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181000	How can I know if I am working fast enough to finish my PhD? I am a second-year math Ph.D. student without a master's degree who likes taking math classes and loves TAing and tutoring, but dislikes research. During the first semester of my second year, I spent about 3-4 hours a week on research while taking three classes and got very little done research-wise. I usually have about 8 hours of office hours a week for TA (some of which are for review or practice sessions) and I also type LaTeX notes for students which I improve each semester. I want to be a lecturer or community college math instructor (I am aware that their pay/ job security is not ideal, but I would rather have a job that I enjoy than being a professor, because I definitely do not want to continue research after I graduate with my Ph.D.) It seems like for those positions completing a Ph.D. is needed to be a competitive job candidate, but the quality of the research doesn't really matter. Being more likely to get a job is the only reason I am doing my Ph.D. I have gotten 6 A's and 3 A+'s in the 9 classes I have taken for my Ph.D. so far, because I spend enough on them and also tutor other graduate students in some of the classes I am taking with makes me spend even more time. I like how for classes I learn everything by going to lectures instead of having to read references, have a large number of small homework problems instead of a small number of difficult research problems, and taking tests instead of working on long-term projects. During my second year the main reason I don't do much research-wise is that I spend too much time TAing and tutoring, but starting in my third year it will be more so motivation than time, because I won't be taking classes. I was supposed to read a lot over winter break and also complete a proof and didn't have any other responsibilities. I read what I was supposed to and typed about 40 pages of LaTeX notes, but I skipped all of the proofs in the book and I found that after I finished reading I did not remember most of the notes I had typed, because I typed them quickly and didn't read the text deeply. I also didn't do the proof. I had a lot of time during break, but I chose not to do a good job because I wasn't motivated. How can I determine whether I am doing enough each week to complete my Ph.D. and not be kicked out for not doing enough research? I usually don't finish the weekly assignments I get, but my advisor hasn't mentioned that I am not doing enough. I know that one way to find out is to ask my advisor, but I don't want them to know that I just want to complete the Ph.D. And I don't want to spend time on research, because then they might decide that they don't want to work with me anymore and I wouldn't be able to finish my Ph.D. I think that I probably wouldn't spend more than 12 hours weekly during my last three years on research, but I would spend at least 8 hours weekly even if less than that was enough. I know that this would leave me with a significant amount of free time which I would probably spend tutoring undergraduate and graduate students, because I am motivated to do that and it would help improve my teaching skills. In summary Is 12 hours spent weekly on research for the final 3 years enough to complete a minimal Ph.D. for a slightly above average Ph.D. student? Is there a way that I can continually check whether I am on track to complete my Ph.D. and not be kicked out for making unsatisfactory progress? Is this in the US? We can't convert X hours a week to "you'll get your PhD." If your advisor thinks you're not doing enough, then they are probably correct. Yes this is in the US. My advisor hasn't mentioned that I am doing enough yet But he also understands that I am also taking classes so I won't be doing much research during my second year. Most new hires as community college instructors in math these days do not have a PhD. @user152100 Oh, I'm sorry, I misread, but my maint point stands. Talk to your advisor. Start there. Not to be a damper on this, but if you asking how many hours a week it takes, then you may not be suitable to do it. You're worrying about the wrong things. Focus on your research, not the clock. 1 - 'but dislikes research' ?! 2 - i believe it was dave crenshaw who said it's not about the number of hours you put in but the the number of things you accomplish during those hours or something It sounds like you don't even like reading math, which is a bit odd for somebody who likes taking math classes. To be clear, skipping over all the proofs in a book you were supposed to read means you read approximately 0% of the mathematical content of the book. Terence Tao has some blog post where he explains that it's not about maximising the hours you are awake and putting in the work, but rather feeling inspired and ready to do work in the hours which you do have available. You get to know whether you're working fast/hard enough by asking your professor/tutor/mentor/fellow students… don't you? In my opinion, the bare minimum required to have a good chance to complete a PhD in math is to actually want one. By that I mean, not just to want a diploma, or a practical means towards having some specific type of career, but to actually have a decent level of passion and enthusiasm about the idea of doing research in math, which is what doing a PhD is all about. A person who lacks this level of passion and enthusiasm will most likely fail. Even many who do have it will not succeed. A math PhD is already a hard enough thing to do for those who find the idea of math research appealing, so that I really wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who doesn’t find it appealing. Basically, it’s a bad idea to think in terms of the number of hours per week. If you are thinking in those terms it strongly signals that you lack intrinsic motivation for doing what it takes to get a PhD. And without intrinsic motivation, your chances simply don’t look very good. Keep in mind that I don’t know you and what you’re capable of, but that’s at least the generic answer I would give for someone in your situation. See also this answer with some related thoughts. And best of luck with your studies going forward. Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. I applaud your love of learning mathematics and your interest in teaching. That said, you will have to be both thoughtful and lucky to reach your career goal: teaching relatively advanced mathematics in a relatively stable job. Many of the other answers here point to the difficult job market now and in years to come. You do need that PhD. If your advisor is sympathetic to your goals and you are good enough to do some research they may be able to help you choose a problem in your Goldilocks zone: one you're genuinely interested in answering, hard enough to be worth solving but not so hard that it's beyond your abilities. I don't think you can succeed as long as you are counting and regretting the research hours. You really do have to care about the problem. Look for one in an area that does not call for lots of technical machinery before you can even state and understand open questions. If there's something touching the things you like to teach, go for that. In your eventual job search consider secondary schools. You will find some advanced topics and some good students to mentor. Your advisor is the best person to answer this, but it doesn't sound like you are headed for success. A PhD is normally all about research, though in the US (assumed), in the second year, there is a lot of coursework normally. Only after passing comprehensive exams does the research get serious and dominates your time (and maybe your life). At the point you are, if the program is 6-7 years in total, you are probably ok, but eventually research will be closer to 20-30 hours per week for someone who is also also a TA. Talk to your advisor about your progress and maybe look around at what your peers are doing as well. However, research, by its nature, can't be predicted. Some projects take much more time (per week and overall) than others. It is because the unknown is unknown and you are trying to make it known. There are no guarantees. And, if you hate research, you should reexamine your path. Even the coursework you are proud of now won't be terribly valuable as community college faculty. It is meant to prepare you for serious research (and for passing qualifiers). I agree that I don't think they care about my course grades when hiring me but if I am looking to be a lecturer or community college instructor (not a community college professor) do they care about the quality of the thesis? Also the program is 5 years in total so I have 3 years of research after this year. @user152100: do they care about the quality of the thesis --- If they care at all, I suspect the general topic of the thesis would be much more relevant than the quality (e.g. other things equal, this would probably help more than this), especially since probably no one will likely to be able to judge the latter, and even if they were able to judge and the thesis was very high quality, red flags might be raised over why you are applying there. My two cents as someone who switched from pure math to applied math and actually found it interesting and motivating enough to complete my PhD: It's not ideal that you don't have that passion obviously. But a change of scenery can help. I was always a pure math person and was trying to do PDE in my early years of PhD (things like Vlassov-Poisson-Boltzmann, proving existence etc) but found it very hard to stay motivated. I came clean to my advisor and we parted ways and I had decided that I would leave the program with a Master's. But a new hire at my university was said to be hiring her first PhD students and wants to do research in computational neuroscience, so I figured it would not hurt to meet her. Now after two papers and two years, I am about to defend this May and have found it very interesting to do Machine Learning/Data Science stuff so I will get hired for that kind of role for a company. This is because the math/simulation part of the research involves a fair bit of Reinforcement Learning algorithms. Our department is huge and I heard similar stories of students completing their math PhD's in applied/computational/inter-disciplinary area and do a lot of simulation/coding as opposed to the old-fashioned 8hrs a day pure math stuff. I also enjoy teaching and my research workload has never exceeded more than 20 hrs a week (on average about 15 - the math is really not that hard in this field). If I did more, then I probably would have published at premium journals and get a strong chance at a nice postdoc, but I am okay with that. But all of this depends on your advisor and in my case she is the nicest and most supportive teacher I have ever had. me too, I found myself less-motivated in pde. The "publish or perish" injunction reflects a professional reality in most of academia Since different PhD candidates differ enormously in their skills and the quality of their work, there is no magic formula to convert hours of work to success or lack thereof. Your advisor and your broader supervisory panel should be able to give you feedback on whether you are on-track in your program. Normally, by this stage of your candidature you would have set some research milestones that progress towards completion of your dissertation. If your panel are doing their job well then you should not be substantially behind schedule without knowing about it, but it never hurts to ask if you're unsure. As to being kicked out for lack of progress, PhD programs have milestones and (at least) annual reviews where you are rated on your progress. Students who have not made sufficient progress to pass their review are generally given at least a semester to catch up, but there are mechanisms to remove them from the program if they are persistently behind and not making research progress. You should read the program rules at your institution to see the review system that is in place in your PhD program. As to your broader career goal and strategy, there are a few aspects of this that are a bit naive and are perhaps cause for concern. Firstly, even for teaching-heavy positions, universities/colleges have generally adopted the view that research scholarship is an important marker of knowledge in a field, and they will prefer their students to be taught by scholars with a substantial research record. For this reason, many academics who focus on teaching undertake research relating to pedagogical aspects of their discipline, as a means to demonstrate high levels of knowledge in the field. (You will find that many acadmics who are heavily focused on teaching will publish papers in teaching journals.) Secondly, there are a number of scholars who believe that universities are entering a period of slow decline (see e.g., Reynolds 2012), which may portend a highly competitive market for academic positions in the future. As shown in the figure below, the rate of produced PhD graduates is substantially above the number of new academic positions, and the gap is getting larger over time. (This figure is only for science and engineering but other fields have been similar.) As a result of these various norms and trends, academics who do not publish research generally have a hard time in academia, even in teaching-heavy positions. Moreover, this is only likely to intensify as more qualified PhD graduates compete for relatively fewer (or perhaps even absolutely fewer) academic positions. You say that you are okay with the low pay and job insecurity of teaching positions at a community college, but on present labour market trends this might become quite extreme. New faculty position vs new PhDs in science and engineering (Figure 1, Shillebeeckx, Maricque and Lewis 2013) Consider your backup plan In addition to the other answers, assuming you succeed in getting the Ph.D. with minimal effort put in on the research (I have trouble seeing how this is possible), consider what might happen if you tried for a lecturer position but didn't get one, or you tried community college teaching and it didn't work out. Many people in this scenario would then look toward a job in industry, and here I'm afraid having a Ph.D. may hurt you significantly given your specific situation. It's my understanding that having a Ph.D. usually communicates to hiring managers that you're skilled at self-directed research (and of course implies then that you actually like it or at least don't hate it). So if you manage to get a Ph.D. without either of these being true, it may hurt your chances of getting a job in industry that matches your interests should your current plan of being a non-research lecturer or community college instructor not work out. Something to consider. Are you sure you hate research? Alternatively, are you sure you that really hate research? Is it possible that you simply haven't found the right research area or problem? Maybe a different area in math, or maybe something altogether different? One test that may be helpful in answering this question is this: are you happiest doing the same thing day in and day out and doing it well (year after year after year), or do you need variety, to learn and do something new every few months or years? Are you a naturally creative person or do you find it difficult? For example, if you like to cook, do you enjoy inventing your own recipes or do you enjoy cooking from established recipes without deviating from them? Basically I'm trying to get at whether you have a personality that is creative, likes to invent and discover, and that craves novelty, or one that seeks to excel at doing one thing and doing it well in a highly stable environment. If the former, I suggest that maybe you've either not truly given research a chance (or may not even have a full picture of what research is), or may not have found a topic you're passionate enough about yet that you want to help push the envelope in that area. If the latter (you crave stability over novelty), then research probably truly isn't for you and that's fine. It's important to learn what type of job best fits you. In this case my gut feeling is a Ph.D. is probably not going to work out, and even if it does it may cause you problems down the road. Other answers gave some good advices on the matter. First, if you really don't like research then the psychological load will get intensified every day, to the point that it might become unbearable. So please be careful about what you really like and dislike before it gets too late. The other point is, I think not liking research and being in academia are two paradoxical features. Maybe you haven't found your passion yet, and the courses you have dealt with so far weren't your taste. So at this point, the 2nd year of PhD, you should keep trying to find what you really like. There's still plenty of time for that IMO. At the end, if you still think that research is not your thing, then maybe you could try some part-time teaching to, for example, high school students. That is a good starting point to check whether your passion and future is in teaching. I think having a PhD is not a necessity for teachers in most places of the world. And I doubt that teaching at high school is less fun than being a college tutor. +100 for suggestion to try part time teaching. OP is taking a pretty big gamble right now. It's definitely worth seeing if what they're working for is even something they'll want.	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13126	How important are GRE analytical writing scores for graduate admission in STEM fields? What is the importance of scores in Analytical Writing section of GRE for graduated admission in STEM fields? Does a score below 3 means that the applicant will be rejected by all good schools? Poor GRE scores are a warning sign, not a stop sign, in most graduate admissions. Essentially, the GRE is only a weak predictor of ability to do graduate-level research, and therefore doesn't get all that much weight, at least in the STEM fields. Now, that said, you don't want to have a 1 out of 6, either. But there are often mitigating factors with respect to the writing section. Given that you have questions like this one: Some people believe that government funding of the arts is necessary to ensure that the arts can flourish and be available to all people. Others believe that government funding of the arts threatens the integrity of the arts. Write a response in which you discuss which view more closely aligns with your own position and explain your reasoning for the position you take. In developing and supporting your position, you should address both of the views presented. I would argue that the writing section is a test that reveals more about the capabilities of students in the humanities than it does students in STEM fields. So do the best that you can, and don't worry too much about this writing sample. It's much more important to worry about the research statement you send to graduate schools! And letters of recommendation! True, but I was referring to what the applicant writes. . . . @aeismail By research statement do you mean the 'Statement of purpose' ? Yes, that's what I had in mind.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.369784	2013-10-01T16:41:03	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/13126", "authors": [ "Animesh Pandey", "MFornari", "Saqib A Naeem", "Tim", "aeismail", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33490", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33491", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33494", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33504", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8324", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/980", "paul garrett", "wagner-felix" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
183	Is there a correlation between being a good teacher and being a good researcher? I have been told that there is a correlation between being a good teacher and being a good researcher (like this paper, in page 15, point 3.6), but i have not found any references or studies about it. Does any know if there is really such correlation, or have studies to confirm or deny it? I would love to see a correlation analysis done between scores on www.ratemyprofessor.com and the professor's h-index. If anyone can figure out whether there's a public API for ratemyprofessor, please post it here! Ugh. Ratemyprofessor? Really?? There have been some empirical studies of this. I don't have a reference, sadly, but from memory they all found almost zero correllation. In other words, neither one in any way predicts the other. Note that this question asks for evidence of a correlation, not a guess or an explanation as to why it should be one way or another (which is subjective). My answer to this has been upvoted four times AND downvoted four times. This is nuts & I've never seen it on any other question. Has someone got a vested interest in this question? No one should downvote anything without an explanation in the comments. I don't think there can be any studies to confirm or deny something like that, simply because neither "good teacher" nor "good researcher" can be quantified objectively without bias, and in the absence of that, how can you compare? But qualitatively, I think the conclusion naturally follows in most cases - both require one to be enthusiastic about their subject in the first place, and require a certain depth of comprehension before they can either publish their results or interact with inquisitive students successfully! Just because it is difficult to measure teaching and research performance does not make it impossible. Furthermore, a good but imperfect measure of performance would still enable a meaningful empirical correlation to be obtained. I'm not sure I understand you - how can an imperfect measure be good at the same time, and how does it ensure it filters out false positives? Assume that there is a true unmeasured latent variable called performance and say that you have an observed measure that correlates r=.80 with that true latent variable; you would have a very useful measure of performance for assessing relationships with other variables. It might not be perfect, but it would be useful in assessing correlations with other variables. I think the same general issue of useful but imperfect measurement applies to a lot of behavioural and social science measurement. It seems likely that there's some nonzero correlation. Certainly, there are factors that should lead to positive correlation; for example, some personality traits (like conscientiousness) should lead to both better research and better teaching. There are also factors that should lead to negative correlation; for example, teaching and research are activities that are competing for a limited amount of time. It would be strange if all these factors nearly cancelled each other out, so we should expect some net correlation. Here's an argument for positive: Let's distinguish between two aspects of teaching, namely exposition and psychology. Exposition means finding simple explanations, coming up with illuminating examples and analogies, mapping out the most important topics and the relationships between them, etc. Psychology means understanding where students are coming from and what they do or don't understand, empathizing and bonding with them, arousing their interest and inspiring them to achieve great things, etc. Both of these are important factors in good teaching, although neither is absolutely essential. A master of exposition without a good understanding of psychology may be clear but dull, and someone who understands psychology but isn't good at exposition may have to follow a textbook closely, but either one will be much better than some teachers. Expository ability is almost certainly correlated with research ability, since they both rely on a deep, creative understanding of the subject matter. In mathematics, the standard example is Jean-Pierre Serre, who is both a brilliant mathematician and the author of several amazing graduate textbooks, and one can see similar characteristics in his research papers and textbooks. However, the psychology side of teaching is probably not closely connected with research ability. There may be some correlation, just because smart people tend to be better than average at all kinds of thinking, but I'd bet the correlation is small. Certainly, there are wonderful researchers who have a terrible understanding of psychology, and vice versa, in a far more dramatic way than for exposition. I see this split as perhaps explaining why there's so much debate about whether good research and good teaching are correlated, with some people saying obviously yes and others obviously no. The answer depends on which aspects of teaching you view as most important. +1 for distinguishing the expository and psychological roles (or the 'teaching' and 'mentoring' roles) Only reference I know of: Feldon et al (2011) Graduate student's teaching experiences improve their research skills. Science, 333, 1037-1040. http://www.sciencemag.org/content/333/6045/1037.full The authors found a that students who taught improved their abilities to generate testable hypotheses. So yes, I assume that this means that there is a correlation between being a good researcher and being a good teacher beyond the simple point of being able to communicate your findings more effectively. Causation ≠ correlation :) @F'x maybe I'm missing some point of the answer, but... which part exactly is the comment about? And BTW, while causation and correlation are not equivalent, they are correlated :D It's hard to evaluate, but from my experience I don't think such correlation exist, or if it exists, it is not extremely evident. Age can certainly be a discriminant, but assumed equivalence in age, a good teacher spends a lot of time in teaching activities, such as preparation, testing, and student nurturing. This leaves very little time for research. Also, most brilliant minds are too involved in their own projects (at the limit of being asocial) and don't make good communicators. The great advantage of a teacher is that he must be "not that smart", that is, he must understand where a difficulty may lie, and come up with a brilliant example to make it clear. Not everyone is Feynman.. I would to add a review point to the discussion that could imply a negative correlation. Teaching students takes empathy, understanding that they do not yet understand and what makes them not understand. A top researcher has probably not experienced this when he/she was in school. Lesser researchers might be better at understanding why a student doesn't get it. Also, a good mind does not imply excellent communicative skills. I would say the correlation is non-existing or slightly positive. Any reason for the downvote? A top researcher has probably not experienced this when he/she was in school. — Perhaps. On the other hand, researchers have to explain their work to non-experts (like promotions committees and grant panels) too. So if they don't learn that empathy as students, they'd better learn it later. I'd say "understanding that they do not yet understand and what makes them not understand" is a major driving force for good research. I think it's worth noting that there are lots of 'types' of students. A great researcher/professor teaching an advanced courses at MIT probably relates very well to his/her students. That same person might be far less effective teaching a remedial class to students who scored too low on their placement exam at poorly rated state school somewhere. This is significantly after the fact, but this paper just came out. It purports to show that students learn the most/best from instructors who are NOT tenure-track professors, potentially due to the added burden performing research has on an instructor. Correlation is not causation. Beware of studies that confuse the two. For those with non-statistical background, it is like "eating ice cream and "driving a car". There may be a positive or negative (or no) relationship between eating ice cream and causing an accident but ice-cream in itself does not cause the accident. Similarly, it is not necessary to be a good researcher because one is a good teacher and vice-versa - a notion that is sort of reflected in the many answers. Unfortunately, many studies use correlation to imply causation. There are any number of reasons that teaching and research might be correlated, or be anti correlated. These reasons will all combine and interact, so you will see a range of extents of correlations. Here are a few: They can be positively correlated because communication is a part of research, so giving good lectures and scientific talks, writing good papers and lessons will be correlated. They must be negatively correlated as a consequence of both taking time from the same individual academic. No one has infinite time. They can be positive correlated because excellent departments and universities value their academics' time and provide resources like secretaries and teaching assistants to help academics have time for both. OK, why are people DOWN voting this? No one should down vote anything without comment, and I've never had any answer be downvoted four times before. Is this someone corrupting stack exchange? I just listed a few reasons why they might and might not be linked. The fact that some times they are linked or sometimes are not linked doesn't prove that these factors have no impact. I'll try clarifying this, thanks Vahid! Ha, this is still getting down voted with no explanation. Dudes, this is just logic! What is the axe you are grinding? I don't have any formal evidence, but I can tell you that at my university there are people who are only doing teaching (and are good at it). If being a good teacher implied being a good researcher, these people would be at least involved in research as well. Similarly, there are many people who are good teachers at high school level and not involved in research in any way. There's a negative correlation. It's been well found in my experience. If you're a good researcher, you'd not be your students favorite. It's like thinking a professional in say big data would teach a subject of big data properly. It sounds like it might, but it won't. A professional would always be in a hurry to go to office, keep thinking about his job, he's doing teaching just as a means to make money in a greedy sense. Same goes for researchers, they're there teaching just so that they can get funds to research, they don't want to teach kids about concepts that can be learnt by reading 10 pages of a textbook. They're there for bigger and better things. So my answer isn't necessarily if a good teacher and good researcher has any correlation. My answer is that anyone who is doing multiple professions just to make more cash (or benefits) isn't going to do it very well. And professors in university have very good power. We had professors who failed 90% of his students, used to come half a hour late to class and left half a hour earlier, we learnt that we were just too dumb. The professor still teaches. Nobody doing multiple professions can be best at both job. Teaching and writing are two jobs that people don't take seriously. Only students know how serious of a job is teaching and only readers know how difficult of a job is writing. Everyone else thinks, otherwise. Your answer could be improved with additional supporting information. Please [edit] to add further details, such as citations or documentation, so that others can confirm that your answer is correct. You can find more information on how to write good answers in the help center. "If you're a good researcher, you'd not be your students favorite" My personal experience is the opposite. @Nobody There're many reasons why you'd be your student favorite. If students also want to be a researcher or do MS/PhD, then you know why would not they be? (To get benefits from you). I'm talking about being loved in terms of "teaching and making students understand". Teaching properly has been thought of spoonfeeding in universities and professors always get angry with it. Meanwhile, the cost to take that paper called degree doesn't speaks like them. plus this is ofc not univeral, but it's majority. It's not just for teaching. Anyone who is putting their hands on two jobs that require considerable attention, is going to perform poorly in either of them based on his priorities. It's psychology and not related to academia tbh.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.370062	2012-02-16T20:52:46	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/183", "authors": [ "Aron Ahmadia", "Christopher Brix", "Community", "Custodio", "Dan D.", "Eduard", "F'x", "James Howard", "JeffE", "Jeromy Anglim", "Jez", "Joanna Bryson", "Jofkos", "Nate Eldredge", "Nobody", "Once Upon a Dev", "Paul Hiemstra", "Rob P.", "Suresh", "TCSGrad", "Voriki", "cbeleites", "eykanal", "grittynerd", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/-1", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15756", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15793", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15805", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/161216", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/167025", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2809", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/358", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/384", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/396", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/397", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/398", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/399", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/404", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4091", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/426", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/427", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/62", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79", "mert", "penelope", "sree" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
1377	Should someone who wants tenure (or a research position) have hobbies totally unrelated to their work? Or in Sean Carroll's words, is it true that "you are better off if your hobbies are nothing like your work"? Carroll, Sean. "How To Get Tenure at a Major Research University: Cosmic Variance." Cosmic Variance. N.p., 30 Mar. 2011. Web. 09 Oct. 2014. This question applies for both cases of tenure and cases of applying for academic positions. +1 for the reference to the post. I think it should be put on the FAQ of this website, as it covers a lot of grounds succinctly. I suspect Sean Carroll is emphasizing this more than most people would, thanks to his tenure denial. It's not always important - plenty of serious bloggers have received tenure, and I know of one mathematician who published a novel before successfully getting tenure at a serious research university. However, Carroll's right about the risks: it will hurt your chances if people spend too much time comparing what you did accomplish to what they imagine you might have accomplished if you had focused more. If your hobbies could be viewed as taking time away from research, then it gives anyone who doesn't want you to get tenure an excellent opportunity to try to derail your case. So basically, if your tenure case could be viewed as marginal or you might have enemies in the department (or among your letter writers), then you should worry about this. Otherwise, I wouldn't let it dictate your life, but I guess it depends on your tolerance for risk. One common-sense approach is not to go around emphasizing to colleagues how much time you are spending on hobbies. always gives sound advice, and there's nothing really left to say :). There's a lot of subtle chest-thumping in departments about who's more busy, or sleeps less, and so on. As long as you're able to demonstrate that you're doing well on the usual metrics for tenure (research, teaching, service etc), then no one will really care about what other things you do. I don't care the cost, I'm not going to let someone else (except my wife and kids) dictate how I use my free time. I am going to use my time how I choose. Isn't that why someone pursues tenure, anyway? Having said that, as AM states, I must acknowledge risks associated with spending free time on things that will not help me get tenure. And I am not going to advertise to others how I spend my free time (within reason). What about children and TV watching? Work-life balance is important. The years until you get tenure are very stress-filled. You need something to balance out work -- whether that's your family or whether it's doing some underwater basket weaving. That being said, you also do not want to give the impression that you are slouching off or not anything than fully dedicated to your work. So at least until you get tenure, I would recommend having a hobby in order to maintain your sanity but not talking about it at work and keeping a low social-network profile. At my previous job, I was an avid woodworker with an entire woodshop in my basement. It helped keep my head on and provided a social sphere entirely separate from school. It definitely depends on the one who reads your CV. Those who don't care about hobbies will simply scroll this lines about hobbies. Those who care will decide based on their own opinion. Also it is nice when it will be possible to do your hobbies at the University you apply to. E.g. "sailing" in the middle of continent would look stupid, but same "sailing" in some seaside city can make sense and add another reason why you would like to work there. I can't really follow your answer. What is unclear for you? I think you misinterpreted the question as pertaining to job seekers as opposed to tenure track faculty. The tenure review in America is possibly an even more peculiar process than the application, which is already vastly different from most job interviews. This advice doesn't seem to apply to the tenure review. Tim, sorry for my misunderstanding, i did not realize that it is USA only. Tenure track positions exist not only in USA and I meant European way. You are right about peculiarities of both application and review processes. But in the end all the decisions are made by humans, with their own thoughts. It was already mentioned about the work-life balance, I just added some words about what the life can be about.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.371139	2012-05-03T03:40:42	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1377", "authors": [ "Cell", "Jase", "LCIII", "Nasantogtokh.E", "Seda Kaya", "StasK", "Steve P", "StrongBad", "Suresh", "TeleOne", "Tim", "Valerio", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/124048", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/124076", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/124077", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/126542", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12703", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/315", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/34332", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4315", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/739", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81612", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81613", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81614", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/86965", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/86975", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929", "lobati", "saru", "sosoali", "غزال قادری" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
88485	Unusual funding issue -- what are my good next steps? So I got some strange news last week, and I'm hoping someone knows what a good next move in my situation is. I'm an MSci CS student in the U.K., about to graduate. A while back I got an offer to continue my masters studies in a PhD programme I applied to, at my current university. More recently, I heard that some friends who had also applied had heard back about funding many weeks ago. I did some asking around and found that my funding application never got considered -- due to an administrative error, my funding application was never processed, though I did submit it within the deadline. All funding has now been distributed, but I never had a shot at funding from the school's DTC as a result of this error. ...I have a potential fallback. A company is interested in sponsoring my research -- they'll put 50% toward the fees and living expenses, and the college pays the other 50%. I'm yet to hear back about this from the college's end, but the company has already committed. Note that this funding's coming from the college of science and engineering, of which the CS school is a part -- so the funding can come from two places. Obviously, I want to maximise my chances of getting out of this scenario with funding. Less obvious is how to go about getting that best shot! With the issue I'm facing regarding DTC funding being kind of unique, I'm not sure that anyone knows what the protocol is. That means I don't know what it'll be possible to make happen. Some suggestions I've had: There's always the college funding and the industrial application I've got right now. Using this situation as leverage to try to get the school, rather than the college, to fund the other 50% of the industrial application. This is my prospective supervisor's bet. As a new tax year brings a new budget, there's potentially a new pool of funding for the DTC for the coming year. I wonder whether I can be considered now for funding from this new pool. Not sure whether that would then affect my start date. Defer my entry until October 2018 and apply again to the DTC in the coming year. This was the suggested course of action from the admin assistant who made the error -- its also my lowest preference. Does anyone have an idea as to whether the school is obligated to consider me at all, if I've applied for funding with my admission application? And what might I be able to do to improve my chances? Does anyone have advice on which if the above might be avenues worth exploring? Thanks! I'd try escalating it further up in the admin chain (potentially a formal complaint to the dean). Whether or not the school is obligated to reconsider you, this reflects very badly on them. Also, can't you try to pursue all of the above options simultaneously? I think (2) is your best shot. If that fails, then take the 50% to another university. @OlgaK escalation hadn't even occurred to me! That's a good idea, thank you. I certainly could pursue all of the options -- and I will! -- but it's also exam & dissertation & flat moving time, so I don't have a ton of time to dedicate, and knowing where my best chances might lie just helps to direct me. @user2768 Thank you! 2 sounds like a plan to me, too, so that's encouraging... news today is that they might actually have some funding to make that happen, so I might be in luck. Thanks for your advice! Do try to lay a guilt trip on them (lay the problem at their doorstep). You can ask them to give you a clear answer to the question, "If my application had been processed, how would I have fared?"	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.371534	2017-04-23T23:41:12	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/88485", "authors": [ "12345", "aparente001", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22768", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32436", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/63539", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/69353", "probablytom", "user2768" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
78607	Travel grants to lecture in a poor country: where to apply? I have always wanted to lecture at a university in a poor country, something like volunteering. I am currently in Australia and I have been in touch with a colleague in Sierra Leone (West Africa) who mentioned that they need lectures for a specific topic but they cannot afford to get hire one. So I thought of helping for one semester. The problem is traveling is expensive and most likely I will be taking an unpaid leave for that period. My question is: are there agencies that can provide travel grants or cover some expenses for lecturers willing to volunteer in poor countries? Any pointers will be highly appreciated! I am US-based, but I assume things work more or less the same. Do you have a PhD? If so, then I imagine that as long as your colleague is able to put together a decent proposal and formally invite you, you should be able to use whatever travel grants that you hold to travel there (much like traveling to a conference while paying your own way to give a talk, except the duration would be longer). In the US, you would be able to apply to various grants such as the National Science Foundation's research grants, American Mathematical Society - Simons Foundation travel grant, and also American Women in Mathematics travel grant (since it seems that you may be a woman). Any of these grants should be enough to cover a round trip plane ticket to Sierra Leone, and I assume some equivalent agencies exist in Australia. If you do not have a PhD, then the situation is trickier. Since you do not have the "expertise," the aforementioned agencies are less willing to cover your travel, which is presumably why so many people ask for donations from their family and friends or through Kickstarter campaigns. I have heard that you can also write to various companies and if they think your cause is worthwhile, they may agree to donate some money. The US has a granting agency that specializes in grants for this purpose - the Fulbright!	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.371834	2016-10-21T03:47:04	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/78607", "authors": [ "Alexander Woo", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/34050" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
183340	Microaggression in our group towards me I am a Bulgarian PhD student in Germany. I am Muslim, but not religious. Our group is international and most of the other students are from developed countries. Since the day I started my PhD, there is one student (she is not German) in our group who has always made me feel bad. My country, my religion, the material I investigated was constantly being made fun of. Every time I felt inadequate and bad. I informed our advisor of her behaviour. Our advisor told me that she would not talk to her, then said that she was very surprised, then wanted time to think. I should point out that this student behaves very well to profs in our group. If I were a prof, I might had been surprised as well. Afterwards, our advisor may have talked to her, because she told me 'sorry', but she did it for herself. I did not know the terms mobbing, racism, discrimination, etc. before. I learned that these are referred to as microaggression. Despite all this, I don't feel well at all, because I was hurt, humiliated, but she was just warned. I didn't behave bad to anyone, but it was me who was injured. I even think that I am seen as a sensitive person who causes problems by my advisor. I don't want to be seen as problem child or cry baby. This is also bad for my career. Should I mention this at the group meeting? Or should I talk about this with my advisor? Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please read the post notice and this FAQ before posting another comment, and beware that we can only move comments to chat once. Do not bring it up in the group meeting. This will only reflect negatively on you, and puts the other people involved in a position where an open discourse about the issues is not possible. You have taken a few steps towards mitigating the issue, and talking to your PI is certainly an option. Your PI seems to have had a chat with the person in question, and a warning is all that is possible without a diary of what happened and when. There is one more person in your institution that I would strongly encourage you to talk to. The confidential adviser. Every university in Europe will most certainly have one. It is their job to be there for you if you encounter any type of harassment, be it from a superior, fellow PhD student, whoever else. They can provide counsel, but also advise you on how to take further steps without burning bridges. To add to this, you should probably also have a personal/non-academic supervisor who sits outside of the research group and is there precisely to help with this sort of pastoral issue What's the official position title for a "confidential adviser", in German universities? @einpoklum: naming may differ a bit, and there are potentially different types of confidential advisors: Vertrauens(hochschul)lehrer, Vertrauensprofessor would be one possibility. I'd also expect that several people may know whom OP could contact and how exactly that position is named in OP's university: Ombudspersons (typically specialized on scientific misbehaviour), Personalrat, Prüfungsamt. I recommend keeping a diary or list of every "micro-aggression." Include dates, times, and witnesses, and keep a copy of any abusive comments that are in written form. If you remember the details of any specific incidents after the apology, you can include those as well. Write down the quotes verbatim (as best as you can remember them); no need to add any comments. Depending on what this list looks like, you can decide what to do. If there are only a few borderline comments after a few months, maybe the issue is resolved. If there are many egregious comments within a short time period, then it's worth sharing the list with your advisor. If you do end up discussing this further with your advisor, you can simply present this list. Do not attempt to summarize or comment on the list; there is no need to use words like "micro-aggression," "mobbing," or "racism". Instead, focus on the concrete details of each specific incident. For example: "The list shows that in the past month, she has used the N-word four times, and on nine different occasions, she commented on my religion, using the words: 'A', 'B', or 'C'." American universities are obsessed with inclusiveness. It's usually pretty hard to fire someone from a university due to interpersonal issues, but an infraction of this sort could absolutely lead to getting fired. I do not know if this aspect of academic culture is the same in Germany, but I suspect that this sort of thing would be taken quite seriously there as well. Good luck. The last paragraph quite clearly describes a witch-hunt: on the one hand, it is hard to fire someone, and on the other, it is easy for an "infraction of this sort". All of this concerns American academia. Then a hope is expressed that a similar strategy could work in Germany. I fail to see how I "promote a witch hunt" -- what a thing to say! On the contrary, I suggested collecting evidence before making a complaint. The third paragraph states that being a jerk is generally not enough to get you fired from a university, whereas creating a hostile work environment might be. I did not offer an opinion on this, nor any "hopes" about other countries being similar. On the contrary, I was being very transparent about any potential cultural bias (though, in fact, I am very familiar with several European languages and cultures generally, including Germany's). @YuvalFilmus Oh come on. On one hand, a completely valid statement for most European Universities is "It is hard to fire any person in a permanent academic role", and on the other, it is easy "for an infraction including sexual misconduct, drug or alcohol use at the workplace". So, (leaving the charged topic of sexual misconduct out of it), according to your explanation, would you say that firing a professor e.g. who drunkenly staggered into the classroom spurring nonsense is "a witch-hunt" as well? Or would this be a sort of infraction that justifies easy firing of such a person? This would not be a useful thing to do unless OP wanted to expend a lot of effort in a prolonged confrontation with that colleague. And it would have the detrimental effect of keeping OP preoccupied with this matter. OP describes "constantly" being made fun of, and being made to feel "hurt and humiliated." If the aggression is truly this severe, then it seems that being preoccupied with this matter is unavoidable. But if these are just occasional snide comments, then I might better understand the answers suggesting that OP should brush this off. Writing down the quotes verbatim in a diary is a good way for OP to judge (and let others judge) how severe this truly is. That's a bad advise, actually. Just focus on your PhD work instead, unless you're PhD in psychology or sociology, of course. ) Evidently, your advisor has talked to her and she has apologised to you. It is not clear to me why you characterise her apology as inadequate, but if you think it's inadequate or insincere, you are certainly free to view it that way. There are two issues in tension in this kind of situation. On the one hand we want people to interact nicely with each other, particularly when working in small groups, and to that end we often want people to avoid upsetting each other in relation to sensitive topics. On the other hand, we also want people to have the freedom to voice their opinions on practices pertaining to countries, religions, etc., and to have the general academic freedom to criticise (or even mock) ideas and practices they don't agree with. University is a good place to expose students to the fact that others may be critical of their religion, their country, their research work, etc., and they should consider that criticism analytically and use it to build up a better knowledge of their own beliefs and ideas. It is a natural reaction to feel bad when you hear criticism of something personal to you, so I don't think anyone is going to consider you a "cry-baby" for bringing it up. It's also not clear from your question how far things went, and maybe she crossed the line. Nevertheless, rather than seeing these events as an injury, I would recommend that you take the route of the open-minded-scholar and look at this criticism as a thing that you can analyse, and that can help you to understand the world better. Either you will conclude that her criticisms (e.g., of Islam) have no valid basis and reject them, or you will conclude that there is some validity in those criticisms and incorporate that knowledge into your ideas and beliefs. This is one of the benefits of a university education and the academic environment more generally --- you are exposed to ideas/arguments that run counter to your own beliefs (often on very personal subjects) and if you receive these criticisms analytically, this strengthens your understanding of your own beliefs and the world. I have noticed that in the younger generation of students there is a tendancy to retreat from criticism of personal things and treat this as a form of abuse, rather than treating it as an opportunity to learn and strengthen your own character. When I was a student it was more common for us to have late-night "bull sessions" where students would argue passionately over all sorts of sensitive issues --- theism-vs-atheism, Christianity-versus-Buddhism, communism-vs-capitalism, criticisms and defences of this country, that country, our own country, this religion, that religion, this group, that group, etc. Sometimes you'd even play Devil's Advocate for a view you didn't agree with just to keep the conversation interesting and tease out the argument. This was usually quite interesting and it tended to hone your ability to understand and defend your own views on a topic, while also exposing you to some critiques that you could use as food-for-thought in developing your own ideals later. If we'd been beholden to the idea of "microaggressions" back then, I think a lot of that learning would have been lost. If you decide you'd like to talk more about this, I'd encourage you to consider talking directly to this other student rather than to your group, advisor, etc. I'd also recommend that you approach it from the perspective of learning and strengthening your own knowledge. See if you can understand why this student finds your country/religion/work worthy of mockery, and subject her reasoning for this to your own logical scrutiny. You might then find that you can come up with a reasonable counter-argument (and maybe even some zingers to return fire) that gives you a strengthened knowledge of your own religion, work, etc. University years are a great time in life to do this. Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment. You are right to be offended by this behavior. You seem to have done the right thing so far. This is a problem for your advisor/PI to fix and they may have taken the first steps. I would avoid bringing it up in a group for the present to see how it develops. If it continues you may need to. But you can also develop friendships with others in the group (and generally) so that if the behavior continues you will have allies who can vouch for your concerns. But making it a public issue will most likely harden those improper views, not lead to a correction. Keep your advisor informed. The attitudes may not change, but the behavior might. Some people will actually get satisfaction from pushback. As you move from one culture to another you will find people who are extremely xenophobic and feel that they are "obviously" superior. It is best to ignore them if you can do so without it resulting in actual harm to yourself or others. You would probably find the same thing in other countries as well (the US, for example). But universities are a bit better at this than other environments. And, for the record, it would also be offensive behavior if you were religious. Maybe other step is to document in some time-stamped format when things happen. Basically a note to self that could be verified for date/time by someone external if needed In some places it is legal to record conversations without the permission of both parties. Other places it is illegal. Document is written not audio The answers here are good especially as regards American academia where terms like micro aggression have taken root and are very much in. I'm not exactly sure about Germany, but Europe in general is much less understanding regarding these (real or perceived) slights. What you describe is certainly not mobbing (which would be bullying of an individual by a group) but might be racism (assuming you're a different race from the other student) or just general discrimination/xenophobia. It might also just be personal antipathy or misunderstanding of some kind. Based on your description this is one student of a group who is being verbally insensitive to you. In Europe professors are usually not particularly used to dealing with interpersonal problems between students especially ones at the PHD level. They treat them as adults and expect them to be able to handle their interpersonal problems on their own unless the conduct very clearly violates social norms or threatens to be legally problematic. You don't actually specifically say what happened and so it's hard to judge, but given the way you describe your interaction with the professor so far, it is quite possible you have already been labeled a crybaby and/or problem student. I'm basing that more on how the professor reacted than what you did. Now what to do about it. This depends a lot on the exact details. I strongly second the advice to find peers in the group and become friends with them. This allows you to have someone that can support you in any further confrontations and also to possibly get an opinion of someone else on what is going on and be able to shape that opinion to exert peer pressure on the student you are having problems with. Unless the violations are quite egregious I would strongly advise against bringing them up in the group or going over your advisors head. While this might work in the US I think in Europe it's still more likely to make problems for you than the other student especially since she's female and seems to be in good standing with the establishment. As a side note I wrote this assuming you are yourself female, if you are actually male it's much more complex and much more likely to be problematic for you. In Europe males are still mostly expected to be able to deal with their own problems and shut up about it. I realize this answer is probably not going to be very popular, but I think it's a much realistic take on the European situation. Not detracting from any other answer, it seems to me that you should try to find additional sources of emotional support/affirmation outside your research group. That is, suppose you were back in your country, surrounded by friends and perhaps family, and some person would make derogatory comments about you. It's likely you would tell your friends this, or your spouse, or your family, and they would reply "Who does that woman think she is? Where does she get off making these comments? You know, something similar happened to me, blah blah blah" and you would have a conversation about it. But as a foreign PhD candidate, you might be mostly alone out of the workplace, or perhaps mostly interact with people with whom you're not close enough to share these things with. That increases the severity of being offended, because your research group are almost all of your "emotional surroundings". I would also recommend some physical activity for general emotional welfare, but that's regardless of your specific circumstances. @Trunk: No, I'm not worried about that. As far as we can tell, the supervisor acted and the harassing colleague has stopped and apologized. @Trunk: Based on the first sentence of the answer, I think it is also fair to say that this answer is of the form "Here are some things you can do, possibly in addition to other things..." rather than "Here are some things you can do to the exclusion of all other things...". It's very hard for an adviser to deal with these things. Where I work there are people who simply don't get along. One of my group members, for example, shares an office with someone who hates him. I have no idea why, because they hated him from the first day he walked into the office. In any case, I have tried to find a solution to the conflict, I talked to both people and to my superiors and I couldn't do anything. And these aren't graduate students, they are senior researchers. The one doing the microaggressions (or full scale aggressions whenever they are in a bad mood) is the first colleague. When I talked to them, they told me my group member was opening the office window when they wanted it shut, that they speak too loud, or they close the door too fast. I have witnessed and stopped some screaming matches and I personally believe my first colleague is at fault here. I have not gotten to the bottom of why is everything happening, though I have a few suspicions. It's been two years since this whole thing started and both of them have reached some kind of truce. That's the best we could do within the boundaries of our workplace. The truce happened because my group member started to push back on the bullying. I have the feeling that my influence and attempts at making peace between them had very little effect on the evolution of their relationship. I have witnessed even worse situations. One of my colleagues got bullied until she quit and sued my institute. She won. The bully was a former boss of hers. It started with microaggressions and it went on over many years, until she got fed up and reported him. The bosses did nothing because they were friends with that guy. The microaggressions either come from insensitive people, or from people who just want to hurt you. The latter know that it's hard to prove them, and they can always say you're making stuff up. In families, in my country, this is the preferred form of war between mother in law and daughter in law. Whoever starts, eventually they both hurt each other in this way. I personally deal with microaggressions by simply sucking it up or ignoring them. "Yeah, whatever" is my preferred answer to those. In my case, it works always. Some of my friends simply call the microaggressor out. If it really gets to us, we complain to our friends. A good venting session always helps. In conclusion, my recommendation is to find an outlet for all that stress you accumulate when dealing with this person. Friends are the best at taking your side. Then, when your head is clear, you should think seriously about escalating the issue further. Just a small comment, there is a huge difference between a boss being the person who is being problematic vs. a colleague. Neither is great but a power differential very much changes the situation. @Trunk As people age and keep failing at things that should work, they start feeling powerless.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.372168	2022-03-16T19:48:55	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/183340", "authors": [ "Ben", "Buffy", "DRF", "Dawn", "Massimo Ortolano", "ScottishTapWater", "Yuval Filmus", "cag51", "cbeleites", "einpoklum", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/106683", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/154603", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20058", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4249", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43032", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/56938", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/72211", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7319", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75368", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79875", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8445", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/87026", "penelope", "shomeax", "user3653831" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
11832	How to effectively use blogging as a tool to gain visibility in academia While a lot has been said in this site about the importance of visibility in academia, I specifically want to know about the effectiveness of blogs: are blogs an effective means to communicate your presence in the field? I envisage the blog to contain posts which informally talk about selective publications. What points should one consider when writing blogs about published papers? It is a significant challenge not to exceed the usual blog lengths when writing on a technical paper. Are there effective tips an academic blogger should keep in mind? A helpful blog post on this question: http://www.antarcticglaciers.org/2013/03/why-i-blog-and-why-you-should-too/ What points should one consider when writing blogs about published papers? — Rule 1: Don't just write about other people's papers. Many bloggers use Twitter to connect with others and 'advertise' whenever they have a new post. If you are well connected on Twitter, more and more people might start following you (through recommendations) and read your blog. I think it is well accepted that an online presence for early career researchers is a good thing, even though a minority actually have one. As an example, blogs on my website have been reposted a few times on various news sites, and they also appear high up the search engine list for keywords relating to my field of research. I also managed to get invited to speak on the back of my website, so in my experience a website really does improve your visibility. The first challenge with blogs is deciding who they are aimed at. Remembering back to my early PhD, understanding papers was hard, and so I decided that I would focus on researchers in my field (magnetism) but try and avoid all unnecessary jargon, which should also make it accessible to undergraduates in the discipline. If you are blogging about your publications, then it means you can simplify the result for a broader audience, without compromising on the detail (those who are interested can look up the paper on your site - don't make them hunt for it or have it stuck behind a pay wall). My main tips for an academic blog are: Talk about all your publications - what is the main result in laymans terms and specify why it is important. Don't worry too much about length limits. Academics are used to reading long documents and a blog a couple of pages long doesn't take long to skim. However, research is generally technical and so it is difficult to write a superficial post such as 'I had omelette for tea' or some such. A blog is as much about you as the subject, so write in the first person and include your wider activities. For example, I always write up conference visits and talks I have attended/done. Pictures and figures are a lot more effective than words, so use these extensively if you can.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.373833	2013-08-12T12:59:24	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11832", "authors": [ "JeffE", "Rabbit", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3890", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7219", "silvado" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
973	PhD opportunities when lacking publications This question in some sense, complements this question. Suppose a good student completes his master's degree in a less-than-top-ranked university. He has excellent academic grades both in his bachelor's and master's, but unfortunately has not experienced the best research 'atmosphere' in his post-grad and so does not have any publications thus far in his career. It is a hugely relevant practical issue: low-ranked universities woo good students by providing them full funding plus scholarships for their master's, so there are many cases where students prefer them to top colleges where funding is not assured. After completion of graduation, these students desire to go for a PhD in top universities. So the question is this: How does a bright student with excellent grades but lacking in publications secure an admit in a top school? One obvious answer is to formulate an excellent research problem and to convince professors of his research ideas pertaining to the problem. Any other useful suggestions? The answer to your question is that such a student rarely does. @Bravo: Charles makes a good point. Are you trying to get into an American PhD program? From my experience many people do graduate Master's programs with publications in the US. You have to make the case that your research potential outweighs your lack of research output. The only places to make that case are your research statement and your letters. Both your statement and your letters should make it clear that you are an active researcher, even though you are not yet published. Your statement should describe the specific research problem(s) that you are pursuing, promising and specific partial results, and a specific and well-informed plan of attack. Similarly, letters from faculty at your MS department should describe your independence, stubbornness, intellectual maturity, and so on, in specific and credible detail. When you ask for letters, ask your references specifically if they can write a strong letter about your research potential. Ideally, your references should admit that their department doesn't provide you with the environment that you need to thrive as a researcher. And it really hurts to write “[Bravo] can do better than us,” so it better be true. Admissions committees (at least the ones I've been on) do take applicants' previous institutions into account when judging research records. We know that applicants from most 4-year liberal arts colleges don't have as many opportunities for computer science research as applicants from (say) MIT, so our expectations for MIT applicants are higher. So your lack of publications may not hurt you as much if your MS department is known to have a weak research atmosphere. However: Do not suggest in your application that your lack of publications is your MS department's fault. You may believe it's their fault, and you might even be right. But if you actually write that it's their fault, you'll come across as someone eager to blame others for your weaknesses. No matter how good you are at research, nobody will admit you if they think you're a jerk. This is another one of those questions that defies easy categorization. If you are applying, for instance, to a "hard" engineering discipline, it's not normally expected that a MSc would have any "external" publication record of any kind, and, as such, not having one would not weight against the candidate in admissions considerations. (All things being equal, of course, the candidate with a publication record might be prioritized over one without.) Similarly, any student coming from a European bachelor's/master's system, where the expected output is a master's thesis, but not necessarily journal publications, I would weight accordingly. (I might ask for a copy of the master's thesis.) Similarly, if the degree is coursework-only, then this should be clearly stated as part of the application. The challenge will then be to get some support from the letters of reference of your capability to do research. For fields where some publication record is expected, I'd follow JeffE's advice.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.374096	2012-04-02T03:39:59	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/973", "authors": [ "Samuel Reid", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/505", "mac389" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
4807	How should an academic negotiate his/her salary? This is a follow-up question to this question of mine, where I wanted to know if academic salaries can be negotiated. How does an academic negotiate a pay package that has been offered? What special points in one's profile must be emphasised in order to get a favourable bargain? Are there any standard cards (tricks) that must be played? PS: The negotiator is assumed to be fresh out of his doctorate. This probably requires more details to be answered, doesn't it? As said in the answers to your linked question, this depends heavily on your place (and employer). Some employers have fixed grid, no negotiation possible: in such a system, you can, however, require a promotion (assistant prof to associate prof, associate prof to full professor, full prof to senior prof, …) that would entail a pay raise. In other places, there are bonuses depending on an evaluation of your performance: then, instead of negotiation a pay raise, you would make sure to increase your chances of a positive evaluation. Thanks Fx. I had a person fresh out of PhD in my mind. And a place where neg. is possible... For a general discussion on salary negotiation tactics, which is fairly relevant here as well, I would strongly recommend reading this fairly long and very detailed article in it's entirety. @eykanal Thanks for the article link. It has some great advice! It's important to remember that you're negotiating a package, not a salary. In other words, there is a set of things you're negotiating for, and you can play games in that space to get most of what you need. Limiting yourself to salary negotiation is tricky because salaries are often the most constrained part of the package (especially in public universities in the US), and the one the chair/dean has the least power to change. So remember that your success at the job depends on your ability to recruit students, procure resources and bootstrap your research program. Which means you need startup money to pay students, lab space and equipment money as needed, teaching relief if that helps you focus on research, and so on. Throw these all into the mix when you negotiate, so that if you give up something along one dimension, you can try to parlay that into a gain along a different dimension. Also understand who you're really negotiating with, and what powers they really have to offer you things. This can be found out by talking with your supporters at the department (you must have some, otherwise you wouldn't have an offer) and also folks at other institutions. Thanks @Suresh, I have one question on this. Salaries in public univs are known and give some idea on how to bargain. But how does one get some idea on the startup packages? Should one list the possible resources and make an idea of the expenses by himself? Startup packages don't vary greatly from university to university in the US, when evaluated in transferrable currency (number of students, number of summer months of support, etc). So one could ask people in comparable universities for suggestions. For things like equipment, it helps to provide a breakdown and pricing (by going to some website and pricing things out). +1 for the package perspective. You have to get to know the package, which takes time as it's complex. Things I didn't realize I could negotiate at the time I was hired were not explained, and I was not looking at all the dimensions. The "supporters" @Suresh speaks of should be able to give you insight. Even a guaranteed lab space for students is something I could have negotiated. To a first approximation, you have two ways of negotiating for a higher salary, namely fairness and leverage from other offers. If your offer is not in line with what other people have received under similar circumstances at the same institution, then you can ask them to address this. If you make a convincing case, they may improve the offer, either out of a desire to do the right thing or out of fear of embarrassment if the details became known (for example, if it suggests discrimination). However, it's rare for there to be enough information to make an objective case for unfairness. Unless the offer is really outrageous, you aren't likely to have much success with this sort of argument: probably, the administration will just explain why they think it's fair. By far the most successful way to negotiate is based on other offers. This gives you concrete proof that another university values you more than this one seems to, and you can make a credible threat of going there instead. You can't necessarily expect to get other offers matched exactly, since the comparison always involves a complicated mix of benefits, cost of living analysis, departmental quality, etc. However, it at least gives you a powerful way to start the conversation, and you'll have a lot of leverage if you might plausibly accept the other offer instead. Incidentally, the worst mistake naive job candidates make is to accept a job offer and then try to negotiate. During the period when you have offers but haven't accepted yet, you are in a better negotiating position than you ever will be later. As soon as you accept, almost all your power disappears. In some cases (for example in Germany), most academic positions are paid according to collectively negotiated labour agreements. The universities have little room to deviate from this (at the professor level things are different, though). The wages are paid according to scales corresponding to different "function levels", and each scale consists of a certain number of steps. The number of steps you get for free is based on your previous experience. It might be possible to negiotate an extra step, but this is usually difficult. In principle you can be placed in a higher scale, but this depends on the specific tasks you will be responsible for. For example, a postdoc leading his/her own group can be in a higher scale than a postdoc without such responsibilities. In short, negotiating salary may be difficult in such a system, since the universities are bound to the collective labour agreements. In the Netherlands the situation is similar. +1 for the collective agreement perspective (I'm at a Quebec university where this is the case). However, as pointed out in another answer, there are many dimensions where administration can have freedom. In my case, I was able to get a reduced course load for the first 2 years, a hiring bonus for the first year, assurance that the school would apply for a provincial 5-year income-tax waiver (a government program), etc. I think the first thing you need to ask is do you want a raise. While it may seem obvious that more money is better, I would argue that this is not the case since the raise comes with other "costs". In the simplest case, would you rather a raise of x, or an increased startup package of 10x? While not directly linked, your total "cost" (including space) is a factor. There are two problems with seeking a raise. First, they are hard to justify. Universities want you to do good research. The effect of a raise on research output is hard to see, while the effect of an extra RA for a year is easy to see. Further, a small increase in salary now projects to large future costs for the university. The university will keep that number in their head during negotiation. A raise means you might top out on the pay scale earlier, so your pay may stagnate (meaning the university over estimated the cost of the initial raise). This means that overall the raise is not good value for money. You might argue that a raise is the only way increase the money in your pocket. In the short run this is true, but in the long run, better research might lead to more money.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.374451	2012-10-17T13:19:22	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4807", "authors": [ "Bravo", "Brian Knoblauch", "Dan C", "F'x", "Fuhrmanator", "GJK", "Jack hazy Turner", "Lae", "Mike A.", "Suresh", "bidi", "eykanal", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/100009", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1069", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12198", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12199", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12200", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12208", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12209", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12212", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12213", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12225", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2700", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3859", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "orbald", "user3337002", "xizor" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
5351	What are our main concerns regarding academic dishonesty in Massive Online Open Courses? As illustrated by the recent NY Times article, Massive Online Open Courses (MOOCs) have recently gained a lot of attention because of their new model for educating students. What are the main concerns regarding academic dishonesty in Massive Online Open Courses? It appears to me that academic dishonesty may be difficult to police for an online course. Is this correct? This question is a bit tendentious, and probably would be a better question if you just deleted the entire opening paragraph and stuck with the one-sentence question. The opening paragraph contains several premises that are debateable yet not really relevant to the real question. Right. The opening paragraph here was deliberately designed to ruffle feathers. That's probably not necessary in this forum. @JonBannon - I agree the opening paragraph is somewhat inflammatory, but I think it should be edited rather than deleted outright. It does provide some needed context to the question. Why don't you try to edit it to tone it down instead of just removing it? I've just approved DW's edit, but the core question is unconstructive, so I'm voting to close. I think that the question is somewhat misleading. Ethics only factor into a very small percentage of students in Massively Open Online Courses (MOOC's). Most students who participate in MOOC's are only taking the course to learn something. Academic integrity is more of an issue when the students are taking the course for some external reason. Some possible external reasons are: Enrolled in the course through the university, and receiving credit for the course Required to take the course by an employer Taking the course as a pre-requisite for another course or program In each of these situations, the role of verifying learning seems like it would be outside of the course itself. If students choose to cheat, it does not necessarily reflect poorly on the course or the program, but rather reflects poorly on the student. TL;DR - Ethical concerns only matter for students who are required to take the course. The people requiring them to take the course are responsible for ensuring their academic integrity. This is an interesting point of view. Currently, the burden is placed on the provider of the course to ensure academic integrity. @benNorris - You are absolutely correct! While the onus of proof has typically resided with the institution offering the course, MOOC's now allow anyone anywhere to take the course. This is one reason providers like the idea; they hope (I believe) that people will like the course and enroll in a program. An obvious contrast to the peer grading efforts in Dr. Chuck’s Class title ‘Internet History,Technology and Security’ and ‘Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World’ exists. 1) ‘Internet History, Technology and Security’ has a far more lenient rubric to follow in comparison to the ‘Science Fiction’ class. 2) I’ve observed that the essays in ‘Internet History,Technology and Science Fiction’ are far more thoughtfully written and at-least follow the question for the peer response instead of a brief recap of work covered in the reading. I’ve had to evaluate responses which describe in a way such as ‘I read Alice in Wonderland was my favorite story when I was small…….’, for a question which clearly states that you need to form a thesis(or a perspective view) for the reading material/novel/assignment for the week. 3) A major reason for this might be the obvious. ‘Science Fiction’ class releases videos of possible interpretations after the peer response whereas the ‘Internet History,Technology and Science class’ releases videos on the topic, therefore equipping its students to tackle the peer responses. Also a funny thing occurred on the Coursera forums where ‘I was accused of cheating(plagiarism) from my own blog when I merely submitted my Peer Response anonymously while posting my copy on my Personal blog. The other students did not have an idea of who I was ‘since the peer grading’ process is anonymous. However, there were students smart enough to recognize that it was perhaps the blog of the ‘person who submitted ‘ and the issue was clarified. Thanks to [person] for bringing this to my notice and arguing the case in my favor. Also a note: Coursera’s plagiarism check systems should probably account for these when it does come into place. The above block-quote is from my blog. I find it to be relevant to this question. This accusation of plagiarism happened with me as well. I was luckily contacted by one of the other students taking the course and I could talk the other student out of down-grading me. This could be a problem even with OpenAccess accounts as some people may like to post work which they did in classes elsewhere. I also took part in the programming-based classes such as Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing. NLP was tough, with real life problems to be solved. However, despite being forbidden to share their programs online, a lot of students did so, because it seemed to be the only way to make something out of the course(the certificate would not count). The reasoning being, that if I learn some concepts from these courses, I could use my github account to appeal to an employer about my skills. 'By sharing programs online, I mean people started public repositories from which any student could cheat and get a working program for submission.' Not even the best auto-grader could possibly prevent this from happening. I don't think this can be stopped in universities as well. Sure you have a honor code, but people can copy parts of code from all over the web. Make it a little original perhaps. There's also the 'theory' that 'don't re-invent the wheel'. For example: 'Most students would not bother with programming a separate module for Fourier Transform calculations for part of a academic program. or doing this they may use a library from elsewhere to directly import a function.' Would this be considered as copying or plagiarism? Probably not? However, some universities(which include mine) think that programming Fourier Transforms is an important part in understanding them. So my university gives us programming assignments in a computer lab without access to the internet. All we are allowed to rely on is the already available libraries on the system. The systems are wiped clean every time. This becomes frustrating when we need to move from AM to FM to delta modulation and so on. We need to repeatedly write the same piece of code for fourier tranforms and this drastically reduces our efficiency. So getting an optimal solution between preventing plagiarism and 'not re-inventing the wheel' is pretty important if Coursera or any online program would need to get. Right now, there is too much focus on plagiarism and not enough effort to realize the problem of redundancy in the system. While I tend to agree with @jelkimantis, I would go a step further. I think the issue of academic integrity is a bit misguided. This is true not just in MOOC's but in more traditional institutions as well. Some people want to think that when they see a candidate has a degree from XYZ University that they no longer need to put in any effort into the interview (or whatever) process. Most humans are naturally lazy and if they can skip digging, they are happy to do so. The problem comes in that those people are making some very big assumptions which likely should not be made. I would argue that the hiring process is one of the most important processes in any company. A bad hire can haunt you for a very long time and a good hire can save you in so many ways. Still, people want to skip as much of the hiring process as they can (on both sides) so if someone has the right degree they are assumed to have the knowledge which goes with that degree. The problems is, they might not have that knowledge. The knowledge might not be there for several reasons: They might have learned and then forgotten due to workload They might have had someone else take an exam for them They might have cheated during the exams and never learned in the first place Regardless of the reason, if the knowledge is not there, it is not there. So, why make any assumptions? The only reason I can see is for those who do not understand to manage those who do understand. However, even in that case, if you don't understand and your subordinate does, then you better give that subordinate a pretty free hand...because you can't check anyway. I know, it's a long answer but I think the entire question about academic integrity is not a huge issue. As a teacher, I care a great deal if students are cheating. That said, with the number of students I teach, there is no way I can effectively monitor them all. Even if I could, it doesn't solve the underlying problem. If someone is going to hire someone (or promote someone) based on their taking a course or gaining a degree, then they should be willing to do the work to ensure that what was taught was retained. One of the biggest challenges is to perform assessment. To scale, the most natural approach to assessment is to use purely automated methods, i.e., automated grading. However, building good automated graders is difficult. The path of least resistance is to use multiple-choice quizzes for assessment. However, multiple-choice quizzes with a fixed question set are inherently vulnerable to cheating: it is easy for people to pool their answers or copy off each other, and difficult to detect such cheating. One can think of ways to defend against this, but in general, I expect that providing high-quality (yet not gameable) assessment may be one of the non-trivial challenges facing MOOCs.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.375215	2012-11-20T15:07:59	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5351", "authors": [ "410 gone", "Ben Norris", "Burgmeister", "Cosmo Harrigan", "D.W.", "Grant Stenger", "Jon Bannon", "José Siqueira", "Mattheus", "Matthias", "MolbOrg", "Nikita", "eykanal", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13827", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13828", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13829", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13839", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13840", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13873", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14216", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14217", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14218", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14227", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14241", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4128", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4196", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/705", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/924", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96", "jacob", "jelkimantis", "patterson", "user257827" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
10247	Why are CS researchers reluctant to share code and what techniques can I use to encourage sharing? While researching a topic area I have come across a number of papers that claim to improve on the state of the art and have been published at respected outlets (e.g. CVPR, ICIP). These papers are often written in a way that obscures some of the details and their methods can be lacking in detail. Upon contacting these authors for more information and asking if they would kindly make their source code available they stop replying or decline the offer. Why are computer science researchers reluctant to share their code? I would have expected that disseminating your source code would have positive effects for the author, e.g., greater recognition and visibility within the community and more citations. What am I missing? For the future, what are some better ways to approach fellow researchers that will result in greater success at getting a copy of their source code? An important issue, but you you split it in two questions? (On SE sites there should be one question per one... well, question.) That is, could you make another post out of the second question? I considered separating the questions but thought that the 2nd would not stand on it's own. You may want to take a look at Collective Mind initiative: http://www.hipeac.net/system/files/grigori.pdf and corresponding publication model http://ctuning.org/cm-journal I could post an answer, but it would something like - how could we change things so that more people will publish their source code? Would that be acceptable, or does it belong to a different question? @FaheemMitha, that sounds like a different question to me -- but a good one. Why don't you post a different question asking how to change things so that more CS researchers will share their source code? The fix for this problem is simple, make CS research (and research in general) better funded. The problem is there is no support for the cost of getting research code to a level of quality where maintenance costs are supportable. @DikranMarsupial I'm not convinced that throwing more money at researchers will improve the situation as they have limited time. I don't think that distributing high quality code is the issue, it's just an excuse people use. Releasing bad code is better than releasing none. additional funds will solve the problem as it means that either they can hire somebody to maintain the code or they can be bought out of other duties to release the time to do it themselves. I like releasing code, and have done so in the past, the reason I don't release more is that I don't have the time for maintenance, that I know from experience is necessary. I disagree that bad code is better than none, I wasted several weeks earlier this year trying to get someone else's research code to work, to no avail. Of course the authors were of limited help as they have the same problems I do. I should add, my wife is quite active in providing code and is driven to distraction by the volume of user requests for help, bug fixes, extensions etc. In my case there is a limited audience for my software, if you are in a field where there is a large audience, the cost of maintenance is far from trivial. Why researchers might be reluctant to share their code: In my experience, there are two common reasons why some/many researchers do not share their code. First, the code may give the researchers an important advantage for follow-on work. It may help them get a step ahead of other researchers and publish follow-on research faster. If the researchers have plans to do follow-on research, keeping their code secret gives them a competitive advantage and helps them avoid getting scooped by someone else. (This may be good, or it may be bad; I'm not taking a position on that.) Second, a lot of research code is, well, research-quality. The researchers probably thought it was good enough to test the paper's hypotheses, but that's all. It may have many known problems; it may not have any documentation; it might be tricky to use; it might compile on only one platform; and so forth. All of these may make it hard for someone else to use. Or, it may take a bunch of work to explain how to someone else how to use the code. Also, the code might be a prototype, but not production-quality. It's not unusual to take shortcuts while coding: shortcuts that don't affect the research results and are fine in the context of a research paper, but that would be unacceptable for deployed production-quality code. Some people are perfectionists, and don't like the idea of sharing code with known weaknesses or where they took shortcuts; they don't want to be embarrassed when others see the code. The second reason is probably the more important one; it is very common. How to approach researchers: My suggestion is to re-focus your interactions with those researchers. What are your real goals? Your real goals are to understand their algorithms better. So, start from that perspective, and act accordingly. If there are some parts in the paper that are hard to follow or ambiguous, start by reading and re-reading their paper, to see if there are some details you might have missed. Think hard about how to fill in any missing gaps. Make a serious effort on your own, first. If you are at a research level, and you've put in a serious effort to understand, and you still don't understand ... email the authors and ask them for clarification on the specific point(s) that you think are unclear. Don't bother authors unnecessarily -- but if you show interest in their work and have a good question, many authors are happy to respond. They're just grateful that someone is reading their papers and interested enough in their work to study their work carefully and ask insightful questions. But do make sure you are asking good questions. Don't be lazy and ask the authors to clear up something that you could have figured out on your own with more thought. Authors can sense that, and will write you off as a pest, not a valued colleague. Very important: Please understand that my answer explaining why researchers might not share their code is intended as a descriptive answer, not a prescriptive answer. I am emphatically not making any judgements about whether their reasons are good ones, or whether researchers are right (or wrong) to think this way. I'm not taking a position on whether researchers should share their code or not; I'm just describing how some researchers do behave. What they ought to do is an entirely different ball of wax. The original poster asked for help understanding why many researchers do not share their code, and that's what I'm responding to. Arguments about whether these reasons are good ones are subjective and off-topic for this question; if you want to have that debate, post a separate question. And please, I urge you to use some empathy here. Regardless of whether you think researchers are in right or wrong not to share their code in these circumstances, please understand that many researchers do have reasons that feel valid and appropriate to them. Try to understand their mindset before reflexively criticizing them. I'm not trying to say that their reasons are necessarily right and good for the field. I'm just saying that, if you want to persuade people to change their practices, it's important to first understand the motivations and structural forces that have influenced their current actions, before you launch into trying to browbeat them into acting differently. Appendix: I definitely second Jan Gorzny's recommendation to read the article in SIAM News that he cites. It is informative. +1 Most of the code is written to a deadline, be it a PhD student trying to finish up or a post doc getting a deliverable done in time. I know many people (myself firmly included) who would be embarrassed to be judged on their code quality rather than the actual research it supports. Stephen, I have just the same experience as you do, and my explanation is that the benefit/cost ratio is too low. Packing a piece of software, so that it can be usable by another person, is difficult - often even more difficult than writing it in the first place. It requires, among others: writing documentation and installation instructions, making sure the code is runnable on a variety of computers and operating systems (I code on Ubuntu, but you may code on Windows, so I have to get a Windows virtual machine to make sure it works there too), answering maintenance questions of the form "why do I get this and that compilation error when I compile your program on the new version of Ubuntu" (go figure. Maybe the new version of Ubuntu dropped some library required by the code? who knows). taking care of 3rd-party dependencies (my code may work fine, but it depends on some 3rd-party jar file whose author decided to remove from the web). Additionally, I should be available to answer questions and fix bugs, several years after I graduate, when I already work full-time in another place, and have small kids. And all this, without getting any special payment or academic credit for all that effort. One possible solution I recently thought of is, to create a new journal, Journal of Reproducible Computer Science, that will accept only publications whose experiments can be repeated easily. Here are some of my thoughts about such a journal: Submitted papers must have a detailed reproduction section, with (at least) the following sub-sections: - pre-requisites - what systems, 3rd-party software, etc., are required to repeat the experiment; - instructions - detailed instructions on how to repeat the experiment. - licenses - either open-source or closed-source license, but must allow free usage for research purposes. The review process requires each of 3 different reviewers, from different backgrounds, to go through this section, using different computers and operating systems. After the review process, if the paper is accepted for publication, there will be another pre-publication step, which will last for a year. During this step, the paper will be available to all the readers, and they will have the option to repeat the experiment and also contact the author in case there are any problems. Only after this year, the paper will be finally published. This journal will enable researchers to get credit for the difficult and important work of making their code usable to others. EDIT: I now see that someone already thought about this! https://www.scienceexchange.com/reproducibility "Science Exchange, PLOS ONE, figshare, and Mendeley have launched the Reproducibility Initiative to address this problem. It’s time to start rewarding the people who take the extra time to do the most careful and reproducible work. Current academic incentives place an emphasis on novelty, which comes at the expense of rigor. Studies submitted to the Initiative join a pool of research, which will be selectively replicated as funding becomes available. The Initiative operates on an opt-in basis because we believe that the scientific consensus on the most robust, as opposed to simply the most cited, work is a valuable signal to help identify high quality reproducible findings that can be reliably built upon to advance scientific understanding." I don't think that's a valid answer. You can just document your setup or even just distribute the code. Even if I can't run, I can learn lots by just inspecting it. I also thought this way, but over time I learned that when you release your code to the public, you inevitable have some responsibility over it. If the code isn't well-documented, if it doesn't compile, if it doesn't run - people will hold you responsible, and it might be bad for your reputation. I agree that if your code doesn't compile or doesn't run it might be bad for your reputation but I think it's reasonable to turn down requests to change/fix your code if you are simply publishing it. If you're managing an open source project that's different but why would publishing source code require more than simply answering questions (as would any publication)? Submitted papers must have a detailed reproduction section -- a similar idea has been bandied about in the computer architecture community for a few years, but it involves providing a working virtual machine with the code installed and ready. You boot the virtual machine and away you go. @ErelSegalHalevi It's much worse for the reputation to hide the implementation details. IMHO, it basically means "believe me". That's not how science works. Hiding the code violates the most important law of making science: falseability. You can't invalidate a work if you don't have access to it. The author can hide behind this black curtain denying whatever attempt to reproduce/invalidate his paper by saying it's not identical to his method. @Spidey, Erel's answer is completely accurate. He does describe a mindset that many researchers do have. That mindset might be a good one, or might be bad for the field -- but regardless, what matter is that many researchers do share that mindset, and act accordingly. The original poster asked for an explanation of why many researchers have decided not to share their code; Erel has given an accurate description of why some/many researchers have decided to do so. You can agree or disagree with whether they've made the best choice, but that's not the question here. @Spidey, I agree that it would be much better for science to have all code published. That's why I suggested a way to encourage authors to publish their code. +1 for "Journal of Reproducible Computer Science", which makes for interesting googling, by the way. But as a developer I think your requirements for packing the code are much too strong. Anyone who knows the phrase "bit rot" will know that it's unreasonable to expect someone else to maintain code which was simply created to demonstrate a point. There's a lot of research in this area made by G.Fursin : he tries to make the CS reproducible. See presentation at http://www.hipeac.net/system/files/grigori.pdf for example. He also tries to push a new publication model http://ctuning.org/cm-journal @D.W. You are 100% right. I meant to say it's not a valid reason not to share. @ErelSegalHalevi: Your dream of having reproducible papers is very nice. But think about publication time. Currently it takes about 6-18 month to publish a paper. Publishing in that journal may take 2-3 years if non-paid reviewers (usually professors) are needed to read all your documentation, learn used language, install tools, troubleshoot the code, and run to check if everything is okay. It sound more practical to use a cloud instance, load the code, and enable reviewers/readers to access your loaded code rather than doing all by themselves. Doing so, increase trust too. @Espanta: One step at a time. First, share the code. Then we go thinking about peer reviewing the code. @Spidey: "It's much worse (...)" - when only looking at science, yes, but (at least in my place) many PhD candidates have the ultimate goal of leaving academia after their PhD to either take a job in the industry, or start their own company. Once they are there, they will be judged by the quality of any code of theirs that is publicly available, and "experimental prototype style code" is going to reflect extremely badly on their reputation. Hence, I can fully understand if they share code only on request rather than make it downloadable somewhere. (They should react to requests, though.) This article in SIAM News sheds some light on the first question, so it might be worth a look. It argues, for a mathematical audience, why researchers ought to publish their source code, and lists many of the reasons you might hear why researchers do not share their source code. It does so by a clever analogy, one that compares the sharing of mathematical proofs to the sharing of source code. Take a look; it has quite an extensive list of reasons why researchers might prefer not to share their source code (as well as some responses arguing that those reasons are not good ones). Here's a citation: Top Ten Reasons To Not Share Your Code (and why you should anyway). Randall J. LeVeque. SIAM News, April 1, 2013. I suggest that you give more information about the article you link to. For example, state the title and perhaps a sentence describing the main idea. Note that links expire, and your answer would be more useful if it provided the information even if the link fails. In sharing code there are several issues: The first issue is the copyright matters, since some of CS researches/projects are funded by certain industrialists/funding organizations that discourage sharing sensitive information such as algorithms, code, or software while publishing in public periodicals. Indeed, there are papers based on certain data (collected from code execution) that unfortunately are manually modified by the authors. If they share the code, catching their mistake/error/modifications becomes very easy leading to failure in either their MS/PhD or research project which is undesirable. In CS research and especially publication, developing code, particularly a lengthy, complex code is a non-trivial task and in most of the cases is considered money-making and paper-generating asset. By sharing the code to the public, they are unveiling facts in very much detail which may degrade their contribution in future researches. Also they may not be the only one who can regenerate article and make credit of that particular research and code. In most of the cases, master students pick an algorithm or method, slightly change it and submit a thesis and paper based on it, that may contradict with the findings and claims of the first author. Remember Thoma Herdon a graduate students who criticized findings of two eminent economist of Harvard university(here is the link ). If the codes in CS are revealed the consequences are likely catastrophic (it might not be too many cases, but if happens it will be catastrophic). Codes are vital property to most of the researchers to conduct experiment and research. If you have a code, you can simply play with it and modify it to generate new set of findings that might be more valuable than the initial findings. Without having authorship of the initial author, there is no credit to them. However, Elsevier recently introduced a new feature using COLLAGE called Executable Papers that is currently available for Computers & Graphics journal by which codes and data are available and researchers can modify the code and input values to play with. Hope it helps. If the codes in CS are revealed the consequences are likely catastrophic. — So you're accusing an entire intellectual discipline of fraud? Really? @JeffE I wouldn't be so harsh to call it all a fraud, but it would definitely improve the overall quality of research papers. Sounds like an accusation of fraud to me, or least criminal incompetence. The only reason publishing data/code would be "catastrophic" is if that data/code did not support the published conclusions about that data/code, as they didn't in the Reinhart-Rogoff paper referenced one sentence earlier. I think your 2nd point is really the most important one. If others can replicate state of the art research and tweak it slightly to produce new publishable results, then you lose the ability to capitalize on all your hard work developing the code to begin with. you lose the ability to capitalize on all your hard work [citation needed] I don't get the second point and the latter half of the third point. Since when does CS stand for dishonest junk pseudo-science where authors manipulate data and hide the details because otherwise what they call "results" would be falsified? If it results in a catastrophe for authors to be all honest and make things verifiable, your field should have collapsed already and gone forever. Like JeffE said, you're accusing CS if you're suggesting these are valid answers to OP's question. You must present evidence. Oh, you collected evidence by your code and manipulated it? That's how CS works, huh? "copyright [...] large number of CS researches are funded by certain organization that does not allow people to share their codes" - Which organization are you referring to? I don't know of a single one that prohibits CS researchers to share their software, or any reason that copyright prevents sharing of software. I think this statement is just plain wrong. These are all good hypotheses, and the problem isn't confined to CS. Anyone know of a study to determine which is actually at play? (killer nonresponse bias, probably... =) @Erel Segal Halevi: I edit the last paragraph and provided link to the feature. @JeffE: I have no intention of accusation, it is my own opinion from what I have already observed and that is why I used "likely" to protect good guys and researchers, like you, who do not falsify findings.I further add one more sentence to that. However, if the point hurts you and others, I really apologize. I had no intention for that. Sorry dude :) @D.W.: To me, it's logical that industrialists funding projects keep the right for the algorithm and code. Do you think papers from big companies of CS and communication can be replicated easily? and are available to the public? They may publish the significance of their research, but I think they try not to share valuable data such as code to the public. Don't forget competitors are looking at each other. A common evidence is the statement on published paper like "Approved for External Publication". This [http://www.hpl.hp.com/techreports/2011/HPL-2011-55R1.pdf] is one of those. Don't agree? @Espanta, it's a huge leap from "you think it would be logical if funders prevented researchers from sharing code" to what you actually wrote. Just because you think something would be logical, doesn't mean it is actually so. What you actually wrote in the answer is almost certainly wrong. If you care about accuracy, you will edit your answer to fix what you wrote and remove the claim that "large number of CS researches are funded by certain organization that does not allow people to share their codes". @D.W.: Thanks friend. I did further change to make it more accurate. Hope it does not have much problem now. My point of view on this is that if you can't share the code and data, you can't publish. Simple as that. You can still research and sell your workforce to anyone, but what good does it make to tell the science community of your achievement if no one is able to reproduce it? Yo must share data, but not necessarily code. In journals, reviewers asked to evaluate if the authors provide sufficient info to replicate the work. Code is not the only thing for research replication. There are many others that impact on results which varies from domain to domain. e.g., for cloud-based apps running on mobile devices, there are very large number of metrics like device and cloud type, prog.language, mobile-cloud distance, data collection time, network quality and many more. So replication of work is not easy in all domains; authors art is to establish trust in his paper.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.376057	2013-05-27T06:29:11	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10247", "authors": [ "91011", "AKD", "Ahmed Ali", "Chris Gregg", "D.W.", "Dakatine", "Dikran Marsupial", "Erel Segal-Halevi", "Espanta", "Faheem Mitha", "Gaurav", "Imamadmad", "JRN", "JeffE", "M.S.U", "Michael Pankov", "Norbert", "O. R. 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8356	How do I put industry research in an academic context? I am an industry based researcher. I research and write policies mostly relating to workplace issues such as codes and manuals. I have just completed my PhD in a related field. On my CV, I can include about 10 years of industry research (plus my qualification as above). As far as I know, industry research is not considered in the same light as peer-reviewed articles. Question: How do I make industry research a selling point in my CV (in the academic world)? Note: I have no peer-reviewed articles to my credit and there is no possibility of publishing my industry based research outcomes in the wider sense. Would your Ph.D lead to peer-reviewed publications ? Yes, it certainly can but I am struggling as I am not based in academia. Patents count as journal articles for some promotion and tenure committees. I have just completed my PhD....I have no peer-reviewed articles — Wait. What? Is that normal in your field? I have been wondering about this too. From what I am reading on this site, most students have at least one peer-reviewed paper before admission to PhD and several afterwards (resulting from their ongoing research). I am based in Australia and was not required to adhere to this 'rule'. My PhD is from a major university. Have I missed something in my 6 years of part-time study! most students have at least one peer-reviewed paper before admission to PhD – This is definitely not true; some do, but not most, even in the strongest departments. In non-science disciplines, it's not unusual to construct a Ph.D first, and then peel off chapters for journal articles. You didn't answer @JeffE's question which I think is important to answer this question. In Computer Science, I have seen many seminal papers come from the industry. I guess whatever is normal in the Social Sciences would apply in my case too. Perhaps someone with experience can elaborate.... @JaveerBaker yes, it is hard to publish research articles in this field. IMO, you need to convince the committee that your works had research aspect. I mean you've used research methods to analyze the system to write policies. @D.W. - That question relates to what qualifies, this question relates to constructing a CV. The two questions seem fairly different to me. Emphasize strengths that mirror what would be expected for a 10-year Academic career: No peer-reviewed publications? List instead all the internal white papers you've written. Mention any academic collaborations when describing roles. (No collaborations? List internal cross-departmental collaborations.) List trainees/interns you've mentored. List any important talks/presentations you've given related to your research. It won't be the same, as the level of discourse when talking to other researchers is different than when talking to senior managers, but it does demonstrate presentation experience. Get very strong letters of recommendation attesting to your strength as a researcher, communicator, and mentor. This makes so much sense and is good practical advice. The relevant issue is how to make your research meaningful to your application. Since this would typically not get much attention in a CV, the best place to do this will be either in your cover letter or in the introduction to your research statement. If your industrial research has informed your choice of problems to study as an academic, or has expanded your skill set, this is information you should relate to the committee. However, if the work is completely unrelated, you may have a hard time convincing a committee that it's worth considering as related experience (beyond the traditional justification of industrial experience in and of itself). I think there might be some confusion. If you write policies, codes, and manuals, that most likely does not qualify as (scientific) research as the term is generally understood by the research community (or the academic community). In our context, (scientific) research generally refers to systematic investigation that leads to new knowledge. The end result of (scientific) research is some new knowledge that was not previously known before. I know that in other contexts, people sometimes use the word "research" in a different way. For instance, they might talk about "researching an issue", by which they mean, go find newspaper articles, scientific papers, policy briefs, etc. on the topic and read them to get up to speed on the topic as quickly as possible. That's a fine meaning of the term "research", but it's not research as the academic or research community mean it. That kind of activity generally is not a replacement for what academics call (scientific) research. (Scientific) research is also usually published in a peer-reviewed conference or journal. Academics may give credit only to published work. There are good reasons for this. For one thing, academics value discovering new knowledge and making it available to humankind. If you haven't published, you haven't advanced that agenda. For that reason, if researcher X discovers something new but doesn't publish, and then a year later researcher Y discovers the new thing and publishes, we usually award credit ("priority") to researcher Y, because researcher Y published. Also, peer-reviewed publications are one of the ways that we evaluate the quality of work. Typically, folks on a search committee are not expert in your area and may find it difficult to directly evaluate the quality of your work. If it has been published in a peer-reviewed conference/journal, that speaks to its quality; and the more selective the conference/journal, the more of a testament to quality it is. If your work hasn't been published in a peer-reviewed forum, it's harder to know whether it's any good (and there may even be a suspicion that it wasn't published in a peer-reviewed forum because it wasn't good enough or would not have been able to survive peer review). So, publications matter for hiring. I'm not saying that unpublished work is never taken into account, but it's a much higher hurdle if none of the work has been published, and you need to be honest with yourself about the situation. I noticed that you asked a similar question about a month and a half ago (Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia?). You got similar answers, and some very good advice, at the time. Perhaps it'd be worth starting by reviewing the answers you go to the earlier question, and then editing your question to provide more context and detail, taking into account what you've read there. Also, you haven't given us much to work with: for instance, you haven't told us what field you are working in; you haven't told us why your work wasn't published and cannot be published in a peer-reviewed forum; you haven't told us what aspects of the industry research you think might be relevant to your application or what options for how to include it in your CV you have considered; you haven't told us what was the work you did in industry, or what the novel scientific contributions were, or what its impact on industry was. The less information we have, the less likely it is that we can provide useful advice. Industry research experience, like almost all research experience, only counts if there is a tangible outcome (e.g., grant income, patents, or peer-review publications). In the absence of a tangible outcome, the research experience (industry or otherwise) and contact (industry or otherwise) are nice, but not worth very much. If you want to make you past experience a selling point, you need to create some tangible outcomes. If the experience is valuable in an academic setting, then 10 years of experience should allow you go generate a tangible outcome quickly. Maybe one of your industry contacts will fund a study or provide you with unique data that could be used in a peer-reviewed publication.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.377921	2013-03-03T22:53:32	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8356", "authors": [ "Adam", "Costa", "D_Ramage", "Falcon Momot", "Fuhrmanator", "Googlebot", "Javeer Baker", "JeffE", "John Doe", "Pointblank", "SrJoven", "Suresh", "Will Murphy", "apaul", "choco", "crodriguezo", "eykanal", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20194", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20195", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20196", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20199", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20383", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20395", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20419", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20420", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20422", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20423", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20550", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20877", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3859", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/406", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4475", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/532", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "seteropere", "zerosofthezeta" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
90186	After publishing many articles in the last few years, why does my work have few citations? During last 3 years I have published 17 articles, but I have only 15 citations (excluding self citation), which I find disappointing. My articles have 100s of downloads almost every month. They seem to be in high quality journals: 2 articles are in Q1 journals (i.e., a journal that is among the top 25% based on avg JIF percentiles), 5 in Q2 journals (i.e., 25-50th percentile), and the rest in Q3 journals (i.e., 50-75th percentile). I share my work on LinkedIn and upload them on arXiv as well, so I don't think reach is the problem. I work in the field of networks and security. Does this mean that my work is not worthy enough? Or I am missing something in attracting the research community to cite my work? I think you have two choices. Do the work you like, regardless of how few citations it garners. Or: switch to a hot topic, and do work with the citations in mind, ignoring how much you like or don't like that area. Perhaps the problem is because you only publish in journals? As I understand it, for the field 'networks and security', conferences are more important. @MBK What is the typical citation rate of other articles in the same publications you are publishing in? It strikes me that a raw X citations per Y publications is meaningless without a benchmark of publication and time. You may already be doing significantly better than average. @Myles The IF of journals in 'network and security' area are not high. One of my article in IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security has 2.4 IF (It is one of the best journal in my area), I have another article published in IEEE System Journal (IF 2.1) and rest are below. The average IF of all 17 articles is 1.3. Bear in mind that some/many authors that get a lot of citations, exceeding a journal's impact factor (and therefore boosting it), get them by default just for who they are. I have seen many cases where groups of people just cite each other, regardless of quality, over and over. It's almost like an informal citing coalition (i.e., one that has emerged rather than being explicitly agreed). Likewise, the most interesting papers I read sometimes get cited few times. If you co-author with the right people, or you become better known, things may change. You might want to calibrate your expectations. What predicts how many citations you should expect? Journal impact factor Time since publication Number of publications Database used for counting citations In rough terms, the journal impact factor can give you an idea of how many citations you can expect to receive per year for a given article. Note that this is based on the relevant database. Google Scholar citation counts tend to be two or three times larger from my experience. Note also that the distribution of article citation counts are highly skewed. So many will get fewer citations, but hopefully as you aggregate over a body of work, central limit theorem will kick in. So it's a reasonable guide to a benchmark how many citations you should expect over the body of your work. Note also, the time it takes people to build on your work. So if you publish something late in 2014, it will often take at least a year for people to notice and start incorporating into journal submissions and for those articles to be published. The basic consequence of this is that if all your work has come out in the last 3 years, and therefore much of your work has come out in the last year, then you may have to wait a few years to see the citations accrue. How to calculate expected citations So let's do some basic math. Mean impact factor: Based on your stated quartile impact factors, I'm going to guess that your average impact factor per article is around 0.8 (e.g., top quartile is around 2 or 3+; second quartile is around 1.5; third quartile is around 0.5, based on discipline it could be different). Mean time since publication: I'll guess 1.5 years, i.e., half-way between 0 and 3 years. Discounting self-citations: Impact factor does not discount self-citations, but you have. So let's say 20% of citations are self-citations, especially early on in an article's life. Number of articles: you say 17 So a very rough estimate of expected number of citations is: expected citations = mean IF * mean time since publication * self-citation discount * number of articles = 0.8 * 1.5 * 0.8 * 17 = 16.32 (i.e., 16 citations) A few caveats: If you are using Google Scholar as your metric, then you should multiply expectations by a factor 2 or 3 (so that gives you an expected citation count somewhere around 32 and 39). You could get a more refined estimate if you calculated expectations for each article separately and then summed the expectations. There is quite a bit of uncertainty about the timing issue. For example, with impact factor, the first few months often don't count and sometimes differences between accepted versus online access versus published with page numbers might make a difference. So actually, that does not look that different from what you have. Also, note that in theory, you could stop doing research today, and the formula would predict that 15 years, you could expect about 160 citations. As with all things, this depends on various assumptions. But if you are comparing your citation count to senior researchers who have been publishing for 20 years, then you need to really understand the fundamental role of time passing in generating citations. More generally, citation counts per article and even on aggregate can be quite noisy and the underlying distribution can be heavily skewed. So the difference between being above or below expectations may be whether you have one or two articles that have really taken off in terms of citations. Take home messages If you are a PhD student or early career researcher where most of your work has been published in the last two or three years, citations will generally look small. Citations just take time to accrue. And the number of citations an article accrues per year is quite noisy. In the first year after a publication comes out, the impact factor is often a better predictor of how many citations it is likely to accrue per year. Based on the assumptions above, publishing in an impact factor 3 journal will on average generate 3 times as many citations as an impact factor 1 article, and 6 times as many citations as impact factor 0.5 article. While this is all an on-average thing, the point is that it is quite possible that your two Q1 publications are equivalent or more important than your 10 Q3 publications, from a citation generation perspective. So if you view things from an impact/citation perspective, then this can inform your understanding of the quality versus quantity trade-off when publishing your work. Generating more citations That said, if your goal is to generate citations from others, there are all sorts of things that you could be doing. Try to do great work and publish in high impact outlets. When evaluating a quantity versus quality trade-off, give a lot of weight to quality/impact. Advertise your work at conferences and online. Attend conferences and network so that people get to know who you are and what you are doing. Other options that may or may not go into grey territory: Self-cite where appropriate. Some citations will come from others seeing how your work is being cited. By self-citing, you are providing a template, and further secondary exposure to your work. Collaborate and co-author papers with leading figures in your field. When they publish without you, they may cite your co-authored work. Think about what topics receive more citations and do work on that. Important review articles, meta-analyses, methodological papers with a clear recommendation, etc. "If you are using Google Scholar as your metric, then you should multiply expectations by a factor 2 or 3". Does GS usually miss half of the actual citations? Is there another reason for this? @Andrea I think they are saying the opposite, google scholar counts some citations double. This is true in my experience, though not as extreme as the answer here suggests. The distribution of citations among papers seems to be a power law (see also gaborous's answer), so I imagine that most papers are going to fewer citations than the expected value. Do you go to conferences? Giving a good talk is a great opportunity to advertise your work and get it known by a larger circle of researchers. Also, I don't know where those download numbers come from, but don't take them too seriously. Typically these digits are inflated by search engine crawlers and other automated downloads. One could contextualize the download numbers by comparing them to the download numbers of highly-cited papers. Not clear that's worth the effort, though. This is probably normal. Citation analysis has created a small storm in the late 2000's by showing that up to 90% of academic papers are not cited by anyone. This figure however only holds true for social sciences, since in other fields the figure goes down to 50% for most or even lower such as 18% for medical papers. To go further, you can look at the distribution of the number of citations for a particular journal, and the median number of citations, instead of the mean, to get an idea of the citation repartition. Citations distributions per journal: Median citations per journal Figures from Quantixed article: The Great Curve II: Citation distributions and reverse engineering the JIF. These figures were generated on 2014 for articles published in 2012 and 2013 in the same journal. If you look at high impact factor journals, such as the venerable Nature, you can observe that the distribution is highly skewed: most articles only get 0, 1 or 2 citations, not more (at least over the timeframe of 2 years since publication). Thus, publishing in high impact factor journals does not guarantee citations, it just increases the likelihood. This also shows that high impact factor does not equate high number of citations: a high impact factor is a measure of popularity, in other terms a measure of how many people have read it. You might potentially get more citations by publishing in journals that are more focused on your topic, even though the userbase is smaller (smaller impact factor). This is something to keep in balance (journal scope vs impact factor). Why are citations propagation so slow? Contrary to journalistic, or social media, posts that get propagated a lot faster, here the slow pace of citation increase can be explained by various factors (that are still being researched), but without doubt two factors are proeminent: Academic articles are composed of long and dense information to read. It's not just something you glance a few seconds/minutes and can decide to share, reading academic articles sufficiently to understand them takes much longer. Citing is not sharing (it's more): citations are an estimation of the number of "derived works", whereas sharing is just copying or creating a link. Thus, citing is much more involving than just sharing, since to cite you need to write your own paper and get it published. This is why some research tools offer alternative metrics such as Mendeley reader counts. There is no clear solution to the "citation issue" right now, so that's why in my opinion the most important is to enjoy research and to be proud of the work you accomplished with your publications.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.378562	2017-05-30T01:05:33	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/90186", "authors": [ "Andrea", "Dr. Thomas C. 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7278	Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia? I have no academic (peer-reviewed) publications to my credit but close to 6 years of industry-based experience. I have just completed a PhD in sociology. Does my work in industry carry any weight in academia? My work in industry included activities such as developing codes and operational manuals in a particular field to be used by operators in that field (e.g., a health and safety manual). Weight in academia is carried mostly by peer-reviewed research publications, published in academically reputable venues such as research journals, conferences, books with reputable publishers, reputable preprint servers, ... If you get these publications from industry research, you get academic weight. A famous example for prominent research in electrical engineering done in industry are the Bell laboratories. Codes and operational manuals are not academic publications, and typically carry little weight. In order to get that, you have to publish academic papers about the codes and manuals, or publish papers about research results obtained with them. It's not academic publications, it is peer-reviewed publications. In my field, industry researchers publish almost as much as academics, in the same journals/conferences. @D.W. true, I added peer-reviewed. Thanks for your note! I guess I would still take issue with the statement that "Weight in academia is carried mostly by peer-reviewed academic publications." I believe a more accurate statement is "Weight in academia is carried mostly by peer-reviewed publications." Whether the publication is from an academic or not is irrelevant. (The fact that a paper appears in a peer-reviewed journal/conference does not make it an academic publication; I know plenty of industry researchers who publish great research in the same places that academics publish.) Sorry if this sounds overly nitpicky! P.S. Another way to think about it: try defining what you mean by an "academic publication". (I suspect you'll find that the modifier "academic" is either redundant or overly restrictive, depending upon what you mean by it.) @D.W. In my understanding, the adjective "academic" refers to the form of the publication, not the institution of the author. Instead of defining what an academic publication is, let me give some example of non-academic publications: works of fiction, newsletter articles, blog entries on the internet, my answer to this question, ... Some of these may still be peer-reviewed, but that doesn't make them "academic". Does this clarify your issue? @D.W. For a real definition of an "academic publication", we probably should put up another question... @Silvado: I think the phrase you're looking for is research publications. I'd also add "publicly-available" to exclude company-internal and classified research reports, which may be peer-reviewed but are not available to the outside world. @JeffE I thought research publications and academic publications were synonyms, but seem to be wrong. I agree with the public availability. In fact the publication venue will be a very important factor for the academic weight of the publication. Does industry research carry any weight in academia? It varies. It varies by subject, by institution, by the individuals doing the hiring. Are there subjects, places, people where industry research can get you a post even with no journal papers? Yes. Are such appointments common? Not anywhere I know of. A good employer (those are the ones you want, right?) will be able to look past the traditional indicators of a good researcher (PhD, journal papers, career in academia), and look at other, non-traditional ones. But that takes time and effort, and hiring can be a drain on those as it is, so you'd need to give a potential employer some really good reasons up front why they should put the effort in to establishing your abilities. A personal recommendation from a senior academic, or from a retired senior academic - one who's already trusted and respected by the employer you're targetting - is the sort of thing that can help open doors for you. The problem here is with your use of the phrase "industry research". Writing codes and manuals isn't actually research. Research is research: if it is good research, it counts and definitely carries weight in academia. Research is evaluated by its merit (e.g., intellectual depth, correctness, importance) and its impact (how has it changed practice? how has it changed the course of research done by other researchers?). The names or affiliations of who did the research is irrelevant. It doesn't matter whether the work was done in a university or in a company. It doesn't matter whether the affiliation on the title is a university or a company. What matters is the content of the paper. If it's good research, it carries weight with academia. It also carries weight with industry research labs. However, writing health and safety manuals is not research. You shouldn't call it "industry research". You should call it "writing health and safety manuals". And if it's not research, it doesn't count towards your research record and doesn't carry weight. A good indicator of research is that it is (a) novel, and (b) published in a highly regarded, (c) peer-reviewed forum. (The question gets more interesting if we are talking about people who do novel, scientific research that could have been published in a peer-reviewed forum, but isn't, because the company wants to keep the results secret. This kind of research is harder for academics to evaluate, and thus might not carry as much weight with academia, because it isn't published. In that case, it's not that the research was performed in industry so much as that the research was never published. In any case, it sounds like that's relevant to you, based upon what you've told us here. Writing health and safety manuals is most likely not something that could have been published in a peer-reviewed conference or journal.) Unsure why industry research is not research. It involves the same skills but at a different, perhaps more practical level. @JaveerBaker, I can understand why you find this puzzling. The problem is that by using the phrase "industry research" to describe the activity of "writing health and safety manuals", you begged the question: you made an implicit assumption that this activity is research, when actually it probably isn't really research. To help you avoid this self-inflicted confusion, I suggest that you try removing the phrase "industry research" from your lexicon and re-ask your question, elaborating if necessary on the activities you were doing and whether they carry weight as research experience. @D.W. - This answer is misleading. There is a very important distinction between industry and academic research; academic research is all public, lots of industry research is private. Because of this, it can be very hard to gauge a researcher's skill when working in industry, as he may have no collaborations, no publications, no public speaking engagements, and no name recognition. @eykanal, thanks, those are good points. I've revised my answer based upon your comments. Here's why I think my answer is not misleading. Based upon the description in the question, what the OP is doing isn't research in the first place, so we don't even reach the issue you raise. While I agree there is a lot of non-published industry research that is real research, I don't think that's the core issue here. I think the core issue is that writing health and safety manuals probably isn't research in the first place. @D.W. - I maintain my disagreement. Industry research is a tremendous force in the advancement of science in many applied fields, without which there would be little advancement. Calling it "writing codes and manuals" is insulting, and definitely an inaccurate portrayal of the field. @eykanal woah, what!? I think you are totally misinterpreting me. I did not call industry research "writing codes and manuals". I never said that! What I'm saying is that "writing codes and manuals" is not industry research. I'm a big fan of research from industry labs; in my field, there's outstanding research coming out of research labs. But go re-read the original question: the OP says he was "developing codes and operational manuals". That's not research! @D.W. - Ah, I had didn't see that you were quoting his statement. My bad. (That's what I get for trying to do this while doing other stuff.)	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182664	Is it ethical to get some help from Stack Exchange for my research as a PhD student? As a PhD student, I am expected to do research on my own, possibly assisted by my supervisor or colleagues. Like any researcher, I sometimes spend days looking for a small piece of information, sometimes just a single sentence, that answers a question whose lack of an answer was preventing me from moving forward. Sometimes, it was enough to stumble upon the right article after several days to get the answer directly, so it didn't require any real research work, except for browsing the internet. What is absolutely wonderful about Stack Exchange is the ability to simply ask such a question and get the answer, without doing anything. Without doing anything ... That's not really true. It's not even true at all! Asking a question on a specific subject requires quite a lot of work, which in my opinion can be summarised in a few steps: Research to see if the question has a direct answer to be found (a few hours of research via various articles, or even a few days) Establish a developed context so that anyone with basic knowledge can access the question Formulate the question in the most understandable and educational way possible (this step is not so obvious: putting words to a question is not easy and requires serious knowledge of the subject!) Pay attention to the comments and answers to either edit the question and improve it, or to judge whether the feedback offers us a real answer to our question or not. In the latter case, it is then necessary to state how the answer does not answer the question. Once a tangible answer has been received, do some research to verify it and then accept it as the official answer to our question. All this work is, in my opinion, absolutely necessary, both out of respect for the people who are going to read the question and try to answer it and for oneself in order to obtain the much-desired answer to our question. But despite the work that I believe a serious question should represent, I can't avoid feeling uncomfortable when I ask a question on Stack Exchange and the answer unblocks my research. Is it ethical to use Stack Exchange for research, following these steps carefully? I would like to make it clear that I have no intention of making the people who answer my questions work for me. When I ask a question on the site, my only goal is to get an answer that helps me get unstuck, not to expect someone to do a scientific research job for me. I see Stack Exchange more like an interactive service that tells you what has already been done. Part of research was always to walk around and talk with folks about where you were stuck (and talk to them about where they were stuck). Just nowadays you can 'talk' with many more people at once, and increase the likelihood of getting an on-target answer to a good on-target question. You might be interested in this Q&A: I have stack-exchanged through my undergrad math program. Am I likely to succeed in mathematics PhD programs? (Ab)using SE for you own purposes is what it's for. "I am expected to do research on my own [and not pay someone to do it so that the piece of paper I'm paying them for might actually mean something]." By the time you graduate that paper had better at least mean you know how to use the internet.... That it's SE doesn't matter. Did they say you can't use the internet, like how they warned me that I might not have a calculator in my pocket 24h a day? What if the internet is down? Then life as we know it is over and that paper will be good for starting fires. Follow up question: "Hi guys, here's my dissertation problem. Please write out several chapters including history of the field and suggest several problems for future research. And double space it. ASAP, please!" I always see questions like this and suspect they are just reputation farming. Is there any controversy on this matter whatsoever? Does anybody say using SE during your PhD is unethical? If such a person exists, would they be found on this website? @ZachMcDargh I don't care about reputation farming, I care about ethical. Nobody said it was unethical, I just asked a question. "Is it ethical" on this site always goes straight to, is it plagiarism, which leads to, is it properly attributed, the answer to which gives you the answer to the first question. Here's a question I'd like to throw back at you: Would you use information found on StackExchange? And if you would, does it really matter who asked the initial question? Yes, it is ethical to seek, accept, and use help in a dissertation. The only difficulty in accepting help from others, and especially on sites like this, is giving acknowledgement to those who provide critical help (insight) into your work, since many of us are anonymous here. But students have, since time immemorial, sat around a table (mead, tea, coffee, ...) and chatted about issues in research. The general issue is one of plagiarism, if you attribute something to yourself that came from another. In mathematics a conversation of a few minutes can be enough to earn an authorship position. The same is likely true in other fields. But "research" doesn't need to be just archaic texts retrieved from dusty library shelves or the 75th page of a Google search. Of course your personal contributions to a dissertation need to be sufficient to convince advisors and reviewers of your advance of the art and science of your field. And, asking the right question can be an important element in research. I would consider it acceptable to cite or acknowledge a anonymous or pseudonymous source (such as an answer on a StackExchange site) by the identifying information presented - so it would be okay to acknowledge "The answer given by user 'Buffy' on the StackExchange question Blah Blah Blah helped by ..." I found in the old days that I rarely got the answer from chatting, but instead got nudged on to a different path or made to realize some alternative approach. Sometimes that was because I had to explain the problem to someone else, and that act of explaining it (rubber ducking) clarified my issues. I still think talking is better than posting a question on SE (which I generally don't do for technical stuff anyways). @AlexanderWoo Don't you think it might create a lack of credibility to quote a question asked on stackexchange? It doesn't seem very professional at first sight. Unless you are saying this with regard to the acknowledgement section? @tomweelen, as in many other situations, a quick explanation that suggests verifiable truths, or "more official" sources, can be very, very useful. Some writing-style purists are opposed to mentioning "intermediate" sources that were actually necessary to find the critical resource, but I think that is a very unfortunate and dishonest pretense! It's ethical to use MSE, and it is important to acknowledge (not just vaguely, but specifically) how it was useful... so other people know how you succeeded! :) @tomweelen I have seen a number of papers refer to (cite) a mathoverflow post. It's not much different from citing a webpage, which is often done for data, computations, etc. It's certainly not quite the same as citing a peer-reviewed journal paper, but it's not particularly unprofessional. Ok I see, thanks for your opinion! I was acknowledged by a paper as "Dikran Marsupial", and was perfectly happy with that. IIRC the authors did ask for my real name (which isn't a secret) and I gave it, but was happy for my pseudonym to be used instead. I did once consider publishing a paper under that name, as it wasn't on my area of genuine expertise and I didn't want my academic credentials to imply expertise that I only had by proxy. For me the primary issue is not to claim credit for other peoples work, which doesn't require the real name be given. @AlexanderWoo: Even better, save the question (and its answers) in the Wayback Machine and include a link to the archived version of the question as well as a direct one to the question itself. @tomweelen there have been journal papers (in good journals) that stemmed directly from discussions on stack exchange sites (such as the one I mentioned above). There's a big difference between citing and acknowledging. You acknowledge people who were helpful without necessarily saying how they helped (the help might have been purely personal); you cite documents that you are using to support the argument presented in your thesis. A casual internet post will often be helpful, but it will rarely by citable, because it's unlikely to be authoritative enough. "Of course your personal contributions to a dissertation need to be sufficient to convince advisors and reviewers of your advance of the art and science of your field." This is a very crucial point. It's unethical to hide from your advisor which contributions are coming from SE, and if you SE your way through too much of your project your advisor may have legitimate concerns about whether you've satisfied the requirements of a PhD and/or whether they can write you a strong recommendation. So it's perfectly fine to ask SE questions occasionally, but it can't be your only approach! The other issue, of course, is that since SE is not any kind of academic or other authoritative source, everything you get from it should be confirmed, either through your own research and/or actual authoritative sources. I would say, yea it’s ethical with acknowledgment. When I was in grad school, we had a large, rolling dry erase board in our “lab” (cubicle area) that I would write equations on about my dissertation subject and sometimes a better mathematician/engineer than me would wander over and ask what was going on. So, I’d have to erase the board and start over and explain. Usually, about halfway though, the lightbulb in my head would turn on and I’d have the solution. I’d continue the explanation until I got past the part where I’d been stuck and applied my new idea. If the watcher agreed, I’d keep going until we got to an end. Then I could go off and start implementing this in code. Sometimes we’d find an error and I’d have to backup and start some part over. The positive moments often led to acknowledgements or coauthorships in a resulting paper. Others in the lab would do the same. You can think of SE like that whiteboard, but maybe more critical. You can put things here (in the form of a question) and see if it’s a reasonable question and maybe get some guidance on it. I think the more general issue is citing a source as supporting evidence when it hasn’t gone through peer review. While the stack overflow process suggests a type of peer review it is not required and referees may have no formal affiliation. So, YMMV. Well, yeah, unverified/unverifiable remarks by anonymous people on the internet are not good sources. :) But remarks on Math Stack Exchange and other sites often give very solid citations, in addition to "showing how to do it", so that the thing is reproducible/verifiable. Is "cutting" supposed to be "citing"? The question says "I would like to make it clear that I have no intention of making the people who answer my questions work for me... I see StackExchange more like an interactive service that tells you what has already been done." So they aren't asking for original research, they're asking for references to existing research. Citation is not to just provide supporting evidence, but to acknowledge that the idea came from someone else and that the author is not claiming credit for it. So if it was the only source, it would have to be cited anyway. "personal communication" (i.e. "they told me") citations have been in the literature for a very long time and they obviously are not peer reviewed. The idea that a source is reliable if it is peer reviewed is fundamentally wrong headed IMHO, it is a very low hurdle and I would venture that the majority of peer reviewed papers are wrong to a non-negligible degree. You have to read the source to know if the citation is reliable. The citation is there to allow you to investigate the reliability of the source if you wish to do so, it is not itself an indication of reliability (other than that the author presumably thought it was reliable)	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.380122	2022-02-22T15:00:00	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/182664", "authors": [ "AVee", "Acccumulation", "Alexander Woo", "Allure", "B. 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119099	Is it in the best interest of supervisors that his/her students publish their research results in top journals? I am a math PhD student in a foreign country. When finishing my papers, my advisor (who is a big name in the field) always proposes me to submit them to a journal. The problem is that so far none of these have been top-tier journals. On the other hand, in my mind, there is no doubt that the results are good enough to be published in really good ones, and I have also confirmed this fact after giving talks at conferences. In addition, in one of these papers, he/she was signed as a corresponding author, even when I did 99% of the job. Why would someone do this to his/her student? The first question is "Of course, yes!"; The second one is impossible to answer objectively without further details and would be too narrow for Academia.se. Did you ask to be corresponding author? Did you tell her that you would like to send the paper to a better journal? If not, you should start communicating with your supervisor and let your expectations clear. In general supervisors are open to discussion, but if you don't communicate you can't expect them to magic guess what you want. I didn't ask to be the corresponding author: I didn't know this existed at the time. The second time I actually spoke and said that I wanted to submit this to a better journal. Although I agree that I should communicate more, what strikes me is the fact that the default option that I am being offered is not a good one. @The Doctor I don't have a huge experience in this, but I think that her being "corresponding author" only mean that she's the one submitting the article on the journal website or to the editor. It doesn't indicate any difference in contribution to the article. See also this question on the topic. So, when you asked "why not submit it to journal B, rather than journal A", how did your supervisor respond? it's not clear what you mean when you say "I have confirmed this fact". How have you confirmed it exactly? @T_M I have confirmed this because, after the talks, some other professors have approached me with really good feedback on the work and even asking me to send them a draft of the paper. I don't see this particular interest in other talks, unless they have done something good. This is not the 'confirmation' you think it is. Like @Dan Romik says, it is not likely that your sense of these things is a good as your advisors. A big name giving informal, verbal praise is nowhere near the same as a referee recommending acceptance for a top journal and the editors agreeing. When I was a PhD student, I didn't have a good sense of these things and was told I was not thinking ambitiously enough... but come on, you are close to sounding like you are convinced your work is amazing and others can't see it... that's a little crackpot, why not just listen to those who know better. This sounds more like a rant and not really like a question. @T_M I really understand what you are saying, but I don't think this is the case here. At least in my field, I have seen lower quality papers in better journals. In addition, if my advisor does not read the paper, then how could he/she know better? I don't want to sound like a crackpot, or like I am giving a rant, as user2705196 suggests. I am just concerned about my career. First of all, journal quality is not an objective thing (measures like acceptance rate and impact factor and so on really do not mean that much, and can be gamed). There isn't necessarily universal agreement about which journals are "top-tier". So consider the possibility that your supervisor simply has a different opinion about the reputation of these journals than you do. The advisor does have a responsibility to give advice that they believe will be beneficial to students, including advice about where to publish. (Of course, the student also has a responsibility to educate themselves about publication options as best they can, ask questions to try to understand the advisor's suggestions, and speak up if they disagree.) I'm not sure what you mean about whether it is in the advisor's "best interest". It is not like they will get paid more if you publish in Acta, but it does generally reflect well on an advisor if their students are successful. But there is a serious trade-off of submitting to top journals: time to acceptance. The peer review process in math is much slower than in many other fields, and top journals are very selective. Even if your paper is "good enough" for a top journal, that doesn't mean that it will be accepted by the first one you submit to, and it may be under review for several months before being rejected. Then you have to start over. As a PhD student, you really want to have papers accepted before you begin to apply for postdocs or other jobs. A paper that hasn't been accepted anywhere, even if it's an awesome paper, doesn't help your job prospects much, because there's no independent confirmation that it's awesome. So at this particular stage of your career, it could be very sensible to submit your work to a less-than-top journal, even if you think it has a chance to be accepted somewhere better, because it's more important to get it accepted fast, without having to go through several submit/review/reject cycles with different journals. This is something your advisor ought to take into account when suggesting journals. But it's a balancing act between the considerations of "publish in the best possible place" and "get accepted on the first try", and you should of course speak up if you have a different opinion about how to balance those. (If your advisor is a co-author, this same balancing act could apply to them as well. For instance, they might have a promotion decision coming up, and they want to have the paper accepted somewhere before that happens. Sometimes different authors may have conflicting needs in this regard, and they have to reach agreement somehow. Personally I think that the needs of more junior authors, such as PhD students, ought to be weighted more heavily, but that is just me.) I also want to comment on the "corresponding author" question. People around the world seem to have different opinions about what it means to be corresponding author. In my part of the world (US), it's my impression that being corresponding author only means what it says: this is the author who corresponded with the journal (sent in the submission, filled out the forms, etc), and who is the best person for a reader to reach if they have questions about the paper. Around here, it doesn't carry any particular prestige, and it isn't meant to imply that "this person did most of the work". So on that basis, I wouldn't say that there was anything wrong with your advisor being corresponding author. (For one thing, your advisor probably has a more stable email address, since you are going to graduate before too long.) There may be some benefit to being corresponding author as a student, just to get practice with the journal submission process, but it's not really a reputation benefit. (If "corresponding author" has a different connotation among people in your part of the world, or more importantly, the part of the world where you intend to apply for postdocs, then the previous paragraph may not apply to you.) I have the same experience of what "corresponding author" means, in the UK in theoretical CS. Congrats on passing 100k! Agreeing with Nate and David - In the US, in biology, "corresponding author" is merely a technical point that carries no prestige -- rather (very slightly) the reverse, since it implies that this person handles secretarial drudgery themselves. Is in the best interest of supervisors that his/her students publish their research results in Top journals? All other things being equal, of course it is. in my mind, there is no doubt that the results are good enough to be published in really good ones With all due respect, I am willing to bet that your sense about these things isn’t nearly as well-calibrated as your advisor’s. Unless you already had several papers accepted at top math journals, the fact there is no doubt in your mind is essentially meaningless. To be clear, I’m not saying you are necessarily wrong, just that your confidence is very likely misguided, even if you got great feedback about your work at conferences. Talk at conferences is cheap; referee reports recommending acceptance in a top journal are a much more rare kind of feedback. Why would someone do this to his/her student? There isn’t a rational reason why an adviser would want their students to intentionally undersell their achievements by submitting to a lower-tier journal than the paper is suited for. The (overwhelmingly) most likely explanation is that your adviser is giving you the best career advice she can, and simply does not think your papers have a high chance of being accepted in a top journal. Keep in mind that there is nothing offensive or negative about having such a belief; she may well think your papers are excellent but still have a more nuanced understanding than you of how few even excellent paper are groundbreaking and competitive enough to get accepted in a top journal. As for the timing issue that Nate brings up in his answer, I think that could factor to a minor extent in the advice your adviser is giving you, but probably if she thought your papers were good enough for a top journal but thought submitting there might be risky because of the time delay this might incur, she would explain to you the considerations, tell you her opinion about the odds, and let you make the final decision yourself. So I’m guessing that’s not the main issue here. Well, ask her how your advisor chooses the journals she wants you to submit. You can also include your past articles in this question. I am pretty sure you will learn from the answer. Some reasons for how to choose a journal: Better fit: Even if you could publish in Nature or Science, research about quantum optics might be better suited to some journal on quantum optics. Your peers won't read Nature or Science anyway. Acceptance rate: Some journals receive way to many articles. This creates extra work if you have to resubmit to another journal. Quality of review: Good reviews helps to improve a paper. You as a young researcher will profit from a thorough and constructive feedback. Sketchy or harsh review does help your writing and research. Time to publication: If it is short, you will profit more from the earlier publication compared to the more prestigious journal. Especially as a PhD candidate this is in your interest. Costs: In many cases a publication costs money, e.g., for color figures, too many pages or to make it open access. Your advisor might know this and want to save money. Politics: They might want to support some group, they are friend to or disliked by a specific journal. Why would someone do this to his/her student? You're assuming bad faith. While that is not impossible it's also less likely than a failure of communication between you two. You should tell your advisor you want to talk to her about the issue of choosing targets for publication. Tell her that you'd like her to tell you about: The strategies different researchers in your field employ. Her strategy - for graduate students, and perhaps even for her publications without grads. At this meeting, after being given an explanation of the general policy/strategy - ask her something like "Ok, so I want to apply this as a thought experiment to some of the papers we co-wrote. Let's take paper Foo. etc. etc. etc. [try to explain how the strategy should have applied to your paper here ]. Does that sound reasonable?" ... and with this you've asked her to justify her recommendations on (one of) your papers in a rather non-confrontational way. Since your description ends up with a submission to different journals than the one she had suggested. You’re assuming bad faith. OP is asking a question. I don’t see on what basis you can say he is assuming anything. You should tell your advisor ... Tell her ... ask her ... How is this related to the question? OP did not ask for any advice on what to ask or say to his advisor. @DanRomik: "Why would you she do this to me?" - sounds like consternation to me. If I misinterpreted OP's tone, let OP make a comment.	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192083	How should you cite yourself when there are more than 15 authors? I am not one of the primary authors of the article, and there are more than 15 authors for the paper I am referring to. How should I include the paper in my CV? Should all authors be cited? How can I neatly highlight my contribution without having to enlist all authors? (This is only necessary, so I can be as economical as possible with the available space.) Why do you have space restrictions on a CV? @Buffy I have a 2-page limitation for the application I am working on Headline: Publications. I don't think anyone cares whether you are listed in the actual citation or included in "et al". If you have space constraints, one way I have seen this done is: First A., ... Plesca, A.-M., ... Senior A. (2022) "A title." Journal. The first author lets someone find the full citation, and the senior author(s) contextualize whose lab(s) the work was performed in (if that's how your field uses last authors). If there are other important collaborators who don't fall in one of those roles, you can include them too. If you are second or third (for example), you can list all authors until you get to yourself then insert the ellipsis. Yes. This seems like the correct approach. I thought that the OP's question is interesting and I agree completely with the answer provided. But I also think that there is something of a general nature that others can learn. Specifically, the many and various citation style guidelines (e.g., Vancouver, Chicago, APA,, etc) are all developed with journals, publication workflow, and standardization in mind. But there is no reason at all not to alter them to suit atypical situations when they arise. The adaptations are likely to be ad-hoc, but they can still be sensible, as nicely shown in the proffered answer. I tend to use the standard "Jones et al., 2007" format, and then add a note to say it includes me. Something like this: Jones et al. (including terdon), 2007 Of course, even this isn't necessary. If you are listing publications in your own C.V., then you are claiming authorship by definition, so simply mentioning the Jones paper will be enough: you wouldn't be listing it if your name were not among the authors so you don't even really need to highlight it in any way. I have also seen i.a. for Latin inter alias/inter alios, meaning among others. (Thanks to Denis Jardin for the correction!) Something like: First Author, i.a. John Smith. "A great Paper about something important", Science 3 (2022). Doesn't inter alia (typically?) mean "among other things"? It just means among others, could be things, people, what ever you desire. And I've seen this used in this context a few times. @d3lt4_papa Actually it does mean things (the correct form for people would be inter alios or inter alias depending on the grammatical gender). Not that I doubt that you saw it used like that, but it is a grammatical mistake... Fair enough, I've only seen i.a. and assumed it stood for inter alia. Apparently it stands for inter alios. Since it is your CV and this is a list of your publications, it is more than obvious that you are one of the authors. Going beyond the standard "Author. (year). etc." would appear somewhat unprofessional. Publications where you are listed as a first author are the most important and these will be clearly visible.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.382403	2022-12-30T20:50:37	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/192083", "authors": [ "AmP", "Anyon", "Buffy", "CrimsonDark", "Denis Nardin", "DonQuiKong", "d3lt4_papa", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/104266", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/166336", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/166383", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17254", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/67137", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/74339", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75368" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
194165	How do mathematics journals get reviewers for a very new theory? Nowadays, getting reviewers is a challenging task for many pure mathematics journals. How would an editor be able to find a reviewer for a very new theory that nobody has worked on yet? If the author is a big name in some field, an editor might consider doing the hard work in searching for referees and the referees will also agree to reviewing for them. If it is from a not-so-popular author on the other hand, it might have a high chance of getting desk rejected. In such cases, how can we expect new theories to be developed with the current system? If the people with a new theory can't explain it to others in their general area of research, what's the use in publishing it? To be more explicit, if you "develop a new theory", then it's your job to convince the reader that it is an interesting and useful theory. People don't just "develop new theories" for the hell of it, they do it with a particular goal. For example, if you write hundreds of pages developing "inter-universal Teichmüller theory" because you think it's a neat generalization of Teichmüller theory (whatever that is), then it's perfectly reasonable that no-one would want to referee it. If you do it and promise that the payoff is a proof of the abc-conjecture, then it's a different story entirely. @BryanKrause I am not telling that it can't be explained to others. But to verify it, one might require say for example experts from many fields then it would be a tough task to get those many experts to review it. So, one can simply put it in arxiv, I guess. Because the theory could be useful later on, who knows? Also to reply to Adam, if we have to convince readers at the initial stage itself, isn't it bad? Because nobody would try to develop new things and would work on current popular topics only "The theory could be useful later on, who knows" is not on its own a good reason to publish or read a paper. "If we have to convince readers at the initial stage itself, isn't it bad?" No, this entirely normal. No-one has any obligation to read your papers, or listen to your talks. "Nobody would try to develop new things and would work on current popular topics only." But people do in fact develop new theories and other researchers do invest the time in learning them, provided that they can expect some payoff from this (see also my example of inter-universal Teichmüller theory). @AdamPřenosil: In fact, IUTT has very little to do with the original Teichmuller theory. It is not at all a generalization of the latter. @Moishe Kohan Thanks for correcting my misconception! Part of the problem with your question is that it is not clear what a "new theory" means. Saying "that nobody has worked on yet" is not enough (for instance, most accepted papers are required to have some amount of novelty). Could you give a couple of examples of math from the last 100 years that, in your mind, would qualify as "new theories?" Personally, I cannot think of any theories which would be completely new. Even, say, Grothendieck's work in algebraic geometry was not radically new: It is built upon earlier works of Zariski, Serre, Weil (just to name a few). In pure mathematics, few new ideas are so unconnected with the past that there aren't people available. The new ideas normally grow out of existing mathematical threads and theories and there are probably experts available that are "close enough" to get the job done. Occasionally something really new pops up. Not-Standard Analysis (epsilons exist as values) was once (previous generation) thought very radical. It was despised by many for a while, but it turns out to be just a different axiomatic basis on which to build - so, not so different after all. The underlying logical process is the same. But some new things get a lot of pushback initially and it takes a while for the ideas of the inner core of researchers to reach a broader audience. But it isn't lack of expertise that causes this pushback. If a paper cites others, an editor can look to those authors, perhaps. If it cites none then it is a harder problem, but might be solved by just guessing based on their own experience. And a reviewer who doesn't feel competent might suggest another person who might be a better choice. (+1) One can flip through the entire metaphorical rolodex of the most startling theoretical leaps in 20th century pure mathematics, and every last one of them, no matter how formidably high-tech, interfaces deeply with some body of already existing mathematics whose experts were competent to review the work and then digest it. Not even Grothendieck worked in a vacuum! [Non-standard analysis, for instance, had an initial audience from set theory and then from functional analysis.] Sorry if this is a dumb question, but is this what you mean by "epsilons exist as values"? @JoshBone No, they mean infinitesimals.	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175211	When should I use capitalization in presentations? I am always confused with should I capitalize something or not. Take the talk by Jeremy Avigad for instance, on page 8, he uses "Formal methods" and "Interactive theorem proving", but not capitalization for "verified proof" and "formal search." My understanding is that we should capitalize the first letter of the items which are sentences. If the item is just a short word, we should not capitalize it. However, my minds fail here. Could anyone give me some help with better rules about when to use capitalization? I always cannot decide on capitalization for presentation. For example, if I write something in a textbox of PowerPoint, should I capitalize the first letter? The only real rule is to be consistent throughout the presentation. Academics are generally pretty bad about following even this, so you will find lots of counter-examples, even from prominent researchers. The presentation you linked actually seems pretty good in this regard: Most of the text is written in sentences, with periods at the end and normal sentence capitalization (first word + proper nouns). This is unusual for a presentation, but it's perfectly fine. Some of these sentences have line breaks and bullets inserted, but the capitalization is not affected. Some of the bulleted lists are lists of fragments (not sentences); these fragments have no periods and the first letter is not capitalized. But even in this presentation, there are a few minor inconsistencies: You mention slide 8. I think this one is arguable; the "squiggly bullets" at the bottom are in a different format than the regular bullets at the top; using different capitalization schemes for these different types of bullets is defensible. Using a different capitalization scheme for the outline or prologue is similarly something I would not second-guess, even if it's not my preference. Perhaps the bullets on slide 30 are a clearer example of a mistake. Elsewhere (e.g., page 23) the author does not capitalize the first word of list entries that are not sentences, but here he does. Well, another rule, probably, is not to use ALL CAPS. But, yes, the example given seems a bit sloppy. Bullet lists are tricky to get right. It's often desirable to: // • keep items short // • minimise punctuation // • make items fragments continuing the sentence introducing them // • But sometimes, a related point fit the same way. // • It may even be a full sentence. // • Should we then continue the list, or what should we do? // • Points that need question marks don't help either. OK, a little contrived, to squeeze into a comment, but hopefully self-explanatory This is virtually always completely up to you unless you've been given specific rules or a style guide by your institution or the venue. But the trend seems to be toward less capitalization generally. Consider, for example, the style on Wikipedia, where only the first word of a title is capitalized. Yes, sentence casing on Wikipedia for titles (MOS:AT) and sub section headings (MOS:HEADINGS). Jeremy Avigad seems to have got it right; his choices might well seem questionable from the perspective that there is something special about presentations, as compared to any other kind of text, but there is not. Unless there are house rules then broadly in any text, the exceptions to normal rules about capitalisation are titles and lists. Titles should have the same place in presentations as in books, magazines or newspapers: eg, each page or slide might have a headline. Lists are different. If the list is seen as text run-on without abnormal punctuation, made special only by its spacing, it should have normal capitals… broadly, none. Broadly, that applies when the items are separated by line spaces that would otherwise have been commas or semi-colons. If the list is seen as a collection of separate items, each item should be treated a separate sentence, with normal capitalisation.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.383167	2021-09-05T17:19:45	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/175211", "authors": [ "Buffy", "Chris H", "Peter Mortensen", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/473", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75368", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8494" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
154512	Pre-tenure faculty - should I ignore all possible troubles to get tenured? I'm a tenure-track assistant professor who started in this fall. I heard that I should not get involved in any issues or conflicts to get tenured. However, I am unsure about this situation. I was in a romantic relationship with a professor in the school I was a graduate student in over 7 years in Illinois. Recently I realized that he has been double-dating with a professor in New Jersey. Actually their relationship was over 10 years. Both are in my study field and they are pretty well-known. I immediately broke up with him during this COVID-19. However, he keeps all of my stuffs in his place -- mostly books and personal stuffs (total about $5,000 books) and does not pay back the costs I spent for his trip (total about $15,000). He says "just let it go". He threatens me that he would contact my department chair and dean not to reappoint with me for my tenure if I bring any issues regarding my stuffs and the cost he doesn't send me back as well as his double-dating. His point is "just stop contacting him". Actually the relationship started because he kissed me during his office hours; he asked me to meet on Saturday to talk about my research and then he took me to his place.... The most important thing to me at this point is to get tenured in my current position. Is it wise to let it go as he insists. Or is it better to bring an issue like contacting his department chair to report his problems? I'd truly appreciate your response -- it is very complicated because I am pre-tenured and all in the same research field. What country is this happening in? I'd be likely to say this relationship had strong elements of harassment/inappropriate conduct on his part: if he was your mentor and started a relationship with you, that's definitely some sort of conflict of interest, not to mention an unequal balance of power. I don't know how well your school handles that sort of thing, but I'd think pretty strongly about that and what to do about it. It is a bit unclear what do you want to achieve besides tenure. Can I ask what would be your plan of action if you were already tenured? I would like to take more strong actions like get in his place with a police to take get back all of my personal stuffs and the costs you took from me. Is it correct that you are at university A, the professor in question is at university B, and his second date is at university C? And that all universities are unrelated to each other? yes - you are correct. however we are all in the same field (go to all the same conferences). I am not a lawyer, but the threat to torpedo your tenure case sounds very possibly criminal. Keywords to google: extortion, blackmail, coercion. Sounds like a very messy situation, good luck resolving it. Ouch. One Golden (or rather GoT-like) Rule is that "it is those who become professors who create the least trouble." You probably have tools at disposal to blow this person out of the water, but you are likely to sink your academic career with it. Do you have a chance of asking at least for your stuff back? It's worth $5000 to you, but perhaps less to your former romance. Another route might be involving a lawyer, discreetly. He may then understand that you mean business. This won't keep him from dripping poison behind the scenes, though. You should declare a CoI early on to your tenure board. I recommend a confidential discussion with your Title IX office. @DanRomik Quite so, but it requires nerves of steel (and hard evidence) to fight that. The strange situation is that a tenured prof would get a $15,000 trip "sponsored" by a postdoc (?). To quote the immortal words: "I have a bad feeling about this." In fact, I think, perhaps: "It's a trap." This guy is double-dipping with impunity, blatantly exploiting people far below his power not only romantically, but financially, making explicit threats across institutions. Clearly this person is happy to take elevated levels of risks. There's a name for such behaviour. Handle with care. Lawyer up. @CaptainEmacs agreed. The suggestion to start by getting/consulting a lawyer is probably the most prudent and helpful anyone here could make. @DanRomik is right, this sounds like a criminal extortion situation. If you think the extortion behavior is going to continue or if you want it punished, consult a lawyer who can advice you about prosecution of the crime or restraining orders. What do you mean by "the costs I spent for his trip"? Before writing an answer let me make sure I understand the situation: you were a grad student that dated a professor and gave him $15,000? There have been some good answers here. Ultimately you have to ask yourself if you are willing to take a slight risk that you may not get tenure. If so, then pursue the answers discussed here. No matter how many precautions you take, there is always a slight chance that your ex can make good on the threats. I know that a lot of people tend to give an "ideal world" type of answer to these questions. But in the real world, if you pursue this, you are taking some degree of risk. Hopefully you are willing to take some risk and get your stuff back. I doubt that you will ever see the 15k. It is probably worth stating this up front: The relationship you describe has the appearance of an abusive relationship -- and I'm also going to say that I'm sorry you find yourself in this situation :-( Part of abusive relationships are threats that, in many cases, can or will not actually be realized. While I don't know for sure, my best guess is that your former partner does not actually have much to gain from contacting anyone about your tenure: It would certainly reflect very poorly on them to have been in a relationship with a student, and whatever they would have to say about you would come over as poor taste and sour grapes, not deep insight in your abilities. As such, my best guess is that your former partner is not actually going to pull through with their threat, even if you moved forward with retrieving your possessions with the help of a lawyer. The second part to keep in mind (and that is something you should definitely take pride in!): Your current department hired you for a good reason, namely that you are qualified in your work! They want you to succeed, and will support you in it. The advice to stay out of contentious topics is probably good, but your colleagues are there to help with get through personal things such as this as they have no stake in it. You will have friends in your current department, or at least people who have good intentions. You can rely on them to find a way through all of this. My suggestion to be on the safe side would be the following. Write an email to the department head or another senior professor in the department in which you lay out the situation to make sure that it's on record before anyone might hear from your former partner. Maybe something like this: Dear < department head > I'd like to bring to your attention a situation that is primarily a personal matter but that might also appear in our professional lives. There is nothing for you to do at this moment, but I want this to be on the written record in case it ever comes up again. In short, while I was at A University, I was in a relationship with professor X. The end of this relationship was contentious, and I have received threats from X as well as professor Y at B University (with whom he has apparently also had a relationship) that they would try to sabotage my career by writing to you about me. As mentioned above, there is nothing for anyone to do at this moment. My goal is simply to ensure you know about the threat in case you do get emails from X or Y. When the time comes, in a few years, to thinking about letters of evaluation for the purposes of tenure, I will likely also request that neither X nor Y will be asked to write. Sincerely, user128851 The point simply is to make sure the issue has been recorded in writing before anyone ever gets an email from X or Y, so that if they ever did, they can find the appropriate place for this email: The trash bin. It will also make sure that your department -- which, remember!, wants you to succeed -- will disregard anything coming from the direction of X or Y when it comes time to decide on your tenure. For example, in a faculty meeting about your case, if someone brings up that they heard bad things about you from X, the department head will say something like this: "We will need to disregard what you have just said. A few years ago, user128851 told me some personal details about her time at A university. I can't tell you what they were, but I will share that she and X had disagreements and that X threatened her. I believe that what X is now saying about her is not something we should trust." And just like this, the issue is gone -- the important point is to get out front of anything X might ever say about you. @TheoreticalMinimum I think in practice, it's often what precisely that other person actually claims. Imagine for a moment that he writes an email to the department head saying "I've worked with A in the past and we had some draft papers at the time that we didn't seem to get around to finishing. I have now found to my dismay that one of her papers from last year is a worked out version of something we had 90% ready, but she has neither asked me to be a co-author nor informed me about the publication". This sounds credible and would worry me as a department head. @TheoreticalMinimum Such an email would, however, have a very different impact on me if I had previously gotten an email such as the one I'm outlining above. That letter could be career suicide. Poster should look for a lawyer. I don't think this is good advice. It's much better to hire a lawyer. There are too many ways your letter could be misinterpreted. @AnonymousPhysicist and ScottSeidelman: How the heck is a lawyer going to help you with something that hasn't even happened yet? The only way the laywer could is by sending a letter to the department, but what message does it send if a young faculty member communicates with the department head by way of a lawyer? Or do you suggest waiting with bringing in the lawyer once tenure has been denied? We all know that that's not going to work. -- -- The lawyer is, of course, a good idea (as I mentioned in my answer) for getting back personal items. @WolfgangBangerth 1. Prosecution of the extortionist. 2. Restraining order against the extortionist. There is no reason to involve the department at all at this point. "what message does it send if a young faculty member communicates with the department head by way of a lawyer?" Nobody suggested that. @WolfgangBangerth something alreadymhappened at the original campus that could land a title ix suit on the school. The prof is probably frightened for his job, appropriately. Anything could happen. There's no reason to bring this to the new school. So this might or might not be a good idea depending on your department head. I could see this working perfectly well with 2 of the 3 department heads I have experienced, but it would have been very awkward with the third and may not have made a good impression. You may or may not have the judgement to make this call as a new TT faculty. I think it's naive to suggest this without reservations - if the department is really good and everyone does their jobs, sure, this approach will probably work. But in practice this is exactly the kind of thing that went wrong for decades before "me too" and is still going on in some places. People abuse power if they can, and some other people don't care or even aid their friends and peers. The first paragraph of this answer is very good, but the rest is not. Talk to a lawyer before you do anything! There are three entangled issues here: an issue of personal relationship gone wrong, your former partner not allowing you to collect your personal items and not returning the money you paid for his trip; an issue of tenure which potentially gives your former partner some power over your future career; an issue with him being in a relationship with you when you were a student, which can be considered academic misconduct and potentially can be used to sabotage his future career. From your answer in comments, I understand that you are not interested in (3), but mostly want to solve (1), avoiding issues with (2). First, I suggest considering (together with a proper lawyer, perhaps) whether you could legally enforce (1) if all other issues were nonexistent. I don't know about laws in the US, but in many places it can be difficult to recover money spent in a relationship. Where I live, it would be probably illegal to simply get in his place with a police to take get back all of my personal stuffs and the costs you took from me. as you suggested in a comment on the question. It is possible that before you get the police involved, you will need to take this matter to court. You will likely be able to get your personal items back, but as for the money, it may be not so easy. It is not uncommon for one partner to buy expensive presents for another partner, and typically partners can keep the gifts they received (unless there is a special law in your country that forfeits an unfaithful partner the rights to anything they received in the relationship). If you and your lawyer agree that recovering your items and money is legal and legally enforceable, and you are willing to proceed, then do it. You will need to inform your Department that there is a conflict of interests between you and the professor. It is unlikely that they will require details, but if they will, you can ask to speak privately to the Ethics Lead in your Department (might also be called Title IX office, Ethics Office - check with HR if unsure). Usually there is a well-established process on how to deal with sensitive matters without compromising the privacy of people involved. Normally, the declared conflict of interests results in him not being part of any assessment and decision-making process regarding your tenure. The panels are often not very big, and it is quite easy to choose the panel avoiding any potential clashes of interests. Also, even if you are not interested in (3), he does not know it, and it may serve as an extra reason for him not to stay in your way to tenure. Good luck. Given the issue of (3), I have to imagine the threats about (2) are mostly bluster. That said, some people can be extraordinarily irrational and act against their own interests, or may simply misjudge that they are at any risk at all from a position of power. OPs concern seems mostly to be about soft power through contact with people at OP's institution (with whom he may be personally familiar) rather than official influence through a tenure committee. @BryanKrause That person seems happy to take quite elevated risks. Without having a history of past behaviour, it is dangerous to assume that the threats are bluster. OP should plan under the assumption that the threats will be carried out. @CaptainEmacs Could be. It's also possible they are used to getting their way with threats alone. @BryanKrause Maybe. But the "bluster hypothesis" basically suggests to OP to gamble with their career to find out whether this is the case. Not an action to be advised lightly; at least it should carry a proper warning tag. @CaptainEmacs Did you read the second sentence of my first comment, or only the first? @BryanKrause Yes, I read it. I found the warning a bit implicit, though. Don't get me wrong, many bullies are actually cowards, but this particular guy has gone so far into the deep, and exhibits such a string of systemic malfeasance (perhaps also some others OP even does not know of) that I imagine them going on the rampage once it starts to unravel, as they will feel they have to deter people from digging further. I've never heard of an "Ethics Lead in your Department"? I suspect that's not a standard thing in the OP's country of residence. @DanielR.Collins Many Universities have Ethical Committee or Panel. It is mainly responsible for ethical approval of research which requires it. But they are also involved with solving ethical issues in the workplace. In the US, Title IX office plays somewhat similar role. "Lead" is the main person representing the office. Recommend that if "Ethics Lead in your Department" does not exist in the OP's country (which seems to be the case), and you instead mean that they should consult with their Title IX coordinator at the university level, that you edit the answer to reflect that, or some other more general phrasing. Ex-academic here. I would err on the side of caution. I would suggest that you: Investigate your legal options. This does not need to involve your school or telling anyone you work with - you have a right to keep your private life, private. For example is there a small claims court you could access that doesn't involve the school? Get your documentation in order. Unless there is proof, it's your word against his. This includes documenting your relationship. Document everything you do, now. This includes all emails, calls, and texts about this matter. If others know of the matter and comment (or bully) you, write it down. Keep this documentation forever. Times change; proof can be very useful in the future, not just now. Map out all your options and consider them carefully. Search for people whose relationships have been with people who have power over their career in your field1 and see how they end. I would absolutely be talking to a lawyer; you need a dispassionate advocate who can give you balanced advice while shielding you from manipulative and what sounds like predatory behaviour. 1 Every faculty/industry is different. In my (ex-)field, for example, the majority will back the older man / male-favourites over any injustice (with proof or not), regardless of reputation (just my lived experience and every other victim I've spoken to in my field). All the best. Just as an amplifier on earlier responses: if you don't have threats from him in writing, check out the legality of recording him over the phone. In many jurisdictions such recordings are legal as long as one party knows about them. If he's in a different jurisdiction it's probably trickier: two jurisdiction's rules plus possibly other rules such as US interstate rules, may apply. But having legal recordings, as painful as it might be to get, could put you in good stead both with the court in trying to recover your belongings, and to get any negative input from the two dismissed if it prevents your eventual tenure. You also don't seem the vindictive sort but if you were, I imagine his actions may be a violation of his employer's ethics code.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.383568	2020-08-28T12:49:20	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/154512", "authors": [ "Anonymous Physicist", "Breaking Bioinformatics", "Bryan Krause", "Buffy", "Captain Emacs", "Dan Romik", "Daniel R. 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1498	How do you earn opportunites to review journals or conference papers? Critical reading is a very useful skill for most PhD students (and postdocs and researchers in general). Instead of assuming that everything you read in a scientific paper is right, it's useful to learn how to evaluate the paper critically: e.g., to question its content, to identify shortcomings and limitations and ways it could be improved. Experience with reviewing papers is a powerful way to gain experience at critical reading of papers. Writing reviews for journals and/or conference helps a PhD student learn to get better at reading a paper with a critical perspective. Unfortunately, review opportunities for PhD students are rare. For instance, it is rare for PhD students to be invited to serve on program committees or asked to review papers. In addition, some may think that PhD students are not competent enough to write correct reviews of scientific papers. How does one solve this problem? How can a PhD student get opportunities to practice reviewing papers? What would you suggest to a PhD student who wants to do some reviews? I think the first paragraph of this question ought to be re-edited to make it more useful. The assumptions about the critical ability of researchers "nowadays" are IMO baseless and speculative. They are also unnecessary for the main question which is useful and about reviewing articles. I would change it to something like "Participating in peer review of journal article can help PhD students build up critical skills, but they seldom get the opportunity to do this...." How does one solve this problem? — Every time your PhD student presents a paper, ask them directly, "So, is this paper actually good?". If they say yes, look disappointed and ask "Really? Huh. Why do you think so?" If they say no, look disappointed and ask "Really? Huh. Why not?" In my department, we call this game "the qualifying exam" (only with four papers). Are you in computer science? Familiar with programming languages? I have a few papers that need reviewing. @Dave Clarke I am, I am. Just write to me: davide.chicco(AT)gmail.com and we'll discuss privately. Thanx @JeffE - We have a similar process for the qualifying exam, but even more importantly, that's how my advisor ran lab meetings. Presenters were required to assign a "grade" to papers they presented and then justify the rating. It's a great idea, and it encourages critical thinking. It's worth saying that some journals have a policy of requiring an extended record of publication in the field before you can be considered as a reviewer. In this case, as a PhD student, you may simply not qualify. I'm going to address your question, but first, I have some issues with it generally: I think that one of the problems of most PhD students (and postDocs and researchers in general) nowadays is that they don't read scientific papers with a critical judgement. They often think that everything is right in a scientific paper; they're not used to doubting its content... This is manifestly not true in my opinion. Indeed in my experience (and I've seen this shared by others), I've watched faculty members reign in students who had torn into a published paper for what were essentially minor methodological flaws that wouldn't change the substantive findings of the paper one way or the other. I think a far more common problem is "failing to see the forest from the trees". But, anyway, review opportunities for PhD students are not many. They can be. I've reviewed 4 or 5 papers for journals in my time as a PhD student, and a disheartening number of conference abstracts. How does one solve this problem? There are three ways I've gotten papers to review: Your advisor puts in a good word for you. Essentially, a journal asks them to review a paper (or if they're an editor somewhere, a paper hits their pile) and they redirect it to you, either formally or informally. Publish. All of the papers I've reviewed are in areas where I already have a well received publication, which bypasses the "Journals don't think PhD students are competent" problem. Some conferences put out calls for reviewers. Keep an eye out and sign up. What would you suggest a PhD student who wants to do some review? Publish. The strongest way I've ever ended up getting papers to review has been from papers I've published. Talk to your advisor. Look out for opportunities - I've seen at least three calls for reviewers in my time expressly open to students. This also gives you an experience being reviewed, which is important both for honing your own skills as a reviewer, and something you need to learn how to deal with. Are there any open-to-review journals where one could train oneself? You don't need a journal to do this. One of the most useful things you can do to train is to get a faculty member to support a journal club where, in addition to presenting the paper, the student writes a critique in the style of a review. Not only does this force you to read the paper you're presenting more closely, but it will let you learn in a protected, mentored environment rather than "out in the wild". +1: Just publish. If you haven't, you shouldn't be reviewing, and if you have, you will be reviewing. "Some conferences put out calls for reviewers." But skip the really bad conferences. I disagree with the statement that a PhD student never doubt a published article (at least in my field). This said, it seems to me that one of the first work of a PhD student is to read and "review" papers: for example, when we start a new project, my advisors always ask me to do a whole bibliographical work, sum up the papers read to them, comment them, try to find what is good and what can be improved in the previous work. Even after, I am also asked to always follow on the new papers that could correspond to our work. I believe it is one of the work of the advisor to help her/his PhD student to learn to do this sort of work. Then if one really wants to review unreviewed papers, there is always ArXiv (or other equivalent repository for papers) where one can subscribe to the rss feed, then work on reviewing for oneself (or for one's advisor) the papers read that are close to your work. Since your question seemed to be how can we do a review, I believe it is not important whether it is an official review or not: the important part was to review a paper in the first place. Just to add some personal experience to the other answers. I did quite a lot of reviews as my advisor and other people in my group who were on programme committees asked me to do some of the reviews they were assigned to do. As far as I can tell, this is quite common practice in Computer Science. You would probably have more trouble avoiding doing reviews than doing them. I can't see why not. You're not sharing the paper with the whole group but just delegate the review to a single person. Officially it's called subreviewing (and some of the conference management tools offer explicit support for it). The review would certainly be properly accredited. As for passing on reviews, this is basically a necessity. A well-known person in the field would be on the programme committee for many conferences and would get 10-15 papers to review for each. You can't do all that work on your own and teach and do research. @DavidKetcheson It's not "sharing manuscripts": it's the formal procedure. A programme committee member asking somebody to review a submission is exactly the same thing as a journal editor asking somebody to review a submission. Members of the programme committee are explicitly expected to find people to review the submissions for them. I don't know what field you're in, but in my field, there exist journals with a public discussion phase. Anybody can comment. For example, this interesting paper explaining why there is no easy way out to anthropogenic climate change had a lengthy discussion (most papers do not). Assigned peer reviewers are required to comment, and naturally the author is required to respond. But in addition, anybody else can respond. Unlike Stack Exchange, there is no voting (-;. In geophysical sciences, the European Geophysical Union has the following two-stage journals (as of July 2012): Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics & Discussions Atmospheric Measurement Techniques & Discussions Biogeosciences & Discussions Climate of the Past & Discussions Drinking water Engineering Science & Discussions Earth System Dynamics & Discussions Earth System Science Data & Discussions Geoscientific Instrumentation, Methods and Data Systems & Discussions Geoscientific Model Development & Discussions Hydrology and Earth System Sciences & Discussions Ocean Science & Discussions Social Geography & Discussions Solid Earth & Discussions The Cryosphere & Discussions Possibly, there may be other fields where such kind of journals exist. Then you can exercise your reviewing by posting an unrequited review for a paper — note, however, that unrequited reviews (short comments) are not formally anonymous — although I have seen instances of people posting under a false name... For a discussion on the wisdom of actually posting there, see: Pros and cons on commenting on public review papers	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.385160	2012-05-09T07:35:46	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1498", "authors": [ "Anonymous Physicist", "Dave Clarke", "David Ketcheson", "David Richerby", "DavideChicco.it", "Duncan McGregor", "Ivar Persson", "JeffE", "Lars Kotthoff", "Seri", "eykanal", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13240", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15157", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/314", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/379", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/47855", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/643", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
43910	Who decides whether to accept a paper: reviewers or the editor? Is accepting or rejecting a paper the reviewers’ responsibility? Or is it left to the editor to decide based on all the reviewers’ comments? @D.W. As an assistant editor of a journal and organizer of multiple peer-reviewed conferences, I strongly disagree: this is definitely a practical and answerable question. Whether the O.P. is currently experiencing it or just curious is beside the point. @D.W. It's not remotely necessary for somebody to be setting up a journal to ask a question like this. Understanding the peer review process is necessary from all angles: in particular, if one is asked to review an article. @D.W. If your original comment is obsolete, please delete it. Hypothetical questions, within reason are fine: this one is clearly reasonable. The question also provides all necessary detail. Reviewers can only recommend acceptance or rejection (or a major or minor revision). It's the editor's responsibility to weigh the reviews, along with the manuscript, and decide. After all, you will often have multiple reviewers. And they will usually not even know who else is reviewing a given manuscript. So how else could you decide what to do with a manuscript where two reviewers recommend a major revision, while the third recommends rejection? Well, from what I have seen, the job of creating a mutual summary of all reviews, and a combined recommendation, (as well as requesting additional reviews in case the reviews diverge considerably and thus prove inconclusive) often falls to the "primary reviewer", who will then report that combined recommendation to the editor. @O.R.Mapper: that is interesting. In the fields I am familiar with, that job falls squarely on the editor. @O.R.Mapper Can you explain what a "primary reviewer" is? It sounds like a synonym for what I know as "associate editor." @jakebeal: The primary reviewer summarizes what the other reviewers have written and also adds his or her own thoughts, both in terms of understood paper content and most important/prevalent reviewer comments. In the notification mail, the normal reviews are then titled "Review 1", "Review 2", etc., whereas the review by the primary reviewer is sometimes titled "Metareview" or "Review X (primary)" ... ... (where X is a number greater than the other review numbers, despite that review often appearing first, while the others are ordered sequentially by their number). @O.R.Mapper. Thanks. Would you mind telling us your field? @StephanKolassa: Not at the core of my personal topics, but as a possibly somewhat known example: Reviews from ACM's CHI conference are usually structured like that. Notification mails are structured like this: "Review 4 (...) Reviewer: primary (...) The Meta-Review: (...) Review 1 (...) Reviewer: external (...) The Review: (...) Review 2 (...) Reviewer: external (...) The Review: (...) Review 3 (...) Reviewer: external (...) The Review: (...)" Reviewer 4 has access to all other reviews and sometimes explicitly refers to them in his or her summarizing meta-review. @O.R.Mapper Ah, this sounds similar to the way that AAAI splits their workload too --- in this case "primary reviewer" for a conference does appear to be equivalent to "associate editor" for a journal: they effectively make the decision, but the program chairs / chief editors have right of refusal on it. Accepting or rejecting a paper is always left to the editor. The reviewers, however, are typically expected to summarize their review by providing a recommendation to the editor for the paper's fate. This is generally not just accept or reject, but may also have higher granularity such as "major revision," "weak accept," "reject but encourage resubmission," or "borderline." As an editor or program chair, I appreciate this feedback (even if I may sometimes ignore it) because sometimes it is sometimes difficult to judge a referee's judgement from the tone of their review. For example, a very long and harsh-sounding review may actually say something like: "I am being very strict in my review of this paper because I think it is good work that can be a great paper on revision." I might overlook it amidst the harshness... or the reviewer might not be so clear.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.385886	2015-04-20T13:47:03	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/43910", "authors": [ "Aussie2020", "David Richerby", "Esen", "Nepal Tour Packages", "Noob", "O. R. 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66545	What is the point of a PhD thesis whose content already exists in published papers? In my area (computer science) it is standard to publish several papers during the course of your PhD and then only "write" your thesis in the last few months of graduate school --- often you only start compiling the thesis once you have secured a job for after graduation. I realize that in other areas this is different --- your thesis is the primary output of your time in graduate school. However, in my area the primary output is the papers you have published and the thesis seems redundant. Given that all the content of my PhD thesis already exists in published papers, what is the point of writing the thesis (other than to fulfill the university's requirements)? Why would someone (other than my committee) read my thesis? I want to know what it is that I am trying to achieve when writing my thesis (as I am currently starting this process). Thus, an alternative question would be: How do I write a good/useful thesis, given that I have published all the results it will contain? All of my papers have full versions on arxiv, which contain discussion of motivation, background, and related work, as well as all the details and some side results. (Unlike, say, mathematics papers, which tend to be very terse.) So in terms of exposition, I am not sure what would be added in my thesis. "Why would someone (other than my committee) read my thesis?" - I personally read PhD theses that describe published work because there is often room to go into more detail in the thesis. If I read a published paper that I think will be very useful to me and I want to know more, I often go look for a tech report or thesis by the author. @ff524 My papers have full versions on arxiv, so I don't expect to give more detail in the thesis. In fact, I might even give less detail. I have only once looked up someone's (masters) thesis, and then only because it contained unpublished results. The first good review article is every bit as valuable to scholarship as the original reasearch. The catch is in that "good". If you can't add novel data to the thesis, you can still make it useful by writing it clearly and well. If you can't do that there truly is no benefit to being redundant. I have seen theses that consist of a short one-page introduction, together with photocopies of a few published papers. @GEdgar That sounds like a 'Ph.D by publication', which is perfectly legitimate but doesn't seem to be the route that OP is talking about. A 'Ph.D by publication' would involve you pointing to (and quite possibly photocopying) a track record of cutting-edge contributions to your field, and evidence of that material having changed things. @omar If you straight refuse to add anything, and your only effort is to copy paste your papers, what is the point of your question? If you want to confirm if it is ok that way, discussion with your supervisor is the best. Clearly this varies hugely by department. I did a Computer Science PhD in the US. In my experience, it was definitely a formality -- I don't think anyone properly read my thesis, including my committee, my advisor, and myself. I just copy-pasted a bunch of papers together with light editing. Heck, I know someone who got a best dissertation award before he actually wrote his dissertation! Some papers in physics(hep) cite various phd thesis. For example, in one last paper that I have read(Phys. Rev. D), the author who was more related to theory used various experimental techniques to check the validity of his theory by using data from some experiments. Hence, the thesis might be used for people that are working in the a similar topic as you, but not so closely related. Like @ff524 (comment above), I too have found PhD theses useful, and over the years I've collected quite a few of them. I've actually purchased at least 20 since 1992 from UMI/ProQuest. Unfortunately, I don't have access to their digital archive, but I have also photocopied more than double this number from various libraries during this same period. I have often found them to contain fuller explanations and motivation, more historical details, and numerous minor tangential results, all of which tend to get edited out in the typical concisely written published papers (I'm in mathematics). To answer your question, perhaps what you can do is to write an overview of your results and how they fit into the larger scheme of similar results on your topic that others have done. Even if no one else reads this, it can help by giving a useful summary of your work that you can siphon off when you need to give talks about your work (such as in job interviews) or when you need to write introductions or abstracts for future papers based on the work. Also, if for some reason you find yourself not working on this topic for a few years and thereby forgetting some of the details, and you want to return to the topic, your summary and overview will be very helpful in remembering what it was all about. Thanks. That is interesting to know. I will try to include more background and side results, although I try to do that in my published results anyway (computer science is known to have much more "wordy" papers than mathematics) I also just finished writing my computer science thesis. I think in the thesis you can do a more exhaustive related work section. typically, in conference papers there's not enough space to review related work in detail. also, you could add a background section in the thesis, which covers foundational aspects of the field your work is related to. this helps readers which are not familiar with the field. however, I did not do this in my thesis, because I think it's redundant. often, there is standard literature, which does the job (much better). moreover, in the thesis you can go into more detail regarding technical and implementation details which one would typcially not expect in published papers. what I think is also important is "setting up the stage" in your thesis in the introduction. this is where you try to show the reader how all your papers fit into one commen theme, that is your overarching research topic. hth. @ChrisWhite I don't understand your comment. Are you saying the point of the thesis is to compensate for insufficient detail in papers? But my papers should have enough detail in them already. tl;dr there is no point. EDIT: But sometimes it is helpful for the scientific community, especially in case you are dealing with an emerging area, so that your work can become a reference for many people wanting to join in. That's a good question. And I'll be unconventional (as most my answers here seem to be unconventional), and claim the following: Indeed, there is not much benefit for writing the thesis in areas, like some parts of CS, where you already published the full versions of your results before submitting the thesis. (A thesis is needed for historical reasons only.) But this is not a problem, on the contrary: you should be happy, because your job is very easy now. Simply wrap up the papers, put them in some overarching perspective using the introduction, make sure the notation is consistent and you don't repeat the same information too many times, and viola, you have a thesis! Not only a thesis, in fact a thesis that will be successfully defended (with very high probability), since it was already peer-reviewed. Comment: It is utterly crucial that you already have the full versions of your papers. They should be submitted or better accepted to a journal. Otherwise, I would claim that writing the thesis is equivalent to writing and submitting for a peer-review the journal versions of your work. @ChrisWhite, the assumption is that the work has already been published in a reasonably-good conference, and the full version is submitted. I stand by my statement: if these assumptions are correct, the PhD will be granted with very very high probability. (for you, I added "with very high probability" in the answer). Also, peer review is not only about correctness, but about merit. Peer review in a good journal is more serious than a PhD committee (from experience). Also, note that the OP is talking about CS. Not about other areas. You might not know the conventions of this area, but they are different than other areas. Thanks. This "pro stapler thesis" view is quite common. (Although it is somewhat disheartening to think that the thesis is a waste of time!) @omar - In lots of other fields, such "stapler thesis" are unacceptable. In addition to being field specific, this might also be university specific. Then, the problem gets down to rewriting the peer-reviewed articles into a thesis, with lots of other details also peppered in, and then, thesis writing is quite a task. That's probably why Dilworth added "_ I would claim that writing the thesis is equivalent to writing and submitting for a peer-review the journal versions of your work._" @Dilworth I strongly disagree with your view. See my answer for details. @Ratbert, I disagree. See my answer there. ‘I want to know what it is that I am trying to achieve when writing my thesis.’ It seems to me that the first person you should be asking is your PhD supervisor. Since you are here, however, I would point out that one significant function of your thesis is to show that you are expert in the wider discourse. It should also demonstrate that you are able to communicate your work in a fully structured way (not simply as a sequence of little papers), and that you fully understand where it fits in the wider world. Any professional thinker (including me, although ostensibly qualified mainly in humanities) can write clever code. A Ph.D candidate, however, should be demonstrating a unified grasp of the field. If you cannot do that, then your external examiner might well fail you. (A friend and colleague of mine recently had to do that to someone.) Your thesis is an opportunity to draw-together the bits and bobs that you have published (and probably some other material as well) as a cohesive contribution to the discipline. At the very least it ought to be possible for you to write a Conclusion (and therefore also an Introduction) showing how your combined work adds something thematically useful to the field. I published quite a few bits of my Ph.D research before I submitted, but the point of the thesis was twofold: looking inward at my own original work to tie it all together; and also looking outwards to locate it in relation to other historical and cutting-edge work. To put it another way... Anyone can (in principle) come up with novel code, or make a clever film, or translate a German poem. A real expert, however, can point to the full range of other approaches and techniques, and explain why this one contributes uniquely to the discipline. As a consequence, your Conclusion should also be able to point ahead and suggest what new avenues your (accumulated) work has opened, and what further developments of it might achieve. The fact that you are undertaking a Ph.D in the first place is indication of cleverness. The thesis is about being professional, and delivering. Often the answer is, as @DaveLRenfro has pointed out, more information and context. What you're describing is often called a "sandwich thesis", and may contain chapters at the beginning and the end ("the bread") that are not actually published papers. An introduction linking the papers together for example, or examining prior work and what has come before (and why your contribution is needed). In the case of my dissertation, which was on a mathematical model of a public health problem, while the major results are all published, my thesis contains a pretty exhaustive account of how each and every parameter in the model came about - the logic behind it, calculations if it needed to be rescaled somehow, assessing whether some distributional assumptions I made were true, etc. Thanks. In a sense my question is "why shouldn't I just create a stapler thesis?" Providing better exposition is definitely good, but I am not sure what I could add above what is already in my published papers. @omar Context and more detail, exactly as the answer says. Three freestanding papers aren't necessarily a coherent body of work all on their own. @omar, even a stapler thesis requires some connective tissue, and there's often some meat there, too. A summary or overview to tie the papers is the idea behind the "compilation theses" that comprise around two-thirds of doctoral theses in Sweden Writing papers is a good part of the job, and it seems you already know how to do it. But there is another very important thing in research, which is the ability to conduct a research program over many years. It requires very specific skills to envision a topic than will span over multiple articles coherently, establish usefull collaborations, drive students, reorient the project if needed, etc. Beyond the quality of the articles themselves, it is also those skills that the jury will evaluate. Of course your supervisor has to take some part in this process. It's normal since this is something difficult to learn. But if you didn't took the chance to manage your long-term project yourself during your PhD, you really missed something. Then, there is often an important part of what you did that simply didn't work, and therefore that you haven't been able to publish. Your thesis is the right place to put these attempts and to explain why it didn't worked and how much you have learned from these errors. Yes, I agree that a long term vision is inherent to good research. I disagree that the thesis writing will take any substantive part in this, or that even the dissertation committee will seriously consider this towards rejecting the thesis. I claim that there is almost no example of a thesis rejected due to "the researcher failing to establish a long-term vision, or carry out a research direction by him/herself" (assuming that the papers have been accepted to reasonably good conferences/journals). I think the supervisor is supposed to be responsible for the vision part before graduation to get the student in a well-planned spot but sometimes students accidentally get their own vision before graduation... One of the main purposes of a research degree such as a PhD is getting a stamp of approval that one is able to conduct academic research independently. The thesis is presented and publicly defended against criticism from other scholars showing the candidates abilities to conduct independent research in ways that the papers themselves might not always show. Maybe especially in the cases where the papers could be having multiple authors, the thesis only has one and only one is to defend it. The proximal purpose of the thesis is to convince your panel/committee (in the US) or your examiners (in the other systems), that you are worthy of a PhD. In this sense, it might be best to think of your thesis like an application or promotion packet - it is a portfolio of work you wish to bring to the attention of those judging you, presented in a convenient and consistent form to make their lives easier. In addition it allows you the opportunity also to draw out the common themes, talk about the "Big Picture" and not just fit your work into your field, but talk about how the field fits into the wider discipline. This is useful to your judge because they have to say that you are a good scientist, not just a good technician/engineer. The purpose of your research is to produce something that people outside your field find interesting or useful. Obviously you cannot always achieve that, but that is why those people are funding your research. In this grand scheme of things, research articles are rather pointless, as they are written for other people in your field. They are only the first steps in the publication process. They are the individual trees in a forest. Sooner or later, someone has to see the forest from the trees and describe it to a wider audience. That description may take the form of a thesis, a survey article, or a textbook. This gives you one possible purpose for a "stapler thesis", in addition to the purposes other answers have already told about. While the individual papers describe specific results to a specialist audience, the thesis itself may tell about the big picture to a wider audience. Fundamentally thesis and research papers have different roles. In a PhD thesis, you present a thesis - a single thesis. This means you have to ensure that all your chapters are cohesive. If you look at your thesis as a collection of papers, it is useless because one can read your papers independently. Many universities are allowing this which IMHO is a mistake. In a thesis, you develop your ideas chapter by chapter and in the final chapter, you conclude your findings and contributions. Therefore, a PhD thesis gives a completely different understanding compared to what reading your papers independently would. If you are not able to do that, then you have not done a proper job in defining your research goals. Even Masters students can do research and write papers in top conferences. PhD is not just about writing papers - it is beyond that.	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76470	Is it immoral to expect uncompensated contribution to the university from doctorate students? In every university that I know, doctorate (and very commonly master's) students are expected to do a number of things which I would categorize as work, related to the operation of the faculty, such as: correcting exams supervising exams supervising undergraduates in lab exercises, answering questions, usually organizing groups and lab exams teaching lectures on the methodology for exercises of a course various errands for the professor (I won't get into detail in this, as it's clearly immoral in my opinion) From what I have heard, those practices are common in Greece. Every PhD student that I know has no official salary from the university, and may get paid from certain research funds for particular projects that he has to complete/contribute to from outside sources. According to the regulations in Greek universities, Master's and above students are obliged to provide "auxiliary work" without this being specified further. Given the fact that correcting exams is actual work, isn't it immoral to do it without monetary compensation? Sadly, immoral or moral, it happens (quite common, actually). Do the PhD students pay their own tuition? Or is it immoral for doctorate students to expect an uncompensated PhD from the university? As you state, 'regulations' are in place, so it would apparently be legal to require 'auxiliary work'. Framing it as a moral question (when the legality seems solid) frankly adds baggage to the question. It is most certainly legal, as it's clearly stated in the regulations, the fact is, that if it's immoral, its legality should be reconsidered. Also no, all education in Greece is free (actually paid from taxes) (there are also some private-paid schools and colleges, but most are state run and free). @K.Gkinis - the problem is, morality is a value judgement, and is often trotted out as a principle, rather than just owning up to somebody just not liking the situation. There are many situations in every day life where something is expected of you, and is good for the community, without being paid. As Jake points out in his answers, all those (except perhaps #5 depending) are explicit job-related duties of a graduate student at a US university (and good training for a future in academia). Is it immoral to expect students to take exams if they are not paid? "Mind that every PhD student that I know, has no official salary from the university". As a fellow Greek, I know that this is simply not true. There are departments that actually pay TAs (PhD students) for this work. It is not very nice to to say things about (y)our country that are not true. @Alexandros: unless you know whether or not the departments of the questioner's PhD-student friends pay them a salary, I don't see how you can know whether that statement is true or false. @SteveJessop Then the OP should clearly say (at least an estimate) of the number of cases or departments he knows. If he only knows 1-10 such cases, then he should not describe his very incomplete and partial knowledge of reality as the norm. @Alexandros Are you sure that they're paid from the university for being PhD students? Or for participating in side research projects? Also the cases that I know of, are those in 4 departments in 2 universities (NTUA and Patras). AFAIK the law does not specify a salary for PhD students. There is no salary for PhD student in Greece, because it is not considered a job. You are paid for the job you do during your PHD (TA, participating in research projects) and not for doing a PhD. It is obvious you have a misunderstanding of how research funding works. @Alexandros Maybe you're right! Being a PhD student is certainly not a job. I thought that research projects fund you in order to reply with a result, and are not guaranteed (you may not recieve one as it is from an outside source), yet your duties are fixed. Thus, you are not paid for your TA duties, you are paid only for providing that result to whoever it interests. (that was my thought process) Even the research itself is in many ways work (junior or not, that's beside the point). There are countries where this is recognized as such and courts have even forced university to make no exceptions. I find this to be a somewhat curious question: it seems to be limited to Greece, and so far the two Greek academics who have weighed in seem to be differing on the facts. I'll say this: unless Greek universities are rounding up unwilling people to be their graduate students and/or the conditions of being a Greek graduate student are kept secret, I'm not sure it makes much sense to call the putative practice moral or immoral. Rather one should ask why the students sign up for such a raw deal... ...In that regard, it is perhaps not entirely irrelevant to point out that my department recently acquired two new Greek graduate students and one new Greek faculty member (who got his graduate degree in England). If many Greek students not only can go elsewhere but do, this may have some effect on what is offered to those who choose to stay. @PeteL.Clark Perhaps they sign up because they need the intellectual stimulation or have certain aspirations. Also if the students (and their parents) have low economic position regardless of the value they provide they can be better taken advantage of economically. In universities in the USA, the type of work that you describe is typically paid for, with the student being employed as a Teaching Assistant (TA). In some cases, this is an hourly job; in other cases it comes with a stipend and tuition support. The time a student spends per week varies, but in my experience is most typically averages to 10-20 hours/week (typically lower for hourly wage, higher for stipend). Many departments do require students to spend time as a teaching assistant, under the theory that the work of instruction is an important part of one's education. It sounds like the universities that you describe are using this theory, but then not compensating the students. To my mind, whether this is moral or not depends on the nature of the work and the amount of time that is required. At one end of the spectrum, if a student is asked to give a couple of guest lectures over the course of a semester, then the experience of preparation and explanation seems like a reasonable inclusion in their educational experience, especially if coached by the professor. At the other end of the spectrum, if a student is asked to do 20 hours of grading and other "scut work" that has little educational value, then it is clearly a job for which they should be paid. Somewhere in between there is some grey area, but in general my feeling is that the more routine and less educational aspects of teaching are work for which whoever conducts it should be definitely be compensated. It is not really unpaid when the student gets 'free' tuition. It may be that tuition divided by hours is a low hourly rate... This is a good answer, but it leaves one point from the question uncommented: "and may get paid from certain research funds for particular projects that he has to complete/contribute to from outside sources" This could be crucial at least for people who do get paid from such research funds, as there might be certain inofficial assumptions about what recipients of such grants typically do for their money in order to keep the system running. @O.R.Mapper: right, for a clear-cut example if the grant money says, "this grant includes payment for up to 20 hours a week of scut work for your university, that we're paying on their behalf for you to do" then you can question whether the funding bodies should be paying for scut work, but you can't really question that the scut work has been paid for. I suspect you're right though, and the system runs on expectations rather than explicit conditions. @SteveJessop: Indeed, I wrote "inofficial" to express that no such statements will be found anywhere in writing. @O.R.Mapper: yes, I'm adding that conceivably there might be official assumptions too :-) And they might be indirect. The questioner says that these universities state as a condition of being a master's student you must provide auxiliary work (is this a form of "student/apprentice as servant" or a quid pro quo to keep down fees, who knows?). So if the grant says you have to be an enrolled master's student then it might be intentionally endorsing that requirement even without explicitly mentioning it. IMHO, the morality of it depends on what you get in return. I would certainly not hesitate to tell my student to grade a quiz while I'm having a severe headache trying to figure out whether some mind-boggling argument in the last version of his thesis is correct or not. On the other hand, using your supervisor power to pass some of your routine duties to the student just because you can is certainly immoral. If you think that your supervisor does a lot for you, I wouldn't make much fuss if he asks you to do some reasonable amount of extra work for him. Otherwise check the written policies. Tuition waivers are arguably the least valuable form of company scrip ever produced, given the fact of tuition inflation. For a related legal perspective, it was recently found (August 2016) by the National Labor Relations Board in the U.S. that graduate students qualify as "statutory employees", have an "an economic relationship to the University", and therefore qualify as being eligible for union membership and collective bargaining with the university over matters such as pay and job responsibilities. So this at least suggests a growing consensus that graduate students are real employees and deserve some consideration as such. The Nation -- It’s Official: Graduate Students Can Unionize	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.388174	2016-09-07T17:15:52	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/76470", "authors": [ "Abdullah Shoaib", "Alexandros", "Barbara Dossett", "Erfan Maleki", "GA Carpet and Artificial Grass", "Jacob Murray Wakem", "Jon Custer", "MikeP", "O. R. Mapper", "Pete L. 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135787	How can I finish my PhD? I have M.Sc. in mathematics, and I was/am working on a PhD for almost 10 years now (on and off), but I haven't published a thing. I have many results (most in a single field) and potential paper drafts, but I never finish up and publish, because I always find something new to learn or a new problem to research. I left the university eventually and got a part-time job as a data scientist, but I was never satisfied about leaving things open. I was working completely alone and didn't get along well with my adviser. Today, while I have the time, I lack the discipline and environment to finish. None of my close friends are mathematicians, so I can't really talk about math with anybody (besides Internet forums). I love math very much, and I'm learning new things all the time, and I want to have my results finally out there and have my resume match my skills. I will be glad to hear any advice, if anybody was in a similar situation. Any help will be appreciated. You say you quit your phd long ago. So how could you finish it? Or do you mean simply publishing the results? Do you really need your PhD at this point, or will it just be a piece of paper to put on your wall? @Dilworth In Germany, this is not really unusual. I know different people who left university and still (claim to) work on their PhD thesis. In many departments, you have no legal time limits, so you can leave university and come back 10 years later with a thesis, defend it and get your title. Nowadays, a little coursework is also often required, but as long as you finished that before you left university, you are fine. Needless to say that many of those never finish their thesis... @J.FabianMeier, thank. This is precisely what I was asking. What does the OP want to do? Publish the papers or return to complete the dissertation? Good question. I don't know if it's even an option to go back now to my institution. At this point, having a published paper will be enough for me and there is no deadline for that, though is it harder than writing a thesis academically. Do not get distracted and focus on completing a thesis rather than publishing. After 10 years, you should have enough material to write a decent thesis, even though what you have done may not be publishable. Get support from your supervisor and anyone supportive from the your department to achieve this. Otherwise, self-fund or reach out for coaches or mentors are able to achieve this aim. Ideally people that know your area and can help support you to focus on your thesis rather than the publications. I understand and respect that publication is important especially in mathematics. Publications is the focus for an academic career but you have already invested 10 years of your life and it does not sound like you are going to be hitting a string of publications soon. Also, if you are already working part-time, it seems to me, getting the PhD and then working full-time is a very reasonable and respectable career goal. Recognise that you get a high every time there is a new challenge. Every one does. It is far more exciting to mov from one exciting topic to the next. Every new challenge has a buzz to it. You have to decide whether this buzz and excitement is more important than completing your PhD. Going over old material and old "stuff" would be drudgery and probably your previous traumatic experience (as you remember why you were not able to achieve publication), but it is important to swallow your pride and decide whether completing a thesis and your PhD is more important than achieving the goal of publication. Depending on the country and institution, defending a thesis without any published results may be difficult or even impossible. True @Peteris. It is best to look and investigate the options now though after 10 years? There may need to be a change in focus to pedagogy or a field not requiring publication. You may or may not have already ruined your chances of completing the degree by missing time limits established by the department. You may or may not have ruined your relationship with your advisor. However, the department and your advisor would probably prefer to have a Ph.D. graduate rather than have someone who dropped out of the program, so there is still some chance that you can finish this. You should start by talking to the director of the graduate program or the chair of the department if there is no director of the graduate program. What formal requirements for the degree have you completed? What have you not completed? Is there a time limit for completion of the degree? Are you still in the program or will you have to apply for readmission? Next, talk to your advisor. Explain that you really want to complete the degree. Are they still willing to work with you? Is your research that hasn't been written up yet sufficient for a Ph.D. or do you need to produce more results? What should your next step be? Ok. I'm going to be blunt, because I see only one root cause for your situation, and since you wrote yourself that "...I never finish up and publish, because I always find something new to learn or a new problem to research." and "Today, while I have the time, I lack the discipline and environment to finish.", I think you too know what the problem is. Your lack of self-discipline. There's no magical cure for that, none of us here can do no more than to say (as the other answers have more politely done) that you just have to commit fully to finishing what you have started, and get it over with. That's it. Should that be, or actually seem impossible, I bet there are support groups for people in similar situations within your reach. Not knowing the specifics of your situation it's hard to evaluate how far up or down the S creek you are, but just start paddling. I do apologise if the previous offends you, but I think you deserve to hear this version too. Believe me, you'll make it. You are the only person who can stop you if you decide to finish your PhD. You get a PhD for completing a thesis, not for publishing papers (apart from specific courses that require it). It is possible to graduate with a PhD before you publish papers. A supervisor will often encourage you to publish as well but bear in mind that this is often not a requirement of a PhD course (this should be clear in your university guidelines). However, a successful thesis and a publication face many of the same challenges. They are both subject to scrutiny by examiners or reviewers. Examiners will generally determine whether the thesis presents original research of publication quality (whether it has been peer-reviewed yet or not). This is one of the reasons that experienced examiners, including external and international examiners are used to ensure that it meets international standards for a PhD to be awarded. Generally a novel technique or application is sufficient, it doesn't have to be Nobel Prize worthy. A thesis must also be coherent and present a logical argument on your topic. If you have several related projects, you must write your thesis is a logical manner that shows how they are linked to address a specific research topic (that you've developed expertise in). Your supervisor should be able to guide you here but it is your responsibility to complete projects and send them draft versions of thesis chapters in a timely manner to get their feedback. The order will not necessarily be the order that you did the work. Most PhD candidates try many different research directions and need to focus their thesis on a particular topic. You can show some of the directions that you tried that gave unexpected results and motivated the direction that you ended up taking. What's most important is that you can demonstrate that you had an original idea and performed the research yourself and developed the skills necessary to be an independent researcher. You need to consider carefully whether your work meets this criteria and whether it is worth writing a thesis in your situation. No one can decide that except you. The requirements for a thesis are different to a peer-reviewed publication but they are related. You may need to consult an expert in your field to discuss whether your results would meet this criteria. You could also present the results you have so far as a seminar or at a conference as your audience will bring up concerns that examiners or reviewers will expect you to have addressed.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.389003	2019-09-07T06:14:27	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/135787", "authors": [ "Dilworth", "J Fabian Meier", "Peteris", "Poidah", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10730", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/112734", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27442", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81424", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/82652", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8760", "nick012000", "user112734" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
10622	Role/importance of letters of recommendation for PhD-applications in Europe? In the US PhD prospects apply to several universities and those select an amount of applicants from that pool according to how many open spots the universities have for that term. Criteria for admission are GPA, GRE/SAT and research experience documented by 2-3 letters of recommendation. In Europe the application process is often times quite different in the way, that not a selected number of applicants get admitted each year, but each available research/teaching assistants position is treated individually. Because the requirements differ vastly, a lot of the times the only formal requirement for application is a 'good' or 'very good' masters degree and/or experience in field x or with technology y. I wonder, are letters of recommendation expected, if so how many, and how important are they actually? We can distinguish two different kinds of doctoral graduate studies in Europe: Programs through "graduate colleges" and "graduate schools" with centralized admissions policies Individual PhD positions in the research group (or institute, chair, etc.) of an individual professor In the first case, everything is essentially along the lines of an application to a US-based graduate program, and letters of recommendation still carry the same weight. For an individual position, letters of reference may be important, but as you suggested, it depends on the individual professor doing the hiring. For some research groups, the posting of an application is a formality, as they're only interested in hiring "internal" candidates (that is, people who have already worked in the group as bachelor's or master's students, and who thus can be "directly" evaluated). For people doing real searches, however, letters of recommendation are also important, because they can provide information about a candidate's research abilities in a way that is not possible just looking at a transcript or set of certificates. I don't fully agree. For example, I'm enrolled in the Swedish National Graduate School in Space Technology. However, it was still the individual professor who decided to hire me as a member of the research group (in fact, I was a master student at the time). So I'd say that in at least some cases, the two kinds that you describe are mixed together. @gerrit: I've added an additional clarification of "centralized admissions policies" which I hope makes my intention clear. Right, clearer now (:	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.389762	2013-06-15T06:57:37	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10622", "authors": [ "NNec", "aeismail", "gerrit", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45235", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
12837	Where can I find statistics on the average number of papers published while working on a PhD? I'm interested in this, because I want to know if there is something like an average number that we might find. I am looking for statistics on the number of papers published while working on a PhD, preferably by general field of study (e.g. Physics, History, etc., not "Quantum Electrodynamics") and the country where the PhD was completed. If possible, the duration of PhD and amount of course work should also be parameters. To clarify do you want publications that are directly arise from the PhD or publications that are published while an author is a PhD student. Any such numbers are meaningless because of huge cultural differences even within a single subject. A PhD in the UK takes 3-4 years, whereas twice that length is common in the US. Also, it seems likely that there are significant variations in publication rates by subfield: maybe quantum electrodynamicists publish more papers than astrophysicists, but you want to lump them all together. Byrnes (2007) found that for tenured faculty in top departments of psychology in the US there was a correlation between the publication rate during the first 7 years following a PhD and the number of publications during the PhD. individuals in the bottom quartile published an average of 1.03 predoctoral articles, those in the middle 50% and top 25% published 2.00 and 3.03 predoctoral articles, respectively Note that the quartiles refer tot he number of articles published during the 7 years following the awarding of the PhD and not the number of predoctoral articles. This study obviously includes only a small subset of all Psychologists (those who have gotten tenure at top Psychology departments), but may provide a hook into relevant literature. Also see this recently accepted paper in BioScience (Not yet accessible) for a similar approach, looking at scientific "success" as predicted by early papers, original language and university rank: Predicting publication success for biologists. Summary here: Early to press is best for success.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.389976	2013-09-19T07:10:41	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12837", "authors": [ "David Richerby", "GeoBar", "Lara Littlefield", "Merlijn Sebrechts", "StrongBad", "Vladimir", "fileunderwater", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32535", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32536", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32537", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32540", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32541", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32544", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32548", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7223", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929", "onawire", "sareeshmnair", "user32537" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
26598	Are spelling and/or grammar mistakes a cause for submitting Errata? During my studies I've read a number of published articles where spelling mistakes have somehow squeaked through the review process. For example, I have found a paper with a section entitled Turbulance Model when the title should be Turbulence Model. I would love to be able to submit an errata if I knew it was going to be a one or two line email, but I don't know of anyone else who does this. Will editors be annoyed with little corrections like this? Surely there isn't a need to bother the corresponding Author with such a matter, is there? To be clear, I am only thinking of cases like the example I've given; a clear spelling mistake or a missing word. I wouldn't start arguing with an author/editor over wording issues or other gray areas. I think that's a misuse of the term "errata", which to me is reserved for an addendum for already published works made available by the publisher or author. In your case, I think a publisher should be overjoyed to get a 2-line email showing the error if you can get it to them before publishing. @MarkJ Maybe I misunderstand your comment, but I am talking about a publication that has been public for a few years, so it does seem to fall under your definition of errata. Let’s be utilitaristic and do a rough, optimistic calculation: First, how much time does correcting a spelling mistake cost? First of all, it costs you some time to find a way to contact somebody from the journal. I ran an experiment with a random journal and it took me three minutes to find a way to contact the chief editor and to ensure that there is no easy way to contact somebody closer to actual typesetting. It costs you about one minute to write the mail. It costs the chief editor (in our example) at least one minute to read the mail and redirect it to typesetting. It costs the head of typesetting at least one minute to delegate the work. Whoever is actually doing the work, has to find the source of the paper, correct the mistake, check whether the whole paper is still neatly arranged (even if the correction did not alter the number of lines in the paragraph, the linebreaking algorithm or the font might have slightly changed) and every sentence is still on the same page (in fields, where references to pages happen). Again, I ran an experiment on one of my own papers and it took me two minutes (as the correction had no major effects) – and I operate my computer mainly via keyboard and consider myself a fast typer and well organized, not to forget that I do not have so many papers. Additionally, let’s consider one minute for uploading or similar. So, all in all, mankind has spent nine minutes on correcting the mistake. Now, At the end of the day, the reason why we bother with spelling is that it speeds up reading texts, i.e., saves the reader some time. Let’s say a small spelling mistake (like turbulance) costs every reader a second. Thus to break even with our nine minutes, the respective word has to be read about 500 times. I do not have any direct numbers on this, but as papers are mainly read by the same people who write papers, this would mean that I have to read (every word of) 500 papers for every paper I write – which is very far from reality. Thus even under the above optimistic conditions you are likely wasting more time than you are saving. Also, from another point of view and my own experience: The involved people do not care. I can tell a story of how much trouble it was to make a typesetter change the way one of my tables was formatted such that it was any readable even if that would make it deviate from the journal guidelines – and that was a severe issue. Finally, it’s likely that you only need to read a few papers to spot a terminus technicus with confusingly wrong hyphenation. My favorite example is »generalized onset seizure«, which denotes seizures with a generalised onset and not onset seizures, which are generalised. +1 Cool, I didn't know all the steps that needed to be taken to make a change like that. It would be cool if you could flag articles for spelling and grammatical errors, so that a typesetter could be notified directly. If that feature existed, I'm guessing it would be about 1 min to flag the post, and 2 mins for a typesetter to verify, correct, and upload. All-in-all about 3 mins of humanity's time, no? Hmm... still seems to need 180 reads to break even. Maybe not then :) I have the solution! Just let people edit the articles themselves! That way even conceptual and methodology mistakes could be corrected. Readers could also add their own ideas and fill in details! I'm pretty sure nobody's ever thought of this before. :) @NauticalMile and Wrzlprmft I'm not sure why you think it would take only two minutes to make even a relatively simple correction to a published article. It's perfectly possible (as partially acknowledged in the answer) for a minor change in wording to completely change the pagination of the article. That could require substantial typesetting work and would also screw up any reference to the article that mentions a page number. If the article becomes a page longer, what are you going to do about its page numbers? The following article's? [continued] This is why journals are very touchy about what changes you can make even to the galley proofs: a small change at that stage can have major repercussions for the rest of the articles in the same issue. That's time-consuming before publication but a nightmare after. @DavidRicherby: If the article is already published, i.e., the journal is already printed, changes would only affect the online version anyway and you would at least not need to worry about it affecting other articles. Changes to the pagination however could matter in fields, where referencing pages is not unseen (amended). Also, in most cases, fixing a spelling mistake does not affect the whole article, so I still consider two minutes an optimistic estimate for the average time required. @Wrzlprmft I agree that fixing a spelling mistake is unlikely to adjust pagination but missing words are the same class of error and are more likely to affect pagination. All answers are good, but this one showed a rough quantitative reasoning why correction of spelling mistakes and/or missing words is not practical which is why I accepted it. turbulance can cost more than 1 second if reader is not 100% familiar with English and needs to use dictionaries. @Vi.: True, but as we are talking about scientific articles, readers will know most of the technical vocabulary to correct such an error for themselves. Sure, sometimes a reader will really need to look up that very misspelt word and fail, but I expect this to be a rare exception. On the other hand there are readers whom this typo will cost less than a second. Keep in mind that this is only a rough calculation anyway and that 1 s is a very roughly estimated average. It is not necessary to make an errata for simple mistakes. That said, however, you need to consider whether the simple mistake may change the meaning of what is written so the key issue here is "meaning". Anything that can create confusion of introduce an error in vital information necessary to understand the material should be corrected. Since it is generally not possible to change published (e.g. journal) material, an errata note should suffice. Otherwise, the misconception introduced by the mistake might propagate and your original work may be misunderstood. So check whether your found errors introduce any major consequences for correctly understanding the text. On the arxiv there exist versions of manuscripts, which are a great way to get rid of this kind of mistakes. I hope that with the onset of online-only journals and the prevalence of internet for article reading this will become more mainstream. In the meantime, I would certainly not bother the author or the journal about such obvious mistakes: almost everyone will understand turbulance is misspelled, and although annoying to read, it certainly does not add confusion to the message. It is great to read nicely-written misspell-free papers, but my opinion is that we should not overlook the scientific quality of an article because a few words were wrong or the author was not a great writer. The definitions of Errata are also very specific to each publisher. E.g. Springer's policies state that publishing an Erratum is appropriate in cases of serious mistakes or a factual error or omission in the methods, results, or conclusions. To warrant an erratum the scientific error must be serious enough to affect the replication and interpretation of results. While Elsevier make a distinction between Errata and Corrigenda: An erratum refers to a correction of errors introduced to the article by the publisher. A corrigendum refers to a change to their article that the author wishes to publish at any time after acceptance. ... Authors should contact the editor of the journal, who will determine the impact of the change and decide on the appropriate course of action Both seem to correct already published articles only by publishing another note about the changes, whatever that note might be called. Unless the meaning and understanding of a word or sentence is severely impacted or the scientific message changes, correcting spelling mistakes does not provide any benefit to the already published article.	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206942	Who should I address in the cover letter? I am applying for a postdoc position. A professor advertises the position, and applications are made directly to the professor. His name, email address, etc., is on the "where to send" part. Additionally, the professor is very broad with the application, so a cover letter is more about convincing him of your research idea. There are questions and answers on this, but should I start the letter with Dear Professor X? Again, no committee and HR email were mentioned. But the real question is, whenever I refer to the professor's research in the cover letter, do I refer to it in the third person (Prof. X's research has shown...) or directly address the professor (your research aligns with...)? Two questions are related somehow because addressing the letter to him and then referring to him in the third person sounds just weird to me. Since whom to address is mentioned in the job call, I would directly address to that person—here, the professor/faculty. In other cases, I try to find if hiring committee chair’s and member’s information is available on the job call. I address them if I find such information. Else, I would write “Dear Committee Chair and Members” Sorry, but in my case, it is directly sent to the professor's email, with his name, etc. Faculty are not involved per se. Are you suggesting going with Dear Prof X, then? Faculty means professor. Ah, alright, I guess I misunderstood. Cheers. Yes, address the letter to the professor. I would also not address the prof in the third person, but use other formulations as the one you proposed. You might consider saying more. Why do you suggest this? Without that explanation it is just an opinion. (BTW, I agree but more needs to be said. So, I start with Dear Prof Whatever, not referring to him as a "you" in the letter but workaround it without actually mentioning his name in the third person as well.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.390945	2024-02-23T12:58:34	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/206942", "authors": [ "Buffy", "Dr. Banjadebaje", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/158608", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/180475", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75368", "rhyso" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
210924	How should I handle a collaborator who doesn't work? I am a second year graduate student collaborating with a postdoc who is not doing his part of the work. He is always busy making posters for our supervisor or other documentation work that has nothing to do with our project. I have tried to talk to him to move a little quickly since my part is almost over. I feel he is waiting for me to step in and do all the work. This work is important to me. How do I handle this situation without complaining or worrying too much? P.S.: He cannot be removed from the authorship as he got an M K Bhan fellowship on the same topic. If your post-doc the MK Bhan fellow, supervisor and others in your lab read StackEx, and if your handle here is your real name, there's a good chance that you are "outed" so maybe they'll come and talk to you now.... But you need also to check the terms of reference - the rules of engagement so to speak- of the collaboration with the supervisor, to better understand the roles and responsibilities in the project: perhaps the post-doc doesn't know he is a collaborator?- maybe you're assuming more than is fact? Related to understand what the situation may look like through the postdoc's eyes ;) https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/102956/postdoc-overwhelmed-by-incomplete-work Why do you assert that he is your collaborator and you're collaborating if it seems you're not? In general, in academia collaboration is voluntary, and if it's not working out in a way that makes you happy, then don't collaborate with them. How is yours vs. "his part of the work" defined? When you discussed this with your supervisor, what did they say? While unprofessional from them to not simply communicate their unavailability to you, it's also completely possible that your colleague as a postdoc is either overwhelmed with other responsibilities or is in a position in their career where this project is not as important to them professionally or personally. In my opinion, you need to do two things: You need to understand that you probably need this project more than your colleague does. So as unfair as it might be, you need to resign to the fact that you probably do need to step in and do all the work. Having accepted point 1 could happen, you should definitely approach your colleague and explain diplomatically what you've written in your question - that you appreciate their input, that this project is important to you and that you see them as an important collaborator and would really appreciate help in the project. If they say they are willing to do their share of the work, great. Set up a simple timeline and some project milestones and pre-plan meetings to discuss findings to motivate your colleague to keep their end of the bargain. And hope that they meet them. If they don't, you can fall back to point 1. To echo some of the other comments, it is important to understand that as one goes up in their career level (and their level of responsibilities), they get stretched a bit thinner. So that thing that is incredibly important to you, is just one item on that postdoc's plate. Just as the things that are most important to that postdoc are just one of many items on the PIs plate. Then the things that are most important to the PI are likely just a small item (if anything) to the Department head, and one can keep going. So you should communicate clearly, and advocate for your specific needs, and see how you can best work together to meet the end goals. If the other person is very busy, then being able to break things up into smaller tangible tasks that they can do may lead to greater success than just a blanket request for them to do everything. Edit: I also suggest you edit your title. The implication is that the postdoc is not working, but rather the problem is the postdoc has been unable (or unwilling, we don't know) to prioritize your specific collaboration at this time. These are different things as it sounds like they are kept quite busy by your advisor. I've found that being specific about what you need, can help move the project forward. Also, offer to help if needed, not do, their part of the project. For example, send a calendar invite to discuss a very specific part of the project you are waiting on. CC your supervisor to have evidence if tasks aren't completed. Send multiple emails and requests for meetings. In lab meetings, you can point out delays if necessary, but ensure you're also on top of your work. The results vary with this technique, sometimes the colleagues appreciate the specificity and the prompt and time-block to get it done, other times they offer a response that just leads to more work for me to chase up. Though it might sometimes result in more work for you to follow up. Good luck with "managing up"!	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159745	How can I improve undergraduate students' writing skills? The fact: my students write badly. The source of the problem is, most likely, low quality primary and secondary education, with little emphasis on essays. Long term solutions are beyond the scope of this question. My focus is on the short term, as a teacher of a course that asks for essays and reports. How can I help my students to improve their writing skills, even if just a little, during the course of a semester? A potentially relevant fact: there is no awareness among students (and I would even say, among teachers) that good writing is important for their future. Other context: I'm in a business department. My class has an average of 20 students. They come from high school. I'm new to the university so just getting to know the type of student. This question (or its answers) seems focused on graduate students, with many examples from lab work or theses, which is not my case. This question is about us, academics. The focus here is on undergraduates who will not develop an academic career, but require such skill nonetheless, and unfortunately my university is not providing it, at least not systematically. @luchonacho I mean, are you at a CC? Are most of your students directly from high school, where they performed well? Or, are there a lot of transfers? Do they mostly speak English (or the local language) as a first language? STEM heavy? SLAC? If you’re teaching a “HASS” subject this is very different to a “STEM” subject. The basic answer would be “get ‘em to go do a BA.” ;) @SamuelRussell I see exactly the same issue with physics - our students don't have as many essays, but they still have to be able to write clearly and well for essay-type exam questions and especially lab reports. As with business, my time in industry (after my Masters, before my PhD) demonstrated that good writing skills as an engineer were very useful. @DanielHatton what sort of qualification do you have in mind for writing skills? High school English (at least in the UK) is a poor measure of any more than the basics of writing. What country are you in? Different countries have different opportunities. @DanielHatton I suppose a reasonable passing grade in GCSE all we can expect from our students, but getting a level from that description is hard: most of AO5 and all of AO6 are applicable in junior school (I have a child in year 3, and similar wording is used) and are requirements for the rest of life. The distinction you make is clearer. My A levels were some years ago, so things have changed, but we were still assessed on our ability to communicate ideas in writing in physics and computer science, less so in maths. My written communication also benefited from studying German to A-level Re "my students write badly": Can you elaborate a little bit in the question? In what way do they write badly? E.g., is the writing full of run-on sentences and homonyms? Or something else? @PeterMortensen That is a very good question, but not being a linguistic expert, finding the proper categories to describe the errors is complicated. At a broad level you can tell when a text is well written: you understand it. Basic errors include misuse of commas, dots, connectors, plus orthographic errors. I'm sure there is a proper taxonomy which I am not aware of. That would be an uphill struggle even if English Lit was their major topic. What you can most easily do is encourage them to read… to read both good and bad examples of their predecessors' work, and outstanding examples of writing in their own or any other field. In your situation I'd try to organise some extra-mural options in tandem with the college's English department. This won't be an easy job; pre-university teachers have tried and failed already before you for 12 years or so. @FedericoPoloni But, have they really tried? Several thoughts. Give writing assignments (goes without saying). Probably more short ones rather than fewer long ones. Make sure students know that form matters as well as content. To encourage students who start from a disadvantage, count improvement as well as mastery. Collect and critique first drafts before grading the final work. Allow students to resubmit essays. More problematical: have students critique each others' work before submission. Those critiques could even be private, so that students wouldn't be calling each other out before the teacher, only noting when some argument was unclear to them. Of course this will be time consuming for you and for them. To do it properly you may have to revise the course objectives to include work done to improve writing - at the expense of "more content". Thanks. What is particularly problematic about peer-reviewing? An personal experience on this? It's interesting but if they are not aware of good standards, it might not be very helpful. Peer reviewing may introduce psychological issues (privacy, competition, personal feelings ...). That said, it's common and students may be used to it. Just be aware of potential problems. Peer review need not attempt to deal with standards, just with clarity. That will go a long way. For peer reviews, I have seen a tool from UCLA http://cpr.molsci.ucla.edu/ used in a math class. I'm not sure if student peer review from students who cna't write is worth the effort, but if you want that, then cpr solved some logistical problems. @DimitriVulis it's often easier to spot the flaws in others' writing, so peer review should work well. The process is instructive for the reviewer as well as the reviewee. It won't catch everything; I'm sure some errors are very common, but I do find that when students take up my recommendation to peer-proofread they do better than those who don't (OK, correlation!=causation, selection bias, confidence, etc.). This even extends to students whose first report is badly written and respond to feedback for the second, but of course they have an incentive in the form of many important marks I'm not sure I agree with the "start from a disadvantage" advice, but that's perhaps because I don't understand exactly what the proposed advice is. It seems to be a grading advice, but students have known for ages how to game such grading. Offering more flexibility with deadlines, extra coaching or other similar help could be a better form of compensation. An anecdote about what can be problematic about non-blind peer-reviewing: I once had a class where Student A did not want to say anything negative about Student B because A worked at the company owned by B's father (I found this out while chatting with the A after the semester was over). So, there can unexpected conflicts of interest. Unfortunately “Give writing assignments” does not go without saying, at least in my field (maths). At most departments I’ve taught in, there has been no or very little dedicated writing training, and adding writing assignments into other courses would have gone against not just student expectations, but also faculty expectations and the department’s interpretation of regulations on grading. (Many kinds of maths grading can be held to a higher standard of “objectivity” than substantive writing feedback can, and one department required this standard for all grading.) This will require effort on your part, but it's a system that has systematically improved my writing from a D grade on average to an A grade. Often times I see professors engage in 'feedback overload' with each assignment, and your target student will typically take that feedback, understandably not know what to do with it exactly, and continue writing poorly. Much of your work starts at the beginning of the semester if you want to improve writing in your students. When you grade papers, you need to be looking for specific systematic flaws that persist in an individual s writing --- if you're lucky, enough students make the same mistake and you can address it all at once to the class in a single document. For example, suppose you have a student that abuses non-specific language. This might take the form of a paragraph like: Big yellow dogs are preferable to big red dogs because big red dogs are lucky (Clifford, 2020). They say that big red dogs are better, but they don't account for the fact that big yellow dogs tend to be passed over for their appearance, but often have great personalities. The abuse of 'they' in this paragraph is a common example of students being non-specific in their language and it's often systematically in their writing. Who is 'they' after all? Is it Clifford? Perhaps it's the red dogs? Maybe it's the editors at the Wall Street Journal? Who knows. But if you focus your feedback on bringing the students attention to this same one or two repetitive problems then you make the feedback digestion process more manageable for the students. So in editing their work you want to bring their attention to at most 1-2 systematic problems that are persistent in each assignment. By focusing on just 1 or 2 systematic problems, the next assignment should have a majority of those habits improved. Then on the next assignment you pick 1-2 things that are systematically wrong in their writing and you keep 'layering' this procedure over the semester. You might recognize multiple systematic problems, in this case, I still suggest you show restraint on addressing all of them at once. As a result you end up with a compounding interest problem and you will see improvements over time by being incremental and targeted in your feedback. Of course, you can only do so much, a lot of work rests on the shoulders of the students and you should not bare their burden more than you need to. A lot of effort indeed! Interesting idea but sounds like one to be implemented after significant experience. Unless I invest heavily, as you say. What do you mean by 'after significant experience'? I'm new to the university and course. So I mean after many iterations, until you get to know their style and shortcomings. I don't believe this to be correct. Good writing principles transcend courses (you said this yourself ;) ) and the students change every single year, so there's no better time to start then right away! Try to experiment with it, otherwise, you'll never really know for yourself. Besides, what you seem to be doing now doesn't seem to be working the way you want, so what do you have to lose? I like this idea, but I'd suggest looking for common weaknesses across the class for the first writing assignment, and then make the appropriate improvement a specific, explicit requirement of the remaining assignments. Repeat for each subsequent assignment. That would generally help most of the class without shifting too much of your time and work from the primary subject matter. One of the struggles that I've always had is getting students to understand how badly they write, and why it matters. If they don't understand that, why would they work at improving anything? (For context, I'm coming from a maths background, so the specific things I do may not help you, but perhaps the idea can inspire something?). What I like to do is essentially a peer-review exercise, but the review element is more about the students using what's been written - they have to interact with it on a deeper level, so that they have to struggle against the consequences of poor writing. For example, I divide students into teams. Each team gets a box of lego. In the first session, they have to design a model and write instructions for how to build it. They are not allowed to draw pictures. The idea is that the sequence of precise instructions mimics a mathematical proof. In the second session, they get a different team's instructions. They don't just have to read the instructions and assess them. Instead, they are challenged to build the same model as was originally designed by following the instructions. This is the point where they really understand how unclear the instructions were and why it's a problem. (If a mathematical proof isn't repeatable, it's not much of a proof!) Could you find a similar sort of exercise that models what your students could be expected to do in the future? Where they produce a document, and that document has a purpose and whose success is affected by the quality of the writing? That is a very cool and clever exercise! Thanks! Will see how can adapt it to my context. This is indeed pretty elegant and cool. This sounds like a lot of fun. I could imagine this as a game people played for fun outside of class. Did anyone use this or could refer to a similar example that could be applied in social science or medical context? You should look into Writing across the curriculum. Even if you get no support from your school, there are things you can do as an individual instructor. You should discuss your writing remediation plans with your "management" (assistant chair or someone "in charge" of your course) in advance, so they would not be surprised. You should not introduce any new requirements in the middle of the semester. Assign work where the students will have to write about the material in your class. Several short narratives (5-10 sentences) will work better than one long essay per semester. If their writing is not to your satisfaction, then make corrections (note that will be a lot of work for you if done properly) and ask the students to re-write and re-submit. Make sure that the poor writing in the final version does not affect the class grade, but a failure to submit the work will affect the grade at least 1 notch. Consider using one of the automated tools that detect plagiarism in student writing. "a lot of work"... indeed! That is why I guess no one around here seems to put effort on it. You say writing not to affect class grade. What about writing change? I could as for an initial ssay and see improvement over the term. I'm confused why poor writing in a final version wouldn't affect the class grade, did you mean the first? @luchonacho What would you do with a good writer who didn't improve at all? @AzorAhai-him- this is not a "writing" class. The class grade assesses their work in another subject. Just requiring students to turn in written narrative, and giving them good feedback (again, this is a lot of work for the grader) will help some students a lot. @DimitriVulis I suppose I don't agree that "their work" is completely separate from "the writing." It seems like many students wouldn't put in the effort to improve if it doesn't affect their grade. @AzorAhai-him- Yes, some students are not motivated. Requiring them to write something and providing useful feedback is the most you can get away with. Consider 3 hypothetical scenarios: 1 Students A and B both earn B+ in a math class based on the math part. Student A gets a grade of A- because her writing improved. B still gets B+ because his writing was good initially and did not improve. Students A and B compare notes, B complains. Scenario 2 student C earns a firm A in the math class and puts a lot of effort into rewriting but despite his efforts, his writing stays abysmal (continued) @AzorAhai-him- the instructor lowers C's grade to A-. C complains. In both scenarios, the school is certain to side with the students, and may tell the instructor to stop using writing assignments. I.e. scenario 3, student D earns a B, but doesn't turn in the narrative assignments, gets a grade of C just for that - it's possible if the syllabus clearly explains that the grading policy allows it. @DimitriVulis I mean you can make up any number of hypotheticals .. you could say that student C actually earned an "A-," not it was "lowered" which implies arbitrariness. I don't really have an issue with students earning a lower grade by not turning in the required assignments? Also, nobody said this was math. @AzorAhai-him- "math" is just an arbitrary example. In any class other than "English composition", using the writing ability to affect the grade is certain to lead to student complaints that the school will support. Just lead the horses to water - most will drink, others won't. You can't make them. @DimitriVulis I guess I have to disagree, both theoretically and in terms of what the school would support. For us in the French system we had a very rigid way of writing which ended up being pretty handy. I think it's the thing that taught me how to write well. You could teach your students how to write in this way. I will present the method and after say how it was taught to us. So, the method is the following, and I'll try to be quick. You take the question you were given and analyse its keywords. Do some brainstorming on how to answer. For the introduction, you give a general idea to catch the reader's interest. Then, depending on the question, you give context and/or definition of keywords. You may also explain why the question is interesting. Then, you reformulate or just write the question again, and you announce the big ideas your development. For each big idea, you make a "part". You start by a logical connector (first, secondly, etc.), then by providing a summary of your idea, then by announcing the sub-ideas it is made of. Then, for each subidea, you start by a ~one phrase summary, then the bulk of your argument, then your examples, then you either summarize again or just explicit how the examples are relevant, and then you transition for the next subidea or idea. For the conclusion, you summarize and maybe then you "open" the question. Now, the thing is, to teach us this, the teacher went by parts. So every week (which is possibly too much for uni) we had to turn in something. It could be only the introduction, or only one big-idea, or just the structure (so the "titles" for the big ideas and so on). And we had a clear barometer of which things we weren't doing well (conceptualizing the question, organizing our ideas, etc.). And also, with time I have incorporated some things of this method into my "normal" writing, but not everything. It can be a bit too boxy. Also, I was kind of quick here. If you want more information, let me know. In English, we have the five paragraph essay which is a similar structure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five-paragraph_essay I like this answer, simply because good writing is dependent on good form. When assigning an essay, be SPECIFIC about what is required structurally, just as in this answer. The forces your students to organize their thoughts before even writing. Afterward focus on general deficiencies, such as mixed idioms, loose grammar, etc. Might be a different generation, but: My native-born-French partner says that when she moved from France to America, she was completely bewildered by the American structural expectation of introduction/topic/support/conclusion, because she'd never heard of it growing up in France. Instead, the emphasis had always been on thesis-and-antithesis -- which itself got her graded down in American college as incoherent (not arguing for a single position). . @DanielR.Collins That's also true! The French system has its flaws, but it certainly teaches you critical thinking —and that has a lot to do with taken different points of view and positions into account. However, I was used to thesis-antithesis only on certain subjects, not all. Writing is learned by reading Maybe give them some easy papers to read during the course of the semester and have them write summaries. If they don't know how scientific literature is supposed to be worded, as a start, having them read some good examples is likely gonna be more helpful. Yeah, just getting people to read more would be a big plus. It would be great if they read classic scientific papers, but I'd settle for literally anything. I suppose Bertrand Russell is out of fashion these days but maybe there's someone a little more au courant, with the same clear, concise, substantial, and witty style. ... and practising, for sure @luchonacho Sure, but for any practice to be effective, you need at least a semi-solid idea of what the end result is supposed to look like. Most of your students likely haven't read a single paper in their lives, so I'm guessing a lot of them are completely lacking this idea. Writing is learned by writing. You don't learn to drive a car by watching other people drive a car. Here is a specific recommendation/suggestion. It depends on pairing and peer reviewing. It assumes that you don't really have the time to do adequate multi-level, multi-version review yourself. Create a double assignment. Two different things assigned at the same time. Give a pair (self selected, random, you select, ... ) the two assignments. They decide among themselves who is responsible for which one. Each writes up one of the assignments and asks their partner for advice on it. They then rewrite, maybe more than once. Decide on a grading scheme before you start. One way is to give them both the same grade on the assignment. Another is to give out, say, 90% of the grade yourself and let each student give the remaining points to their partner. Those points are specifically for the quality of the feedback received. Expect, of course, that almost everyone will give full points to their partner, or none. The latter result gives you a chance to advise them about teamwork, which they might not otherwise get. If they want to "cheat" and work on both together, fine. Let it happen. It is an additional skill that will serve them later. But, the answer of Ethan Bolker is the basis of any good scheme. Repetition with feedback is the only way it can be made to work. If you can give the feedback yourself, given the scale, and you can permit resubmissions in some form, then do that. I really like the idea but did not completely understand the grading options. Is this described somewhere in more detail, do you have any reference? I have a couple of suggestions. My background is that I'm an engineer. I graduated about 40 years ago with my bachelor's degree. Back in the day, our department had two "writing" courses: "Tech Paper 1" and "Tech Paper 2". Each was a single credit course, and in each course, the papers were due a little less than a month into the semester. For each paper, there were very strict rules. Each had to be less than 10 pages, double-spaced (back in the day when we used typewriters - I don't know how many words that might be). The papers had describe a technical problem in the "Problem Statement" (aka Introduction) section. Then they had to propose two or more possible solutions to the problem - including data, feasibility, etc. Finally, there was a Solution section that explained why one of the possible solutions was chosen. The papers also needed a clear, less than 100 word abstract. I can see something similar being done with management students. The problem wouldn't necessarily be technical (it might be choices for a product launch, for example). In those days, the department's standard grading ended up with <10% A grades, maybe a little less than 40% B. The rest were Cs, with a smattering of D grades. The rules for tech papers were special. If the student got an A or a B on the first submission, then the course was finished (though B students could resubmit and try for an A). Otherwise, the student needed needed to take the comments on paper, incorporate them into a new submission and present that. An A or a B on the second try lead to an A or a B. Otherwise, there was the possibility of a third submission (I don't think A was possible at that point). I believe that the grading on the last submission was a bit tougher (for example, if you had a C and didn't noticeably improve the quality of the paper, you could possibly slip to a D (I think - it's been a long while)). The idea was to get students writing like professionals, not like coddled high school students. The grader's comments were nearly all in the area of making the paper more concise and more focused (well, as well as improving grammar, spelling, etc.). The idea of multiple submissions was to make the student understand that his/her work would be reviewed out in the real world, and that re-work was pretty standard. The grader's expectations were said to be in the realm of what a supervisor's expectations would be once the student graduated. There was some allowance made for students who were writing in a language that was not their primary language (and, in part because this was in a Canadian university, papers could be submitted in either English or French). I thought then, and still think that this was a great way to get students to write clearly. ==== Since that time, I've been working in industry (with the occasional detour into graduate school). I've mentored several of my co-workers on their writing skills. As other people have mentioned, the best way to learn to write is to read a lot. But, I go further and say that when you find something whose style you like, you should read it out loud, and listen to what you are saying when you do that. Then, when you write, you should always read what you have written out loud. Listen to what it sounds like. See if you run out of breath before you finish a sentence. See if you can muddle through that 50-60 line paragraph without forgetting what the point was. When you read out loud, you will hear the fact that you included the same word in the last three sentences. I'd like to think that having students read an excerpt of their work out loud to the class would be a good idea. However, that would be unfair to non-native speakers as well as those who really don't do well in public speaking. But, if you decide to pair students up to review each other's writing, having part of that review being done out loud might be a good idea. Sounds like a good idea, but it would require an extra writing class. @henning--reinstateMonica: Well, yeah. And the grader spent a lot of time on the comments from what I saw from peers. The selling point is graduating students who can communicate clearly. My second point doesn't require a class though. I'm a really big fan of reading what I write out loud; I find it tightens up my writing. To expand on Julia Sepúlveda's answer on text structure and Ethan Bolkers answer on form, provide them with instructions. Maybe even spend one lecture on this. We had a course called 'study-qualities' in my first year and writing was a large part of it. But if your university does not have such a course, you have to make do. The instructions should be hands on, and include pointers like: divide your main text in paragraphs paragraphs have headings but headings are not part of the text: the reader must understand the paragraph without having read the heading start each paragraph by explaining in one or two sentences what you will say in the coming text end each paragraph with re-iterating the points you made in said paragraph run a spell-checker have someone else read your text before turning it in Be ready, you will face a surprisingly strong resistance. By forcing them to write on a level which should be the most basic requirement after the secondary education, it is something which is very alien for them. On the superficial level, their reaction will be that they do not understand what do you want. In the reality, they will actively work on to attack you back. Because it is an attack for them. This is a radical thing. The word "radical" is coming from the latinic word for "root". Because you grab - and fix - the root of the problem. Be ready: the problem will attack back. Imagine the worst possible attacks, like: "Sorry I have dislexia" (this will be a lie in 99% of the cases) "Sorry I did not know that I need to write well here" (crap talk) "It is a ... class and not a grammar class" (pseudorandom scratch on a paper is still not an essay, furthermore literacy is a must-have already for the secondary education) They will likely attack you indirectly, partially through their parents, and through the University administration. It is not about politeness, it is not about beautiful suggestions. It is about that if the student is incapable to formulate round sentences, then you have nothing to grade. You might try to understand his writings - a little bit -, but honestly you are not an elementary school teacher. I remember as I both laughed and hated the teachers who forced me to write in a good quality. Now, many decades later, that I see that a large part of the University students are in fact functional iliterate, I know that they were right and I would do the same, yet more vehemently. So, the first important thing, be ready for sneaking counterattacks. Second important thing, you need to have a hard hand. Third: you will likely lose. Do not count with radical results, but target them. You have a good chance for a little improvement in the short term. But they won't write correctly, it does not matter how strongly do you "motivate" them, and you can not let fail the whole class. Your gain will be: You will know that you did your best. You made the Humanity a little bit better. The best approach I saw to this was to provide examples. One of my philosophy subject tutors wrote four different short essays (<1000 words) on the same topic. They were of varying quality with respect to structure and evidence. So the good essay was organised logically, each paragraph concerned one argument and gave reasons for the position. On the other hand, the bad essay was a mix of assertions without evidence, inconsistencies, related ideas very far apart etc. All four essays were given to the tutorial class and they were asked to grade them (in groups) with reasons for the grading. The bad essays took him a lot longer to write. Instead of writing bad essays, I imagine you could find some examples in one of the 'homework assistance' sites and then work your way up to write the better ones.	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133502	How should I interpret a promising preprint that was never published in a peer-reviewed journal? There have been a couple of occasions in my research in which I've come across a preprint that is several years old and is very relevant to the work that I'm doing. Often these preprints have very promising initial results. However, when looking at the CVs or Google Scholar pages of the authors on the preprint, I can't seem to find a version that ended up getting published in a peer-reviewed journal, even if the preprint is several years old already. Why would would a researcher abandon a manuscript that they obviously put a lot of time into? Do researchers sometimes just abandon lines of inquiry because they get too busy? Or, is this an indication that their promising initial results were not robust enough for peer-review, and I should be wary of attempting a similar study? In my field, important credibility indicators for preprints without a formal publication would be: who the authors are (yes, of course, this is a bit unfair); and how the preprint is cited (can be unfair too, because it encourages a rich-get-richer mentality). If there is subsequent work with formal publications who cite the preprint in their related work study, you would expect them to say if the preprint is known to contain errors (or, sometimes, if there is a reason why it wasn't published). But if subsequent work ignores the preprint, it can be a bad sign (... or they may have missed it). There might be any number of reasons. You might try to contact the author(s) to get more information. But... (not all with the same likelihood) They might have left academia for various reasons and not bothered. Is the CV also old? They might have incorporated the key ideas into another paper with a very different title. You search is then fruitless. They might have discovered errors. Reviewers might have considered the results trivial. Their attempts to publish might have been rejected by journals for other reasons. They might have changed sub-fields. (This one less likely, I think.) But you should be wary, at least, of following up on unpublished work and, at least, be sure that you can verify the claims independently. One other important possibility (if it's math), everything with the preprint is basically fine but they submitted to a top journal and the refereeing process took 2 years but the paper was rejected, they then spent a year revising based on those reports and other feedback they'd gotten, spent half a year deciding where to resubmit, then it took another year and a half to get accepted at the second top journal, but their backlog is such that it takes another year and a half for it to be published. So now 6 years have passed and the preprint isn't published anywhere. @NoahSnyder that sounds oddly specific... That’s not actually intended to be the exact story of a particular paper (mine or others), but more a realistic amalgam of different stories of mine and others. I second the suggestion to consider contacting the author. You should have a low threshold for doing that. To abbreviate @NoahSnyder: Maybe the authors lost interest. @NoahSnyder this hits home. I think this happens more than people think. They might not be able or willing to afford the publication costs. They might not have thought highly of the result at that time, and when it proved popular, it was not new enough to interest journals. (What do you get from republishing something that's already known by everyone in the field and put to test for validity "in the wild"?) They might be in the lucky situation to not feel pressured to publish by their employer, so why bother? Just to give a concrete example: this paper solved a famous open problem in the field. As you can see it was essentially written in 2009. It was published in 2016. I'm not privy to the editorial misadventures it has encountered, but no doubts about its correctness or its relevance were present in the community in the intervening years, as far as I can remember This kind of thing happens a lot, publishing papers can be tough at times and it can take several years before something gets published. Someone told me they knew someone who wrote a paper and couldn't get it published for many years, but now the technique in that paper is used all the time and it is referenced a lot. They work in an environment where preprints are accepted as publications already, so no need to re-publish it, espectially if the preprint got a lot of citations already. (I believe this can be the case for senior researchers in theoretical physics and computer science, and I expect it's also dependent on which country you're in, whether you're in industry or academia, etc.) Sometimes you can guess from the journal and the arxiv revision history what the process looked like. In the example Denis gave, it looks quite likely that v1 is a genuine preprint, v2 is what was first submitted to The Annals, v3 incorporates major changes based on the original referee reports, and v4 is relatively minor revisions based on the referee's responses to their revision. It's totally implausible that any journal would rejected that paper, so that example shows just how long it can take to get an important long paper refereed at The Annals. Not all peer-reviewed papers are solid, and not all non peer-reviewed papers are unsolid. Judge for yourself. Seriously, sometimes people cannot be bothered to fight with reviewers about minutia, relevance, impact, significance; worse, sometimes people have a problem to get a paper published in a journal that later proves to be seminal to a field. The story of Schechtman comes to mind (or also some colleague from my own field who wrote an absolutely central paper for my field which took several years to get published in a peer-reviewed journal). If it is an experimental paper and hard for you to verify, you may tread more carefully, but anything that's theoretical and in your reach to check for yourself is worth consideration if you need it. As others mentioned, there can be various reasons. Perelman only published his proof of the Poincare conjecture as preprints. It was enough for everybody to hear about his proof, so why bother?:-) Mochizuki only published his proof of the abc conjecture as preprints (to be more precise, he also published it several years later in a journal where he was the editor-in-chief, if I am not mistaken). In this case, the extra reason was the proof was too complicated, so nobody could referee it :-) (I am cutting some corners:-) ) "he also published it several years later in a journal where he was the editor-in-chief, if I am not mistaken" you are mistaken—there was a rumour they had been accepted to appear in such a journal, but it didn't happen. The papers are still not published, and only a small group of people accept Mochizuki's proof as doing what he says it does. @DavidRoberts : Thank you. So this is also a "clean" example:-)	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.394239	2019-07-18T14:54:37	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/133502", "authors": [ "David Roberts", "Denis Nardin", "JeffE", "Mark Foskey", "Mark Omo", "N. Virgo", "Noah Snyder", "Sylvain Ribault", "The Vee", "Tom", "a3nm", "akhmeteli", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1534", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17423", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33983", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53463", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/59", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/64518", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/74339", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8881", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/90168", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/92334", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/98244", "nimcap" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
11979	How to write a graduate study personal statement for a technical field without related bachelors degree? With the desire to obtain a master's degree in Management Information Systems, IT Management, or Computer Science, how do you proceed writing a personal statement when your bachelors degree is unrelated? With minimal previous technical experience (basic knowledge on programming, some collegiate participation in software club), is it possible to be considered seriously? What can be added to the statement to strengthen your impression? I ask because a lot of the graduate ambassadors at DePaul have bachelors in different fields. Related: How does one change to engineering for graduate school after undergrad in a science field? Hello @Garry, it has been a year since you ask this question. Can I ask that are you successful in the transition? Do you have any tip? Thank you so much. @Ooker Sorry Ooker, no followup to the question. I asked this question for a friend of mine and they chose to pursue other interests. I was recently accepted to a MS program that is different from my undergrad and graduate training. In my personal statement I tried to relate my experience to the field I was pursuing. I had field research experience in public health, but I was applying for a MS in biology. I still used my research experience, but I focused on the general research skills that I developed, things that would be useful in the lab. I mentioned things that are universal to all research. I think if you convey passion and direction for the new field, you'll be alright. It can be an advantage too. Think of ways you can incorporate your previous field if possible. If not, show them your maturity and passion. It seems like admissions committees can tell who is going through the motions and who is genuine. Make your voice heard. Recently I applied for an MS in electrical engineering. I wrote my sop on my own. Firstly you have to mention how you got interested in this field. Then you mention all about your academics and activities from your schooling to present day. Then you mention about your area of interest and your academic projects and internship(s). At last why you want to do graduation in the area you prefer to and conclude. Regarding your projects you have to give brief explanation about the project and the things that you used in the project . No, you don't mention "all about your academics and activities from your schooling to the present day." You only discuss relevant information that helps the reviewer understand what you want to do as a graduate student (plus some motivation as to why). A blow-by-blow replay of your academic career is not particularly helpful—unless you have particular circumstances that require clarification or explanation (a gap in your career, poor performance at a particular stage of your career, absence due to illness, etc.).	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.395304	2013-08-19T18:41:17	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11979", "authors": [ "Garry", "Jeffrey Lott", "Ooker", "Sarath Somana", "aeismail", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1252", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14341", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/31217", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/31244", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
1799	Which soft skills for research career? In a previous question we stated that soft skills are pretty important for admission decisions in universities, so I suppose that you'll agree with me if I said that they are very important not only during the admission phase, but throughout the whole career. Which do you think are the most important ones? Thanx! You've always been able to answer your own question on SE sites, and now they've made it even easier to answer your own question while posting it. I recommend you edit your question to remove the answer part and post that as an answer. I'd upvote it :) In a previous question we stated that soft skills are pretty important for admission — I don't think this is an accurate characterization of the answers to that question. Soft skills are important to succeed at interviews, but most admissions decisions (at least in North America) do not require interviews. I broadly agree with Davide's answer above, but I would move the list around somewhat: Tier 1: Self motivating Communication, broadly-defined Ability to stay focused on a single task for multiple months & years Tier 2: Work on a team Creative, curious personality Strong writing skills Tier 3: Learn from criticism Personable Tier 1 skills are, in my mind, absolutely required to be a researcher. The inability of any of those will preclude you from doing your work (i.e., unable to communicate means unable to publish; unable to stay focused for long periods of time means unable to complete research projects & grants.) Tier 2 skills will turn a good researcher into a great researcher. Technically speaking, researchers don't need to be good team members, but having that skill will greatly improve your academic worth and potential. Tier 3 will improve your worth to yourself and others as a researcher. There are probably a bunch here that I missed and should have included. I would put "learn from criticism" in Tier 1. In my opinion, I'd suggest these (in order of importance): hard-working attitude public speaking ability to manage personal relationships ability to work in independently ability to work in team creative skills and ability to formulate new problems and ideas ability to accept & learn from criticism Do you agree with this list? Would you add something? Would you change the position of something? Hard-working attitude isn't a skill—it's a personality trait. So are most of the rest of these. Also, on an unrelated note, I'd avoid using casual spellings ("hardworkin'", "speakin'"), particularly in academic writing. I would add being able to communicate ideas and concepts effectively. The ability to write clearly (or maybe this is a hard skill). @DaveClarke: That's definitely a hard skill, as is public speaking. I want to add self management. I mean think better about our life, our work an so . I mean knows to control our mind to when think about what and how to do that I will add some further unmentioned skills I value highly and miss among many students in the age of internet and information overload: googling/filtering, knowing & using search operators, especially for finding literature. Seems obvious, but I see so many students lacking basic search and internet skills that this is my #1 knowledge management, meaning future-proof saving and organizing of your knowledge and bibliography keeping up with academic publications critical thinking (logic, fallacies, cognitive bias, problem solving), history and philosophy of science (Popper & Kuhn), Being a scientist means to study further and learn your whole life, more than in any other job, where most of soft skills named in other answers apply too (work hard, in team, motivation ...). Also I think curiosity and creativity are rather personal traits than trainable skills. If you don't have them, consider choosing another job. You didn't say what kind of graduate program you are talking about. The admissions criteria for a Master's program are very different than for a PhD. Here's what the top-three admissions criteria look like for admission to a research-oriented PhD program: Evidence of research ability. Evidence of research ability. Evidence of research ability. So, if evidence of research ability is so important, how is it judged? Well, there are several ways that applicants can demonstrate research ability: Demonstrate prior success at research. For example, participated in one or more prior research projects that led to a publication at a peer-reviewed place. This is usually the strongest evidence. Show prior experience with research, with evidence that it went well or that future research will likely be a success. For example, participated in one or more prior research projects, which did not lead to a publication, but the letters of reference state have positive things to say about the applicant's research ability, and the letter-writers are credible on this. This is next-best. Show great intelligence and technical ability, as well as passion/motivation. Here we are talking about indirect measures of research ability. One of the strongest ways is to excel in technical classes. Admissions committees will also look at the motivation/drive (what does the applicant want to study? why? is the applicant driven to do research? why?), at written and other communication skills, and other factors. Of the materials in the application packet, I could prioritize which are most important: Publications. If you have publications, include them. Admissions committees will often read the publications, look to see where they are published, etc. Letters of reference. Strong letters of recommendation can be very valuable. They need to come from credible people who are well-calibrated about what it takes to be successful in a Ph.D. program, and they should be as strong as possible about the applicant's research potential and other abilities. Classes. Great grades in relevant courses is helpful. The courses also need to provide adequate preparation for the Ph.D. program. Essays. The personal essays should be thoughtful, well-written, demonstrate the applicant's interest in research and goals for Ph.D. study. Admissions committees will read to see whether the essays seem well-informed about the field the applicant wants to join. They'll also try to figure out the applicant's most likely interests, to see if they are a good match for the faculty in the department who are looking to advise new Ph.D. students. Other materials. The rest of your application packages (e.g., GRE scores) are of lesser importance. They're more likely to get you rejected, or raise a red flag that causes the committee to look more closely at the rest of your application packet, than they are get you accepted. It is semi-important to demonstrate communication skills; if you cannot communicate clearly in the language of instruction at the university, then you may not be able to serve as a teaching assistant, which means the school may not have a way to fund you, which is very bad. Also, advisors are more likely to want to work with someone who has good written English than someone who will need to learn how to write clearly. The question was not intended just for admission phase, but, more broadly speakin', for academic career. In addition, the elements you listed (publications, classes, etc) ain't soft skills...	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25837	How to test (admitted) grad students before hiring them in your lab Recruiting "bad" PhD students who only become emotional, temporal, and financial drag is not good for anybody. I was listening to the recent freakonomics podcast episode, and thought it would be great to use tricks for testing the candidates before hiring them. Interviewing only can tell you so much, but unlike industry, PI's have more time to test the students before committing to seriously bring them into their research program. In a related question, some qualities of successful students were discussed. Specifically, I want to test for persistence/focus creativity logical/systematic thinking communication teamwork "smartness" some basic skills (programming, computer skills, writing, etc.) At the same time I do not want to punish for lack of knowledge or experience. Also, I'm okay with eccentric personalities to a certain degree. I've seen PIs testing their candidates by giving them mini research problems before hiring them (or while they are rotating in the lab). Some students will quickly finish the task and further explore the science on their own write fantastic reports/papers, while some students never finish the simplest first step. This seems to work fine (but some students might think it is not fair). I would like to learn if there are some quick tests that would reveal the quality of the candidate. What tricks/procedures do you use? P.S. I am in a computation/theory heavy science in US. EDIT: I am especially looking forward to King Solomon's cutting the baby in half type of creative solutions. Perhaps PI can ask the student to do an impossible task and see how long it takes before the student says he/she thinks it is impossible. Just to make it clear, you mean recruiting for a PhD, right? Could you specify the country? Where I am originally from, it is typical to hire someone as an intern for a couple of months (summer) and then decide. But of course many other places have more restrictive, centralized admission policies, and taking someone on might only be possible from within the university, after admission, and so on. If you have a rotation system in place, is this not enough time to see if someone is more or less capable of independent work? Could you give the arguments as to why this might be viewed unfair? @amlrg I am assuming the students are already admitted to the institute & department. Yes, rotation would be a great time to test them. I want to discuss strategies in doing so in detail. I suggest changing the question title to reflect that you are talking about testing students after they have been admitted into the program. PI's have more time to test the students before committing to seriously bring them into their research program - not always. In some departments, PhD students are effectively admitted directly into their advisor's research group. but some students might think it is not fair — So what? (I assume you are open about your expectations and enforce them fairly.) You can't make everyone happy, and you shouldn't try. Students who disagree with your standards are welcome to work with another advisor, In Germany, where I work, most PhD students are employed using a contract as government employees. This arrangement makes "tests" unnecessary, as the contract includes a six-month "probationary" period, during which you can evaluate the candidate. So, while there is certainly an incentive to higher the best person, it becomes possible to remove someone who quickly shows himself unsuitable for the project in question. Is there anything wrong w/ the typical job recruiting techniques of interviews + talking to their references? I generally look for passion on the topic, but try to check via references that they actually produce good results. @Joe Not that there's anything wrong with the standard procedure. I just want to know more "tricks" and "quick tests" to weed out the dangerous ones. Do you want to do a distant test (for instance over an online chat interview) or a model lab test (he comes to your office/lab for the test)? "Perhaps PI can ask the student to do an impossible task and see how long it takes" I guess the really good students (i.e. those you want to find) won't take long to think that you are impossible... What tricks/procedures do you use? I work with each student as a potential colleague. I meet with them regularly, monitor their progress, offer what feedback and advice I can on what classes to take, papers to read, problems to work on, techniques to apply, people to work with, conferences to submit to, writing, presentations, and so on. If they show sufficient promise/progress after a semester or two, I offer to continue working with them in an official capacity as their advisor. If they don't show sufficient promise/progress, I offer to help them find another advisor who better matches their interests, background, and working style. If necessary, I help the student navigate a change in degree programs, departments, or universities. Finally, if I don't have enough time to effectively evaluate and/or advise a student, I just say no at the beginning. In other words, I don't have any tricks. I just do my job. I don't think it is fair to judge a person by tests. People have ups and downs. Look on their overall profile. Have they done something creative even once, in their career? Some students are exam-phobic and do not get A grades all the time, but if you look at their research and thesis in the past, those are very creative and novel. Those kind of people are the ones, that succeed, not always the ones who run after a 4.0 gpa(on a 4.0 scale). If the person doesn't has any novelty to show in their past projects, ask them the reason. What was the idea behind the work they have done, what did they learn from it, and what do they intend to learn from their PhD. Why are they pursuing a PhD? Why do they want to join your lab? Tell them what are you looking for, in the candidate and ask them to do a self-evaluation. Tell them to be frank, if they do not know something that you want them to know, and that you'll be willing to work with them if you really see them as the right candidate. Keep your expectations real. You might never find a student with 100% qualities matching your requirement, but if you find that right candidate who is willing to give his 100%, you can make their 70% match better than anything else you'd ever get. At the end of the day, a good student is the reflection of a good teacher. Oh and by the way I'm also a Bioinformatics major and it is not always possible to know everything on the computer skills side. They might be excellent in one programming language but know nothing in others or they might be average good in a number of languages being the master of none. At the end, the thing that matters is, if they can get the job done, using whatever technique, whatever approach! Correct me if I'm wrong. :) The statement "I don't think it is fair to judge a person by tests" is a bit ridiculous. Sure, perhaps individuals should not be judged solely based on formal examinations, but to say individuals should not be judged at all based on examinations undermines entire fields of valuable practice and research. Tests are useful. What would an "overall profile" be if not comprised of a variety of subjective and objective tests? Also, what you are recommending are small tests. Well, my point here is to say that knowing more about a person and testing a person, are two different things. An example to that: Albert Einstein was a wonderful scientist yet if he had been tested, he might not have been the "A" grade student. What I am saying is that testing, either subjective or objective testing, are two ways of "knowing more about a person". An interview is also a test. Also, Albert Einstein was tested and he was indeed an excellent student (http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/956/was-einstein-a-poor-student). Not to sound facetious, but have you ever considered your role as the mentor in understanding why these collaborations don't work out? Relationships are bidirectional. As such, I am struck that in your initial post the issue is the deficit of the student. I'm a grad student. I've worked with many professors on different projects. In every instance you get what you give. Most normal people will do their job (i.e., the grad student meeting expectations) if you do your job, at least in the context of a collaboration across time. I haven't started my lab yet. But, I have seen a number of fellow grad students who were unsuccessful. I understand there are many factors, and many of them could be because of the PI.	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10347	How to engage students in oral presentations? Paper-based exams are not fully representative of knowledge, and it is good to consider oral presentations of students as a factor for the final grade to some extent. This is somehow the case in graduate courses, where the number of students is lesser, but how to follow this strategy for crowded classroom of inexperienced undergraduate students. I mean a classroom of 50+ size with students who do not have experience in scientific discussion! I've had classes of this size where I have each student do an individual presentation. It is very time consuming but I also feel it can be very worthwhile. If you give each student 10 minutes to present some information and you have 50 students then you will have 12-13 hours for presentations (allowing 15 minutes total per student including Q&A, changing students, etc.) If you teach in 2-hour sessions then it will consume 6-7 sessions. If you have 30-32 sessions per semester it is doable but it also removes a significant chunk of time from lecturing. In my case, I lectured for several weeks (giving the students time to do their research and giving them the foundations they needed for their presentations) and then had the students give their presentations. Then I continued lecturing with other assessments later on. The module was not about presentation skills but I do feel that in each subject, we need to teach the students some general skills (structuring an argument, how to format text, how to research, giving a presentation, etc.) in addition to the module content. The students ended up understanding the material quite well when judged by their presentations and I found many of them quite eager to learn how they could improve their presentation skills. In the end, I was happy with the overall results and plan to do it again. I would like to add to earthling's answer. If you have teaching assistants, please do make good use of them in this aspect. As a TA, I have had excellent experiences in mentoring undergraduates to prepare research presentations, final papers, projects and proposals for these papers and project. Of course, we were generally in a class of 120-160 students so that speaks to a classroom scale higher than what you are suggesting. There were 3 graduate TA's, usually and we each had about 50 students to mentor. We found that we could devote significant amounts of time to each student when we met them on a one-on-one basis. Of course, the professor also met them one-on-one and there were a couple of rounds of iteration of their final presentations - which was very, very useful for the professors, the TA's and the students. As mentioned previously, it was a time sink, but very well worth it.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.396881	2013-05-31T14:58:47	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10347", "authors": [], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
12802	Are generalized recommendation letters bad? Sometimes online application systems ask for uploading recommendation letters as supplementary documents (scanned copies). In this case, it is possible to get general recommendation letters (addressed as To Whom It May Concern) and submit them for different applications. Is it bad to submit a recommendation letter, which has not been addressed for a specific application? Assume that the content will be the same. If it is OK, is it bad to attach some recommendation letters for an application when it is not requested? What level is this? Grad school applications? Postdoc? Tenure-track? How many things are you applying for? I'm actually surprised that whatever system you're using has you upload the letters yourself. Typically (maybe this is field specific?) an applicant should not even get to look at the letters, since any negative (or neutral) comments the writer includes might strain their relationship, and so excluding the applicant means the writer can, in theory, be more direct and honest. That said, 1) This is bad. A generic letter is obviously better than no letter at all (if one or more is required), but not always by much. It indicates that you are interested in a position somewhere rather than interested in a position there. If your other qualifications are superb this might not matter, but you can give any application a really significant boost by showing the people who will be reading it that you are interested in them and will be a good fit. This doesn't mean totally different letters for each application, but you will have to help your letter writers to tailor small changes, for each letter, that "personalize" your applications. 2) This is probably bad too; if they didn't request letters, then they don't want them. At best they'll ignore them, at worst they'll be annoyed that you don't follow directions. First, as wsc says, you should not be uploading the letters yourself. Usually there's someone in your dept. who can accept letters and send them out if there's no way for the letters to be uploaded directly. Second, senior letter writers already spend a lot of their own valuable time writing letters for dozens of people. Asking them to write separate letters for dozens and dozens of applications for each person is completely unreasonable. In Math for research jobs in the US, letters for job applicants are not school specific. (Though they do usually say "postdoc" or "tenure track position" since obviously a strong postdoc candidate would often be a weak TT candidate.) (For teaching letters for liberal arts schools my impression is that the situation is somewhat different and some specialization may be expected. But I don't have first-hand knowledge. Of course, for those letters, it's less likely that one person is writing 50 letters a year.) Not having access to letters appears to be a US issue. In other countries, it is more or less accepted that students will get the letters of recommendation directly and upload it themselves. I recently caused a bit of commotion when I asked an EU-based fellowship program if I could directly send my letter of recommendation to them instead of forwarding it to them via the student! Interesting. When I wrote a letter for Cambridge Part III, there was an elaborate procedure to ensure that the letters hadn't been tampered with. (The letter had to be on official letterhead, signed, and put in a sealed envelope with my signature across the seal.) But maybe England is different from the continent?	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.397108	2013-09-18T03:57:36	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/12802", "authors": [ "Keine", "Mohsen Afshin", "Noah Snyder", "aeismail", "cardeol", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32444", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32445", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32446", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32450", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70175", "montfenn", "neutreno" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
2911	Is reuse of "internal" results considered self-plagiarism if used in a later publication? This is a little bit different from the case of reusing boilerplate text. Say one has done a series of experiments (either real or "virtual") to produce a set of results. Because the results are inconclusive as to the cause of certain effects, an additional, much larger set of experiments were performed under a series of different conditions to complete the "factorial matrix" of possibilities (all possible states of factor X crossed with all possible states of factor Y). However, because the original results are valid, and represent unique "cells" in the factorial matrix, is it necessary to rerun the experiments for a future publication, or is it just a matter of obtaining journal permission for the re-use of figures and tables associated with the presentation of the data? As an example, am I violating copyright if I add a new set of curves to a figure which contains the same data as before? I ask in part because there was just today a retraction based on reuse of figures, and I'd rather not run afoul of guidelines. What? Do journals hold copyright on data? Or just on the presentation of that data? Data collected the same way would be the same data. Data are facts, which are generally not copyrightable. I've revised the question to make clear the intent is on the presentation of that data. From my experience, researchers are free to re-use a given dataset as many times as they want in numerous publications. I've been involved in single datasets (which, admittedly, took years to build) that generated dozens of papers, and that is by no means a unique scenario. My understanding is that researchers are to refrain from publishing an identical analysis on an identical dataset in different papers. If you're using a single dataset for multiple analyses, there's no need to re-generate the data. I agree with the other answer that this is a normal occurrence. To avoid any confusion, be clear and cite the previous publication as the source/original presentation of the data. It is not citing (even yourself), which is an ethical breach, as it makes it seem that have done more than you really have.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.397478	2012-08-20T15:54:52	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2911", "authors": [ "Ben Norris", "Celdor", "JeffE", "aeismail", "anais", "enricoide", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19381", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7335", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7336", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7338", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7340", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/924", "intrepidkarthi", "spartan" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
52762	How to cite a paper with erratum? I want to cite a paper [A], which has been corrected by an erratum [B] in the same journal. I have not found a rule how to cite this case. Is it proper to cite [A,B], or just [A] or just [B]. I am rather looking for a recommendation by some sort of scientific organization or major journal than for personal opinion, so please provide a link. An erratum would usually only include the part to be corrected from the original publication. Hence it would be insufficient to cite just the erratum and not the original article. Examples of such errata are shown in the US NLM site. Thus you must cite both original article as well as the errtum. But there is a method to cite errata. You should cite the original article [A] in the main section and cite the errata [B] after the citation info of [A] in the references section. Similar to this. References: [A] Authors of A. Title of A. In conf./article/report/etc. Erratum. Author of B [B] [B] Info of B... A simple example is provided in the answer here. Should I use bold font for the word "Erratum" just to remind people? You ought to confirm the norms with the publisher. If this is your own form of publishing, it would be up to your preference, although I’ll prefer italicised. @Ébe's advice is probably best for the [1] [2] scientific style of references. In many humanities disciplines using footnotes, however, it's simplest and most common to append the errata information to the end of the publication unless you want to discuss the errata individually. So something like: Michael Cuthbert, "Common tones in simple time," Journal of Music Theology 11 (2016), pp. 220-230, errata v. 12 (2017), p. 294. Whether to italicize errata in a citation like that (is it still Latin? or now English?) is up to you. This is also what I'd do with the [1] [2] style that I ordinarily use (in mathematics and computer science). In the text, there would be simply [7]. In the list of references at the end of my paper, item 7 would look like what's in your answer.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.397698	2015-09-03T22:33:50	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/52762", "authors": [ "Andreas Blass", "Anonynon", "James Neill", "Matthew Morgan", "Spammer", "Varghammer", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14506", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/145473", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/145474", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/145475", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/146505", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/146513", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/40592", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/55111", "zyy", "Ébe Isaac" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
27076	Why are (galley) proof requests given such a short deadline? Often the publisher requests to get the proof within 24 hours when it's ready. What are the reasons for making this so short? Do they want the authors to not make too many changes? EDIT: The email I received said: Please ensure you check the entire article carefully, and answer all queries. Return corrected proofs and any related material by uploading to the site within 24 hours. EDIT: @StrongBad pointed out a related question. Yes, an interesting question considering that usually one's wait for these galleys is months on end, with no accurately predicted deadline... I'll try to explain the problem from both perspectives: author and a journal typesetter. The typesetting process goes as follows: We pre-plan the issue contents 2 months in advance, in order to balance the issues in size. This is necessary for small journals with 4 or 6 issues per year, not quite for large journals with a long publishing queue. At this moment, we take articles that are accepted. If there's not enough of them, we go through the queue and try to find articles that can be accepted quickly. Now the authors provide the final version. This takes some time, so I receive the articles usually 4-6 weeks before the issue date. That's not a lot of time. Most articles are typeset within 1-2 weeks after I receive them. With these, there's no problem at all. However, then you have articles that take more time, since the quality of the figures is being discussed, as well as semantics (when the formatting from the authors is poor and the semantics are not clear) etc. This takes some time. So it can happen that the article is typeset like 2 weeks before the issue date, or even less. So now the article is typeset and is with the authors for proofs. Any correction they make has to be incorporated. Sometimes it's not easy (requests for replacing a figure with a better one, for moving figures to other pages etc. are not uncommon). Sometimes I strongly disagree with the authors on these. In such cases, we need to have yet another couple mails exchanged or the chief editor involved, and that takes time again. At this moment you see that 24 or 48 hours can be the maximum we can give. Once all articles get back, the issue has to be made ready, articles published online, CrossRef+Scopus metadata prepared, DOI registered etc. That's the perspective of the journal I typeset. I hope that it is clear that the publication comprises a lot of steps. When the authors are cooperative and reasonable, everything goes fluently and the final version is ready 4 weeks before deadline. And then you have cases when things don't go quite well, and you get very close to the deadlines. Moreover, to make things easier (and reduce the amount of work just before the issue date), you leave authors quite a short time for response. In most cases, there is plenty of time left, but if 80% of people misuse this time, we work 16 hours a day the last 3 days before the issue date to sort everything out, and we simply want to avoid this. From the perspective of the author, 48 hours is not much for proofreading an article, especially since this has to be done very carefully. However, in most cases, if you ask for extension (a 5-line mail with a very short request is enough), it will be granted without any problem. Just please don't misuse the possibility. These timings don't fit with my experience as an author (presumably because of being in a field that works on a different timescale). It can be over a year between the journal receiving the final version of the paper (already typeset, just in a different layout) and the author receiving the proofs (often edited to create major errors that completely change the meaning or turn the work to nonsense). After the 2/3 days given to the author to send back the re-edits, the paper appears online, in final form except page numbers etc. A couple of months later, the paper makes it to a journal issue. @JessicaB That's quite possible. The publish queue is probably quite long in the journals, right? And yes, the timings are quite field-dependent, and even journal-dependent. I only tried to explain from the view of the journal that the things aren't quite simple. @Yo'. Thanks! Traditionally. How long it takes by the designers to prepare Galley proofs ? @goro Somewhere between 10 minutes and 1 hour per page. But remember that most copy editors have other things to do as well, the backlogs of their work range from zero to months, and at least from my own experience, you can't do typesetting 8 hours straight because it's very tough on your eyes and you need breaks when you do other stuff. All of the arguments on this answer hinge on the existence of deadlines caused by the need to balance issues in print. There might be people out there that care about the printed versions of their papers this side of the year 2000, but I have yet to meet them. As it stands from your argument, then, the imposition of extreme deadlines on authors without a warning is pretty much just based on a legacy practice that the journal feels bolsters its commercial negotiating position but from which the author gets zero meaninful benefit. So... why should authors comply with that deadline, again? @E.P. Well, I tried to explain how it is in some journals. Of course, you can answer by swearing over the publishers bullying the authors, but I'm not sure it makes any sense :-) Well, this answer is an apology of some pretty unreasonable behaviour on the part of publishers that, as you explained, are exclusively due to constraints that benefit the publisher and not the author. It might not look like that from that close up, but the structure is all there if you zoom out. There definitely is lots that could be accomplished by reasonable voices within publishing arguing for a move to paperless systems that would actually implement their stated mission of serving the scientific community efficiently and cost-effectively, ... ... but then that might crumble the facade-level pretense that publishers are anything other than vested interests trying to wrest as much money as possible out of the taxpayer via scientific institutions. So yeah, the incentives need to be created from the side of the demand, but the "we're here to serve" spiel just becomes increasingly untenable as time wears on. Galley proofs are part of the production process where a book or journal issue is actually printed, as opposed to the 'softer' process of deciding what pieces will go into it and in what form. As such, the deadlines for their revision are associated with the physical production process rather than the editorial process for the piece and can be quite different from deadlines for e.g. minor revisions or revise-and-resubmit requests. These proofs are only meant to be used to check that the typesetting correctly represents the author's intent, and not that the content is scientifically correct (which should have been done at an earlier stage). Occasionally a one- or two-sentence 'note added in proof' may be appended to a paper but that's about it; for an example see the AIP style guide, p.11. Checking the typesetting is assumed to be a straightforward matter that does not require more than one day (though assuming that an academic can spare the time at the publisher's decision with no prior notice is another matter), so such deadlines are usually OK. Note also that such deadlines can be negotiable if properly handled. If such a requests lands on you and you will not be able to complete it in time, it is usually acceptable to notify the editor, as soon as possible, that this is the case. A polite note along the lines of Dear Editor, We have successfully received the proofs of our article. Unfortunately, today is my thesis defence, my coauthor is getting married and my advisor is away due to travel, so we will be unable to complete your request to review the proofs within 24h. We will get them to you as soon as possible, which will likely be the day after tomorrow. Is this acceptable, or will it lead to a delay in publication? can work wonders in stretching such a deadline. From personal experience, I have seen a 24-hour request be stretched to a full week without a publication delay. Or, for instance, the journal could send you a notice on Christmas Eve to return the page proofs. (This happened to me recently!) The high-probability explanation of this capriciousness is that they think they can "get away with it", given the circumstances. Remaining silent for months, and then giving someone a 24-hour deadline is ... let's face it... grossly disrespectful. Power-inequity manifest. Explanation-over. :) @paulgarrett Right, to an exntent. However, I don't think that in many branches there's monopoly or oligopoly. You can choose journals based on their galley proofs time, if you wish :-) @yo' I find that to be extremely disingenuous. The power disparity between journals and authors is plain as day except, apparently, to the people with a vested interest in keeping it around. I don't say I disagree. But still, it's a marketplace and it works like this. I don't consider my last comment ethical or non-ethical and I don't discuss the power distribution in the whole thing. I just state the facts. And frankly, unless there is a incentive for the journals to change their minds, they won't; so if you want to change things, you have to create the incentive. @yo' You were responding to a comment that was explicitly about, in paul's words, "power-inequity manifest". I don't see how you might manage to not discuss the power distribution in the whole thing ─ I really do know that it wasn't your intent at all, but I'm really struggling to see your initial comment here as anything other than "that's right, we the journals have you by the (expletive), suck it up or don't publish at all". You're right that incentives need to be created and all, but I don't see how snark from people with vested interests helps. (That's probably more bile from my side than intended, btw; let's not escalate this into a pointless argument. But please do reconsider how your comments read from an external perspective.) Ok, I really meant it as saying: Well, unless you do something about it, nobody will, because the publishers certainly won't. (I see now how that this is not how one would read it though. And I'm quite unsure what to do now.) Let us continue this discussion in chat. You talk about only checking the formatting as an author. However, every single time I have received proofs they managed to alter more than just formatting. Newly introduced spelling errors and worse mistakes are frustratingly common. Unless they explicitly mark their changes (some do!), checking can be tedious. As I said in my answer to How much time is usually left for authors to return page proofs? What happens if I am late?, I have never seen a 24 hour turn around time requirement, but 48-72 hours seems quite common. I think there are two reasons for the turn around time to be on the order of days. From my experience, publishers are working on a tight schedule; there might only be a month or two between when the proofs are finished and the issue is delivered to subscribers. If an article needs to be re-typeset or delayed to a later issue, the publisher will need to rework the the entire issue which is going to take some time. It seems that with their time scale the longest they could wait for proofs would be two weeks. This leads to the second issue. Academics do not handle deadlines well and publishers need to handle the articles from the worst procrastinators amongst us. If you give a bunch of academics a deadline in 2 weeks a non-insignificant portion will take over a month. Quick, cheap, paper based publications with flexible deadlines for authors and reviewers just isn't practical. I am not convinced by this argument. Most journals today typeset every article in a new page, so there is basically no need to change anything to shift a paper to a later issue. The only thing that changes is the page number. Moreover, excluding special issues, it seems far more sensible to allocate a paper to an issue after the authors return the corrected proofs. @FedericoPoloni I don't understand the printing process but printed journals are not just a bunch of stapled/glued together pages. Further, if the journal has some color pages, but not all, that can make a big difference to the layout. Many journals also have advertisements which may also need to be repositioned. My guess is that the publishers think the current system is sensible enough. I don't have much faith in publishers, but I would think that the system would change if enough people required extensions. I guess we are simply in different fields then. As far as I can tell, in mathematics a journal is just a bunch of articles stapled togethers, each printed on different pages. Advertising and other editorial content is minimal or non-existent and is never on the same pages as the papers. Again, if the publisher is silent for several months, which is the norm in mathematics, and then sends me an email telling me I need to do something within 24 hours, ... @FedericoPoloni Even in mathematics, most journal issues are more than just a bunch of articles stapled together. Respectable-looking journals are bound, and (if I remember correctly from when I was a managing editor) that requires the number of pages to be divisible by 8. There might be other constraints that I'm not remembering now (or perhaps never knew). @AndreasBlass Interesting to know. I was (probably wrongly) not using "stapled" in its literal sense in my previous comment, but it's interesting to know that there is this constraint, too. What did you people do when the total number of pages of the articles ready for production was not a multiple of 8? @FedericoPoloni I have no idea exactly what the layout team does, but I am pretty sure most print journal, with the possible exception of AMS journals who may use the unaltered LaTeX, spend considerable time laying out each issue. @FedericoPoloni The journal I was editing, the Bulletin of Symbolic Logic, had some leeway in formatting (and sometimes even delaying) things other than regular papers --- things like membership lists, meeting reports, etc. In the worst case, on blank age at the end wouldn't be a disaster. But I know that the people working on layout put in considerable effort to make things fit well. Laying out a publication such as a magazine or journal is very much like solving a crossword puzzle...you have certain constraints put on you by the printing process itself. A press form is typically 16 pages... 8 per side. So a publication is most efficiently printed in multiples of 16 pages. You can also have 1/2 sheets that have 8 pgs., 4 per side, but that means more press runs, more setups, more forms to fold in the bindery. The layout process also takes into account the most efficient use of color...if you can "gang up" all your color plates on the same side of a sheet, it's cheaper. Your paper ought to be in pretty good shape after you get to the point of galley proofs. At that point, you are really just checking to be sure that their typesetters didn't introduce errors. All of your own typos and requests from reviewers should have been fixed by the time you get there. There was one paper that had the typesetting introduced hundreds of errors. It was an equation heavy paper in a biological journal. That took less than a day, but I only worked on that paper that day... If that happens, you can ask for an extension. @Memming Indeed in that situation, when yo say "You made so many errors that I cannot complete correction in one day", they can hardly deny you an extension ... Short galley proof delays are not universal, in particular for journals having no print edition. I am involved in the copyediting phase of the LMCS journal (called "layout editing"), which is an arXiv overlay journal. When we modify articles for style or typographical reasons, we give authors 2 weeks to verify our work (sending them the new PDF plus a LaTeX diff). The 2-week deadline is really to put a deadline, but there really is no urgency. When the authors approve, the paper gets assigned an issue and the final version is published in that issue. My understanding is that the galley proof step with short deadline is because, with print journals, some editing must occur as part of the preparation of a specific print issue, and fit in the production timeline for that issue. But once you get rid of the print version (and who reads academic journals on paper nowadays?), the problem simply goes away. Speaking as a former Design Director, Typographer, and Production Manager of many publications and also of national-market print advertising work: The reason that there's a tight deadline for authors' galley proofs is because of what galley proofs are for: evaluating whether the formatting has introduced any issues with readability or meaning; whether there's any typos or format errors; whether there's any omissions or duplications. The turnaround is tight because it's part of the production phase, not part of the editorial phase. The time to edit and re-write and fuss over the article is done and gone. Galley proofs is a final reality check, not a chance to revisit that awkward sentence in the 4th 'graph. Traditionally in print, editorial and not production is given the luxury of extra time. Usually there is no luxury of time, in spite of what it appears to the author. Most journals have a lot more production steps to go through and are very close to press time when the authors' proofs go out. It may seem like "not a big deal," but a printing operation has scheduled their presstime very closely, and if your book is late, it gets bumped from the schedule in favor of something that is actually ready for press. If your book is bumped from the press schedule, it might be days or weeks before it can slot back in. The cost to "hold" the press is spectacularly prohibitive. Production and pre-press times are shrinking these days, it's easier today and faster to get a book to press than it was in, say, 1985. In many ways that exacerbates the problem with proofs turnaround...there's just no "fiddle" time anymore. But nowadays many major publishing companies release journal articles online several months before they appear in the journal issue. Why does it matter if an article appears online three months and three weeks before the absolutely identical version gets published or three months and two weeks before the absolutely identical version gets published? In the non-academic press, a publication (i.e. magazine) with a cover date of January 2016 would be delivered to subscribers and newsstands/bookstores no later than mid-December 2015; To do this the skids of finished magazines have to be at the post office in the first week of December. If your publication has, say, a 100k print run (a bit bigger than your typical academic journal) a large bindery operation needs three or four days...five days if it's a smaller bindery. That means it has to be off the press before the last day of November. Let's say your publication is five forms (5 x 16 pgs.) two of which are color. Modern presses run at about 10k impressions for sheet, 30k impressions for web. You've got five set-ups and five runs...a couple days if your press only runs one shift. Prepress for that is a day or so, and so the latest you can be at the printer is the beginning of the fourth week of November. But when you send your materials to the printer, they have to make proofs (blue-lines or some other proofs that show full sheet impositions). Those proofs need about 4 days to turn around, so we're back to mid-november. It takes a week or so to do the composition and layout and final fussing-around with a five-form publication (80 pgs or so). That means that we need the authors' proofs back by the first week in November, for a commercial publication. An academic journal needs a longer lead time, because the people who have to read and approve things are, well, academics and not full-time publication people. So the proof cycles are that much longer. This should help you understand why a publication with a January cover date needs to be wrapped up by the beginning of November! also...forgot to mention that Christmas, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, all fall within that timeframe...so add ANOTHER week. We're back to October. I am talking about academic presses, and in particular mathematics, where color is very rare. Here is an example: this article was published online on March 27, 2014. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11083-014-9323-y#/page-1. It appeared in the July 2015 issue. If you check out the journal's website, you'll see that articles typically wait for a year or more before being placed in an issue. Clearly this is not proceeding on anything like the timeline you suggest. Are you suggesting that your single specific example means that I'm "wrong?" Academic presses have extended timelines, because the reviewers, editors, people-who-must-sign-off, are often not terribly available. They hew not to the paper-author's beck and call. It's not a single example but an entire journal published by one of the two largest academic publishing companies. And it's not a matter of "wrong" but describing different things: articles in popular magazines are rarely written a year before they are published. I'm giving explicit examples to show that academic articles often sit -- publicly available, in a finished form -- online for more than a year before they find their way into an issue. I have over two dozen publications. When, recently, one of them appeared in the same year it was submitted, I was completely shocked. @Pete L. Clark: I would imagine that your very prestigious and wonderful mathematical journal is given an outright insulting budget for print publication, and so have to keep the size of each issue within budget-driven constraints. That means the book can't just grow because your amazing and deserving paper walked in the door. They've already got enough fascinating papers to carry them through next year, so yours just goes into the queue. I don't understand what you're getting at (and I really don't understand why you've chosen such a sarcastic tone). Publication queues are understandable and necessary in the current system: no one was complaining about them. What is more recent is the phenomenon of journals releasing the papers online more than a year before they are formally published in the sense of appearing in an issue. This also a very positive practice. It's just that if a paper stays "on deck" for more than a year, then it's clear that waiting a few more days on the proofs would not cause publication delays. You're right, Pete...that was altogether too sarcastic. The problem is, people with ONE point of reference deem their experience to be the "standard" against which others are evaluated, when in reality, they have absolutely no idea what is going on. It's part of the "me, mine" mentality that is infecting the entire world these days...people think it's "all about them," and then discount as irrelevant information that most decidedly speaks to their issue. this is the case here, where a decades-veteran of publications is discounted because "that's not how math journals I know about" do it. None of the things that you put in quotation marks were said by me or anyone here. When two people with substantial expertise give differing advice, it is likely that they are both correctly describing two different things, and we should try to find out what those are. Most of the users on this site are in STEM academia, for which a very small number of very large publishers dominate the market, especially Elsevier and Springer. Have you worked for these academic publishing companies? If not, which ones? In addition to the fact that in most cases you can easily check the proofs within a day, I would assume that it’s also more efficient for the typesetters and in particular the copy editors in the case that you actually want to correct something as they are still familiar with your paper and are thus faster at applying your corrections. For example, after one day a copy editor usually remembers the reason and context of a particular change and can thus faster work your corrections. (I'm a journal typesetter.) No, it's not really easy to proofread a paper. We sometimes make lots of changes and lots of things can go bad, even if we try that not to happen. @tohecz: Did I ever claim something different? (I only claimed that it’s usually easily possible for the authors to check the proofs within a day.) Also, if you are involved in typesetting: Can you confirm my assumption? Now I feel that I wanted to comment another answer, sorry for that. Anyways for your question: I think it depends. It's certainly more comfortable to keep the article with me for as short time as possible, but I don't consider having to return to it a problem. It's more the overall complexity of the process that makes us impose short deadlines on proofs. And yes, you can check the proofs within a "normal day", however, people seem not to have many "normal days" -- all the time you have seminars, teaching activities, board meetings, scheduled discussions with students, travelling, etc. It's sometimes hard to find spare 3 hours within consecutive 3 days, not to speak within 1 day. The reason is simply that nobody is expected to make any changes to the galley proofs. The content and the basic wording of the paper is fixed after acceptance. No rewriting or reformulating is allowed at this stage. The authors should only check if the typesetting and copy editing did not introduce any errors. Often you are also given a list of changes that the copy editor made and you can also work through this list. In other words, the author is only expected to read the galley proofs once and only with the "correctness lens". This could be done in less then 24 hours in almost all circumstances. In exceptional cases you may well ask for deadline extension. I don't find this a compelling reason. I agree that normally it takes less than 24 hours to check the proofs; let's say reasonably one hour or two. But they could be sending them in what is a busy day for me. For what they know, I could be on holiday, or it could be the day of my PhD defence, or my wedding day. @FedericoPoloni, of course. And, as I have ranted above, how could there be a 24-hour quasi-emergency after months of silence from them, etc. For-profit publishers are, if only by accident or economic necessity, bullies. @paulgarrett In my field non-profit publishers are following exactly the same practices. Physical publishing of journals (which in my opinion is totally useless) automatically requires good publishing practices. If academicians do not insist physical publishing, and could manage online journals, problem would have been automatically solved and many cost saved. @FedericoPoloni, normally, the typesetter would contact you in advance, saying on WHICH day the proofs will reach you. Then it is up to you to accommodate sufficient time for the proofreading on that or the following day... @al_b, I have never had any accurate advance warning of when the proofs are coming - the acceptance email says wait for proofs, after that you're at the mercy of the publication workflow. The only errors that have been introduced in my papers have been easy-to-find/fix breaking of formulae, but there's no guarantee that an author will even see the email within 24 hours (and therefore no opportunity to ask for an extension). That said I don't think they really expect every proof to be returned in that timescale. The proof is an actually typesetted version of your paper, ready to production. In other words, everything is ready that someone pushes a button and the press can print the issue. This is the very last "lets check it one more time" thing. For this reason: If you have a correction, it is actually cost money to them. If there is 50 paper in the journal, and 10 out of the 50 start rewriting the paper in the last minute, then the production line waits till everything is fixed, reformatted, again cost money. A lot. Before anyone starts to complain about the 24 hr (which is common in my field, too), let us be a little professional. Your paper should anyway be free of errors and well written at the point of submission. Then several referees check it back and force, as well as you are free to check your manuscript if you are not sure. When you are at the proof stage, your paper has already read and checked by several people, several times for months. You don't have a good reason to re-write anything, except if there is an error due to typesetting. In other worlds, if you done your job decently, you don't have more than 5 min job with that proof in 99% of the time. Actually, the typesetting process often introduces many errors for some reason. I think the publisher somehow 'retypes' all the text which seems bizarre in this digital age (but then again, this publisher didn't like LaTeX and insisted on converting everything to MS Word). Though you are right that it costs the publisher a lot of effort (and some money) to change things at this stage. @Memming It may vary publisher by publisher. I have seen less than 5 genuine typos/mistakes in proofs so far, but I met dozens of professors who wanted to change the title or conclusion in the proof (directly editing the PDF), which makes me sympathetic toward publishers in this question. @Memming It depends. Sometimes it happens I introduce rather stupid mistakes even if I pay a lot of attention. One example for all: A figure with two graphs got change from top-bottom to left-right layout, but I forgot to change one in-text reference from "top" to "left". Certainly: The idea that you can proofread an article in 5 minutes is a bad idea. I, the typesetter, am not responsible for mistakes I introduce, in the sense that you cannot be angry at me that I made a mistake and you missed it during proofs. @Greg I think there's a misunderstanding. I wrote that comment with my LaTeX typesetter hat on, I made a mistake during the processing of an article of someone else, when I needed to re-arrange the figures to better fit them. @tohecz (sorry, I am missed you are a typesetter) By the time I publish a paper I really know all the key point by heart. 5 minutes is maybe an exaggeration, but someone who is familiar with the text should able to check if all the equations, figures are correct or not in very short time. If someone messes up a figure that I worked for hours and redone 5 times, I don't need an hour to catch it. If the typesetter misspell an adjective that no way influence the readability my results and conclusions and I cannot catch it with one read - I live with it, and sleep well. @yo' How on Earth does the proposition that you are not responsible for the errors you introduce makes sense to you?	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.398017	2014-08-11T14:11:59	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27076", "authors": [ "Adolf Krige", "Andreas Blass", "Bill Barth", "Chris H", "Dr. Joe Kenan", "Dr.Farah Bano", "E.P.", "Federico Poloni", "Greg", "H. Charharbashloo", "HEX", "Hagen von Eitzen", "Jessica B", "Kris Hardy", "Memming", "Miles B Huff", "Pete L. 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16866	Affiliation on a paper written mostly in previous position If research was done and paper was mostly written at institute A, but then it finally got accepted while the author moved to institute B, say, 3 years later. Should the affiliation of the author be Only Institute A: because 95% of the support was from here, and work was done here Both Institute A and B: in some sense, both institutes supported the work Only Institute B: this is where the author is affiliated at the moment related: Changing affiliation on publication There are no fixed rules but I would opt for your option (2). The affiliation is intended to aid in facilitating contact with the author but is of course useful to a department to show count the paper as a product from that institute. By listing your former address first indicating that that is where you did most of the work and then adding the second as present address provides the best and useful information for all parts. Option (1) means your present location is not disclosed which is a missed opportunity to locate you. Option (3) has the disadvantage that your former department are not associated with the work you performed there. So although all are acceptable, (2) would be the best (most polite and useful) way in your situation. Is there any actual examples of using option (2)? Firstly, some journals have specific rules about what counts as an affiliation. So if the journal has such rules you should follow them. These rules are variable, and I have seen all three of the options included. In my opinion, affiliation should match your current contact information and, on top of that, match any affiliation where you conducted the research, if possible. Note this means options (2) is best. If the journal has a rule precluding option (2), be sure to thank any institution you don't put as an affiliation in the acknowledgment section. All universities deserve credit for what they contributed. That said, in my experience the majority of people in this situation (not a huge sample size), use the affiliation that either matches their current contact information or their contact information from when they submitted the paper. However, this doesn't mean it is what they should do. I fully disagree! This might result in a major uproar since the funding and research opportunities were given by A. It's one thing to down vote; it's another thing to vote to delete. Strongly disagreeing with an answer is not grounds for deleting it. This is a good answer. Your current institution is the one you should have most allegiance to. Just let me clarify I did not vote to delete the answer, it is valid, but I disagree ;). I think my previous version of this answer was being misinterpreted [mostly my fault]. I was recommending option 2, but was noting that option 3 is very common and that if you do go that route you should, at least, thank the old institution in the acknowledgements. @OBu I don't think we disagree, please see the edited answer that more accurately reflects my views. the current version is much clearer now and I changed my vote.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.400556	2014-02-12T19:40:50	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16866", "authors": [ "500 - Internal Server Error", "Ahmed So", "Bjørn Kjos-Hanssen", "DeanLa", "Diafotismos", "Drew Steen", "Fawaz", "M. Ali", "Matthias Fleckenstein", "OBu", "Raju", "Thomas Lee", "WetlabStudent", "apap", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10941", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11257", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/187302", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/24823", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45477", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45478", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45480", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45481", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45482", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45485", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45486", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45525", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45526", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45579", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8101", "riashatrafat" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
2457	What makes securing faculty positions difficult? This question is an off-shoot from this one, where it has been agreed by most that securing faculty positions is difficult in general. I would like to know what exactly makes this so. Though in theory university rankings may be pointless, there is a broad quality-based classification of institutions in any country which many will agree on - for example, the crème de la crème, top tier, middle tier and decent universities, of which there could be a few hundreds. We shall assume the student has passed out with a good thesis and impactful publications. Is it tough for a student graduating from a higher rung to gain a position in the lower rungs? What factors dictate the difficulty in securing a position in a university in the same league? PS: In India, the answer to Q 1 is "not at all", as there is a heavy crunch for faculty positions even in top institutes. Instead the difficulty arises only when students from low rung colleges seek top positions: in most cases, such students are found wanting in skills. Physics World, May 2015: only 1.7% of the current post-docs in physics in the UK will get permanent jobs (lectureship in the UK, a rough equivalent of assistant professor in the US). One of the strange effects of faculty hiring (and graduate admissions) is that offers do not necessarily go to the strongest candidates. Departments have limited resources to interview, recruit, and hire faculty. Interviews are expensive; startup packages are really expensive; faculty job offers burn political capital even when they aren't accepted. So hiring committees make strategic decisions based on the perceived probability that candidates will accept the position. The University of Southeast North Dakota at Hoople would most likely not interview superstar applicants, because they don't want to waste their time interviewing someone who's "obviously" going to get offers from stronger schools. As with any self-selection process, this assumption is partly justified and partly Institutional Impostor Syndrome. So no, selecting an MIT grad is absolutely not a no-brainer for U-Cal-XYZ. And yes, sometimes reasonable PhD students from very strong schools fail to get faculty jobs, or even interviews, because they don't quite have the research record to get an interview at the best departments, but their pedigree scares off weaker departments. @Inquest One option is to specify in his cover letter exactly why he wants to go there. To a small extent, this happened to me. I wanted to go to a research school, but if I didn't get such a job, I would have preferred to go to a school near my family and where I went to school. I said this to one less research oriented school, and was progressing through their application process until I got a few offers that I clearly preferred over them. At that point I withdrew my application. The short answer is that there are many more people that want faculty positions than there are positions. Any time demand is higher than supply, cost tends to go up. So why is demand so high? Partly it's because being a professor has lots of attractive qualities. However, partly it's because that's what our professors tell us we should be (some do this very explicitly, and some more implicitly). As a result, many students (especially stronger students) decide that the only way to succeed is to become a professor. Another aspect that makes becoming a professor hard is that most professor jobs require a combination of skills: teaching, research, article writing, grant writing, advising and mentoring, networking, etc. However, grad school generally fails to teach us many of these skills. Most grad schools focus almost exclusively on research, and possibly teaching. The demand-supply part is one can understand, but how do rankings and no. of univs enter this model? A top-univ graduate may easily get into any middle-tier univ, right? To clarify: There are many more highly qualified people who want faculty positions than there are positions. It is difficult because there are more graduating PhDs than there are faculty positions. This is because by and large, academic departments are not growing very fast. Consider a department that has 40 faculty positions, and is not growing. Suppose each faculty member has a career that spans 40 years (Say, ages 28-68). Then in a steady state, this department will hire 1 new faculty member every year. On the other hand, say each faculty member graduates 1 student on average every three years. (This is conservative: say each professor has only 2 students at a time, and each one takes 6 years). So this department graduates 13-14 students every year. This is what happens in general: each department produces many more PhDs than it consumes, so there must be many who leave the system. I understand that, but can't people move down the univ. ladder? Isn't selecting an MIT grad. a no-brainer for a U-Cal-XYZ? This happens at every level, not just at MIT. People do indeed move down, but there aren't many positions there either. Graduating from a good school of course helps your employment chances. (This should go without saying, but the reason that graduating from MIT does not guarantee you a job at say a top 25 school is because where you graduated from is actually only a tiny part of how you are evaluated: you are primarily judged on your record of research in graduate school. Having attended a top school is correlated to having a strong research record, but not as strongly as you might think) @^: Yes, agree with that. I have made that assumption in the question too. One way to think about this: pedigree opens doors for you but it won't necessarily close the deal. A degree from MIT might get you more interviews - but the final decision, as JeffE indicates, is more complex.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.400894	2012-07-15T13:37:12	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2457", "authors": [ "Aaron", "AncientSwordRage", "Bobson", "Bravo", "Dan C", "JeffE", "Observe", "StasK", "Suresh", "agatha", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1069", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1228", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/411", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6123", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6124", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6129", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/6130", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/739" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
78430	Applying for phd with flunked course in master Well, here's the thing. I'm a 2nd year ME master but enrolled in a CSE course and got flunked. So up to now, I enrolled 8 course in my first year (4+4). Without the failed course, I get GPA 3.52 for the rest seven courses. My GPA drops to 3.0, if that course is included. So I plan to take one more course to balance my GPA in this semester. Actually, I feel confident about the courses in this semester. Meanwhile, I'm gonna apply for phd in this semester. So how will the failed course affect on my application for phd? Am I supposed to submit transcript with 7 or 8 courses? Is it even possible to get a course removed from your transcript (after you've received a grade)? I don't think my university allows such a thing, but I guess that may not be a universal quality.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.401355	2016-10-18T03:22:07	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/78430", "authors": [ "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36315", "tonysdg" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
121578	How much emphasis should be put on GitHub reputation in a computer science MSc application? My undergraduate major was not computer science, but civil engineering, and I took five computer science courses in college. I worked as a software engineer for five years after I graduated, but not for famous companies. I love open source and I spend much time on it. Now I have a 2000+ stars GitHub open source repository and several 50-100 stars repositories. My target is a top 30 computer science MSc program in the US. How helpful are popular GitHub repositories like mine for applications, in particular when changing fields? An admission committee can give you insights, but we aren't that committee, so we can't. Perhaps you can rephrase your question in terms that we can answer? (Please avoid shopping questions in any rephrasing.) One answerable question might be how much emphasis to put on the GitHub reputation in the application. If you don't have a top B.Sc in CS you may find this a much more significant obstacle, as you'll be competing with mainly CS B.Sc. grads with top grades. You need to demonstrate a consistent interest in CS, not just programming. Be prepared for extra course requirements (to ensure you are at B.Sc. CS levels) and hence extra time and extra expense. If you don't have a top B.Sc in CS you may find this a much more significant obstacle — I doubt it, actually. Lots of people change fields between undergrad and grad school, and five years of experience and a popular github repo go a long way toward balancing out a lack of formal academic training. 2000+ stars for a GitHub repository is an amazing achievement. This will definitely make you stand out if you know how to use it right. You should tell a story in the cover letter/statement of purpose/or whatever it is called: what is your passion with coding and open source, how did you come up with the idea for that project, how well it was received by the community (explain a bit as people may not know GitHub), and how it helped other projects (search if any other repositories that use your tool). This part is not an answer: ask yourself why do you want a Master? This is impressive for a PhD program too. If you just want a Master, then it's better to find a job with a top tech company instead of wasting two years, and a lot of money. Stack Overflow has a function that if you give them your GitHub account URL, it can refer you to employers. What is the function where if you give them your github, they refer you? I took a small glance and couldn't find anything like that. @Seiyria Try the jobs board and the developer story. @TRiG I see that and have it set up, but what I'm trying to figure out is where the "github employer match" feature is. I don't recall this existing in that capacity - just that you can put your github stuff on your profile. If there exists some documentation that SO uses it to match, that would help. Otherwise, it's just a result of having github related stuff on your profile and it being more appealing to employers (not specifically seeking to match with them). Some countries require a master's before a PhD. 5000 stars, 20+ repos, spending years of my life in unpaid open-source work. I'm unemployed :) It will definitely need some explanation. Many CS academics don't participate in open-source development (raises hand) and will have no idea what "2000 stars on github" means. @PascLeRasc No, it's a terrible filter. The asker can continue to do open-source development in grad school regardless of what his professors do, and it's perfectly possible to have enthusiastic open-source developers on the faculty but not on the admissions committee.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.401461	2018-12-13T07:33:37	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/121578", "authors": [ "David Richerby", "JeffE", "Patricia Shanahan", "Seiyria", "Sliq", "StephenG - Help Ukraine", "TRiG", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/101903", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10220", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10685", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22768", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27141", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/30886", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/74137", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/898", "murray", "user2768" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
7875	Whom to discuss research papers with? When I read research papers I often come across many things that I'm unclear about and would like to talk over with someone. My advisor is not available to do this with me as she does not have time. I'm not sure with whom should I discuss these research papers with, in order to help me understand the papers better. I am the only student who is currently being advised by my advisor. How should I go about finding people to talk through these things with, so I can better understand the research papers I'm reading? What do you mean by doubts? Do you mean that suspect that there are problems with the papers or do you just mean that there are things that you are unclear about and want to talk over? I suspect it's the latter, but it's worth being clear because the answers may be different. @BenjaminMakoHill Yes its the latter. "Doubt" used this way is standard in Indian English, but not ordinarily used by English speakers outside India. It's good for non-Indians to learn to understand this usage, but also for Indians to learn that it's likely to be misunderstood by non-Indians. See http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/2429/ for more. This distinction has caused many problems for my colleagues :) Your advisor is not the only person to go to, to get answers to the questions that research papers are raising for you. Talk to other researchers, in your department, or online with peers at other universities. But it does sound like you are getting insufficient advisory support. Do you really just have the one advisor? Time to build up your supervisory team. Talk to your advisor about what's expected of you, and what's expected of them. It sounds like you've got a mismatch between your need and their resource, and it's important to get that fixed as soon as possible. You'll also find a lot of good, relevant advice on these questions: skimming a paper and running a reading group. How do I talk to peers at other universities. I dont know them personally. Also I dont know whether they have read that paper or not. I'd suggest that you form a reading group! (As also suggested in passing by EnergyNumbers.) What helped me out early during my PhD was to create a series of reading groups around literatures I wanted to learn. A model I often followed was to organize a weekly meeting to read 1 book or 3-5 papers with 2-5 other students. We'd usually meet for 2 hours or so. I found other students in my cohort/program and others in the university who had similar interests. Ask around! If the papers you are reading are the kinds of things that are likely to be on your general or qualifying exams, chances are pretty good that others around you will have to be reading them as well! Does the person who downvoted this want to explain? There are many things not clear in your question. For example, is the paper something that your advisor has asked you to read ? Or is it just something that you're browsing for your own edification ? Did the advisor say that she cannot or will not help, or that she's busy ? I can understand an advisor finding it difficult to spare the time to explain papers that maybe even she hasn't read. But if it's something related to your work with her, then I'd expect her to help a little more. You have to realize though that just because someone is your advisor, it doesn't mean that they know more than you about every single topic :) - in fact, part of your evolution as a student will be to get to the point where your advisor asks you for help ! But I think the general answer is as EnergyNumbers indicates: find other students in your department to discuss these papers with. That's really the best way. Also, realize that working through a difficult paper, on your own or with others, is the best way to learn new material. It's a normal part of the training process.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.402033	2013-02-09T09:27:55	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/7875", "authors": [ "Jannat Arora", "Noah Snyder", "Suresh", "highsky", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/25", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4457", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5962", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/69577", "mako" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
103996	How to resolve grading dispute between TA and Lecturer? On a math exam recently, the students were asked to use the definition of a limit of a sequence to prove that the sequence given by 3n/(3n+5) converges to 1. Given a positive number Ɛ, the definition requires proving the existence of some number N such that if n>N then \|3n/(3n+5) - 1\|<Ɛ. As a consequence of the definition, once a sufficiently large N is found, any larger value of N will also suffice. Many students set \|3n/(3n+5) - 1\|=5/(3n+5)<Ɛ and solved for n to find N = (5-5Ɛ)/(3Ɛ). However, the professor decided to include an extra step: 5/(3n+5) < 5/n <Ɛ, which leads to another sufficient value N = 5/Ɛ. Although most students gave a correct proof (consistent with the definition in their book), the lecturer took off points because they didn't find the "best" value of N. The lecturer claims that the author would have used some (unnecessary) inequalities to find the "better" N, which is probably true. When students complain about losing points, I tell them that their answer is correct and that they should seek full credit for their work. The lecturer suggests that I am putting the students in a position in which they may "pick a side" and that ultimately the lecturer is in charge. Who's wrong here? Update: I was not notified about the lecturer's decision to remove points until after I gave the midterms back to the class. Once students started asking me about the missing points, the only written justification left by the lecturer was "not best N." By "best N," the lecturer was referring to the N value found by using the additional inequality 5/(3n+5) < 5/n <Ɛ. By "best," he does not mean "smallest" (and by definition, there is no largest N). Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. There's a lot of confusion in the answers below: Please note that the lecturer's answer generates the larger N, as compared to the students. E.g.: for ε = 0.1, student N = 15, but lecturer N' = 50. Is it possible that the lecturer didn't realize that his answer is not "best"? It gives a worse N than the students' N, and the proof is no more trivial than the students' proof. So what does he mean by "best"? Is there some criterion that I'm not understanding (perhaps not even imagining)? 123 says in his/her answer, "If students answer a question correctly [in mathematics] then they deserve full credit". I'm commenting here because this attitude seems to be implicit in other answers, and perhaps in the OP too. I strongly disagree with this opinion. If a correct but poorly written answer, excessively complicated, hard to read and full of irrelevancies, is given full marks purely because it is "correct", this is severely unfair to a student who has taken the trouble to find a simple argument and explain it clearly. Let's see if I got this right. The professor graded the exams on his own? And you weren't involved in grading them? The two of you didn't meet to go over the official solution he was going to post? Are you absolutely sure that the lecturer wasn't trying to claim that 5/(3Ɛ) was a slightly more elegant solution. I just cannot conceive of any mathematician claiming 5/Ɛ was best. I believe the issue may actually be mathematical after all, even if the lecturer did a poor job at conveying this (but who knows, maybe this detail was explained carefully in lecture). As you indicate, to show that the limit of 3n/(3n+5) is 1, you argue that for any ε>0 there is an N such that if n>N then \|(3n/(3n+5)) - 1\|<ε. The variable ε ranges over the positive reals (and perhaps, so does N), while n should be a natural number. Now, \|(3n/(3n+5)) - 1\|<ε is equivalent to (5-5ε)/(3ε)<n, so you can take N=(5-5ε)/(3ε). The issue is that this quantity may be negative for large ε. (Cont.) For small ε, this N is perfectly fine. Now, one can argue that it suffices to consider only small values of ε, but this needs to be at least mentioned. Lacking that, taking N=(5-5ε)/(3ε) has the issue that n>N does not ensure that n is positive (if ε is, for example, 23). One could then argue that this is implicit in the notation, but in truth I would expect that unless this is made explicit, at least some students would be perfectly happy with taking any n, positive or negative, such that (5-5ε)/(3ε)<n, regardless of the fact that the sequence 3n/(3n+5) is only defined for n natural. (Cont.) So, unless some such clarification is added to the answer, there is indeed something lacking (or even incorrect) if one simply says that N=(5-5ε)/(3ε) (or, perhaps, its ceiling, if N should also be a natural) works. Mathematics allows for objective truth. If students answer a question correctly then they deserve full credit. I do not think it is wrong for you to advocate for your students or for you to encourage them to advocate for themselves. The whole point here is that there are multiple correct answers and the lecturer is insisting that students must give the "best" answer, without saying so in the question. An analogy would bethe question "Fire regulations require that there be at most 100 people in this room. Are the regulations satisfied?" The students have answered, "They're satisfied because there are fewer than 100 people in the room" and the lecturer is insisting that they say "They're satisfied because there are only 67 people in the room" for full credit. "without saying so in the question." undergraduate students should know the purpose of assessment is usually a test of their understanding of the subject and shouldn't need everything spelled out to them. Do we really need to say "show all working" for all questions we ask? BTW I don't think the analogy works because (presumably) stating the threshold shows more understanding of the situation, rather than slightly less (as in the case in the original question). realized latex does not work here* ... So, I will just say this: The question is about proving that a given sequence converges. Clearly, the students have done this by solving the first inequality. This answer merely asserts an opinion. It offers no useful advice for what the OP can do in this situation. It offers no answer to the title question. @DikranMarsupial If the students really understand the topic, they know that if you need to prove that something holds "for all large enough n" it is almost never necessary to identify the exact meaning of "large enough". So this is not testing understanding. @DikranMarsupial : "Do we really need to say 'show all working' for all questions we ask?" Yes! Until you teach them otherwise. I struggled hard for a week before mental anguish relented that "5 or -5" was a valid answer... that a math problem could have multiple answers. Maybe that is a valid assumption among higher math tiers, but college is a learning environment. Some students may not have gotten used to this yet. Furthermore, lots of students highly value grades (sometimes overly so, perhaps due to older baggage) so points off can be a very (overly?) harsh way to teach this lesson @DavidRicherby as I said, we don't know what the lecturer has told the students in class, so perhaps the lecturer has a good reason. You may not agree that it is a good reason, but it is generally a good idea to have some self-skepticism in this thing rather than jump to conclusions. @DikranMarsupial It’s a fair point that the lecturer may have stated this bad requirement in the classes. The nature of the dispute makes this problem difficult. As a mathematics (BS) and computer science (MS, PhD) student I have done numerous exercises that required proof of the existence of a natural number N such that for all n>N some inequality is true. In addition to limits in mathematics, they show up in computational complexity analysis of algorithms. Every time I have done one of those exercises I have picked a value of N that made the proof as simple and clear as I could. Often, I was aware of a smaller value of N that would have required a longer proof. I have never been marked down for picking an unnecessarily large value of N. Any finite value N, no matter how large, such that the inequality is provably true for all n>N is equally good. That is an important aspect of these definitions, something the students should understand and apply. If smallness of N were going to be a grading factor, despite its irrelevance, it should have been announced in advance. That said, it would have been better for the OP to discuss the matter privately with the professor, and perhaps with more senior professors. The OP should not encourage protests directly, but should state the professor's decision and recommend that follow-ups be forwarded directly to the professor or offer to forward them on the students' behalf. Of course. The smallness of the constant can't matter if you care about what's going on in the infinity. In this case the professor on the next course will now wonder why are these students doing all the unnecessary steps to find smaller constant :D I fully agree with this. As somebody who works in this area, I've never come across a situation where it's important to find the exact cut-off for a "For all sufficiently large n"-type statement. And, even more generally, I've often been in a situation where I've just proven something strong enough for what I need, even though I know that something stronger is true. This lecturer seems to be teaching students to waste time coming up with unnecessarily precise results. My understanding of the question is that the students picked a smaller value than the professor which works, but the justification requires extra inequalities (which maybe the students didn't explain?). @Kimball: That's what I understood as well. Although, honestly, determining that 5/(3n+5)<Ɛ is equivalent to n>5/(3Ɛ)-5/3 is not something that should IMO require justification in a calculus course. I've +1ed you answer, but I think it would be better to not outsource the communication aspect to another answer that disagrees with yours. Even if much of the information is the same, the fact you disagree may mean some details will differ and will probably result in a somewhat different presentation of the available options. @Patricia: The professor didn't actually find a smaller N, but a larger one. There is a slightly larger one which simplifies the proof and only increases N a tiny bit, and the professor's change which makes N three times larger without any need. Another way of looking at the lecturer's larger N is that it more immediately generates sequence elements that are closer to the limit of 1. (Not that it defends the terrible marking, but just an attempt at understanding the perspective.) I do recommend that Patricia edit the answer to observe that the lecturer's answer had the larger N, not vice-versa. As a former Math / Computer Science student myself, I would like to add that some teachers use a "find the smaller possible N" clause to add artificial difficulty to their tests and to somewhat padronize the answers. I was really not satisfied with this when I was in college. Mathematically, you are clearly right. Any reasonable person should agree with you. The problem asked to prove that a limit holds, they proved it, period. "Find the optimal N for a given epsilon" has nothing to do with the question asked[0]. Since your professor doesn't agree with you, it makes me suspect he's not a reasonable person. Having said that, it is still annoying for him if you "go against him" by telling the students to appeal the grade (appeal which they would win, if it is done honestly). Have you ever discussed this with him prior to you discussing it with the students? What did he say? So why don't you propose to your professor a compromise? Ask him to change the question from "prove the limit" to "find the optimal N such that this inequality holds". Or "Once you prove the limit, give an estimate of smallest N such that the error is lower than epsilon. " You can sort of add some context to the question to make it more sensible, for example by saying that f(n) is the percentage of criminals arrested as a function of the amount of money spent, and you want to get to a certain percentage. In short, if he wants to ask a question about the optimality of N, make him ask that question, not an unrelated one. [0] Personally, I would argue that it is actually harmful. Understanding that any finite intervals can be ignored and that we should focus on what happens for N arbitrarily large is a crucial point to understand convergence and limit at infinity. This obsession on the exact optimal N is harmful, because it gives the impression that it matters; it would be more beneficial to instead show how a complicated inequality, for example, can be simplified by simply considering N incredibly and unreasonably big. It doesn't matter, because we are only concerned about what happens at infinity. "Not a reasonable person..." I agree with this. While I agree with the beginning of your answer, I think you've misread the OP's description of the situation. As I understand it, what happened is actually the opposite of the scenario your suggestions address: the students calculated the optimal N, while the professor used a (somewhat arbitrary) simplification that yields a valid but non-optimal N, and then took points off the students for not using the same simplification. @Ant, I wasn't notified of the scoring until students started asking me why they lost points. Since the only justification left by the grader was "find best N," I gave my honest opinion. @TheSubstitute: With the information you gave, the professor's solution is actually not the smallest N by a long shot. @gnasher, I never said "best" implied smallest. @TheSubstitute Since you never said it, I'll say it now. In a problem of this sort, the smaller N is better than the larger one. The best proof might produce an unnecessarily large N, to keep the argument or the calculation simple, but that's not the best N. @IlmariKaronen Indeed, I had misread. Thanks! :) I think the only thing you may have done wrong is to send the students to the lecturer. That could be (but not necessarily) construed as undermining his authority, and TA's have to watch that carefully. But I have always instructed my TA's to advocate for the students. I want the TA to come to me with my errors or any other problem they find. At least once per semester I begin a lecture with, "Mr. Johnson has informed me that....and so here is what we'll do... And I want you all to remember, when student evaluation time comes around, that Mr. Johnson advocated for you, at great personal risk to himself." Warm fuzzies all 'round. Anyway, I think the way to handle such things is for you yourself to debate with the lecturer. If you lose the debate, you can tell the students that you agree with their complaint, but that you've talked to the lecturer about it and he's not changing his mind. You might inform them of the departmental avenues for grade appeal, but advise them that such a minor issue is probably not worth it. I'd leave out the "at great personal risk" part. As a student, I'd feel nervous about asking a TA to advocate for me if I thought the might harm their prospects. @DavidRicherby No. My students have a decent sense of humor (which seems to be missing from large swaths of academics. It's sad, really, that we've gotten to this point where we over-analyze every word in Cheka fashion.) Tone doesn't come across well in written text. If you'd mentioned that it was in a humorous tone, I wouldn't have said anything. +1 as this answer focuses suggesting the TA and instructor discuss the issue since the grading of a particular problem seems to be causing confusion for several students. Perhaps the answer could be improved with adding some material @DikranMarsupial comment at top of page - (that is, there may be several things the professor is trying to accomplish at once with the grading rationale. Could be she is trying to encourage good students to go deeper and farther next time). Sure, the professor could be just being obnoxious. Personally, I think you are right; other people who have answered think you are in the wrong. Allow me to offer some additional advice about what to do now: It's probably not worthwhile to escalate the situation further. Probably neither of you will change the other's mind. You might meet with your graduate director, department chair, or other person with responsibility for supervising graduate teaching in your department. Ask them what you should do in the future, when the instructor makes a decision you feel is wrong and students complain to you about it. One possible consequence is that, in the future, you would be asked to TA under a different professor. Presumably this is a consequence which you would welcome. And what can the students do about it? @ClassicEndingMusic Take the class with a different teacher if they're so inclined and the school provides that option. I had that happen to me as a TA, I worked with one professor who graded his students harder/assigned harder assignments than others and a lot of them dropped the class and took it again later with an easier teacher. @JAB But the issue here is not about the class being harder, but the grading being unfair and arbitrary, and the instructor hiding behind their nominal authority rather than acting responsibly. It is really not a comparable situation to the one you describe. tl;dr- You're mostly right, but it'd probably be best to approach this diplomatically. The basic question is whether it's appropriate for you to voice your disagreement with the instructor given your role as a TA. I'd argue that, in academia, it's entirely reasonable for you to express your disagreement; that academia isn't the place for subservient silence. You're mostly right It seems like we can fairly uncontroversially establish a bunch of stuff: Mathematically, you're right. This is mostly the course instructor's call to make. Students who disagree with the grading policy need to speak to the course instructor. The controversial point would seem to be whether or not you're permitted to voice disagreement with the instructor's decision. Reasonable people may go either way on this issue. In typical business contexts, employees are generally expected to avoid expressing disagreement with their higher-ups. In yet more authoritarian environments, e.g. in a military chain of command, such disagreement is actively punished. However, one of academia's core tenants is academic freedom. It'd seem inappropriate to require an academic (like you) to not share their opinion on an academic matter (like an exam question) to students. This can be approached diplomatically When you share your personal opinion, you might express it as a personal perspective as an academic in the field. This would seem well within your rights. Then, students might ask why, if you agree with them, you don't fix it. The simple answer is that you can't; that it's the instructor's decision, not yours. Reasonably intelligent students will tend to understand that that means that they need to talk to the instructor without you explicitly directing them to do so. Professional consequences Be warned that your instructor or other job-selector may prefer to have unquestioning loyalty and may opt against giving you a position in the future, or write a weaker recommendation letter (if at all) if they're upset enough. Standing your ground on issues like this have inherent risks. That said, personally, I've opted to do this in the past. When students have complained about a decision that I've disagreed with, I've bluntly told them that, yeah, the instructor's wrong, and that they'd need to take it up with the instructor since it's still their call to make. How you frame the dispute will make all the difference: "You're wrong because xyz" is unlikely to succeed. "I'm having trouble explaining this to our students because I don't understand in the context of xyz (reasons why I think they should get credit)" is much more likely to succeed. From my experience in the military, I was never punished for a tactful question/suggestion, although my warnings were not always heeded and ultimately, as you say, the decision rests on someone else's shoulders. Dissent should be made to superiors in private; doing so in public is what gets you punished. When I first read this question, I was astonished by the requirement to find an "optimal" N to prove convergence as it shows lack of understanding what a limit is. In my class (I did TA work) a student would get full credit even for the factorial of the reference answer. But then I noticed that I had misread the question. Actually, the professor's N is larger than the student's so it is definitely "non-optimal". But the answer 5/Ɛ is simpler to write and to use further if it was needed. I think there is some pedagogical value in showing that you can weaken your statements to make calculations simpler. One can find such “unnecessary” (as OP calls them) steps in many real complicated proofs. How much this knowledge should cost to the students in question is up to their professor. You are getting two answers: The lecturer is your superior, he makes the decisions Mathematically you are correct Since this is a course in mathematics, not in management, politics, or the military, he seems to me that clearly #2 is the correct answer, and that you are right. It's a course in mathematics, but the question is about interpersonal dynamics within academia (else it would have been asked on a different stack). -1 The mathematics (unfortunately) cannot solve an interpersonal dispute -- only people can -- and therefore this fails to answer the posted question. The purpose of academia is to teach correctly, not to satisfy your own ego. I hope neither of you teaches, you are not good examples. And yet, @user, you have failed to answer the question asked. The question wasn't Who is right?, the question was How do I resolve this dispute? This is an interpersonal question, not a mathematical question. @TRiG According to your logic, no-one answered the OP's question. That's a BS comment. I agree with many sentiments in comments/answers here, but---and I be misreading the question---my first guess from what you've said is that the students who lost points lost points for using inequalities that required justification in the professor's mind, not because they didn't use the same bound the professor did. Does this fit in with your situation? Deducting points for incomplete justification is of course reasonable for proofs, though where to draw the line is a judgement call, and one that is left up to the professor, though you may disagree. In any case, if you're not sure why he took off points, then you should either ask him or direct the students to. You should never tell students to campaign for a different grading rubric. How do you relate that interpretation to the third paragraph of the question? @PatriciaShanahan Based on the 2nd paragraph (which indicates the professor used an extra inequality which won't give the smallest N), I think "best" here means easiest to prove, not smallest. I think the the students used $\frac{5}{3n+5} < \epsilon$ to find that $n > \frac{5}{3 \epsilon} - \frac{5}{3}$ which leads to $N = \ceil{\frac{5}{3 \epsilon} - \frac{5}{3}}$. Instead of the preferred solution of the professor: $\frac{5}{n} < \epsilon$ to get that $N = \ceil{\frac{5}{\epsilon}}$. So even though the first $N$ is correct as well, it is not the smallest. And that's why the professor seemed to have taken points off. @ClassicEndingMusic I'm a little confused what you mean by "the first N." The first one mentioned in your comment in smaller than the second one (corresponding to the professor's solution). @Kimball Yes, but to be honest I am not exactly sure either why the professor insisted on the second N. But anyways, I don't think that incomplete justification was the reason. @ClassicEndingMusic Well, the OP is a bit vague what the students found or did---it's possible they took other values of N which were valid but their justification was not good for some reason. I'm just saying that based on the information we have here, one shouldn't assume the professor is being unreasonable. It's a bit difficult to answer your question because I don't find it completely clear what the point of contention is. But reading between the lines I think I can find two. The lecturer says "ultimately the lecturer is in charge". He's dead right here. You are working under his supervision. You can discuss and disagree with his opinion, in fact you should do so (as long as it's feasible: perhaps not if there are 1000 students in the course and marks have to be absolutely definitely finalised by lunchtime). But ultimately it's his decision. If you're still unhappy with that decision - if you think it's mathematically and educationally wrong - then you could take the matter up with higher authority. But this is not something you should do lightly. The lecturer says you are enabling students to "pick a side". He's dead wrong here. As long as you are giving the same advice to all students in this position, you are leaving all decisions with the lecturer - which is his job anyway. There are not two sides the students can choose between. It rather sounds here as if the lecturer is saying "you have to support what I say because I say so" - which is unscholarly, unprofessional and unmathematical. You didn't actually ask what you should do, but in case you want my opinion - don't do anything about the first point, unless (as I said already) you feel strongly enough to take it higher. But I wouldn't recommend that. About the second, I would suggest you courteously point out to the lecturer that you are not suggesting to students that their marks should be altered, but are referring them to him to make the decision, as is his right. (And his duty - but it might be more tactful not to mention that.) Also, keep a sense of perspective, and see if you can encourage students to do so too. I imagine this is probably a small part of the mark for a small part of a small assignment. For the record, I have some sympathy with the lecturer's attitude (mathematical that is - I have no sympathy with his professional attitude). Mathematics, especially for advanced students (you didn't say what level this is) should not always marked as right or wrong and nothing else. That said, I doubt that I would have marked the assignments as he did in this particular case. I thinks the outcome should depend on the exact question that was asked: if the students were required only to provide proof, which they did, they should get full credit. if the question mentioned that the "best" value of N had to be found, and defined what was considered best, the professor is free to take off points for answers which don't meet the criteria specified in the question. It would be inappropriate to penalize students just because they didn't guess what the professor had in mind. Especially important in math, where answers you get are only good for what you've asked for (check the last one).	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.402455	2018-02-17T01:17:11	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/103996", "authors": [ "123", "Andreas Blass", "Andrés E. Caicedo", "Ant", "B. 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18261	How to tell a faculty member that I don't need him on my thesis committee anymore? Out of five needed members for my doctoral thesis committee, four are fixed. For the fifth member, I approached Mr.A. He has no real connection to my research or topic but I contacted him because he was just as good a fit as anybody else in the department to be the fifth member. I have never worked with him or taken any classes but we did talk a lot in the first few years where he would just ask about my progress by the copy machine, etc. We don't even have a "rapport". The relationship is absolutely neutral, nothing positive/friendly, and nothing negative. I asked him to be on my committee and he said yes. I said I'll get back to you with dates, etc. He is a senior tenured professor. Then about a month later, I was looking at the CV of some of the new hired (junior) faculty in the department Mr.B (this is his first year) and I see that we have a collaborator in common. Mr.B has published multiple papers with him and Mr.B is working with the same code and the code managing team that we are working with. He is definitely a good person to have on my committee. I finally see Mr.B after a few more months (because of busy schedule/travel/etc.) and he agrees to be on my committee. The question is, how can I tell Mr.A, as tactfully as possible, after about four months of being quiet that he is basically rejected from my committee because I didn't know about Mr.B but now that I know, Mr.B is a much better match than he is? That I don't need him but I do appreciate his offer? I don't want to antagonize Mr.A or burn any bridges. Should this be in email or in person? Should I explain or just keep it terse? Should I keep it vague that I don't need him and thanks for his time? Or should I tell him about Mr.B and why he is a better match? FYI, this was before anything official/paperwork was done so there is no problem with that. As the answers point out, professors don't worry too much about whose committee they're on or not: fewer committees mean less work for us :). Now if A was untenured, then Ph.D committees are a (not very important) statistic of relevance in a tenure case, but this is not the case in your situation. You mean that you are worried about giving a prof less work to do? Directly. "I don't need you on my thesis committee any more." @JeffE Isn't it too direct? It may be thought to be rude and have consequences for the student. Make the professor angry with him, etc. @Parsa Of course it should be preceded and followed by more social niceties. "Hello, Professor, I need to talk to you about something. Prof. X recently agreed to serve on my thesis committee, which means I don't need you on my thesis committee any more. I'd be honored if you stayed on the committee, but of course I will understand if you are too busy." Shouldn't your supervisor be communicating this? And ... what the think of the problem? I think you're making a bigger deal about this than necessary. You enlisted Professor A to serve on your committee because you needed a fifth man, not because of any close research connection. More recently, but still before signing any paperwork, you found Professor B, who does have a close research connection. Just tell Professor A that! Problem solved. You don't have to dither about how to present this information: send it in an email or send it in person. The information of the previous paragraph is sufficient: you don't need to dwell on your connection with Professor A as much as you did in your question. (But by the way: asking about your progress at the copy machine is what I would call "friendly". At least he knows who you are and something about your progress in the program, and he cares enough to ask about it sometimes. That puts him ahead of the curve in many academic departments at many universities.) What you do not seem to realize is that if Professor A has no close connection with your work, it is overwhelmingly likely that he was being friendly indeed by volunteering to serve on your committee anyway, and he'll be equally happy or, more probably, a little happier not to serve. Since he is a senior tenured professor he has lots of stuff to do. Serving as the fifth man on a student's committee is not nearly such a prestige job that his layoff needs to be sugarcoated. He'll understand, and he'll be especially happy that someone with more relevant expertise will be taking his place. You can present it as a positive development that effectively does him a favor. For example, "I'm writing to keep you up to date on my thesis committee. I've recently discovered that one of the new junior faculty, Dr. B, is an ideal fit for my research interests, and I was hoping to add him to the committee. I realize you are very busy, so I thought it could make sense to replace you with him before filing the official paperwork. Does that sound reasonable to you? Thanks again for your willingness to serve on the committee." I can't imagine he'll object to being replaced. If for some reason he really wants to be on the committee, you could always try to set up a six-person committee. I did this about a year ago when I changed research tracks and advisers. I explained the situation to Mr. C, who was on my committee and a relatively good fit about Mrs. D, who was a much better fit with my changed research trajectory. It was no problem at all. Usually, it will not be much of a problem. There is usually no maximum number of committee members. Rather than removing the extra committee member, I would suggest informing him that he is welcome to continue serving on your committee, but that if he wishes to quit he may do so without causing you any problems. I think it's better to make the decision.	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14257	Are there any legal issues in having someone's book as the basis and as a textbook for an online course? I want to create an online course and use someone's book as the basis (follow the structure, topics) and as a textbook (use exercises, examples, etc). Note that I'm not going to distribute any parts of the book to my students. What might be the legal issues here? How do physical universities deal with them? Most universities have one or more people responsible for handling copyright issues. I would find who these people are at your university, and run it past them (with all the details) to make sure that everything is fine. I cannot see any problem with this as long as no copyrighted material is accessible in such a way that it breaks the copyrights of the book. Although the outline of a book probably can be considered the intellectual property of the author (and possibly the publisher depending on copyright), I doubt anyone would object since the purpose of writing a (course) book is to provide a product to support teaching of a specific topic. The structure of a book can often be the most logical way of presenting the material. The key issues is rather if you reproduce parts of the book such as providing the exercises on-line. As long as participants must obtain the material in the book on their own you should not worry. From this perspective it is no different from a normal university course (where it is also illegal to copy and distribute material freely from a book (or equivalent). So for an on-line course, you just need to be very careful with reproducing text or figures from copyrighted materials in ways that breaks the rules. You can also contact the holder of the copyright (author/publisher) to obtain the right to provide parts within the course. The success of this may depend on the system you use for on-line material and what file formats you use for distributing the materials. Such details will likely be made clear by the copyright owner if you ask.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.405298	2013-11-20T15:44:17	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/14257", "authors": [ "Alireza Tabatabaeian", "Bozidar Vlacic", "Exec-mba", "Johannes", "PhysicsComplexity", "SOlearner", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36810", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36811", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36818", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36820", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36821", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/36822", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/9558", "hunse" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
159546	How can I avoid overuse of words like "however" and "therefore" in academic writing? I am in the field of computer science (more specifically robotics), and as I am writing, I must actively avoid using the words "however", "therefore", etc... every few sentences. This is especially an issue in proofs, as I feel like every other sentence follows from the previous. For example, I am tempted to write something like the following: This constraint is satisfied because... However, if blah blah..., then blah blah. Therefore, something something. However,.... (and I can go on forever). Often, I can just delete some of the "however" or replace "therefore" with words like "consequently". I can also sometimes change the wording to use "then", "so", or "but". However (see I can't even help myself), I feel compelled to use words like "however" to help with flow. How can I avoid using words like "however" so many times? Is this bad writing? Is this normal? FWIW, I struggled with this in my master's thesis. Especially with 'nested' howevers (in parentheses). I found the trick of letting it rest a day or two then proofing it afresh helped, but sometimes I was just pushing the issue to the next sentence. Some topics just are complex ‍♂️. Not sure whether this is too obvious, but in terms of style and writing proofs, I sometimes look into papers of others (more experienced) authors. So, you can look how they avoid (or use) these words and try to get inspired. Let me suggest an alternate view. This is in regard to writing proofs and other very technical things. You want, above all, for your intent to be clear. It may be that "however" and "therefore" are the best available words and that they clearly express the flow of the argument. After all, if you were writing the proof purely symbolically you would "overuse" certain logic symbols in order to be exact. And, don't let "fancy words" get in the way of your readers deep dive into the ideas themselves. Sometimes the most obvious word is the one that is most quickly understood to express your intent. This might be especially important for those who know your subject, but are not native speakers of your language. OTOH, I haven't actually seen your prose. If an editor or reviewer objects, then you can change it to suit, of course. Are the first words of each of your paragraphs meant to be examples? Good catch @GoodDeeds, but no @Buffy However, we could assume they were. Therefore, your answer is a good example. @PierreArlaud "We could assume they were, and your answer is a good example" works just as well. Use these linking words if you need them, but they can often be removed entirely. Agreed. When reading articles, I am often confused by the author using different words for the same things. I get like "Wait, did I miss something, isn't he talking about the same as before?". If you feel the need to use the same word a hundred times in a row, please do exactly that and not switch around for fancyness. I find it interesting how I have never seen the abbreviation OTOH before, yet it was intuitive what it meant without even reading the rest of the sentence. @Evorlor, OTOH I'm often confused by such abbreviations. ;-) +1. The one phrase I try to studiously avoid is "in other words", since if I have to rephrase it then I should just fix the initial phrasing instead. I don't see anything necessarily wrong with using the words in the OP. Great answer (+1), however using "OTOH" is a perfect example of a fancy expression that might confuse the reader. I am not a native speaker and don't know what it means. @Vincent, yes, you are correct. I find the Urban Dictionary a good source for such things. There are many similar sites as well, including many dictionary sites. But the Urban Dictionary can be (very) coarse, it seems. @Vincent it means "on the other hand". @Evorlor i worked in a company where they were (ab)using TLAs (three-letter-acronyms) in internal wiki. They even came up with TLA index page. Sometimes you can use "If ..., then...." or "Suppose .... Then...." // Some copy editors will have a fit if you try to use But instead of However as the first word in a sentence. // "By contrast" instead of "On the other hand." // Agree with @MaxD that technical writing should value precision over variety. Even my high school English teacher stressed that. @BruceET: Some copy editors might even have a fit if you use However as the first word in a sentence. @JW But that's perfectly valid English. @wizzwizz4: I agree, as do many others (see https://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/starting-a-sentence-with-however-right-or-wrong), but not necessarily those cleaving to Strunk & White. It sounds to me like you're actually doing everything that you need to do already. In fact, when you are initially writing a paper, I would suggest that you not worry about it at all. Write things as they come out most quickly and naturally, focusing only on conveying the substance of your argumentation. Only at the very end, when you are polishing before submission, is it worth worrying about the wording. At that point, you can read the paper out loud to yourself and see if you start feeling repetitions or stumbling over sentence structure. Reading out loud is valuable because it slows you down and forces you to really hear what you have written. If your words feel uncomfortable when you read them out loud, then fix them just like you are doing already: deleting when you can, and substituting synonyms when you can't. +1 for reading out loud! It's an incredibly effective trick for easily spotting things that can be surprisingly tricky to spot when just reading. (The exclamation mark is made to be read out loud, too) ARGH! Don't substitute synonyms just to avoid repetition. If I had a nickel for every time I had to puzzle over whether an "iteration" was the same as a "step" because the author felt they were overusing one of the words, I'd never have to work again. @Nobody Terms of art should not of course be varied, but connector prose like "however" and "therefore" most certainly can be. I disagree with this answer. From personal experience, “we’ll worry about that later” or “we‘ll implement that properly later” is rarely seen through. If you can do it properly now, do it now (unless it really has negative impact e.g. because it would severely disrupt your flow or it’s really supposed to be a very rough draft/prototype and any additional effort would be wasted). @Michael My observation is that it's very easy for people, especially inexperienced writers, to get stuck on wording and fail to produce the core content. Aggressive Pruning I agree with other answers that your repetition of however and therefore might not be a problem in this context. However, I would like to point out another option. These words are usually included as signposts for the reader, but do not change the meaning of the text. Therefore, I suggest omitting them. For example, I agree with other answers that your repetition of however and therefore might not be a problem in this context. I would like to point out another option. These words are usually included as signposts for the reader, but do not change the meaning of the text. I suggest omitting them. Just try removing the offending words in each sentence where you feel it might be getting repetitive. In most cases, you'll find you can remove "therefore" or "however" without impacting the argument. If the transition of ideas is jarring, leave the words in. You mention that you remove instances like this already, but you may not be aggressive enough. In your question, you state Often, I can just delete some of the "however" or replace "therefore" with words like "consequently". I can also sometimes change the wording to use "then", "so", or "but". However (see I can't even help myself), I feel compelled to use words like "however" to help with flow. To me, the "however" in the last sentence is optional. You add it to emphasize contradiction with the previous statement. You could replace with Unfortunately, I still feel compelled to use words like "however" to help with flow. I would suggest an exercise where you remove all "however"s and "therefore"s and then wait an hour or so. After the wait, re-read your text and re-add the words where necessary. The time gap will give you time to forget where the words originally appeared and allow you to read with a fresh perspective. This should help with more aggressive pruning. Rephrasing As regards to synonyms, sometimes rephrasing the sentence works better than rarely used synonyms like "ergo". For example, I agree with other answers that your repetition of however and therefore might not be a problem in this context. I would like to point out another alternative. These words are usually included as signposts for the reader, but do not change the meaning of the text. When this is the case, I suggest omitting them. Rephrasing can also emphasize contradiction and support in the same way that "however" and "therefore" do. For rephrasing, the same exercise as above can help, but I also find proof-readers invaluable. They often find ways of stating the same thing more succinctly and elegantly because they have a fresh approach to the text. I'd heartily agree with the idea of trying out dropping these "connectors" entirely. The prose itself has a direction. Unless you start a new paragraph, most readers would (reasonably) assume that the next sentence follows in some way from the previous... The example in the first paragraph is really cool (+1), but note that both of your examples from OP's question are actually about replacing rather than pruning. Sometimes there is no way of pruning without compromising on clarity. I must actively avoid using the words "however", "therefore", etc... every few sentences Says who? There is nothing wrong in repeating the same linking word every few sentences, in my view. Don't let the language majors guilt-trip you into thinking otherwise. That rule is way overrated. If you are writing about matrices, you wouldn't look for synonyms to avoid repeating the word "matrix", would you? Just use the clearest and most appropriate words, and raise your threshold for how much repetition is 'unacceptable'. Unless every third word in your text is "however", I wouldn't worry. To be fair, using the same (non-technical) word in every other sentence (barring obvious exceptions like "and", "so", "or"...) can make a paper unpleasant to read. Knowing a few synonyms (or using a thesaurus during later editing passes) is not a bad idea. Consider the argument structure in the paper. I find that I have the however/therefore problem when I'm writing in flow-of-consciousness narrative voice, rather than making an effort to structure my arguments. So I write something like: Premise P1 Therefore, Conclusion C1 However, Counterargument to C1 Premise P2 Therefore, Conclusion C2a Therefore, Conclusion C2b However, Counterargument to C2a Therefore, Counterargument to C2b Given this experience, here are some structural things I try to consider. 1) Give back-references. Would "Therefore"/"However" be better replaced with a simplifying restatement of the point that the arguments are building upon or tearing down? Premise P1 Given P1, Conclusion C1 Despite P1, Counterargument to C1 Premise P2 Given P2, Conclusion C2a Given C2a, Conclusion C2b Despite P2, Counterargument to C2a Given C/C2a, Counterargument to C2b 2) Consider the flow of points. Looking at the sequence of premises and arguments you have in the paper, is it the clearest way to communicate your point? Would it be better split into separate sections? Perhaps "premises/assumptions", "conclusions/inferences/extrapolations", and "counterarguments" sections? Premises Premise P1 Premise P2 Inferences Given P1, Conclusion C1 Given P2, Conclusion C2a Given C2a, Conclusion C2b Counterarguments Despite P1, Counterargument to C1 Despite P2, Counterargument to C2a Given C/C2a, Counterargument to C2b 3) Maintain a consistent direction or thrust. Heavy use of "however" may indicate that you're regularly flipflopping between each side of an argument, rather than presenting one side in full, then presenting the other in full. 4) Reserve them for building up or tearing down a point. If you're using "therefore" in a way that doesn't build upon prior information to form a further conclusion, or "however" in a way that doesn't present a counterpoint, then examine why you're using it. Compare this, which neither builds on, not provides a counterpoint, but appears to do both: We gathered the data. However, this was not easy, as we were in the field. Therefore, we only took a few readings. to this, which avoids that appearance: We gathered only limited data, due to fieldwork limitations. 5) Don't thesaurize. Contrary to other advice, I wouldn't advise trying to conceal this issue by changing the words to synonymous terms. You can't build a good wood-framed house without knowing exactly what the solid foundational posts are, the exact position of all the beams from foundations to lintel, and exactly how the joints tie each one to another. You can't write a good paper without knowing exactly what the solid foundational premises are, the exact position of all your conclusions from premises to final, and exactly how the arguments tie each one to another. That means knowing when you really mean to use "therefore", rather than spackling over all your joints to hide them behind weak weasel-word phrases like "and", "so", "then", "but", "yet", "though". Like a good joiner makes the joints a visible feature of their work, make those words a feature of your writing, calling out its structure. 6) OK, maybe sometimes thesaurize, but deliberately. This is an edge case, but perhaps worth mentioning. Sometimes, we use different bullets at different levels, to avoid confusion: blah blah blah blah In a similar way, it can be useful to thesaurize in order to separate subarguments from the main argument flow. Be careful, it can end up a mess, but it's worth trying: Premise P1 Therefore, from P1, Conclusion C1 Note as an aside that tangential premise Pt1 And so tangential conclusion Ct1 But tangential counterpoint to Ct1 Therefore, from C1, Conclusion C2 However, Counterargument to C2 It's almost always better to slice the tangent off into another section, an infobox, or even leave it out completely, though. Both are perfectly normal in academic writing. You can mix things up by using: However nevertheless nonetheless X notwithstanding This is not always/seldom/never the case for... ..., yet, ... Therefore Thus Ergo Hence Accordingly For this/that reason Also see http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/ for more options to express this and other common ideas in academic writing. To be honest if I saw 'Ergo' in a text I would think the author is trying way too hard to sound fancy. @AccidentalTaylorExpansion Cogito for this/that reason sum. @AccidentalTaylorExpansion: Or had watched The Matrix Reloaded too often. Very often, you use a "however" because you're describing some developing process of thought. Thoughts change or turn to something else, and this reflects on earlier assertions. But a written document is not a speech - your text does not have to be chronological relative to your thought processes (certainly not relative to your original thought processes). You can also use structure and visual appearance in your writing, which an oral presentation can't have. Let's take your example: This constraint is satisfied because... However, if blah blah..., then blah blah. You could make it: Let us now consider the whatever constraint: blah1 : The constraint is satisfied because ... blah2 : blah blah This is usually a good idea. But, as other answers point out, sometimes the "however" makes perfect sense and the narrative sounds reasonable/engaging/exciting with it in place. I like this a lot. The "looping" linear line of thought needs not be reproduced in the text which can be better structured (although I don't quite understand your example here). EDIT: My answer here does not directly address your problem, but I see it is useful to look for synonyms sometimes, at least we avoid to use same words repeatedly. I would suggest to consider this website to find synonyms (www.thesaurus.com). For example, I have looked for synonyms of "therefore". As you can see in the results, there are a number of synonyms, sorted by relevance. You can check the meaning of each word by clicking on it. You can also see examples showing how the words are used in sentences. Using a thesaurus for academic writing is a very bad idea. If the author is not sufficiently familiar with alternative word choices to pick them on their own, it is likely that the reader is not overly familiar with them either. Academic English is supposed to be very simple. I mean the writer should not choose like a machine. Other dictionaries (e.g., OALD) are essential to check the meaning of the word before using in a particular context. @Arno: It often happens to me that I have to look up "simple words" and then remember, hey, there is this simple world I am familiar with. Definitely words I would understand when I reas them. @Arno "Using a thesaurus for academic writing is a very bad idea" I don't think so. Blindly using a thesaurus for academic writing is a very bad idea, but it's not because academic writing should be simple. It's because synonyms have similar meanings, but not exactly the same meaning, and academic writing should be precise. You shouldn't use a synonym to avoid repetition; you should use a synonym iff it more precisely matches the meaning you want. Consider also using synonyms that aren't wordy; when "accordingly" means the same as "for this reason", using the latter just adds --words that don't contribute to meaning-- meaningless words. This is an answer that could be applied to almost any question about writing style, and may get dinged for that, but I'm going to add it anyway: Look for examples to follow. When you read papers, take note of ones that are a pleasure to read, and then read them again to see how they do it. People have given some good answers with examples, and I think they are helpful, but they are made-up examples. It's really valuable to see how actual problems of exposition have been solved in ways that are clear and satisfying to you. Maybe they turn out to use "however" rather frequently, and maybe they don't. You will learn from what you see. In writing as with all performances: That which looks easiest is in fact the most accomplished. In other answers, people have suggested using synonyms, rephrasing, or omitting the conjunctions. I would like to add some extra insight on this. I believe that “however” and “therefore” should be treated differently. “However” serves the important purpose of preparing the reader for a contradiction or a problem that will arise following the conjunction. Therefore, it is hard to omit. The solution for avoiding the overuse of “however” is to use synonyms or to rephrase the sentence. As for “therefore”, it shows that the next phrase or sentence follows from the previous one, and it can often be omitted. Of course, the other options are also possible. Example I will illustrate with a random example I came up with: The constraint is satisfied because the Σ-value is 1.5. However, we need to be careful since the standard deviation was quite high. Therefore, the experiment needs to be repeated for improved reliability. I recommend repeating the experiment while changing the value of Ψ to 3 so that the results will be compatible. However, setting Ψ to 3 might affect the consistency of the results due to Ω being 5. Therefore, I also recommend changing Ω to 4. This solves the consistency problem, however, precautions should be taken since this value for Ω is quite low. Now, I will rewrite this text without using “however” and “therefore” at all. You don’t need to go this far in reality. The constraint is satisfied because the Σ-value is 1.5. Although this is within the acceptable range, we need to be careful since the standard deviation was quite high. For this reason, the experiment needs to be repeated for improved reliability. I recommend repeating the experiment while changing the value of Ψ to 3 so that the results will be compatible. This introduces a new problem, where setting Ψ to 3 might affect the consistency of the results due to Ω being 5. Since this may undermine the experiment, I also recommend changing Ω to 4. This solves the consistency problem, but precautions should be taken since this value for Ω is quite low. An option is to use grammar checking tools. Most LaTeX editors do not include this, but you could, for example, copy & paste a paragraph into a word processor and see what synonyms it suggests. I also have good experience with Grammarly, but it isn't cheap and may not be worth it. But it both tries to tell you when your text is repetitive, and you can click words to see synonyms. Just really make sure that you do not blindly accept and suggestions, as it sometimes wants to replace technical terms with something that's no synonym in that context. On the other hand, it works well with LaTeX, which is a big plus. In the end, I think some online thesaurus and word processor features are suitable for native speakers. Non-native speakers may consider using a more costly tool, especially when your reviewers notice that you're not a native speaker.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.405631	2020-12-01T21:27:59	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/159546", "authors": [ "AccidentalTaylorExpansion", "Arno", "Askar Kalykov", "BruceET", "Buffy", "Carl-Fredrik Nyberg Brodda", "Denis G. 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124084	Why do so many PhDs choose to join academia instead of industry given the pay in academia is considerably lower and the workload is much heavier? In the computer science field, an entry-level software engineer in top-tier tech companies (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) could earn as much as a 20-year experience professor. And the workload in academia is way heavier. For example, my friends in Google work 8 hours a day and have the weekend while my Ph.D. friends have to work at least 60 hours a week if they want to have a good publication record. They almost stay in the lab all day long and don't have the weekend. And also, given my observation, getting a position at an even mediocre university is even much harder than getting a position at Google level companies, let alone a Ph.D. would take more time on their education. Why do so many PhDs still choose to be a professor while they have the choice to go to the industry? Note that many PhD students don't work more than 60 hours per week, but have a reasonable workload. On the contrary, many people in industry work much more than 8 hours per day. Because value can't be measured in money? If wealth is the ultimate motivation for you, then this won't make sense. But for many people it is not. What do you actually want to achieve in life? To answer your question, different people choose different directions because they have different goals. Personally, I have never regretted going into industry after getting my CS PhD, not because of the money but because I am much happier with the work (and in 40 years I've NEVER been able to go home after 8 hours work!) Considering that PhD is degree primarily designed for an academic career, it is not that surprising that at least some of the degree holders end up in academia. "For example, my friends in Google work 8 hours a day" this may be the case at Google, but it is not always the case at other top tier tech companies. For example, Amazon and FB are notorious for having no work life balance at all. In my experience workloads in Academia tend to be a lot lighter than in industry once you get passed the initial postdoc and early faculty phase. cuz baby boomers are working later and later into their lives and not giving up jobs... Simple example: a prof is in function 20 years, and supervises 5 PhD candidates at the same time, for four year terms. That's 25 candidates supervised by one prof, only one of which who can take the prof's job once the old prof retires. So if all 25, or even 'many' as you say, vie for the same job, only one can make it. (Disregarding other academic positions such as researchers, but in general there are fewer places the higher up the food chain you go.) Most people having finished a PhD therefore end up outside academia. Academics have massively more free time than people who work in industry, and I don't know where you get the idea that the workload is heavier. That's a pretty fanciful statement. There is more truth in this movie than you'd initially credit: "They expect results!" The work-life balance situation is country-specific. In Finland, the average professor works hundreds of hours more per year than the average full-time employee, because labor laws are enforced more strictly in the industry. Working hours in the US academia seem similar to Finland, but there may be industries where people work longer hours. Where else are you going to do research? You can get a job in industry writing code, building actuarial models, etc.; but if you want to do actual research--- not R&D for a product, but basic research--- you have extraordinarily few options outside academia. @MattSamuel There might be examples for both scenarios. I have been told by several professors that one should do 70-80 hours workweeks. In CS field, an entry-level software engineer in top-tier tech companies (e.g. Google, Facebook, etc.) could earn as much as a 20-year experience professor....Why do so many PhDs still choose to be a professor while they have the choice to go to the industry? First, your assumption is wrong. Most PhDs end up in industry. I don't have any source but I think this is from 90 - 99%. If you limit your question to the 1% - 10% that become professors, they are all very successful, i.e. they have plenty of papers, promising research direction, strong network etc etc. And there is a reason for their success: they have passion, and when you have passion, money is likely not the most important thing in life. Except for machine learning, in most areas in CS, you need to stay in academia to do research. And there are many benefits that you can only have when working in academia. You take credit for what you have done. Products in industry are developed by a large team, and nobody can take full credit for it. But researchers can take full credit for what they do in their papers. Reputation: you are invited to give talk, become program committee members, etc etc, and everybody will know you. I would be excited to meet an author whose paper I have read. I'm not excited at all to meet a Google employee. (I'm living in Mountain View, a small city with 80,000 residents, but more than 20,000 Google employees) Do interesting jobs. You always work on new things in research, while the majority of tasks of a software engineer are maintenance, fix bugs etc. (I'm a software engineer if you are curious) Stand-alone answers and digressing discussions have been moved to chat. Please only post a comment if you have a specific suggestion how to improve the question. Otherwise post an answer or take it to chat. Also see this FAQ. Sure, but a large chunk of the 90% have passion too. In my field, pure math, nearly everyone goes into the program with the intention of going into academia. There are far fewer jobs available than PhDs; and at the highest levels, success is a crap shoot: it depends on what contacts you make, how successful your unpredictable research projects wind up being, etc. I'd also add that plenty of researchers & professor end up doing consultant jobs too. When a company needs know how in advanced stuff they will want to have someone that knows well the field to consult during the design&testing phases at least. Consultants are usually pretty expensive so a good professor doing just a couple of things like this per year will earn more than an engineer (yes engineers could do this to, except for their contract that probably forbids them from doing so and the lack of time) Not exactly what you're looking for, but this science article says that whole over 50% of postdocs think they'll stay in academia, only ~20% do. The vast majority go to either industry to "other", which I suspect includes what many of us would consider industry. I would like though to meet some google employees like Rob Pike or Ken_Thompson. Not to mention IBM employees or other companies. Academia and industry are closely related, wouldn't survive without each other. As far as I see it, the main advantage that academia has over industry is freedom. In industry, you generally work on what your employer tells you to work on. As a professor, even at the entry level (assistant professor), you have quite a bit of leeway to work on what interests you, with the constraint that you have to find an agency that will give you money for at least some of it. Many postdocs and even some graduate students have the ability to come up with their own project ideas and pursue them, as long as they are somewhat consistent with their mentors' funding streams. The constraint of being able to find funding is a big one, but I still think that I have much more freedom than my friends in industry. As a professor, I only talk to my boss about what I'm doing once or twice per year. In academia, usually your boss is happy as long as you bring in grants. Another reason to stay in academia is inertia. Once you've spent 5 years getting a PhD, you know a lot about what a career in academia looks like and have resources to help you move forward. Finding how your skills might fit in industry is less obvious and you might not know how to start. I agree that freedom to pursue own research interests is grater in academia. But there is also quite some path dependcy. Within political science, for example, I can't work on political theory during my postdoc and then decide to apply for TT positions in international relations. -- And then there are also trends, fads, and potentially interesting problems and methods that unfortunately fell out of fashion. With the constraint that you have to find someone to pay you to do it or it keeps your boss happy, is really the same side thing both sides of the fence. Plenty of non-academic roles that academics take up have a degree of freedom to direct what they entail. Plenty of academics are 'stuck' doing the thing they can get funding for. required: http://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1436 (I had a much longer answer, but realized that it could be condensed. I also noticed your specific field of interest, Computer Science, which allowed further compression.) Computer science != programming. Thinking otherwise is an overwhelmingly common error, especially in industry. If you study computer science and that is actually what you want to do, it is very difficult to find a position in industry. If you study computer science and want to write programs, that is a very easy position to find in industry, mostly because of the error I mentioned above. And to further this, programming != software development I wish I could just "chose to be a professor". But you are correct in your assessment that, for people who chose to stay in academia, money could not be the motivation. But, doing a PhD is not just obtaining another diploma, just another step in one's education. The knowledge (i.e. collection of facts related to your field of study) obtained during a PhD is so specific that it is not easily transferable. The transferable skills a PhD candidate trains for have to do with understanding scientific literature, being able to make connections, conclusions and get new ideas from it. After obtaining their PhD, one should be able to do that reasonably well with literature from any (sub)field related to theirs, after a short period of time needed to come up-to-speed with a new topic. On the other hand, skills required for a software engineer are a different set of skills entirely. A masters education will sometimes familiarize you with the basic tools (programming languages) and concepts needed, but you eventually need to develop skills related to writing legible, repeatable, reusable code, which you mostly obtain by a lot of practice. Judging by some of the industry interviews I had after my PhD (in parallel with the postdoc interviews), I would've probably done much better in them before my PhD, or even before finishing my masters. So, they're jobs requiring different skillsets. I chose Computer Science because it fulfilled me, unlike e.g. medicine or law. Taking this further, I want a research job because it gives me a sense of fulfilment I wouldn't get from a software engineering position. Pure research positions in top-tier companies are quite competitive, so there's a slim chance somebody who can't succeed obtaining a permanent faculty positions will be able to secure a research position in industry. Some of the following points are what is important to me, rather what might be important to everybody, but I heard most of them echoed back to me from my colleagues in academia. Comparing research positions in industry and academia (though my experience in industry is limited to what I got from a few interviews, and then a few months where I was forced to take an industry job while waiting for my immigration documents): Most research positions are much more flexible with working hours. People understand that, doing creative work, some days you just can't get anywhere, and some days you're on a streak and don't want to stop after 10 hours. People that are really not morning people can occasionally arrive late for lunch, and nobody says a word. In industry, I've heard arriving to work at 9:30AM is considered as having "flexible work hours". Even in case of very strong research ties to industry, holding an academic position allows you to chose the problems you want to work on (possibly amongst several industry collaborations, but the choice is still made according to your research interests and research group). In industry, you need to work on the problems as dictated by the market, interesting be damned in favour of profitable. In my academic interviews, people were interested in the problems I was tackling. In industry, people were interested in my problem solving skills. Nobody cared about what I applied them to, just whether I can apply it to the problems they would present me with. Academic jobs are some of the most travelled jobs out there. During my PhD, I wouldn't be surprised if the amount the University covered for my travels would have easily closed the wage gap to industry. Conferences and professional visits are an integral part of academic research. Travelling with industry always has a promotional purpose. I feel free to discuss my ideas with anybody, anywhere. I reach best conclusions through discussion. The thought of chatting about a topic, having an idea and having to bite my tongue is a bit terrifying to me. The worst that could happen is somebody poaching an undeveloped an untested idea and researching it themselves - not a terrible loss since I don't get to develop all of my ideas anyway. In industry, one needs to constantly think of confidentiality, and which details of their work they are allowed to disclose. The goal of publications, as the "tangible products" of academic research, is to share your ideas, results and findings with the world. I enjoy the idea that my work is public and adding to the collective of human knowledge (let's not discuss paywalls right now...). In industry, all the ideas have to be intellectually protected before publishing: patented or whatever. The goal of publishing is not, precisely, to share your approach with the public. It is again promotional; to boast about the results you obtained with your new method; the details of which you might (need to) try and keep vague. In my head, the list of contrasts goes on. It's little things and big things, but all in all, all the freedoms that staying in academic research allows me are worth more than the difference in monetary compensation industry could offer. If somebody wanted me to work a 9-5 job (or generously allowed me to work 9:30 till 5:30), working on their problems which I find marginally interesting, and not discuss my work with anybody not on their payroll (and sometimes not even that if employees are too competitive for promotions), they would have to offer me much more than the industry standards. Since I'm not a research rock star and nobody is going to offer me that, I guess I'll stay in adacemia if I can, and leave an industry engineering job as a fall-back option. I wanted to write my own response but I realized it had too much in common with this one, so I'd rather comment. These are pretty much my reasons. I'd also add that scientific output tends to have a much larger shelf-life than whatever one is producing (if at all!) in the industry (including code). A few other points. Not everyone has an enormous industry to fall back on. The body of your post mentions CS, but your title doesn't limit to science fields. There is no high-paying industry for most people in the humanities, subfields of linguistics, psychology, imaging. Personally, I'm glad I don't work for a private company and "produce value for shareholders." Many universities are still good places to work in terms of benefits; good retirement, medical, and other perks, especially in public schools that can offer government benefits. My university has a pretty generous vacation schedule, even if a lot of people don't take their days. I'm not in CS, but that sounds reasonable Because all our role models are in academia, and academia is what we know. A Bachelor student, Master student, or PhD student will be working in a university environment. He or she will be exposed to successful researchers, internally within their university, externally when they are visiting, or when he or she is visiting a conference or even reading papers. The power of role models is very large. This reinforces the selection bias. When all the role models are within academia, academia becomes the known option. Industry? I don't know anybody in industry, they don't go to conferences and they don't even have employee websites, only vague and general LinkedIn profiles. They probably never come and give guest lectures. They might visit a careers fair at my uni, but hey, I'm a postdoc and already have a job, why should I go to a careers fair, those are for undergrads, right? In addition to what WaterMolecule and James Fennell have pointed out, this inertia is not only a matter of sticking with what we have: it is a matter of sticking with what we know: to remain in the protective cocoon of Academia. Source: PhD Comics I think that most of the existing answers have a flaw: they list out some rational pros of academia versus industry, assume that PhD graduates act completely rationally, and then conclude that many stay in academia for the reasons listed. From my experience at least (mathematics PhD, now software engineer) this is not how it works. I think a huge factor in PhDs staying in academia is simply inertia. At every stage in the career process of an academic, staying in academia is the short term easiest option. When I was graduating from my PhD, it would have taken me two or three weeks to prepare post-doc applications and submit them; applying for industry jobs took three to four months of full time re-training and the significant risk that it actually wouldn't work. In the long term, for me, it was the much better option - but at the point where I had to choose, I was tempted to take the short term easy way out. In mathematics nowadays, most PhD graduates can expect to have two or more post-docs. During this time they will have very little financial and geographic security (you have to move to where the one post-doc you were accepted for is). Foreigners in the United States, like me, also have very little immigration security during this time, whereas good private sector employers will have green cards for their foreign PhD-graduate employees within 2-3 years. Post-doc salaries are about half those in industry for recently graduated PhDs. The fact that, despite this chronic situation in the jobs market, many PhDs continue in academia is a strong indicator in my opinion that rationality is not the main determinant. Socially acceptable answers: Becoming a professor is unlikely to be the goal of the majority of Ph.D. students. Can demand higher salary upon joining company To pursue their own interests and passion without pressure from company To teach others and continue to learn. Socially unacceptable answers: Pathway to immigration into wealthy, Western societies. Count the number of Chinese, Indian and Iranian Ph.D. students in your research field and their overwhelming white, Anglo research advisors and calculate this ratio. Pathway into high paying companies, especially by people who did not study a lucrative major. I cannot tell you how many people I know from civil engineering or chemical engineering have used their Ph.D. as a way to learn advanced software courses and join Google or a bank afterward. They cannot cut it in the competitive industry world. Industry routinely does their own research but they usually hire the really big names: inventors, people who have written books, etc. Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat. Also, please stay nice. How does one use a PhD "to learn advanced software courses"? @MartinF A lot of universities offer courses in scientific computing, AI/ML, modeling, etc. at the graduate level and you don't have to be part of the major to take them. Contrast with undergraduate programs where you might have pre-reqs to take the same classes. @MartinF What do you mean, you just take a course. That's it. Again, I cannot tell you how many people who are studying biochem or doing some stuff like finite-element modeling are taking algorithms, software engineering, machine learning and other computing courses on the side, with the firm intention of joining a software firm afterwards and never looking back The two main reasons I can think of (thought of at the time this was relevant to me): Momentum: You've stamped your name a bit of the world. You've got to grips with a lot of things unique to this world. Things that might not be valued elsewhere. You know you are good at what you doing. You don't necessarily want to give that up and jump to something that's realistically a very different skill set. There are some roads industry doesn't go down: Unless there is a perceived short-term, competitive, advantage in knowing the answer to a question, it's hard to get industry to take the question seriously. This won't affect everyone. Lot's of interesting questions do have answers that are competitive advantages. But there is a reason academics are often considered not to be 'down-to-earth": if it's a down to earth question you want to answer, you can normally get someone to pay you answer it better elsewhere than in academia, so you do tend to leave. If not... you have your answer. As far as I know in the majority of the cases (not all, of course) people stay in academia without being so deep in reasoning about comparisons between academia and industry. They studied there, they had many friend around them, perceived professors as bosses and, when they find a way to begin that career, they do it. Moreover very often families are proud of them for being “university researcher” and money is no a major problem in the initial period. So they stay there and are very happy of this. A part this category, few people really make a choice and have precise targets in minds; another few people come back to academia after some years of industry; another few people begin to teach back to academia after many years of industry having in mind the idea to boost the preparation of student in a way that industry need, and so on. As a rule the percentage of “stay in academia” is about 1-2%, the percentage of target minded less than 0.1%, that of “back in academia” again 1% or less, that of “teach back” something around 0.01% or less. These figures depend on your country as well. (Btw: I’ve been part of “teach back” people, even if, at the moment, I’m mainly deeply involved in industry projects again and do not teach or research for university anymore). Actually, my family might be "proud to the outside" for me being a "university researcher", but privately keep asking me when am I finally going to get out of school, and why don't I go work where they pay me what I deserve (mind you, I'm fine financially). Also, there actually used to be quite a bit of chatter about academia vs. industry where I was doing my PhD, so while they might not have gone "deep in reasoning", I know a lot of my peers from my PhD at least considered it. The pay ain't that much lower in academia as compared to industry in all countries. In several places you can earn say 70-90% of what you would as a junior "newly baked" M.Sc. And then spend perhaps 4 paid hours per day doing what you love most in the world instead of hmm what do I know..., fix someone elses bug (who quit for a long time ago) or writing soul-numbing requirements. @MorganRodgers that's not what I wrote. I wrote get the time do do the funny part (aka research) of the job 4 hours a day.	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209325	Is this self-plagiarism? I have two papers which are using totally different methods and are on different subjects. However, in both papers I use the same case study as a benchmark. The case study is very technical. When I describe the technical properties of this case study, if I use the same sentences, but cite that I used the same case study before, is this a problem? Is it self-plagiarism? Since the case study is very technical, it was very hard to rephrase the description which is only two paragraphs. @user207421 - Self-plagiarism has been asked about on this site hundreds of times, and there is even a tag for it. I kept J.R.'s comment for anyone else that wants to question the premise of self-plagiarism, otherwise comments have been moved to chat; please do not continue the discussion here. Before posting a comment below this one, please review the purposes of comments. Comments that do not request clarification or suggest improvements usually belong as an answer, on [meta], or in [chat]. Comments continuing discussion may be removed. I use the same sentences but cite If you cite the original paper, i.e. make it clear where the content comes from, it is not plagiarism. That applies both to regular and self-plagiarism. Said otherwise, it would be plagiarism (regular or self, it does not matter) if OP had not cited the material. @EarlGrey - It does matter for your direction of the implication - self-plagiarism is only a concern if the reused text contains ideas that would be presented as new ones in the present work. Whether you need to cite your prior work depends on the nature of reused text and on the function of the reused text in the new work. However, if you had co-authors, or are forced to reuse somebody else's formulations, then you need to cite unconditionally. Different methods and different aspects? I mean, it does sound like you are writing two unrelated papers on a specific issue you are focusing on. If I wrote two papers about the German political system or a Swedish political party with different focuses and methods, would that be self-plagiarism? Not really. Would I refer to similar reference points in both? Probably. It seems like you are not reusing findings or approaches. As long as both papers present novel findings, you should be good. Yes different aspects and methods but they are tested on the same benchmark and the text describing the benchmark is the same in two papers I would reference at least one of the papers in the other (sometimes you can mutually reference them). The question isn't about the papers as a whole, it's about the fact that both papers refer to the same case study. The APA publication manual (American Psychological Association) presents an (in my view) rather clear explanation of self-plagiarism including situations where the reuse of exact sentences/phrases is deemed acceptable. Perhaps this might help you (https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/citations/plagiarism). Although I realise the APA is not used in all the disciplines as baseline, it may still help you to find a position that is suitable for you. Reusing the same sentences, especially statements of fact, isn't plagiarism. Failure to attribute ideas to the original source is plagiarism, including self plagiarism. But if there is only one way to say something, other than some paraphrasing, and they aren't statements of ideas that can be misattributed, then there are no issues. Even copyright won't cover things for which there is only one way to say it. In particular, using the same wording in a citation in two different papers isn't plagiarism. A citation is a statement of fact.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.409548	2024-04-09T12:26:35	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/209325", "authors": [ "Barmar", "Bryan Krause", "DSPinfinity", "EarlGrey", "J.R.", "Jirka Hanika", "JosephDoggie", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/128758", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13985", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/186522", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43739", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/63475", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/80335" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
185491	Can a PhD candidate be a guest editor in a peer reviewed journal? I am a PhD candidate (last year) and was invited as a guest editor in a peer reviewed journal. I am excited to take the experience and I am sure I will handle it well, but I am not sure if I have to be a PhD holder to qualify for such position. What discipline are you working in? In a STEM area this will almost certainly mean that the journal that sent you the invitation is a fake/predatory journal. Fun story: I, a mathematician, once published a paper that contained the word "old" in its title ("Old and new algorithms for "). After that paper, I have been invited several times to submit papers to predatory journals in geriatrics and gerontology. This should get you an idea of the level of scrutiny the spammers do when sending out their invitations. Groucho Marx quipped that he wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have him as a member. I feel somewhat the same about publishing in any journal that would invite me to be a guest editor (at least on my own). @FedericoPoloni I made the mistake of publishing a paper with the word "cancer" in the title. Why not ask either the journal or your own institution? Who else could really have a useful view? Is that not down to some combination of the journal itself, any relevant professional associations and your own institution? I assume none of them is required to, yet any of them might impose regulations? I think that until you have many years of refereeing papers behind you, you are not ready to be a guest editor. By the way, I get invited to be a guest editor about once a week. Unless you have strong evidence to the contrary, you should assume this is spam and delete it. One way to check if a journal is reputable is to ask your advisor. I think I could probably get my cat to be a guest editor! It'd be unusual to invite a PhD candidate to guest edit a journal. You are right to be suspicious. I would check if the journal is disreputable; simply being peer-reviewed is not sufficient. Even if the journal is reputable, I would still discuss with supervisor (not only about how to edit, but whether or not to do it, since it'll take time away from your PhD) before accepting the offer. There are no general rules, inscribed on ancient scrolls, about such things, though an individual journal might have its own preferences or rules. But, the person(s) who invited you is(are) almost certain to know of your status. So, assume it is fine. Also, spend some effort to determine the reputation of the journal and the one who invited you. Your advisor can probably help with this. It will take time and effort to do this, of course, so make sure you (and your advisor) are prepared for that. Also be sure you trust this journal... You should be suspicious of invitations from a journal you haven't heard of. I think it is too trusting to assume the person (or AI) that did the inviting knew the status of the person. I get invited to be guest editor for topics far from my areas of expertise. @TerryLoring, on the other hand, you are assuming the worst case. I find it much more likely that whoever sent the invitation does not know of the OP's status. A real guest editor invitation to a student strikes me as unusual, and spam invites are all too common. In my experience with the volume of spam vs. legitimate correspondence, I'd actually say the exact opposite, that it's almost certain that whoever sent the invite has no idea whether the OP is a PhD candidate or a PhD holder. @Buffy Unfortunately, if my inbox is anything to go by, the worst case is also overwhelmingly the most common case here. The main question is whether you know the field well enough to identify reliable peer reviewers who will able to review the papers properly. You will also need to be able to judge from the reviewers comments whether the papers should be accepted and what needs to be done to improve them. It will be difficult to do both of these things without experience. Are you confident that you can do both of these things? If not experience, what is the basis for that belief? Note that in some fields, e.g. climate, there are a lot of "fringe" scientists that repeatedly try and get obviously wrong arguments published in peer reviewed journals. In such cases the editor really needs to be aware of these "fringe" views and make sure that they receive a desk reject, or are reviewed by reviewers who are already familiar with the argument. Unfortunately "fringe" scientists often pick journals in other fields, where the topic could just about be considered within their remit, as they are unlikely to run into a reviewer that has seen the canard before. Here is an example of a very obviously wrong climate paper that got published in a peer reviewed journal on medical physics. Note the links to the comments papers towards the bottom of the page. You would have to be confident that this could not happen in an issue for which you were the editor, as the failure of the review process is ultimately the editor's responsibility. This means you should definitely refuse unless the scope of the journal is very narrow. P.S. "fringe" is used here euphemistically because in responding to "fringe" views it is important not to attach insulting labels in order to make sure we respond rationally and factually.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.409881	2022-05-23T14:56:28	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/185491", "authors": [ "Bryan Krause", "Buffy", "Dan Romik", "Deipatrous", "Dikran Marsupial", "Federico Poloni", "G_B", "Nuclear Hoagie", "Robbie Goodwin", "Terry Loring", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/110722", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/119911", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/123103", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/2827", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/34226", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/40589", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/63475", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70982", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75368", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/958" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
185967	How should I deal with challenging master thesis students as a supervisor? I'm a PhD student in my first year, co-supervising master students with a postdoc, and listed as the first supervisor. This is my first experience supervising a thesis. My previous experiences with students were mainly tutoring or conducting lab experiments with students. The issues: The students are not honest; they have experience with some tools, and it is in their curriculum, but when I asked them about the tools, they stated to me clearly that they don't have experience with it. In another meeting with the co-supervisor, they admitted the opposite; however, minimum experience. I have sent many tasks since the beginning stating clearly why these tasks should be done now because they will need it in the future to do so and so. The tasks were ignored. The student neither thinks actively nor searches for the information, expecting everything to be spoon-fed. I stated many times that this is not how master theses work. I thought maybe the topic was new to them, so I prepared a list of questions, including keywords with the required material to search within and learn. It was not taken seriously. Also, they don't consider our time and that we have other responsibilities and expect an answer within a few minutes. Since time is running out for them, they are playing some game (I don't know the proper term for that) like: You are my mentor, and the time is running; if I didn't help them immediately, they would spend the time doing something wrong, which would be my fault. Whenever I ask a question from the questions list I sent earlier; supposedly they did a literature review, and the answers are entirely wrong. Their excuse is the topic is new, and there is not enough literature, which is a lie. They reached the stage where they complained to me that the server was down (where they should get the data), which is a national server and not my issue. I don't know what to do anymore; I tried positive reinforcement, specific tasks, and specific tasks with deadlines, but all did not work. I don't want to be an "unsupportive supervisor"; I'm afraid I have already lost interest in the topic and am not interested in getting a good master thesis out of it. The questions might be: How should I proceed, and how can I proceed objectively? A good master thesis in my opinion is that the students understand the problem, review the relevant literature, approach the issue, develop a workflow to solve it, try that, and write all that in in their thesis. The students received their topic/title, recommendation regarding literature, the tools that should be used in the thesis at the beginning. After, two or three consecutive meetings, it was clear that they need to be guided a little bit. That is why I or we started guiding them. Have you discussed this with your post-doc and professor? If so, what did they say? Also: who decides whether these students pass or fail? I assume a professor -- but if you are "first supervisor," maybe this is your decision? Also: I don't understand your first bullet. What does "in their colloquium" mean? My read is that they are trying to avoid overstating their level of knowledge, which is minimal. Or? If you were my supervisor, I would kindly ask you to let me be freer. You are supposed to only guide them, not to tell them what do you. Note that, there is a difference between giving them suggestions and giving tasks. "[...] getting a good master thesis out of it.". That is not job. That won't affect your career. That is not your thesis. If you are interested in the subject, work on it yourself or give the project to someone else. @cag51, I fixed the term in the question. They have two subjects in their curriculum where they study these tools thoroughly. I even went and checked the slides and the assigned homeworks. I don't know how they passed. Thanks for clarification. Please also see my other question above. @cag51, yes, I discussed the issue. Actually, the guided supervision was their idea (which I guess fired back on us). Three people decide the final grade. @Our It seems like that is more of an answer than a comment. @ZeitderNordwanderung cag51 is asking whether you've discussed the problems you're having with the students with your supervisor. If so, what did they say? @BryanKrause, and I answered above! That "guided supervision was their idea"? I assume by this you mean the hands on approach you're taking so far... If guided supervision isn't working out, isn't it time to have a new conversation? Please be patient; we're really just trying to understand the situation so that we can offer helpful advice. If I understand correctly, it sounds like you discussed this situation with your professor and they told you to offer additional "handholding." Is that correct? What I'm really trying to understand is: if you tell the students "do X or you or will fail," and they don't do X, will they indeed fail? Or will your professor swoop in and offer some alternative? How many such students? (Suggest the question be edited with that info.) @cag51, I appreciate that! And I would answer your polite questions (not questions in that passive aggressive way). I don't think there is a way for alternative, their delivery deadline is in two months, and according to their study regulations, either they achieve it by that or fail the master. OK, so it sounds like you're supposed to help them, but ultimately they have to submit their project, and a different group of people will decide whether they did enough to pass. In that case, I agree with amon's excellent answer below, nothing further to add. Good luck. I think that there is a lot of context missing here that is important to keep in mind when trying to provide or triage advice: are you in the US or Germany or some other country? Academic norms vary a lot across countries. What is your field? (CS?) Do the students have industry experience? Frankly, this whole setup is very foreign to me. My first year of PhD required no TAing. After that I was more of a "helper" whose "real job" was research. I don't want to impeach your abilities as an adviser. You clearly care. But I can't help but feel that your dept. is taking advantage of that fact. You are trying to be helpful, but there is such a thing as too much handholding. The more helpful you are, the more likely students are to exploit this and to become a help vampire. You do not owe your students any success. You owe them a fair chance at succeeding. But this chance is theirs to take. The thesis is solely their responsibility, especially since the purpose of a masters thesis also is to demonstrate the ability of doing independent academic work. By definition, success or failure of the thesis isn't your fault. Some students will throw their chance away, regardless of how much you help them. Things that might help in the future include clearer boundaries, and focusing your assistance more on methodological aspects. Your student currently expects responses within minutes. Matters are rarely so urgent that they need responses the same day. When supervising a thesis, it might be best to minimize such informal messages except for truly urgent issues, and instead have regular meetings for which the student can prepare questions. Depending on the kind of work, a cadence like one meeting every two weeks might work well. Then, you can defer any small issues that come up: “let's discuss this at our next meeting”. You mentioned that you “sent many tasks”, provided material, and tried to set deadlines. This is fine when working with an intern or research assistant, but not for a student who is supposed to independently write a thesis. Firstly, because you're doing their work for them. Secondly, because it's their thesis and they should use whatever working style they believe works for them. Instead, it might be best to focus your assistance on methodological aspects, so that the student knows how to write a good thesis. For example, many students need an explanation about how to find useful literature, how to structure a thesis, and maybe where to find techniques that weren't covered during lectures. A master thesis is often the longest independent project done by the student, so sharing experience with time management can also help. But mostly, a Socratic approach is useful, where you ask the students about their plans for the thesis. What are their goals until the next meeting? Do they feel they are on schedule, if not how can they adapt their plans? Have they considered the connection with $related_topic? How to they intend to mitigate a certain risk you are concerned about? What challenges are they currently facing, and how do they intend to solve them? You can suggest things, but it will be the student's decision what they do with that suggestion. Added benefit: if you set out a plan and they fail, they will blame you, and perhaps rightly so. If they set out a plan and they fail despite knowing your concerns, that's clearly on them. Since the thesis in question is already close to its end, it will be difficult to switch to clearer boundaries and to more passive support. But if at least two weeks or so are left, not impossible, if you are willing to put your foot down. For example, consider an email along the following lines: It is great that you have these questions, but this is your thesis and working through such challenges is part of it. I don't have the time to discuss your progress right now, but I can offer a meeting $in_4_business_days. Please continue work on your thesis in the meanwhile, and we can discuss remaining issues then. Is this impolite? Maybe, but so is bombarding you with endless requests for help. What I find rather odd in all of this is that it's the first thesis you supervise, and already as the main supervisor. Supervision is a skill that can be learnt, but ideally by shadowing another supervisor for one or two theses. I'm still in that “apprenticeship” phase. So I think it's completely unsurprising that you're running into these kinds of problems, and I also ran into similar problems with the first students that I mentored. The good news for you is that you can learn from this experience, and can be a much better supervisor for the next student. The learning experience goes both ways. I appreciate your answer! And I will keep your advices always in my mind :-)	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.410463	2022-06-09T17:08:27	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/185967", "authors": [ "Bryan Krause", "Daniel R. Collins", "Jupiter", "Our", "cag51", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/157408", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/23737", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43544", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/51585", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/63475", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79875", "webelo" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
190093	What should I do with discarded paragraphs? I'm writing a difficult paper for my PhD. My first draft is rambling and long, so I'm cutting it down for the next round of edits. However, I find it difficult to discard old writing. Some of the paragraphs I'm discarding may still be valuable for my future PhD, so I put them in 'discard' documents which I may use for my final dissertation document, or try to fit them into drafts for future papers. What is your strategy for discarding old writing? What's the most efficient way to utilise discards, so you don't have to rewrite the same paragraph in future? Is it difficult to discard because of the effort you put in, or because it contains information/ideas that is left out of the final version that you might want in the future? A bit of both I think! We usually have a separate document where we put the discarded paragraphs - this way you still have them when writing something else. Science: you will have to rewrite again and again and again the same thing. And everytime you will not be able to reuse your previous text because of some small changes in the context. Be prepared. Bonus point: be prepared also for the consequences ... what you write again and again as a PhD will be read as "innovative", as an assistant professor will be read as "state of the art", as full professor will be read "oh gosh, not that old pile of crap again" ;D Acknowledge that less than half what you write will get to print, either discarded by you or not accepted. (This answer is based on my experience with mathematical writing. I assume that it should apply to other kinds of scientific writing too, but your mileage may vary.) I suspect that you may be fundamentally misunderstanding the purpose of the writing that you are having a hard time "discarding". It seems like your logic is that you spent a lot of effort writing a certain paragraph, but since the paragraph will not appear in the final version of your manuscript, this effort was wasted. So that the effort is not wasted entirely, you would like to keep your writing in the drawer so that you can pull it out later at an opportune moment. This is of course pure speculation on my part, but I cannot imagine why else you would "find it difficult to discard old writing". The flaw in this logic is the idea that the effort it took to write the paragraph will go to waste unless you use it somewhere. This is a misunderstanding. The effort was not wasted, since the paragraph has already served its purpose, which was to serve as a stepping stone on the path towards the final manuscript. Its purpose is not to be something for you to hold on to until you find a proper place for it. The paragraph had its place in the process of exploring and stumbling towards the final manuscript, but after it has served that purpose it's time to let go of it. Imagining that it is going to be revived for some other purpose is almost always wishful thinking. Of course, from time to time you may find yourself writing an outstandingly well-polished couple of paragraphs which for some reason or another did not quite fit into the final manuscript, or paragraphs where you have a convincing, well-articulated reason to believe that they might be useful later, rather than a generalized feeling of what if. These it makes sense to keep around. But your average run-of-the-mill paragraphs that simply didn't make it through the editing process? Kill them and don't carry their corpses around. (This does not mean that you should never back up previous versions of your work, but rather that you should not primarily do so with a view to resurrecting unused paragraphs in some future work.) Your stated reason for keeping these paragraphs in a state of suspended animation is "so you don't have to rewrite the same paragraph in future". Again, I suspect that there is some fundamental misunderstanding here, because it's not like the act of writing a paragraph is a major undertaking. The amount of effort you are going to save by not starting from zero is going to be infinitesimal, and is more than made up for by the fact that writing the paragraph anew will almost certainly result in a better one. What is a major undertaking is polishing a paragraph over and over again (and moving it to and fro) until it fits perfectly into its surroundings. But this process is not something you can substantially speed up by cutting and pasting bits and pieces from your previous work. Whether you start from zero or not is almost irrelevant, as long as your focus is on producing good writing rather than spending a minimum amount of effort on the writing process. I can sympathize with the fact that at the beginning of your scientific career it make take you some time and effort to write a coherent paragraph, so my comment that the amount of time saved is going to be infinitesimal might not ring true to you. If so, then that's all the more reason for you to practice the bread and butter of scientific writing – which is editing, rewriting, and experimenting with different ways of expressing the same idea, rather than clinging to existing strings of words and sentences – until it does ring true. +1 A big part of writing is experimenting with different ways to think about the work, as well as different ways of organizing and presenting it. When constructing a building you often need to construct scaffolding to support parts of the building during construction. Metaphorically, you often need to build intellectual scaffolding to arrive at the profound ideas that underlie the work. Once you arrive there, the path you took to get there is often messy and obscures the final result. Your writing is only useful if people can understand it, so you discard the mess in service of clarity. This idea is what I needed to hear: "the paragraph has already served its purpose, which was to serve as a stepping stone on the path towards the final manuscript". Thank you! I used to hate discarding paragraphs, which I'd spent lots of effort writing. And indeed, they can be useful and save time. On the other hand, hoarded paragraphs could be distracting and delay the inevitable rewrites. My solution has been to use version control, such as GitHub. It's free and easy with LaTeX, and there must be something for other document types. There is a learning curve, but lots of advantages: easy backup and version management, clean directories, easy re-use of text (you can highlight differences between versions), collaboration with co-authors, and no regrets for discarded text. Added Clarification (fully re-using the comment by @preferred_anon): Just to clear up any confusion about terminology: GitHub is not a version control system, it is a third party host for files that are version-controlled by the software git. For offline work, no more is needed than just git - no server, local or otherwise. "Private" github repositories are not private from GitHub, but for truly private hosting over the internet, you are forced to do it yourself. Server software like Gitlab or Savannah provide this, but both require some know-how. Similarly, Overleaf is a good service that has version control. I find while I almost never use paragraphs once they were discarded, and writing is faster without them serving as a distraction, I am much more comfortable knowing we can recollect them if we need - particular if an editor wants a section chopped, then another wants it back. I’d add that sometimes a paragraph gets discarded to meet a page limit on a conference paper. Or an experiment is reduced to a couple of sentences and a couple of numbers. Having the original paragraphs as commented-out LaTeX text makes it easier to put them back in for a “director's cut” in your thesis. For LibreOffice, save in the .fodt file format. It's equivalent to odt, except it's a single XML file instead of multiple zipped XML files (and can therefore be version-controlled more easily). If you want a LaTeX-based WYSIWYG editor, I'd recommend LyX; its format isn't quite TeX, but it's also version-control-compatible. @DanielHatton Good point! Also possible to have a GitHub account with private repositories. It's something like $3 per month, or even free with one or two repos (not 100% sure). There's a famous saying about version control that (one of) its main purpose(s) is to allow deleting without fear. I use Rmarkdown/knitr a lot and that also works well with version control. Just to clear up any confusion about terminology: GitHub is not a version control system, it is a third party host for files that are version-controlled by the software git. For offline work, no more is needed than just git - no server, local or otherwise. "Private" github repositories are not private from GitHub, but for truly private hosting over the internet, you are forced to do it yourself. Server software like Gitlab or Savannah provide this, but both require some know-how. @preferred_anon Necessary clarification added. Sorry, had to re-use your comment. @schrödingcöder Don't apologise, I'm delighted you wanted to include it! In LaTeX, I often just comment something out and leave it in the document. When I'm revising later if I decide that it doesn't need to be there, I delete it. Sometimes I end up pulling parts of that discarded paragraph back in and I find it easier to have it sitting there than have to dig through version history. If I have discarded something earlier, this was for a reason. If it was rambling then, it is still rambling now. Because of that, I keep these drafts around to kickstart writing and to help overcome the writer's block so to not stare at the blank page, but not much else. The rest is generally easier to rewrite. There are cases where the writing itself is reasonably good, but the decision is made to make the scope more narrow for a given paper. If that is the case, strike while the iron is hot: build up on this work lest it becomes outdated. As Hemingway famously said, "The only kind of writing is rewriting". You will be discarding a lot of old drafts, because part of what you are producing in the process of writing is knowledge and deeper understanding of the topic, not words on the paper that make it into the final version. (+1) Good advice! I think Hemingway also said “write drunk, edit sober”. ;-) My take is a little different than some of the others'. Your old rambling paragraphs will distract you and weigh you down, pulling you back into your previous thinking and approaches. You need to improve your writing skills, so I strongly recommend you burn everything (or at least put it all away where you can't easily get at it) and just keep starting over. You need to find your writing voice, and that takes time and a lot of attempts. It's really hard to find a better way to write if you keep focusing on your old and admittedly not good attempts. Toss it all out. Like the cartoon writers, each time you change your mind, pull the paper out of the typewriter, crumble it up and toss it in the garbage. Only this way will you make a fundamental improvement in your writing skills. You will see that it gets easier and easier. "However, I find it difficult to discard old writing." I would certainly say the same of myself. I agree with your sentiment that this stuff has to be axed from your current draft and yet, hoarder that I am, I feel your pain in not wanting to throw it away. (You might not be a hoarder like me, but that is definitely what instigates me to think in this way.) Here is what I have found works great for me: I have a massive collection of electronic notes where I hoard all these snippets. (I use Microsoft OneNote, but you could use any note-taking system that works for you.) I save them in notes in a section that I call "Research ideas". Here is the power of this simple strategy for me: Because I know that I am not throwing anything away, I can be very aggressive in cutting out these paragraphs from my current working document. There is little pain of parting because I know (or think) that it's just a goodbye; I can change my mind and bring it back whenever I want. So, I have no excuse to cut things out aggressively. That meets the very real need of aggressive rewriting if you want to move forward. For me, this is probably the single most powerful feature of this simple system. Because everything is in an electronic notes system, storage space is virtually unlimited. So, I can hoard as much as I want. (That satisfies my hoarding urge with little cost.) Because it is an electronic note-taking system, I can rapidly search for and recover anything that I really need. So, unlike a physical hoarding system, there is very little downside to the clutter here. As I think more about these tangental ideas, the notes give me a place to develop and flesh out details. Some ideas are recorded once and then never again revisited; others I find myself coming back to again and again, sometimes over several years. Over the ten-plus years that I've been saving snippets like this, I would estimate that probably no more than 5% of things that I put aside and save actually make it into new, active work. I evaluate this either as that the 5% justifies my hoarding reflex, or that the system frees me of 95% of deadweight that I could quickly offload from other projects. Either way, this system works for me. So if you do find you want to use that paragraph again, it's going to be tough to find it again in a "discard" document. You will be most likely to be able to locate it again in the location you originally wrote it, because that's where you remember creating it. Much better if it can stay there. Also, sometimes I think I can cut a paragraph, then my supervisor comes back with the comment "I really think you need more background on X", so it has to go back in. For both these reasons, you don't really want to move the paragraph. If you are using LaTeX, the solution is easy, just comment it out in place. If your LaTeX document is getting too large, it might be time to restructure each chapter into a separate file and pull them all together with \include. If you are working in some other format, then the way to hide the text will have to depend on the format. Lots of formats allow some form of annotation or comment that can be hidden. But in the end my advice is still the same, keep it in it's original document, just find a way to hide it in the final output. In LaTeX, I sometimes discard-but-keep text by moving it down below \end{document}. @AndreasBlass, fine for one file documents, but once you split the document over multiple files, it would mean moving text between files. In LaTeX you can: (a) "comment out" unwanted material using \iffalse or (b) [as Andreas mentioned] move unwanted material below the \end{document} . In both cases, that material will not appear in the final manuscript, but it remains in the source file where it can be recovered, if desired. For those wanting to clean up such comments before submission, see Utility to Strip Comments from LaTeX Source As with everything you do with a computer, use version control. There's little reason to throw out anything digital in the 21st century, save security concerns. This is reasonable for e.g. writing, but since you use the words "everything" and "anything", file size concerns may also apply. For example, if you generate terabytes of raw simulation data a month some deletion may be required. @Anyon: if you version control the code (incl. settings) that generate those terabytes, the terabytes are intermediate results which usually do not need to be put under version control. @cbeleitesunhappywithSX -- I suppose the point is a bit more valid if it's data and not simulation data -- but a 10TB drive is under $200 today. If I were in the data business, generated TB's per week, $2.5k/year in drives (not counting things to put those drives in) or so to maintain local storage without deletion is not an unreasonable cost of doing business. @ScottSeidman: I do measurements that generate in the order of GB/min raw data. While those so far have been for an institute with a different backup strategy (and their git server does not offer git-lfs), for another institute I've put GB of raw data under git lfs storage. Since raw data is anyways not supposed to change, and the most important metadata change (typos in file name) work well with git lfs, that is also fine. I'd recommend to consider a "release" snapshot of the important intermediate files when submitting the manuscript, similar to a copy of a binary release of solftware. @cbeleitesunhappywithSX some of us have data generated by physical processes; that can be big too. Storing the data collection code isn't a panacea and @ Scott project budgets can easily be too tight for that, especially given the stupid markups universities' preferred/sole supplier agreements lead to for non-standard IT @ChrisH: I'm one of those some :-) ... And I'm very much aware of a) the seriously limitated IT infrastructure funding in many scientific projects and b) discussions on whether we really need to or even can store a copy of the raw data we acquire, or whether it is necessary to move on to store only the much reduced data volume after some initial aggregation. (After all, for many instruments, we never get access to the very raw signals, but only to suitably processed/calibrated output data which we define as our raw data)... but we're getting off-topic wrt the question of manucript text Every time you remove sections from a document, simply save it under a different name. In the morning you open up Abacus.doc. You spend the morning chopping bad sections out. In the afternoon you save Abacus(i).doc. The next morning you open Abacus(i).doc and continue writing as normal. Take this opportunity to backup the most recent version externally. You end up with many numbered versions of the same document. But this is no problem. The old versions are still there in case you ever need them. The only difficulty is if you remember something you removed but want to put back, you need to crawl through all the earlier versions to find it. If you start working in the morning and don't save until the afternoon to a different file, won't the autosave feature (that is standard nowadays almost everywhere) overwrite the original file you opened? Let them go. Those paragraphs were not living in a vacuum, but they were heavily intertwined with the surrounding sentences and paragraphs and documents. They costed you some effort, they may contain some valuable informations, both things are true, but: it costs you less effort to rewrite them from "scratch" (see next point) rather than being burdened by carrying them with you ... don't let you drown in the burden of sunken costs; the valuable informations hidden in them is there because youput that worthwhile chunk of information into them: either you can reproduce that information, or it is lost forever if you are not being able to produce it again, having that information already written will be of no help, if you cannot reproduce the "substance" underlying that information. In short: either you can prepare a short essay, a commentary, a blog post, a tweet or some analogous microblogging post with those paragraphs, or they are more of a burden than of a potential help in the future. Disclaimer: obviously there is a small exception: if you by any chance will become a Nobel prize in literature, those discarded paragraphs will have immense value ... afer your death. If you really worry about leaving something to your offsprings, think about how unfair is for some people to be loaded with cash and responsibility with no merit on their own ;D	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.411422	2022-10-29T09:52:43	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/190093", "authors": [ "Ander Biguri", "Andreas Blass", "Anyon", "Chris H", "Clumsy cat", "Cris Luengo", "EarlGrey", "Ed V", "GEdgar", "Kimball", "Michael Mior", "Pam", "Piethon", "RegressForward", "Scott Seidman", "WaterMolecule", "aqua", "cbeleites", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/109931", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/110096", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/123536", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/128758", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/128924", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/139393", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14506", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/152294", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/16023", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17254", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19607", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20457", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/28605", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4484", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/61971", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70455", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/725", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/84223", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8494", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/85366", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/91884", "preferred_anon", "schrödingcöder", "wizzwizz4" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
176181	Are first-generation college students considered an "underrepresented group" in academia? Neither of my parents went to college. Is this something that can be brought up in the context of university diversity hiring and outreach? This is for academic jobs - postdoc, tenure-track, etc. What's your country? In many countries, they use college entrance exam to determine who can go to college. For example, about 10 million students take college entrance exam trying to get into college in China every year. So, college education has nothing to do with diversity and outreach in China. I expect this would be considered for admission to undergraduate programs. But not for postdoc, tenure-track, etc. I am always a little surprised at the reported number of 'first generation' college students at the California's UC system. It always seems improbably high to me. great question. my 1st thought is like no in letter but yes in spirit. my 2nd thought is given that you're 1st gen...perhaps there's another underrepresented group that you belong to? i just came up a theorem in academic applications: 1st gen is necessarily in some underrepresented group (at least for maybe 1950s onwards) ! united-states-based answer. Yes, you can mention it, and in theory it can help as it is something that some institutions’ policies, and some individual faculty members, care about. Some caveats to keep in mind: The word “outreach” as used in US academia has no connection to this issue. It would probably matter more in the context of undergraduate/graduate admissions than for academic jobs. However, it might still matter a bit for academic jobs. How you bring this up matters: you can mention it in a “good way” that might slightly help your application, but if you’re not thoughtful about what you write you can also mention it in a “bad way” that will have no effect, or even slightly hurt your application, by showing you to be a person who misunderstands why universities care about this issue and/or who thinks that their first generation college student status makes them entitled to preferential treatment in hiring. Related to but separately from the above, you can bring this up in an “honest way” or a “dishonest way”. Here, by “honest way” I mean bringing this up out of a genuine belief that this information is relevant to the question of whether you deserve to be hired over someone who has similar qualifications to you but has parents who went to college. And “dishonest way” is bringing this up without having that belief, but just knowing that this might help your chances. (The words honest/dishonest are just an approximation; some people might disagree that there’s anything dishonest about the second approach. But just to give an example, if you grew up in a wealthy household with privileged access to many resources that helped you succeed academically, but your parents just happened to have never gone to college, and you mention that latter fact but not the former, I would consider that dishonest and a form of gaming the system. Which is not to say that it wouldn’t work, just that it’s ethically questionable.) Obviously, it would be best if you bring up the issue in an honest, good way. But you might do it in a dishonest, good way, or in an honest, bad way, or in a dishonest, bad way. I wouldn’t advise you to do it in a bad way, and I wouldn’t advise you to do it in a dishonest way. But avoiding those pitfalls, the answer to your question is “yes, you can mention it”. Hope this helps, and good luck with your job search! (+1) "I wouldn’t advise you to do it in a bad way...". Ha ha, such helpful advice. I think I will steal this line as generic advice to students on all matters. Can you elaborate on point 3? You describe a "good way" and "bad way," but give no hint as to how to produce (or avoid) either of those effects. @DrakeP I’m happy to give general advice that helps OP make sense of some of the bewildering things universities are asking for in job applications these days. But coaching them what to write to achieve specific effects like you are asking about could seriously undermine what universities are trying to achieve with their hiring process — they want to know what job applicants think, not what they’ve been advised to write by someone else. So I don’t feel comfortable offering advice at that level of specificity, sorry. @DanRomik alright, I can understand that perspective. Thanks for the consideration 1+ for clearly stating US-based. Here is one "honest way": you might have been a McNair scholar or at least be interested contributing to the McNair program at that university. (I was a McNair scholar for 1st gen reasons, and at least at that time and place 90% of the McNair scholars were black.) Yes, colleges do track and care about encouraging first generation college students. An undergraduate application might even have a place to indicate status as a first gen. It's unlikely you'd ever see that on an application for a faculty or post-doc position however. But you might still work a mention into one of the essays you may be required to submit, perhaps to explain your passion for diversity, that you bring the "I've been there" lived experience of understanding of the challenges first gen and minority students face. I'm not sure who you're thinking of with "understanding of the challenges first gen and minority students face" reference at the end though? Perhaps just redundantly referring to first gen as a minority status? Because being a first-gen student doesn't really help you understand e.g. the experiences of LGBT students or those of people of color, and it'd be rather naive to suggest otherwise IMO. @aquirdturtle "being a first-gen student doesn't really help you understand e.g. the experiences of LGBT students or those of people of color, and it'd be rather naive to suggest otherwise" - further still, people in those groups may take offence at one's suggestion that it would help, as it minimises their experiences (which may include abuse, oppression and persecution) by suggesting that a lack of education would allow you to relate. Such groups are usually implied when the term "diversity" is used, so I would also be careful about my usage of that term in any application. @NotThatGuy I'm LGBT and I would not be offended. I would expect that someone who felt different than other students when they were an UG would have some compassion and understanding of what it feels like to be different. YMMV. @NotThatGuy Being a first-generation student is different from being a "minority student," but, well, the experiences of being an African-American student, an African international student, a Vietnamese-American student, an LGB student, a trans student are all pretty different from each other too. In my application materials, I talked about my experiences as a trans student/academic and tried to relate them to compassion for and some understanding of students with challenges from other groups. I agree with Nicole that a first-gen student writing something on those lines feels very appropriate. @Danica Some people may appreciate the similarities between first-generation and typical minority groups for mentioning it to count in one's favour, while others could be offended due to the differences. One could probably express a similar sentiment while avoiding the "diversity" and "minority" terms specifically (or at least being very careful about how one uses those terms), to get the potential benefit of the former without the downside of the latter. @NotThatGuy Is you argument that LGBT and minorities might be offended based on personal experience as an LBGT or minority or is it just speculation? There's a difference. @NicoleHamilton I am a robot and all my arguments about humans are based on observation and analysis. ("based on personal experience as an LBGT or minority" or "just speculation" is a false dichotomy.) @NotThatGuy Okay, so have you observed that LGBT or minority students are offended if a first gen student remarks that they feel their experience helps explain their passion for diversity and understanding of the challenges first gen and minority students face? I have not. @NicoleHamilton "based on observation and analysis", not just "based on observation". If you assert that only experiences that exactly match the one in question matter and any reasoning based on similar and related situations is "just speculation", that would raise some rather concerning questions about the idea of learning and pattern recognition in general, as well as the entire field of psychology. You're again implying a false dichotomy: either I have observed this exact situation, or I'm incapable of having a reasonable justification for how someone would react in such a situation. @NotThatGuy Okay, so you haven't observed anything that supports your claims or your "analysis" and you have nothing else to offer as "reasonable justification" except a word salad. Good to know. @NicoleHamilton So you expect me to summarise here the decades worth of life experience that led me to this belief? Firstly, that seems quite unreasonable to expect anyone to be able to do to any significant degree. Secondly, that is asking a stranger for what they might consider to be quite private details about themselves and their life. Thirdly, my only claim relates to what "some people" might do, which doesn't seem like it should require a high, if any, burden of proof. Lastly, you've been dismissive of me in practically every reply, so why in the world do you think I'd open up to you? @NicoleHamilton Had you said, based on your experiences, that people most likely wouldn't take offence, I wouldn't have had any objection. This is pretty much what you did initially, which I didn't object to. But then you felt the need to take it one step further and try to seemingly dismiss my experience completely and assert that I don't have any justification whatsoever to say that even one single person would take offence, which seems like quite an extraordinary claim from your side, that would require extraordinary evidence, not to mention the added burden to dismiss someone's experience. Let us continue this discussion in chat. I taught for many years at a school where many students were the first in their families to attend college. We were proud of that record. This fact about your life will be a positive factor in your application, since it suggests motivation that might not be there in an application from a student from a family where college was just "expected". Some schools like mine value it very highly. That said, I doubt that there is any formal characterization of your status as "diversity" or "outreach". I think that the earlier answers were focused more on undergraduate education, where there can be some effect in the US. However, for post PhD position, post docs and regular academic jobs, I doubt that anyone will hire you because you went farther in school than your parents did. The focus will be on you and what you can offer. It will depend on predictions that you will fit a position and the recommendations of others who can support those predictions. That said, there are people who went to the finest schools because their grandparents and such did and those people get hired, but a lot of that isn't for the quality of the applicant. A lot of that turns out to be misplaced faith. But, for the great bulk of people, at that age and level of education, it is on you, both your accomplishments and your perceived potential. Other aspects of diversity might count for something in these days but not first-generation alone. I was one of the first generation folks. My mother had a 2 year nursing degree and I had some uncles with bachelors degrees. I had the support of teachers to get into college and suspect that the family history paid no part. It did help me get scholarships, though. But everything post BA was entirely on me and the recognized (by professors) fact that I knew some things, had some insight, and worked hard. FWIW, I became an academic and my uncles became rich. There are a few colleges, perhaps not especially prestigious, that specialize in first generation students. For jobs at those places you might get an edge for a faculty position if it is perceived that you are more likely to understand the needs of the students. I agree that first gen status is likely to be far more relevant for an UG applicant. For a faculty position, I think it might be helpful if it's connected to the applicant's passion for diversity and the "I've been there" experience they bring. The literal fact of being first-generation college grad is not quite what "diversity and outreach" can be about, at the level of faculty positions in the U.S., I think. Namely, I would be interested in the awareness of faculty candidates about the difficulties first-gen students face, as well as the difficulties other "traditionally under-represented" demographics face. E.g., college is easier if your parents can tell you what it's like, and have the money to allow you to not worry about money too much while you're in school. Faculty in roles of appraisal of undergrad applicants and grad-program applicants should (in my opinion) be aware that some people have had more opportunities and advantages in early demonstration of talent and interest. That is, peoples' early-life accomplishments certainly occur in the context of their family and social environment. Having been through difficulties oneself can lead to better understanding of those difficulties... but, not necessarily. In particular, at the faculty hiring level, in very legitimate regards it's not literal membership in traditionally under-represented groups, but awareness and some understanding that no, "it's not a level playing field". Would doing something to support first-generation students count? @cgb5436, I'd certainly think so!	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16542	If you have no choice, is it acceptable to translate a recommendation letter for yourself? Inspired by the question Is it acceptable to write a reference letter for yourself? I have a related but somewhat different question: Given no choice, is it acceptable to write a recommendation letter for self? This question is based on real cases. In non-English speaking countries, many professors don't know how to write good recommendation letters in English. The professor may know how to write papers in English in his field. But, when writing recommendation letters, he has limited vocabulary to write about his students. In other words, his English is not proficient. To make the matter worse, some professors may only be able to write simple English sentences. The professor may tell the student the contents of the letter in his native language and ask the student to translate it into English and then signs it. The student may want somebody else to write the letter because he does not want the professor to do this unethical thing. But, the professor just happens to be his advisor (undergraduate or master). The student may want to suggest that his professor ask the professor's colleagues for help to write the letter. The professor may say no. Therefore, the student writes the recommendation letter for himself by translating the professor's draft in their native language into English. Is it acceptable? If not, what should the student do? I would hope the Professor/Department would hire a professional translator. @StrongBad Actually, I personally encountered this kind of problem. I have friends in Academia. They come to me for help to correct the grammar errors in the recommendation letters for their students. I like this question. While I fully agree with the sentiments expressed in the linked question, I feel that are simply not practical outside the US. In Europe, where there seems to be less of a culture of reference letter writing, one must either choose between having no letter or self-writing it. In fact, I have talked to approximately 10 faculty from different universities about this topic, and 100% of them found it completely normal that the applicant writes the letter and the faculty simply signs it. @StrongBad That seems very unlikely. In Europe, most faculty I talked to can hardly be bothered with the process of letter writing in general. I hardly see them contact outside assistance in this matter. I would add to this question: given the strong negative sentiments that are associated with self-written support letters, what concretely is an applicant to do that comes from a culture where asking a faculty to write a support letter themself is indeed considered an unusual request (which is going to be denied)? In my case my professors knew enough English, but they had almost zero experience with the concept of recommendation letters. It was a very difficult situation for me. @xLeitix: In my answer to the linked question, I make the following point: among other things, a recommendation letter written by a student is likely to be a bad(ly written) letter. In practice, if I read such a letter I am likely simply to register that it is not helping the student's case; I am not going to try to track down who wrote it. @StrongBad: Aside from being considered an unimportant favor for single students rather than an "official task" of departments in European academia, and thus ranging in a very low priority compared to many other tasks, as described by other comments, I'd like to add that hiring someone to do/participate in that work seems even more unlikely to me. It is not unusual for university departments in Europe to have problems getting any "support" staff not directly involved in the research process (with the result that sometimes, it is up to the researchers to use a part of their working time ... ... for maintaining the department's computer systems, updating the website and doing other PR things, or doing other merely administrative tasks. Getting paid positions for conducting "voluntary favors" such as writing recommendation letters sounds rather unrealistic in that situation. @O.R. Mapper: maybe not every department can afford a professional translator. But, at the university level, there is an English department, whose role is probably not restricted to teaching students, but may also provide different services: English classes for faculty (including letter of recommendation writing related courses) or translation service... Mine as such a service (for a reasonnable price compared to professional translators outside of the university). @Taladris: My university (for approximate dimensions, with an academic staff of somewhat more than 3000 people; in a non-English-speaking European place) does not provide a translation service. All researchers employed at the university are supposed to be good enough at English to be able to read and write scientific papers on their own (and there are indeed courses for faculty for that kind of text). As letters of recommendation are very unusual here (when I once needed some for a foreign institution, I had to write 3 out of 4 myself), no specific courses for that kind of text are offered. In non-English speaking countries, many professors don't know how to write good recommendation letters in English. - supporting evidence? @LeonMeier There are plenty of examples of such rec letters online. One of my professors asked me to write one for him. @scaaahu There are plenty of examples of such rec letters online. - Supporting evidence? Thanks for asking this question. In light of recent strong comments I have made on closely related issues elsewhere, let me say that I think that getting a letter translated from one language to another is an absolutely kosher academic practice. The classy thing to do would be to also include the original (e.g. how do you know that the readers will not speak that language?) and also indicate who the translator was. However, the translator should not be the student. That is a problem because: (i) It is an obvious conflict of interest. (ii) Recommendation letters are often meant to be confidential, and this violates confidentiality. If you absolutely cannot get anyone other than the student to translate the letter then you should clearly indicate "translated by the student" and expect to have your honesty applauded and the letter largely dismissed. I must say that my heart opens up for a student who is living in a context where there is no qualified third party to translate a letter into English. I have been to academic departments in several non-anglophone countries and never encountered such a situation...but of course I have not been everywhere, nor to a random sampling, nor to any academic department in a "third world" country. That's a tough situation. Translating the letter yourself does not seem like the best answer. Let me also say the following: if you are a non-anglophone student whose English skills are far superior to those of the faculty at your university [and assuming that you are applying to anglophone graduate programs, of course!], then you might try to cultivate relationships with anglophone professors elsewhere in the world. Twenty years ago that would have been preposterous advice, but due to the proliferation of mathematical interaction via the internet, it seems very viable today. For instance there is a small but positive number of students with whom I have had sufficiently substantial interaction on MathOverflow and (more often) math.SE so that I would be glad to write them a strong recommendation letter. If you are a math student, you can always try writing to any professor and having mathematical interactions with them. They are not obligated to respond (I certainly do not always respond...), but they often do (I often do...) especially if you show them something truly promising. [At some point in the previous paragraph I forgot that I was supposed to be writing for a general academic audience rather than an academic mathematical audience. But since I am not sure how far my advice extends outside of mathematics, I will leave the m-word in.] Among US students applying to US graduate programs, it is increasingly frequent for at least one of three recommendation letters to come from the director of a summer undergraduate research experience (REU) than a faculty member at the university. Such letters are not necessarily the most penetrating -- they read very similarly, perhaps because of the implicit motivation to paint one's summer research experience in a positive light -- but they often get the job done, i.e., they lead to admissions. Let me also say that a letter of recommendation for graduate admission is not always the most important part of the application. If I get an application from a university that I have not heard of, and letters from faculty that I have not heard of and whose reputations I do not know, I can only take the letters so seriously no matter what they say. (And it is quite true that not everyone knows how to write a good "American-style recommendation letter". This does not necessarily get counted against the student; it just doesn't get counted for them.) If you are coming from an "obscure program" then your goal is to convince the readers of the applications that your training is equal to (or superior than!) the training that students in more familiar programs get. So it can be helpful to include very specific information about coursework: e.g. not just the title of the course and the course grade but the textbooks used. If you wrote a paper which does not make any research contribution but shows a solid understanding of graduate-level material, by all means include that as part of the application. Also be sure to take all the applicable standardized tests and do your best on them (and don't cheat on them!!). I'd like to suggest instead of asking if you could self write the letter, send your advisor an email that says something like this. "Thank you so much for agreeing to write this letter for me. We have done a lot of great work together over a long period of time and I'd like to highlight some things that you may wish to talk about in your letter (of course feel free to choose not to use any of these examples if you so desire): Example 1 Example 2 ... This will allow your letter writer to at least have some phrases he/she could say in relatively good English, but you aren't actually writing the letter. The advisor will likely edit them and add more phrases, but at least it is a good starting point. This way, no confidentiality is breached because the advisor can still ignore all of your examples and you have no idea whether he/she chose to do so or not. I also like Pete Clark's idea of sending in an untranslated letter if it is in a language that can be easily translated in most English speaking institutions. Also make sure the examples are not something that could be read from your CV. They should be like hey remember when I came up with this idea you really liked in our meeting or remember when I advised that undergrad of yours ... listing some of the things you did with the undergrad. Basically they should be more related to your personal interactions with your advisor. No. It is a breach of confidentiality. If the recipient of the letter is not informed that the student translated it, then that is (at the least) unethical. If the recipient of the letter is informed that the student translated it, then I see no immediate breach of ethics. But it's no longer a confidential opinion, may have been subtly altered by the student, and likely won't carry much weight as a result. In either case, how can the recipient be sure that the student's translation is true and unbiased? The proper way forward, as I see it, would be to get the professor to write the letter himself and then get the letter professionally translated. Enclose copies of both the original letter and the translation, declaring that the letter has been translated into English (by either a professional translator or another professor). Or just send the letter in its original language. If this is a field where serious scholarship is done in Flemish, some of the letter recipients will read Flemish. And if this is not a field where serious research is published in Flemish, then a letter in Flemish correctly identifies the author as not a serious scholar. I don't disagree with you. The last part of your answer is hard to do. Professional translator is expensive. Ten letters could cost the professor's one month salary. Other professors are also busy with writing letters. Do you have better ideas? @scaaahu Besides what I said and what JeffE said, I cannot think of any other options. It's very unlikely there would not be a friend or colleague you can hand the letter to for translation (after removal of identifying things such as names). What if the letter contains some negative opinions? The honesty and confidentiality of reference letters is sacrosanct. a friend or colleague you can hand the letter to for translation is possible but only to a certain degree. I got requests from friends to do such tasks until I got tired of it. Colleagues is probably a different issue. Sometimes colleagues are reluctant to do it for various reasons. Thanks for your suggestion. It carries weight. Let me just chime in to say that, depending upon what the language is, just sending along an untranslated recommendation letter may be a reasonable option. American scholars are still scholars, and a good scholar participates in a context larger than that of the US or of anglophone writing. If one is applying to a program in mathematics in the US, I think it is at least likely that some faculty member in the program will be fluent in any of: French, Spanish, German, Russian, Chinese. @Moriarty I'm curious if you would find the answer I provided below as also ethically questionable. It certainly is less objectionable than writing the letter yourself but I could see others thinking its a bit inappropriate as well. @MHH I think that's OK. Send the original and a translated version, both electronic. Then the recipient can copy-past the content of the original letter into Google Translate and get something meaningful out to confirm the content of the translated letter. Slightly dodgier: write the recommendation letter yourself, in English, then translate that into your native language, have the professor read/sign that and the English version, and send both copies. Dodgier because you could be writing one thing in one language and a nicer version of the other, but I'll bet your recommender reads more English than they write.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.414212	2014-02-04T12:38:18	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/16542", "authors": [ "Ana", "Jason Marse", "JeffE", "Leon Meier", "MMa", "Moriarty", "Nixt", "Nobody", "O. R. Mapper", "Pete L. 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72716	Community College Math Prof. Prospect Where can I find reliable statistics/info on the outlook of tenure math teaching jobs at the community college level? Teaching is my biggest reward, I love math, and I refuse to enter industry (but I also don't think I will do a postdoc). I'm seriously considering entering this profession after the PhD (I'm currently a 3rd year math Phd student), but I am not sure what to expect. I.e., I am not sure how much pressure there will be for me to be forced to accept adjunct roles with no hope of tenure or security of employment. I was told that my old community college, which has 10,000 students, hasn't hired a tenure track math professor since 2009, and I am not sure how common this trend is. I am willing to move. For general issues involving teaching in community colleges (in the U.S.A.), The Chronicle of Higher Education has a lot of useful articles.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.415371	2016-07-12T22:51:36	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/72716", "authors": [ "Dave L Renfro", "Falcon's Video Vault", "Mahsa Mahdavirad", "MathWizard", "Wilson Muir", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/204866", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/204867", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/204868", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/204899", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49593" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
11094	Is it possible to publish a research paper as an independent undergraduate author? I am interested in a new fast moving field in which none of the professors at my university have an interest. I have even started to work on some areas that show promise in the current scenario. As I am working independently, and this will be my first paper, do I have a reasonable chance of getting it published (assuming it turns out well)? What mistakes should I absolutely avoid while working on this paper? (to maximize chances of publishing later on) I published part of my senior thesis before I got started on my postgraduate studies. Yes, it is even possible to publish in a first rate journal, as long as the result is "good enough". Why are there close votes on this question? This is clearly not an undergraduate question; it's an academic research question from an undergraduate student. Please don't abuse the close vote system. Your question contains three questions. Is it possible? yes. Do you have a reasonable chance? Probably less than any other researcher because you lack the training but not zero. What mistakes to avoid? Well, that is what research education partly is about. Writing a paper involves many aspects, providing the proper background, explaining the research, putting the research in perspective and reaching proper conclusions. There are many mistakes that can be made: you do not show you know the field, you do not describe the methods/theory/experiments well enough, your discussion does not hold and your conclusions are not well founded. All of this can come from poor understanding or from not writing well. So as long as you can tick the boxes from the subject specific to the methodological including writing skills then you would stand as reasonable a chance as any. In the end there is likely only one way to find out, try. You state that you work independently and that is all fine. But, in science we all benefit from having others read and comment on our work to improve it so your chances of success can increase dramatically if your writing can be read and commented on by peers (with at least a PhD would be recommended) to weed out problems and any lack of clarity. While this answer is technically correct, I think it's ignoring the practical reality of the research community. The likelihood that an undergraduate with minimal exposure (<5 years) to a research field can (1) understand the relevant published literature, (2) understand where the field is currently and what other labs are doing, (3) perform research worthy of publication, and (4) write up the results in a journal-worthy article with minimal to no mentorship throughout the project is extremely slim at best. I am sorry, but I do not think I am ignoring what you comment on, it is merely implicit in my answer. I definitely agree with your explicit version of the list. A small addition to Peter Jansson's great answer; your chances of publishing your work independently will most likely depend on your field and how you want to publish your results. I work in biomedical research and the only "independent" articles I have seen so far are written by senior academics that either portray their "expert opinion" on something, or a literature review of a particular subject. Yet again, they are not independent there either (at least in some meaning of the word), but rather utilize the resources of their affiliations and many years experience in the field. If you are into some sort of CS research, I suspect there will be more options in terms of publishing your results, and there you might have a better chance in getting published. Practically speaking, you may be sufficiently well equipped for performing the research and writing it up. But, as others have mentioned, you almost certainly lack experience and understanding of the field to explain why you did it and what impact your work has. And most experienced researchers are able to spot some common issues in the presentation, even in topics they do not know much about. Corollaries: You can publish, and I would absolutely encourage you to try. Mighty oaks from little acorns grow. It is a lot easier for a student to publish a research paper solo rather than to publish a literature review, although the latter is also commonly done - as a part of a thesis project and under supervision. One potential issue might be presentation. You should enlist some help to review the article before sending it to a journal. Another could be a flawed experimental design (if it is experimental research we are concerned with). This is what training is for, and it is hard: very few can get it right, much less first try. Do not let that discourage you, however: this is where practice and feedback are especially helpful. More on that point later. Yet another issue does not have to do with research but with the submission process. From personal experience and communications, it could be an unexpectedly enormous roadblock. Suppose you read enough literature, and you also got an interesting result and wrote a paper about it, and this paper looks no worse than what you see out there... Now what? Teaching you the process of picking a journal, submitting a publication, and interacting with its editorial office and reviewers is yet another role typically assumed by an advisor. You may or may not find this problematic, but if you end up struggling, again, enlist help. Now, to expand on the experiment design... One piece of advice I could give you is this: before doing anything, pretend for a moment your experiments showed very favorable results, the best you could plausibly imagine. Try to describe them; do they make for a convincing case? If not, this is a bad, bad design; figure out what is missing. Do not underestimate this pitfall, it is far more common than you think. Then, consider what happens if the results were very weak, sitting firmly at the previously established baseline. No improvement at all. Could you extract any knowledge from that? If not, this is still fine, but consideration should be given, especially as the experiments get more and more laborious. Good luck!	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.415505	2013-07-12T02:52:18	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11094", "authors": [ "Blue_Sky", "Mack", "Maori", "Mikael Vejdemo-Johansson", "Peter Jansson", "Wael Khader", "Willie Wong", "bviala", "dramzy", "eykanal", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27556", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27557", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27558", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27571", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27572", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/27575", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/519", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/73", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/94" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
5566	What should I focus on to get admission in a Masters programme in the US? I am currently in my second year, pursuing a B.Tech. in Software Engineering, in India. I want to pursue a Masters' in the US in CS/CS-related fields. My area of interest is AI. I still have two years to go before I will need to apply. So, what should I be working/focusing on in the next two years so that I have a good chance at making it there ? Keeping in mind the fact that i will need scholarships/financing options. My GPA is not very good at the moment. — Start with that. @JeffE Actually our University awards percentages, my score is about 70%. I am not sure what that translates to in terms of GPA. I am in the top 20 percentile of my batch. @JeffE any advice beyond that ? Since you still have two years to finish your bachelor degree, I strongly advise you to focus on the two years and leave this issue till 1 year or even semester before graduation. Please keep in mind that only a small percentage of Master students get funded. It's less competitive to get into a Master program than a PhD, mostly because the students pay their own way. If your grades are not the best you should try to get high GRE, good reccomendation letters, and possibly to some research during your Bachelor. Are any particular reasons why you chose the US? There are many other school around the world that would cost you less and get a good education as well. US has the best research centres as far as AI is concerned (as far as i know). Almost every year about 1-2 people from my institute make it to some of the best/better colleges(CMU, GeorgiaTech, Cornell) there largely financed through scholarships and the like. I havent really looked at other options considering this + i still have around two years. I don't doubt that some Master students are being financed, but as I said they are a really small percentage.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.416273	2012-12-02T06:22:14	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/5566", "authors": [ "CentAu", "Herman Toothrot", "JeffE", "Neal Fultz", "VH-NZZ", "Vishnuraj V", "asheeshr", "hertzsprung", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14407", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14408", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14410", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14411", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14412", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14418", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14584", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4050", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4227", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/532", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "peschü", "rienafairefr", "seteropere" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
204122	Why do so many institutions choose their own systems for application process rather than universal systems like mathjobs.org or interfolio? Why do so many institutions choose their own systems for application rather than universal systems like mathjobs.org or interfolio where letter writers don't have to upload their letters multiple times? Customized questions don't seems to be the reason since mathjobs.org and interfolio also offer the same option (or at least let the applicants address this in the separate PDF document uploaded) Cost? I don't know how much mathjobs.org or interfolio charge each institute to use their system, but it seems that it is also not easy or free to build and maintain their own application system. So there should be reasons other than these. Why can't every institute use mathjobs.org or interfolio, making the lives of letter writes easier? My impression is that this is usually forced by central administration (see e.g. https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201907/rnoti-p1085.pdf for a story related to MathJobs specifically). For US state schools, the answer is "ensuring compliance with state law". Many private universities do rely on just interfolio or math obs. Even if one discipline has its own system, which one should they use? The math jobs? Or, an English jobs? From the university administrator perspective, they are using one system. One could also ask the flip question: Why doesn't the math group adopt the same standard as a university system such as the large University of California System? One of the main advantages of mathjobs.org is that you don't need to ask the referees for additional letters once they've uploaded the generic reference letters. This is important because busy professors wouldn't be comfortable writing letters for 10–20 separate applications. I am a candidate, and I feel it. But in my experience, most of the positions in North America (USA, Canada) uses mathjobs portal Just to clarify, do you mean for faculty hiring or something else like grad student admissions? (We use mathjobs for both, but are also required to use an internal system at the end of the process for grad school applications.) (They can't even spell their own name: three different ways on the same page: MathJobs.org, MathJobs.Org, and Mathjobs.org) Centralized systems like Mathjobs are really the exception rather than the rule. In most other fields of academia, and in practically all industries outside academia, the norm is that applicants for a job will apply through the employer's own HR system. And university HR policies are usually written to assume that as the default procedures. They may need to comply with laws or institutional policies on confidentiality, record keeping, non-discrimination, etc, which are harder to ensure with an outside system. So, if a department does want to use a centralized site like MathJobs, then usually someone from that department has to lobby the university HR office to get an exception from the general policy. This may or may not be successful, depending on the flexibility and/or risk aversion of the HR and legal people, and/or on how much internal political capital the department is willing to spend. Sometimes there is a compromise, where the bulk of the application material is collected through MathJobs, but the applicant also has to submit at least a pro forma application through the university's HR system (maybe entering only their basic personal info and a generic CV). Another argument that's sometimes raised is that MathJobs is something of a victim of its own success: it's so easy for applicants to apply that they very often apply to basically every job they see, even those for which they are not at all qualified, or do not fit the expectations. (E.g. fresh PhDs applying for full professorships, algebraic geometers applying for math education faculty positions, etc). As a result, employers using such platforms can receive a huge number of applications, often in the hundreds. Even if they have very efficient procedures to screen out those applicants, it takes time, and if they do not have such procedures it is going to take a huge amount of time. (For instance, in my department, every application that meets the minimum requirements - which is usually just a PhD in the desired field - must be read in its entirety and scored on a formal rubric.) As a result, some people think that the extra time burden of requiring applicants to apply through the university's own HR system is actually an advantage, as it forces applicants to "show that they are really interested". Personally, I don't agree: I think it just tends to skew the applicant pool towards people with a lot of free time on their hands, and that it's disrespectful to candidates to make them waste their time filling out forms in order to prove their interest in the position. I would rather see an employer keep using MathJobs, and if they really need to make candidates prove their interest, add a requirement for a special essay about something that's actually directly relevant to the position. Cost is also a factor: MathJobs currently charges an employer about US$500 for one job posting (or about $800 for multiple postings). It may not be that much in the big scheme of things, but it means that a department lobbying to use MathJobs has to also lobby for the administration to pay for it, or come up with funds from their own budget. At my institution, the normal advertising budget for a faculty search is $500, so if we want to use MathJobs, then we can't advertise anywhere else unless we get special approval for extra funding. You're right that an internal system has a cost too, but usually it's some off-the-shelf software-as-a-service package that the university has already licensed, and so the marginal cost of posting one more job is basically zero. Probably worth noting that it's the people in HR who are legally responsible if anything goes wrong. If days is leaked, or a hiring process turns out to be discriminatory, it'll be HR people who will be in front of a judge. Makes sense they want a single system they were confident about, understood, and controlled. @IanSudbery: I'm not sure that's true here in the US. Certainly the organization is legally liable for data breaches, discrimination, etc, but I don't know that there is personal legal liability for any of the individuals in the organization. is guess I miss spoke there. I suspect the HR person is not personally legally liable, but that they are the person the organisation males responsible for the organisations liability, and they are the person that would have to answer for any problems, even if the punishment would go to the organisation. My institution uses the same system for tenure track professors as for HR staff as for plumbers as for student jobs. If they used mathjobs for math jobs what would they do with all these other positions? I consider using mathjobs is a courtesy for applicants and letter writers by making their lives easier. It is completely up to "all these other positions" whether to use a centralized systems or not. @NoOne I don't know much about the use of MathJobs; it's possible people here in that field post on both as long as that's in compliance with regulations. And if you go tell HR "Hi we'd like to hire a faculty member, here's the job description" they're going to use the standard procedure. But, besides that it may be a bit cruel but what's the incentive for making applicant's lives better? It's not like it's hard to find people that want research jobs in mathematics. @NoOne To the institution their time is more important than yours. If MathJobs costs them time then no amount of "courtesy" is going to be worth it. Plus, of course, the school had a hiring process in-place before MathJobs (or even the internet) was even a thing. Don't ever discount inertia. A non-American perspective... In the country where I work, we have a single job application portal for all academic jobs and other university positions across all our univeristies, research institutes and other similar organisations. Why should we change to use multiple subject-specific portals? All jobs are advertised through this site, although university policy may also mandate adverts elsewhere for certain types of jobs. Then the applications are also gathered with this site. This gives the adminstrators their single system, and the academics a key place to job hunt. (For reference I work in the Netherlands and am referring to https://www.academictransfer.com/en/ ). As Pieter Naaijkens comments, it is administrators who are pushing this, often against the advice (or protests) of mathematicians. From their point of view, they might be overseeing hires in multiple disciplines, and so using a university-wide system is simpler from their point of view. It is true that significant amounts of faculty time is wasted in fiddling with letters, but, well... that's less visible to them. Some universities (including mine) have adopted a hybrid system, asking candidates to apply both on MathJobs and whatever software their university uses internally. The key point is that recommendation letters are only required on MathJobs. This seems like a sensible compromise: candidates have some extra hoops to jump through, but letter writers don't. One extra point: I have read in the Chronicle of Higher Education that hiring processes can be very cumbersome in some fields. Apparently it is expected there that recommendation letters be tailored by the writers to individual job openings. With mathematicians often applying to 100+ jobs, such an expectation seems utterly absurd to me. However, for an administrator familiar with such customs, mathematicians' complaints might seem trifling in comparison, and hence easily dismissed. I think your last paragraph is looking at the issue backwards. US mathematicians apply to 100s of jobs because with an automated system like mathjobs it is feasible to do so. In Europe every job application is individual and therefore mathematicians apply to much fewer jobs. They choose a lot more where it is actually worthwhile to apply and tailor the application. Both from an individual mathematicians and from the hiring universities perspective I prefer the European model. @quarague Sorry, this is a naive question, but how then do candidates decide to which jobs to apply? From an American point of view, there are lots of universities out there, and if you're a candidate it's very difficult to guess which of them might be interested in you. I would say the match of research interests is the key point. Pick universities where you already know some researchers or have already collaborated with them. Of course this works a lot better with research focused postdocs but then the teaching oriented liberal arts colleges in the US are a lot more rare in Europe. @academic thanks for asking your "naive" question. In the countries I've been in, there is no centralized application portal like you described in your answer, and the way quarague described (look at each institution/university and consider the people and the reputation, and topics, etc. then apply individually) is the norm, and happens to be the only way I could imagine, at least until I read your last paragraph. Applying to 100+ jobs is very much an exception (in my experience) and you're supposed to be deliberate in choosing where you apply. From a university IT perspective, a lot of it is ensuring compliance with all the boring bureaucratic parts. My institution does use the same system (PeopleAdmin) for every single job, from trades to temporary office workers to professors and deans. I have seen others where there is a clear separation between faculty and staff application systems. Especially as a public university, there's a bunch of questions we have to ask everyone about veterans preference, prior state service, equal opportunity statistics, acknowledgment about false statements, etc. It would be difficult for HR/legal/IT to get all that implemented on a website like MathJobs. Another issue is requirements about retention and privacy/disclosure of job application materials. At the end of the day it's a state job, professor or not. A lot of the rules are exempted for academic positions, but some still apply. There is also a direct connection between our application software and the so-called ERP software (which handles everything from grades to registration to payroll). So job postings automatically connect to the relevant position/salary/etc. I don't think they even allow people to post a job without first setting all that stuff up in the system. Inertia. Tradition. Preference. ... Not every institution wants such things to be seen and perhaps even "mined" by other entities over which they have no control. Some information needs to be "privately held" for various regulatory reasons. Some seemingly useful online "services" have disappeared with little or no warning. Google is rather famous for this. Some large online services have had security issues with personal data released to the public. And, asking potential candidates to take a little extra effort tailored to the institution isn't a bad thing from the institution's perspective. On the other hand, if you want to know, you can ask, though you need to ask lots of places to get anything useful. It is a sort of research question that a potential service provider would want answered. The first two (inertia and tradition) are factually wrong, at least in California: mathjobs was used widely in California for about 15 years until administrators decided to change the system to a homegrown one. Actually, inertia and tradition are the reason most universities do many (most?) things, @MoisheKohan. Easy call, and the world is bigger than California. I agree in general, but this way one can also easily prove that 7 is a composite number, because "most numbers are composite." And for how many universities do you know as a matter of fact that they are not using mathjobs because of tradition and inertia? The only example I know is Harvard, but their hiring process is totally different from anybody else's. NIH The Not Invented Here syndrome. Many organizations consider themselves unique, and with extraordinary requirements when it comes to recruiting. The reality is that a site that manages generic recruitment is enough. There are specialized sites that will have integrations with external entities that help to link to publications, author databases etc, making them ideal for a specific field. If they also manage the legal specificities of a country it becomes a fantastic site. These sites cost money, when local development is free. Except for the salaries. Except for the lack of experience in development, legal and HR requirements. Except in maintainability. Except, except, except. Unfortunately this becomes clear too late. The specialized sites aren't a panacea either - some of them are truly atrocious and then a general site will be better. Local dev will rarely be great, except if you have an IS army. The industry used to be in that situation in all cases. This is slowly improving now (even though the larger and older companies still belive that are unique in their needs)	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.416541	2023-11-22T21:13:10	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/204122", "authors": [ "Bryan Krause", "Buffy", "Ian Sudbery", "Jack Aidley", "Kimball", "Moishe Kohan", "Nate Eldredge", "No One", "Peter Mortensen", "Pieter Naaijkens", "Richard Erickson", "SoronelHaetir", "academic", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/112583", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/115668", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14938", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/151712", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/176372", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19607", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/22", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/33210", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/473", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/54886", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5614", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5843", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/61756", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/63475", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75368", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/82972", "justhalf", "learner", "quarague", "user176372" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
151925	What should we do when an abstract gets accepted for a conference, but the material is not ready? Recently, my team's abstract was accepted for a poster presentation at a conference. The abstract submitted is not a complete work. Over time, we still don't have the desired results that are worth publishing / presenting. ... what should we do in this situation? I worry that our contribution is not good enough - or bad. Did the abstract represent the status of the work accurately? Does the conference expect complete work? There are places which encourage work-in-progress submissions as abstracts, with the idea of sharing preliminary results and getting feedback. Yes, the abstract did represent the status of the work (usage of the words: 'intended to', 'will'). As for the conference's expectation for the work's progress status, it's not clearly stated.. In the future, do the research first and then submit the abstract. I suppose that standards differ, but in my experience (CS) posters don't need to be all that refined. Unless your standards are different, I suspect that you could put enough together to inform people about your project, its current state, and its direction, if not the conclusions that aren't yet ready. Many posters are "work in progress", rather than completed. Alternatively you can withdraw if it is impossible to do enough to meet your own standards. You may not have a complete set of results, but presumably you have a clearly defined research question and method. You may have already encountered and learned things along the way. Perhaps you have preliminary results. It could be an option to present these and look for feedback on your research question and approach and perhaps even get valuable input to improve your research. One of the things that is so appealing about conferences is to see updates about progress in various research projects, even when it isn't yet ready for publication in a journal. Unless you intimated in your abstract that you had specific results which you don't have, or you do not have a research question or method, I would personally still present. Especially a poster. Someone has to say it: simply withdraw the poster presentation. Of course, no one wants to do this. But there is nothing wrong with simply yielding to reality: things just did not work out as expected. Then, next time you submit an abstract, bear this one in mind! Best of success with future submissions!	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.417824	2020-07-19T12:44:33	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/151925", "authors": [ "Anonymous Physicist", "GoodDeeds", "Kenny", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/126515", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13240", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/48413", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/68109", "lighthouse keeper" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
8145	What is the advantage of becoming a full professor if you already have tenure as an associate professor? What is the advantage of becoming a full professor if you are already an associate professor with tenure? Why not just stay an associate professor for life? What is the key difference between an associate professor and a full professor? Why continue to write papers if you already have tenure? Can't a tenured associate professor stop writing papers and still have a job? It is well known that as one advances the ranks of professorship, he is not much happier than before - citation needed! It is not clear what you are after here. You ask for the key differences but when they are provided in the answers you counter with hypothetical conditions about people who don't care about money or recognition. Do you want to know about differences based on principle motivating factors outside of the main professional motivators across all fields (i.e., money and recognition)? Or are you just asking if deadwood exists in academia? If that is it, then the answer is yes, I even know some of them personally. For the second part of your question, see also: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/5663/1033 If you are seeking a tenured professorship just to have an easy life, you're doing it the hard way. For the salary difference between associate and full professor, see here: https://chronicle.com/article/aaup-survey-data-2013/138309 One advantage of being a full professor is that you don't have people asking you why you haven't yet been promoted to full professor. I suppose another advantage is more money. Why continue to write papers if you already have tenure? Can't a tenured associate professor not write papers and still have a job? The general answer is simple: most of the people who would quit doing research after tenure in fact quit before tenure. The ones who make it to tenure generally care about research and intend to continue at it for a long time. In more detail: Reaching an associate professor position in a research university is a long journey. At this stage you could stop writing papers and lead a comfortable life, if you were willing to live with the disapproval of your department chair (which is not an easy thing: there are many ways they can make your life unpleasant even if they can't fire you). However, if that's all you wanted, you could have had it with much less effort along the way. By the time you reach tenure, you have let many opportunities to change your career go by, and you have repeatedly passed through filters intended to measure your talent and ambition. This selection process means tenured professors at research universities generally really want to do research. Now, sometimes people change their minds or burn out, and a few might never have intended to maintain their research programs. However, on the whole this is a group that has been selected for research enthusiasm and ambition, so it's no surprise that on average they maintain the desire to do research. One key difference is that full professors are paid more. But if one doesn't really care about the money (i.e. want to have an easy life and don't want to work hard to become a full professor) then he can stay an associate professor for life? I don't mean to imply that this is the only difference, only that it's an important one. At any rate if your question is "Are there people who never get promoted to full professor" the answer is yes. Another key difference is that you get to sit on more committees. Hooray! "Why continue to write papers if you already have tenure?" Because it is fun? While some academics forge a rewarding career from teaching and administration, for most academics research is what provides a substantial part of their job satisfaction. If research is not something you actively want to do, academia might not be a good career path, especially not being a senior academic. It is fun for may be 10% of full professors. For others, it is fulfilling obligations of all sorts: to co-authors, to funding agencies, etc. If you don't find writing papers (or doing research more generally) fun after tenure, you've lost your way. @Suresh, unfortunately many academically gifted students get steered towards research to fulfill society (or parents)'s expectation. They may get to tenure but then realize this is not their path. I have many colleagues who were once brilliant students, but have no joy writing papers. If you want to avoid administration, don't become a full professor. @user151413 at least in the UK there is a lot of variation in that. I suspect in most cases if you have a sufficiently strong research profile you can avoid admin, although I suspect that is changing as promotion becomes more and more strongly tied to grant income rather than research output. At the end of the day, we [I am an SL rather than a prof] all have to pull our weight, we don't all have to do it in the same way. not sure what warrants a downvote in what I wrote. Yet another reason to seek promotion to full professor is political influence. Especially in larger/older departments and universities, administrative positions (department chair, dean, etc.) and membership in influential committees may be restricted to full professors. (For example, in my department, only full professors may serve on the promotions and tenure committee; similar restrictions apply to college- and campus-level committees.) This is the flip side of the service expectation that Ben Norris mentions. Good answer! At my university, associate professor is sufficient to join any committee. At least in my case, the question remains open. I am a tenured associate professor in 'hard science' at a major research institution (part of that cluster famous for the Ivy on the walls). I've been an associate professor for ~5 years. Fairly recently, my chair asked about timetable for promotion. Said Chair fell to the floor (almost) when I replied "I could care squat about promotion to full professor". Seriously - who cares? There are two motivations I can think of for wanting promotion. (1) money, and/or (2) ego. I get paid more than enough in my current position, thank you very much, and anyone who thinks a different academic title means anything to anyone (other than their own inner ego) is delusional. I'm an associate professor. I write 3-4 good solid papers a year (have about 60-70 so far, 2 books, and a bunch of book chapters), do my share of teaching, edit for a couple of journals, get grants when I feel like it, and supervise students if they're good and I feel like it. I shift research gears with some frequency, pursuing what interests me. I go to meetings if I feel like it, not as a career move. That, of course, is the point of tenure. I do what I want, more or less. The university system is predicated on people striving for promotion, for 2 reasons. One, the bean counters and political types in the university administration understand that outside of academics, like government agencies, alumni groups, and other folks who might have $$$ to give to the school, title carries gravitas. A lot of universities make a big deal out of the number of 'full professors'. Second, and more to the point, they want the lure of promotion to keep you active - not at anything as trivial as 'intellectual work', but...getting grants. Pure and simple. Without overhead off major grants, universities would crash and burn - so, how do you keep everyone motivated to keep playing the grant game? Hold out the lure of the 'perks' of being a full professor. Problem is, the system doesn't account for people who could care less about money, or title. People who publish just fine without a lot of $$$ rolling in. People like me. I'm doing what I want to do now. I loathe administrative assignments, and if doing them is a necessary step on the road to 'full' title, I'll pass. Nicely said.. this reflects my thinking very well! Also, full Professors have a higher set of expectations; expect to wield their gravitas to gain more benefits for the university. In turn this puts more pressure on me and distract me from doing what I love doing... so yeap, I'll pass too! So is not wanting to do admin or opposing the system your main driver? In the Netherlands, you need to be a full professor before you can be the main supervisor (promotor) of a PhD student. Otherwise you can only be a co-supervisor (co-promotor), and thereby miss out on all the credit. And by credit -- of course -- he means money. In Austria, an associated prof. can be the advisor of a PhD student. Anyway, we (all) do not work for money because we work to come to fame. ;-) As of 2021, this answer is outdated for several Dutch universities (where associate professors can now be promotor of PhD students). One could say that a full professor has a more prominent position in its department, but that is somehow more trouble (e.g. you can have to be chair) than entertainment. I would say that the real point is that becoming a full professor is a recognition of your qualities. Kloeckner: But that is a form of external validation. Isn't what you think about yourself more important than what other people think about you? More, but not exclusively so. If you're a researcher, you're caring about what other people think of you ALL the time (writing papers, writing grants, etc etc) @guesjnree You don't care about possessions, you don't care about salary, you don't care about recognition from peers; it sounds like what you want to be is not a professor but a monk Isn't what you think about yourself more important than what other people think about you? — Ha ha ha ha! Never forget: Professors are human beings. Like other human beings, we need external validation. @BlueRaja-DannyPflughoeft: In fact, someone in my field left an associate professor position to become a nun! So indeed if your preference is to live in a monastic society, you can do that instead of going for full professor. never mind-- I'll just give you one. The answer is that, for many faculty, it is not necessary to become a full professor. There are distinct advantages to doing so, however: 1) salary. If you remain an associate professor, salary generally will not go up any more, whereas if you become full, you will get a substantial pay increase, and will probably be eligible for future merit based pay increases. If you remain associate, this will not happen, so salary will actually go down relative to inflation; 2) service: associate professors have a harder life than is usually imagined. They actually get the worst, most onerous service tasks, because assistant professors are usually shielded from these, and full professors can opt out of them, and get more interesting service work. This is especially true at research universities. Running the graduate program is almost always an associate professor's job, and it's a ton of work. Full professors have more freedom more salary; 3) Status and prestige, leading to other opportunities: There is a stigma attached to staying associate for too long. It may seem petty, but one's colleagues are a little like siblings-- you are with them for life, and you see some rise up quick and others stay behind. There is often built up resentment and jealousy, and we are all only human. On a less petty level, there are certain prestigious, well paying fellowships and other positions that are easier to get if you are full (eg., editing a prestigious journal or being president of your discipline's scholarly organization or running a search committee and determining who your department is going to hire). Finally, at some institutions, if you do not continue to advance, you will not be fired, but you can be demoted away from the position you have to a more teaching-based job. You will teach more undergrad classes (and more classes overall), and may not be able to advise grad students or perhaps even teach grad classes. Again, this varies from institution to institution. The pressure is greater at prestigious research universities rather than liberal arts colleges Interesting discussion. I am a full professor at a research university. My rank does allow me to participate in any committee. It also enables me to be the department chair (I have) and to chair other committees. I still write academic research papers and get research grants and contracts. Why? First, I have spent many years establishing a reputation in my field and do not want to forsake that reputation. Second, I want to be a positive role model for my undergraduate and graduate students as they move toward professional life. Third, I have financial motivation to do so (my university grants me a percentage of incoming research funds). Fourth: the research I do is important theoretically and for people who do important tasks in the "real world." Therefore, I feel like (hope) I'm making a difference in the world. Fifth, importantly, my graduate students need money, and my department doesn't receive enough from the upper administration. Therefore, grants/contracts pay their way. Sixth, I learned to be a driven, Type A, OCD academic in grad school, and old habits die hard. :^) Agreeing with the answer provided by Noah Snyder, and following from the OP's comments to it: In addition to an increase in pay, full professors often have a different expectation for service - to the department, institution, professional, whatever. Usually, these sorts of activities are undertaken to gain promotion and/or tenure. As a full professor, there are few options for advancement, and so fewer expectations that you do things to earn yourself a promotion. Of course, slacking off after becoming a full professor will cheat you out of that better-paying named professorship or named chair. As a full professor, there are...fewer expectations — Um, no. This is simply false. Not in every department at my institution. The difference is often also that full professors have their own group or department. Associate professors often have just a few PhDs and postdocs. So, getting full professorship is a means of really creating your own group of people, and direct them towards research that you think needs to be done. In that sense it is comparable to rising in the ranks of any ordinary company, you start as a business unit manager, and then go on to be CEO. This is not true in the US: even lowly assistant professors can have a "group". Yes, anyone can setup a group. I'm the CEO of room x.y.z. I noticed one of the responses mentioned the increase in pay. Sure, that would be nice. As one in the process of going up for tenure in business, I can tell you that research is required even after tenure is granted. It is a common misconception that you cannot be fired after you receive tenure. It does become more difficult. As long as the university needs your skills AND you are doing what you are supposed to be doing (teaching, service, AND research), then it is virtually impossible to get fired. But, to satisfy the research component, you must stay what is referred to as academically qualified. This means that you continue to do research even after tenure. In fact, you must continue to do so, even after you have become a full professor. Failure to do so results in negative evaluations by department heads which leads to lower if not stagnant pay. It leads to the implementation of plans for corrective action and if those plans are not followed can lead to dismissal from the university, EVEN IF YOU HAVE TENURE. Do you know examples of people whose pay was lowered? I've always heard of this as a theoretical possibility, but not known it to actually be enacted. (I'm not even sure if I know cases where pay is truly stagnant, though I've heard of people not getting merit-based raises.) Even ignoring inflation, every single one of us at my state school had our pay lowered, de facto, after the 2008 crash, when our health care costs rose and our salary was frozen for years. Does that count? @Corvus It seems pretty common that cost of living goes up faster than salary increases, particularly when budgets are tight. My health insurance has been going up faster than my raises too. But to lower a tenured faculty's gross salary from their current contract presumably requires exceptional circumstances. (Cases where I can imagine this: merging universities or reorganizing some departments.) It's fairly common to have your pay drastically reduced while still remaining employed. It may need to wait until a contract renewal. Most universities offer a bigger increase for promotion to Full Professor. However some universities may have amounts for promotion to Associate Professor at $3,000 and Full Professor $4,000. Do know that these amounts are below average. Per month or per year? What currency are you talking about? Hi and welcome to Academia SE. Sorry, but this answer is unclear: first, are the amounts specified per month or per year? Second, the question refers to the case where one is already a tenured associate professor, and your answer is unclear in this regard. Please, have a look at the [Tour] and at the [Help] to see how this site works.	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41947	Does consistency in how my name is presented/abbreviated as author on a publication matter? Assume I have the name: "First Middle Last". I have been publishing as "First Last." At my current job (postdoc) my adviser prefers that I list my name on my paper as F. Last (or F.M. Last), and I'm afraid that the change in style will make it less obvious that all the papers I've written are from the same person. Is this an issue that matters? If so, does it matter enough to insist on using "First Last" in spite of all other names being abbreviated on any papers? P.S. If this is a community dependent question, I'm a physicist in the AMO physics and optics communities (e.g. APS and OSA). I'm asking about how my name appears in the list of authors on the paper I wrote (not about how citations are formatted). A more common issue that I've seen is whether or not to provide your middle initial. I'd be interested in the related question of whether providing a middle initial on some publications and not others causes many problems. If you find yourself publishing under multiple names, e.g., "First Last" in one journal and "F. Last" in another, you might want to consider registering for an ORCiD. ORCiD provides a unique identifier which a researcher can use to unite all the different names she/he has published under. If you have a more common name, like "John Smith", an ORCiD can help differentiate you from other researchers with similar names. And if you change your name, ORCiD can help you link the older to the newer. Are you talking about how you are listed in citations, or how you are listed in the authorship of a paper? In authorship, it definitely matters precisely how you are listed, especially since there are a lot of scientists in the world, and there's a decent chance there's another one out there with a very similar name to you. It's fine to insist on having your name listed in the way that you want to have it listed. In citation, though, the fraction of your name that appears largely depends on the style of the citation required by the venue (I have even seen one highly aberrant journal citation format that omitted the author names entirely), and also doesn't matter so much, since the citation is really just a "pointer" to finding your original article. I was specifically talking about how my name appears in the original publication. (Thanks for the quick/nice response) I believe that consistency is important and it is important for journals to accept your preferred name if at all possible. I go by my middle name and it is important to keep it that way for me. One reason is that my first name is the same as my father and we have the same middle initial. Thus, there would be confusion if I published under my first name or just my initials. Even an ORCiD could be confusing if I linked by initials (although all those pharmacology papers might help my pub record ;-). At least I don't get the confusion with my grandfather's pubs that my brother gets. There is an additional consideration for women. When I got married, someone asked my wife if she was going to change her name. She replied,"Why should I? I have more publications than he does." If a journal requires a specific format (initials plus a last name, for instance), there's not much you can do. However, the more consistently and uniquely you can identify yourself, the easier it will be to make sure your work is properly "accounted for" and remembered. It's a lot easier to keep track of a "Hedwig von Restorff" than for a "John Smith," for example. There are journals who insist on particular formats for names? Ugh. They need to read this. I think the author name style should be uniform for all the authors of a paper. Since your professor prefers initials for first names, you have not much choice :). The question here is whether bibliographic databases (e.g. Scopus) would recognize you and link this paper to the other papers you already have therein (i.e. recognize you as the same person). Additional data used to perform this properly is your affiliation. I have already published papers with initials for the first name. From my experience it works well in Scopus, even though I have very common last name. Nowadays, I use just my first and last names on my papers (and my stackexchange registration), omitting my middle name. A few of my early papers, though, had my first and middle initials and my last name, for consistency with how my teacher and co-author formatted his name. The discrepancy has never caused any problems for me, but it caused a little extra work for the staff at Mathematical Reviews (nowadays MathSciNet). They are quite careful about keeping track of when two different names refer to the same person (and when the same name refers to two different people). So at some point, I got a letter from them asking me whether the papers under both versions of the name were mine. I don't know whether other fields than mathematics have an organization that is similarly careful about matching names to people.	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12874	Why are recommendation letters highly relied upon? For any kind of academic application (from graduate admission to professor position), recommendation letters have a major impact on the outcome. The basic idea is understandable: discovering what others think about the applicant. It can help the review committee to decide about the applicant. However, recommendations letters cannot be statistically reliable. For instance, when all recommendation letters of an application are highly positive, this cannot guarantee that all colleagues think highly of the applicant. Instead, it can be the result of only a few friendships. In a typical example, if someone has three socially close friends (including current colleagues, coworkers, past professors), then, his applications are always supported by strong recommendation letters. For example, one could have conflict with his entire university, but having close social connection with three persons who can recommend him. So, why are recommendation letters relied upon so highly, given these limitations? UPDATE: I do not mean friendly recommendation letters. I mean influence of friendship on a professional recommendation letter. As an another example, Applicant A who has good relationship with 20 professors of his department is an ideal academic with professional relationships at workplace. BUT applicant B who has serious conflicts with most of his colleagues (professors of his department), but having only three friends among his department professors will get better recommendation letters. Those three professors will write recommendation letters based on the applicant strengths by ignoring his weakness in the light of their friendship. In many countries, students even write their own recommendation letters. Only letters from sources that are known to the committee are given heavy weight. One small thing I want to point out: no matter how unreliable recommendation letters may be (and I think overall the letter system works), there aren't many alternative measures of applicant aptitude that do better. For graduate admissions, we know GPA can easily be skewed by grade inflation, and official transcripts may fail to capture the full scope of the applicant's activities (did he do independent work for no academic credits? etc.). There are few (if any) ways to beat the flexibility of the recommendation letter in painting a complete picture of an applicant. The premises of the question are dubious: things don't work in such an extreme fashion, although there certainly is risk of corruption, as with anything. In a typical example, if someone has three socially close friends (including current colleagues, coworkers, past professors), then, his applications are always supported by strong recommendation letters. No, that's not what "strong recommendation letter" means. First, strong recommendation letters do not simply state the author's high personal regard for the student, but provide specific, personal, and credible detail supporting the applicant's potential for excellence. I don't just want to know that someone thinks you'll succeed—I assume they wouldn't write you a letter if they thought otherwise. I want to know why. I want compelling evidence, not mere opinion. Second, recommendation letters have more weight if they come from credible sources. At a minimum, the author should work at a credible academic institution. The best letter writers are themselves experienced, visible, active researchers, with documented experience mentoring and/or selecting candidates for admission/hiring/promotion at departments similar to the candidate's target. For faculty promotion in my department, letters are essentially required to be from full professors, preferably in named/endowed positions, in top-10 computer science departments, and there is a strong preference for ACM/IEEE Fellows, NAE or NAS members, and major award winners (Turing, Gödel, Dijkstra, Gordon Bell, etc.). The intersection of these two aspects of strong letters is direct comparisons with the applicant's peers. An ideal PhD recommendation letter for my department includes sentences like "Among the 13 undergraduates I have mentored who went on to top-10 PhD programs in computer science, I would rank [applicant] roughly 3rd, well below [famous person who proved P=NP], but on par with [successful person] at MIT, [successful person] at Stanford, and [successful person] at CMU." I did not merely friends. I meant if someone had three close friends and 20 enemies from full professors of his department, he will get better recommendations than someone who had normal relationship with 23 professors of his department. Don't tell me that full professors are 100% professional in writing recommendation letters, and never consider their personal relationships. "credible academic institution": So do the NIH, DOE national labs, and NIST count as "academic institutions" by this definition? @aeismail: Yes, provided the author can document experience with successful PhD student / tenure-track faculty / the tenure process. @All Of course not. But lack of professionalism doesn't actually help that much; evidence is evidence. And seriously, what are the chances that someone is going to be BFFs with exactly the three people who can write in technical detail about their research, and piss off everyone else in their department? It's a small world; that sort of stuff gets out. @JeffE that was just an exaggerated example to clarify the issue. I just mean that recommendation letters are biased, as they are statistically not representative of the views of colleagues; it is too selective. @All If by "biased" you mean "will write false things because of a social relationship," then this probably happens, but I would argue that JeffE's definition of a strong letter would be at odds with the rest of a candidate's record in those cases. If a letter-writer says great things but the rest of the record shows otherwise, then the candidate won't be particularly competitive. @JeffE That's one of the best descriptions of what one should look for in letters of recommendation I've ever read. The only thing I am a bit wary of is the "direct comparison". When done carefully and substantiated with clear evidence, it certainly works, but otherwise it is the hardest piece to either verify, or to make sense of. Given that Steven Krantz openly advised to write something like "Two best people are A,B. C fits in between in the sense that his research is on par with A and his teaching is on par with B" in one of his "How to..." books, there is a lot of room for "abuse" here. @Googlebot If your recommendation letters show that you were able to get three different professors working at an accredited university to be "biased" in your favor, then that's statistically significant because some students finish a degree with zero professors biased in their favor and even many professors biased against them. Perhaps a small number of professors would be unprofessional enough to be biased in favor of a student for reasons unrelated to their academic potential, but three professors who are able and willing to insincerely recommend someone seems very unlikely to me. The fact that applicants choose their letter writers definitely means the letters are a biased sample of opinions. In certain cases departments take big steps to address this issue. For example, promotion and tenure committees ask for some letters from people not suggested by the candidate, precisely to avoid this source of bias. Nobody worries quite as much about graduate admissions, but there are still several safeguards: If someone writes recommendations that seem unreliable, biased, or misleading, they will lose credibility and their letters will carry less weight for everyone. This is a strong incentive to keep bias in check, since professional reputation is a critical aspect of academia, and nobody wants to be thought of as a fool or scoundrel. Of course there are still some bad recommendations, but admissions committees really keep track of credibility: when we evaluate an application, one thing we discuss is what we thought of students recommended by these letters writers in the past and what we think of their judgment. Having multiple letter writers also helps. Finding one recommender who is strikingly biased is easier than finding three. Admissions committees sometimes solicit opinions from other faculty members at the applicant's university. If the applicant's letters seem questionable or difficult to interpret, or we're concerned about credibility, then it's easy to call or e-mail to get a second opinion. Overall, I believe the system does a good job of minimizing conscious bias or manipulation. It's not perfect, but I think you are underestimating the strength of the incentives. If an applicant can find three people with a lot of credibility who are willing to hurt their reputations by writing unreliable letters to help the applicant get admitted, then they can take advantage of the system, but this is not so easy. If anything, I'm more worried about the safeguards being too strong. One severe drawback of the letter of recommendation system is how it handles unknown letter writers. If the committee knows nothing about a recommender, has never seen a letter from them before, and doesn't expect to in the future, then the recommender has very little credibility. If an application includes only letters from unknown recommenders, then the chances of admission may be low even if the letters all say wonderful things. This isn't fair, since some applicants just don't have access to any other recommenders, but it's unavoidable under the current system. (It's not just a matter of bias or honesty, but also of whether the recommenders are even capable of judging who would be a good candidate for admission.) "Overall, I believe the system does a good job of minimizing bias." While I think All way overstates the case, I think that there are really systematic biases in the system of relying heavily on recommendation letters; for example, everything we know about social psychology suggest that such a system will discriminate against women, etc. just in usually subtle, imperceptible ways. @BenWebster: Great point! I've edited to clarify that I mean conscious bias or manipulation. While it may be redundant to write an answer after 3 people already have, I think the other answers have not actually tried to answer the question, but to disprove the OPs hypotheses. I agree that the OP overstates the degree of bias and favoritism in the system of using recommendation letters, but those are serious issues. As the other answers point out, a letter written largely on the basis of warm personal feelings will not be very convincing, but I think the personal attitude of the letter writer will influence the reader (does anyone doubt that it's easy to write a letter that spikes almost any candidate's chances that it is still professional and accurate?). If you read a book like "Thinking Fast and Slow", and then look at how people actually make decisions about academic hiring, you will slightly horrified at how much we ignore the plain facts of social psychology. People rely on recommendation letters because they are monkeys (OK, actually apes, but for rhetorical purposes give me this one) whose brains evolved in one sort of social situation that encouraged certain kinds of mental heuristics. One essentially universal fact about humans is that we prefer to make individualized judgements based on intuition rather than rely on any kind of impersonal rule. We are overly confident that we know when to make an exception, and we feel better seeing a mistake made based on human misjudgment, rather than some sort of numerical calculation. This is evidenced in lots of places: for example, people actually try to actively invest in the stock market when any look at the facts shows it is essentially impossible to beat passive investing in the long run. That said, I think for academic positions, it's also probably true that there is important information in recommendation letters which is hard to get anywhere else. In a lot of cases, I'm not sure what we would look at instead. I doubt they are going anywhere, and people will strongly resist switching to any "harder" metrics, as doing so just "feels wrong." Recommendation letters for associate and full professor positions (both in hiring and promotion) do not come exclusively from writers that the candidate selects. Instead, the department will solicit letters from independent sources in the candidate's field. Furthermore, the references named by the candidate cannot have close personal or professional ties to the candidate. that cannot be considered as recommendation letter, but external peer-review. Potayto potahto. @JeffE peer-review is exactly what can be relied on, but almost all job advertisement for full professor position asks for recommendation letters by people who know the applicant, not independent review. Nobody who hires tenured faculty relies solely on letters provided by applicants. Tenure cases require external letters chosen by the target department.	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8144	What to do with a paper with references but no citations? I just received a paper for review that does not have a single citation (in the text) of its references. I wonder if this is common in other areas non-CS related. Since it is a conference, I don't think I should contact the editor, but I do think it should lose many points in its evaluation. Overall the paper is well written, and they do not seem amateurish people writing their first paper. What would you do in this case? does the conference review process allow author response and revision? I don't think it allows author's response, only revision So did you look at the other papers? Do they have anything to do with the content of the paper? Just curious. @Leonpalafox If these authors are reading this forum you may have revealed your identity as a reviewer. Having a bibliography section without any citation in the text is something very weird. @AlexanderGruber That shouldn't really be the job of the reviewer. It's up to the authors to provide the context. As a matter of fact, determining the relevance of the references on its own can be a major task. @MarcvanDongen Again: just curious Not citing the reference list is amateurish! This problem is common in my senior project reports and grad students' "guided readings" course reports (literature surveys). Have you checked with the rules for submissions? Are inline citations required? I wouldn't know of a case where they aren't or where it's not necessary to have them, but then again I have seen weired things for the first time before! Reject. No work exists in isolation. The authors need to position their work in relation to existing work, and this requires more than just putting a bunch of papers in the bibliography section: it requires a detailed comparison. The authors failed to do this. In any case, there will always be another conference for them to resubmit to. This is true in non-CS related fields as well (e.g., business). I know of exactly one published paper in my field (computational geometry) that was published with no references. The references section reads, in toto, "No references on this topic seem to exist and no useful results could be found." @JeffE: But that was back in 1985 when no useful results could be found. @JeffE: Let me guess: a full day workshop with 5 submissions and one was an abstract where the full thing never got submitted? My initial reaction is that they merely have encountered a set of issues for which there are no relevant papers they could cite. For example, where would you expect citations in there? Citations for the sake of citations are a Bad Thing. Citations should advance the position of the paper in a meaningful, shoulders-of-giants kind of way. And initial reactions are often the right one[citation needed]. But upon further reflection, it occurs to me that with the vast multitude of papers out there, the likelihood of not having a single paper that could help advance this paper's position in a meaningful way is probably very, very small. What is much more likely is that the authors either did not do their due diligence in looking for work that could have advanced their position and/or saved them time, or worse, specifically excluded other research because glaring similarities. Both are common, and either is bad for the authors and the scientific community as a whole. The main thing that concerns me is... where did they get the idea to do whatever is in the paper? Was it not at least partially based on some published work that they're either challenging or advancing? That is the most troubling thing to me. It's not clear from your question, whether they simply don't regard other papers in the field, or they do have related work etc. but they omit the in-body-citations. If it is the first case, I'd second Dave's answer (unless it's a brand new question with a brand new technique that solves it, and they clearly say that no related work can be found to the best of their knowledge). However, if it is the second case, it seems quite technical issue that can be easily fixed, and in this case you can just mention in your review that references are missing and this should be fixed (also note this to the PC chair; s/he can condition the acceptance on fixing this issue) The fact that it's a conference, in my eyes, makes it more flexible -- papers should be considered mainly by merit and not by technicalities. I can think of the opposite case, where the paper has all the citation, gets accepted, but in the camera-ready version all references are removed. +1 for technical issues which might be the case here (though I can't imagine submitting a paper without checking its references and in-text citations).	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189073	Which academic writing style allows extensive explanatory footnotes? I am writing an essay which involves many concepts supposedly unfamiliar to the reader. It has been suggested to me that the explanations of these terms be in the footnotes as this way they wouldn’t count towards the word limit. My preferred style is the MLA, which doesn’t seem to have a custom of such. Which style should I be using if I intend to put in extensive explanatory footnotes? I would guess that "extensive footnotes" wouldn't escape the word count. Can you talk about your field and the type of essay you are writing? If you find yourself putting in tons of explanatory footnotes, I would suggest you need a re-write to reduce them. Footnotes with significant subject content are disruptive and annoying. Usually when I see tons of footnotes I assume the author got useful comments from review of a draft, but was too lazy to re-write accordingly. "Which academic writing style allows extensive explanatory footnotes?" Bad academic writing style. Think about it like this: Will whoever imposed your word limit be happy that you circumvent it this way? Also: Which kind of setting imposes that you use some style guide, i.e., you can’t use your own custom one, but also no specific style guide is imposed? Always worth bringing up John Hodgson's 173-page footnote for those who haven't heard of it before. A huge contribution to scholarship, but he put it in a footnote because technically it didn't fall under the immediate topic of the book. @BillOnne Please tell every theoretical syntactician this. Not a real answer, but my feeling is you should look at some style guides for humanities. I think this "extensive footnotes" style is more common there than in STEM. @Buffy even appendices or endnotes might count (or they might not but I wouldn't chance it) If footnotes aren't counted toward a word limit, that probably means that footnotes are not expected to contain anything except citations of sources. They exclude them from the word count so as not to encourage you to skimp on citations. I would guess that for footnotes containing substantial text, either they will be counted toward a word limit, or, in the case of a paper being graded for a course, the teacher may just not read them at all. Either way, unwise to try to bend the rules like this. Write in your own style. Overly proscriptive writing styles are bad for science as a whole as they generally make things harder to read and create an artificially higher barrier to entry. You want your writing to be readable and concise without being cryptic. If you think your readers would benefit from footnotes, add footnotes. If you're writing for a specific journal, then I'm afraid you're stuck with whatever limitations they place upon you. "an essay which involves many concepts supposedly unfamiliar to the reader" is called a textbook I don't think Terry Pratchett did much academic writing.... Write for readability, not to abuse abstruse word-count rules While there are sometimes writing assignments in university courses with some strange rules for computing the word-count, as a general practice, the decision of whether to put information in the body of a paper or its footnotes (or an appendix or elsewhere) should be made on the basis of readability and convenience to the reader. The decision should hinge on what is the best way to present information to the reader (and perhaps also stylistic consistency of particular journals, etc.), not on the basis of some silly idea that words in a particular area don't count against a word-count restriction. There is nothing inherently wrong with having extensive footnotes in a paper if this is the best way to present information to the reader. Generally this will occur where there are lines of argument or observation that are ancillary to the main thrust of the paper, which would distract from the flow in the body of the paper. Nevertheless, I would counsel strongly against moving material to footnotes merely to try to abuse a set of silly rules relating to word-count. (If this paper is for a university assignment, and your lecturer has imposed a set rules that incentivise this, please feel free to draw their attention to this post to let them know that they are engaging in poor educational practice.) As to what you might call a writing style that focuses on doing this, I would call it the style of bad writing. If only journals and conferences accepted papers without abstruse word-count rules... I think for journals and conferences it is far more normal to have page-count rules. @FedericoPoloni Well, without any limiting rules people who already write excessively long papers would write thousand of pages... As far as I am aware (but I could be wrong), there is no academic journal or book publisher that does not include footnotes into the total word length. Even if this is an essay, it is highly likely that your teacher also considers footnotes as part of the total word length. I advise you to confirm such details with the person in charge of the course. There is no fundamental relationship between a citation style (or manual of style) and the length of footnotes. It depends on the topic that is being handled, and the chosen method of research. Longer-than-usual footnotes are more closely associated with certain research fields, especially within the humanities. The most common use of extensive footnotes can be found in critical editions of pre-modern, medieval and ancient authors. A good example is the critical edition of the Dead Sea Scrolls, and a more recent example would be Sonu Shamdasani's annotated edition of Carl Jung's Black Books. Related to this, we can find academic journals that allow for extensive footnotes (within reason), depending on the topic: studies of pre-modern legal history, religious texts, archaeological finds, medical treatises, ancient architecture, etc. One journal that tends to allow for large footnotes is Monumenta Serica (example 1) (example 2). Lengthy footnotes tend to become unavoidable when one is dealing with cultures that are profoundly different from modern ones, or when dealing with artefacts and documents that go back far in time. Other fields such as philosophy can also sometimes have unusually long footnotes. Again, it depends on the topic that is being analyzed. However, it is important to stress that one should make every possible effort to avoid long footnotes, even when it is allowed. For example, make a list of the topics or concepts that require the longest explanations, and create a section near the introduction that provides a basic, clear and simple explanation of such concepts. Then, when you need to add more nuance or minor details to those explanations, use footnotes. Or try to spread the explanation of those concepts throughout the text, while still using footnotes for small details. At every stage of the process, ask yourself: "Is this explanation really necessary for a reader to understand the key points of my essay?" Train yourself to write clearly and concisely, because that is one of the main reasons why students are asked to write essays. One last word regarding styles. It has become fairly common to use Chicago (or adapted versions of it) in books with extensive footnotes, not because it encourages such long footnotes, but because it is designed to provide detailed referencing data for finding old documents in historical archives. Chicago is extremely useful when you need to distinguish between different manuscript copies or versions of the same text, which can be spread over different archives around the world. (+1) for pointing out that footnote usage can vary a lot, especially when considering fields of study that are not narrowly focused only on science or technology. Also, it is common in some fields that footnotes are placed at the end of the main body of text (both papers and books), which I personally find very annoying since until you flip back to see the footnote you don't know whether it's something mostly ignorable like "p. 73, Smith, 1949" or a useful tangential remark and/or explanatory remark. I feel you. I, too, have wasted many hours of my life going back and forth between the main text and the endnotes... Legal scholarship also tends to have lots of long footnotes, to the point that a page might have just a couple lines of body text with the rest of it filled with footnotes. @DaveLRenfro Well, for instance, in the two-volume set of A. M. Yaglom, Correlation theory of stationary and random functions, vol. I; Basic results, vol. II, Supplementary notes and references, the footnotes are even all placed in the dedicated second volume! Yes, a bit annoying for an otherwise excellent book. @Massimo Ortolano: The massive and comprehensive treatise Convolutions in French Mathematics, 1800-1840 by Ivor Grattan-Guinness -- 3 volumes, Science Networks / Historical Studies #2, Birkhäuser Verlag, 1990, 1602 pages -- is not quite as bad. At least the footnotes appear at the bottom of the pages. However, to see the bibliographic citations you have to refer to Volume 3 -- dedicated to excerpts of selected texts/manuscripts, tables, bibliography, and various indexes -- for the 130 page bibliography. So far as I know, every style can accomodate footnotes. You don't often see them used extensively, in the way you're asking about, because it makes for tedious reading. One context where extensive footnotes seem to be common is legal writing - I often see footnotes which are so long, they continue into the footer of the next page. PLOS journals don’t allow footnotes, FWIW. Legal studies articles sometimes include extensive footnotes. For example, Marco Jimenez's article "Finding the Good in Holmes's Bad Man" in Fordham Law Review (Volume 79 Issue 5 Article 9) includes multiple pages that are 75%+ footnotes as well as one page (2075) that is entirely footnote overflow from the previous page! Many of the footnotes are case citations as would be expected, but quite a few include extensive commentary on the case as well that the author didn't feel quite fit in the body of his article. I own a book, First Peoples in a New World, David Meltzer, that is a popular rendition of the scientific literature of the archaeology of what became the Americas from around 12,000 or so years ago. It is around 20% endnotes. Meltzer is one of the developers of some of the main theories of people from that time up to, say, the neolithic. However, of you want to read it all, including the scientific notes, it is maddening to read, though very informative. As a print book, the notes are certainly contributing to the word/page count, of course. But, other books, those that merge a popular and a theoretical/scientific view into one work, probably satisfy your search for a "writing style". But that is much less likely to be used in an essay or paper. I was taught that footnotes are bad and disrupt the reading flow. One should probably omit them alltogether, and with some writing discipline this is doable. Now, speaking of the "oh, and by the way" notices – which you would rather write in a book or maybe a thesis, but not in a research article – I see two ways. The more conventional one is to create a separate section and put all the trivia there. The other one leans on Knuth and Tufte and is more a presentattion thing: use extensive wide sidenotes, such as those in tufte-latex class. Put the trivia in there, without footnote symbols or anything. In this manner the trivia would not disturb the reading flow, the presentation of actual material.	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177277	How can I transition into genome editing after a theoretical physics PhD? I had a very bad PhD experience which has led to complete loss of motivation to pursue a career in theoretical physics. I don't have the motivation anymore to work on topics which are very abstract and, being a postdoc, it is even harder to do this independently. In addition, I find the long term prospects of doing this very dark. There aren't any good job opportunities and getting a tenure track position requires more than one postdoctoral experience. Off late, I have been thinking of transitioning to biology and more specifically to the field of genome editing. I know this is very different from what I have been trained at, but I have always liked this field and did a lot of self-study during my graduate years. Prior to contacting people, I asked for advice if this transition is doable or practical. And everyone who replied has strongly encouraged me to go forward. But it was a different story when it came to actually getting a position (I asked for internship opportunities also) in the lab. The advice was to get into computational biology where interdisciplinary people are more. I don't want to transition into computational biology just because it would be easier to transition, but learn completely new skills. Otherwise, I would have preferred to dedicatedly train in data science and find the high paying corporate jobs. I want to stay in research and do impactful work, something with real impact and not esoteric like my graduate or postdoc work. Given the situation, I have been thinking of doing another PhD because I don't have any constraints. But I fear that this is not recommended and I doubt I will get admission into good places. Should I meet the people whose work I admire in person or have an online discussion with them if that is possible? Most of the transition stories I have heard involve some kind of meet up during conferences/meetings and things fell in place after that. Any kind of useful advice keeping my interests in mind would be highly appreciated. One step at a time. Start with a year or so of wet-lab work, a masters program will get you that, then take it from there. You’ll want to understand the theory, goals, and practice. As someone in the genome sciences, I can say anecdotally that there is an increasing number of physics PhDs finding great success in biomedical sciences / bioengineering. Take Stephen Quake as a paragon: https://bioengineering.stanford.edu/person/stephen-quake I know that people often say not to do two PhDs, but in a couple cases I've seen it be the right move and work out great. In your case I think it might be the way to go. Biology has become so fascinating these days that it's completely understandable to want to switch fields. At the risk of being blunt, it is probably worth pointing out that there is a difference between "wanting a job in a specific area" because you want to transition into that area, and "actually being qualified for a job in that area". In other words, an honest evaluation of the situation is likely that nobody will give you a paying job in a genomics lab because you don't have the background for such a job: The people they want to hire as, say, postdocs have had several years of training and job experience in this area, and you don't. That's just a fact, regardless of whether or not you've done self study in the area. So you're stuck hoping for that unicorn to appear out of nowhere. The recipe to actually getting these jobs is to obtain the qualifications necessary for these jobs. You won't get this qualification through self-study: You're competing with people who've spent several years at the lab bench during their PhDs. You'll have to go through that school as well. So apply for grad programs. You might of course encounter the same issue: They would like to hire people as graduate students who have had several years as biology undergraduates; if you know someone in biology departments, it is conceivable that you could find ways to demonstrate to them that you have equivalent knowledge and find admission anyway. As for your last comment, "Most of the transition stories I have heard involve some kind of meet up during conferences/meetings and things fell in place after that.": These sorts of cases are first rare, second probably exaggerated (the person in fact did have quite a lot of biology background already, though they might have had a position in a physics department), and third quite often involve people who are not actually seeking a paid position: They are, for example, already physics faculty and simply find themselves in collaborations with biologists. I would not think this a viable path for you to get from where you are to where you want to be. There is no alternative to actually being qualified for the job you are seeking. It really isn't very rare at all in the specific case of bioinformatics: this is a very interdisciplinary field, and also relatively new. Until quite recently, everyone working in bioinformatics came from different fields. In the lab I did my PhD work in, we had people who came from biology, computer science, pure math, physics, even aeronautical engineering. @DanielHatton well, I started my PhD in 2002 and at that time, there were very few, if any, undergraduate bioinformatics courses and most people in the field came from different backgrounds. There were some post-graduate courses, although not many, but very very few undergrad ones. Of course, that will also depend on geographical region. I am mostly familiar with the European bioinformatics world. @DanielHatton I don't know what to tell you. I can assure you that there are many in the field whose PhDs were in Physics. I cannot know why this "famous bioinformatician" told you what they did, you'd have to ask them. Also remember that this is a very wide field and I'm sure some sub-fields will be different than others. And, finally, my account is clearly anecdotal: I cannot rule out that I have just happened to come across more people with a Physics background because of the conferences I attend and places I have worked. @DanielHatton, has the situation regarding physics graduates in bioinformatics changed since 2004? I can imagine that the rise of machine learning might have made some difference over the last 10-15 years. Just curious. I work for a bioinformatics company and we have hired physics PhDs as recently as 2 years ago. We are still actively recruiting math and physics people. @terdon You're missing the mark. OP specifically does not want to go into bioinformatics, but into genome editing. Different field, for which different backgrounds are necessary. @WolfgangBangerth yes, I know. I had misunderstood the question. First a slight reframe: if your disappointment with theoretical physics is that it's too abstract and you want to do "impactful work", maybe consider opportunities outside academia as well. Academic research does a good PR job of selling itself as the non-profit, idealistic, make-the-world-a-better-place counter to industry, but in my experience most academic research is pretty inward-looking and gives relatively little reward to anyone who is not driven by scientific curiosity itself. So look also at medical physics (which can be research or clinical!), relevant industry, data science etc. If you're set on staying in academia, one thing to be wary of is that many of the biology labs who might be interested in hiring someone with a physics background "out of the box" would be doing so expecting you to bring in physics expertise. If your negative experience is with academic theoretical physics, this may work just fine for you, but if you have grown to really, really dislike physics and/or want to do fundamentally different work, then it could be very frustrating to be the "pet physicist" while everyone else is doing the more traditional biology work that you were hoping to do. Basically, you need to have something to offer to the lab that hires you: it's either your physics/numeracy expertise (for example, as a data scientist sort of role), or as a biologist in your own right. In the latter case, as you correctly identify, you are not actually qualified, and pursuing some relevant qualifications would help both your CV and your understanding of life sciences (I would probably start with an MSc rather than a PhD, especially if you've just emerged from a negative PhD experience). And, as @terdon points out, "genome editing" isn't really a field in biology. At best it's a technique - there are a handful of labs working on the technology itself, but the vast majority of people use transgenesis/CRISPR/what have you as a tool in pursuit of a biological question. This is a common problem I have seen in people with a hard science background - they often tend to be interested in, or aware of, only a few high-profile technical or abstract problems that are actually rather unexciting from a biology perspective (all fields are prone to this, not just biology...). If you want to work as a biologist, then having some relevant academic background would help you understand what your colleagues are working on and why it's interesting. You absolutely don't have to change your own interests or preferences. But placing your specific interest, which may be genome editing, into a more solid understanding of the biological problem it's trying to solve will help you make connections with a broader range of people and align your work with actually useful outcomes.	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5511	How to contact a potential PostDoc advisor? Reading this very interesting question ("How long before PhD graduation should I start applying for post-doc positions?") about "when", suddenly I started to reason on the "how" issue. Imagine you were going to finish your PhD program and wanted to contact a professor to express interest for a possible PostDoctoral contract within his group, and wanted to know more information about it. How approach him/her in the best way? What to write in the email to send him/her? Generic open positions (e.g. "Jobs - we have some postdoc position available on...", without the beginning date nor other details) In some fields, well-known scientists will get so many postdoc inquiries that they will simply not reply if you mail them directly. In such cases it is helpful to have your PhD advisor contact them. Depends on whether you know the person, or not. If you know him/her well, you might go for an informal inquiry. In the case the person is not your acquaintance, you better formulate it as any other job seeking inquiry. To the style, this template always worked for me well (as advised in some job-seeking training course I took): Salutation, 1.- me 2.- you 3.- us together 4.- conclusion and a kind request for a reply. salutation. Each of the points above should be a single paragraph. Firstly, you introduce yourself, possibly mentioning how you know each other if that is the case and most importantly articulating the purpose of the e-mail/letter, that is that you are seeking a job. In passing you should mention what you are doing now, position, affiliation, expected date of graduation, etc. Basically you want to motivate the other party to read further. Second paragraph should be about the other party. What you know they do, or did in the past and highlighting whatever other positive aspects of their work, which are a relevant reason for your application. Possibly, you can mention that you learn from somebody else/opening, etc. that there is a possibility of an open position in the group, etc. The purpose here is to prepare the ground for articulating why you fit for them in the subsequent paragraph, as well as to show that you mean it and you made your homework well (e.g., read their papers). The third, most important paragraph, should be about you as a fit for the position, or the group. It all revolves about how you can contribute to their work and why it should be their interest in hiring you. Here you expand on the relevant experience/projects you did, about your abilities to publish papers in top journals/conferences in the field, your abilities to solicit external funding, teaching, whatever. Still you should consider how much bragging is appropriate. The message should be clear and concise: "there is a potential fit between the two of us". Finally, I would close the letter by explaining what can be found in the attached documents and possibly what other constraints you might have. When appropriate, I also make it clear that this is of course an unsolicited application, but still I would be glad if the person would find time to review my background and reply. Attach your CV and the statement of your research interests. Worked for me. Also you should be as concise as possible. The length of this reply is probably already at the edge of acceptable length. I came a cross a short but interesting editorial note from American Chemical Society written by a potential postdoc supervisor. She raises lots of advises like send few thoughtful emails rather than tones of thoughtless copies and pasted emails. I think it is quiet useful for every postdoc applicant regardless of his major. Couple of interesting quotes from the author is of value Funding issues aside, the majority of the postdoctoral applications I receive do not capture my interest, and I am sure this is true for most faculty. Many email requests that I receive appear to be sent by someone who has taken a long list of faculty names/ emails and sent oﬀ their application with little thought. I usually do not even read such requests after the ﬁrst few sentences My advice to potential applicants: send far fewer but personalized emails. Read about a faculty member’s research and tailor your letter to the group. Obviously, include your CV, prior research accomplishments, your career plans, and how a position in the group would help move you toward your goals. Provide details that help sell you, including important interactions with colleagues, the skills that you bring to the position, and other key points that may set you apart. When writing an email to me, for example, I like to know why you selected my group: was it on the advice of a mentor, because you like a particular aspect of my research, or hope to gain a speciﬁc skillset? Next, explain what you can do for me. Most applicants list a myriad of reasons why getting hired is good for them. Perhaps not surprisingly, I hire people because it helps my research program. I want an outstanding researcher and also someone who has good communication skills. Reading your email is my ﬁrst opportunity to judge your ability You may find the whole text of less than a page here I would treat it like a networking exercise. Do you know each other -- Contact them directly Does your advisor know him/her -- Talk to your advisor and get the scoop on the potential advisor. Talk you your advisor and devise a contact plan. Maybe your advisor can provide an introduction at the next conference or a suggestion for a lab visit for you. Do you know someone in common -- Talk to that person. Get the scoop on the potential advisor. Then contact the potential advisor dropping the common person's name and saying how he/she thought the potential advisor would be a great fit for you. You know no one in common -- Networking fail. Go meet more people. a. Have you cited the potential advisor in a paper -- Send them a reprint as an introduction b. You don't know the potential advisor (or anyone who knows him) and have never cited him -- Before contacting the person, you need to know why you want to work with him/her. If you are confident, send an email introducing yourself. If you are hesitant, ask your advisor for an email introduction. You don't know the potential advisor (or anyone who knows him) and have never cited him -- Why do you want to work with this person? (i) Because (s)he might want to change fields, thus no one in the network knows the putative advisor; (ii) has read their papers, as one should, and finds the work interesting. And yes, it did happen to me. I have sent several unsolicited letters to potential advisors that I had no previous contact with, and got a reply for more than half of them. @fridaymeetssunday see edit. I didn't mean it in a bad way, I meant it in the you need to know why you want to work with the person to explain your position. Fair enough. The original answer felt like it was discoursing unsolicited contacts. IMO, this part - Before contacting the person, you need to know why you want to work with him/her. - is the important bit, regardless of one's network. Btw, I always added a paragraph explaining why I wanted to change field, and extended the point in the motivation letter, and got feedback that that worked in my favour.	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1604	How to prepare for a (PhD or PostDoc) admission procedure? "Luck favors the prepared mind" ( Louis Pasteur ) During the MS degree program or PhD program, it's advisable for a good student to get used to take a look on scientific activities of research groups he want to join, after graduation. So, if the student decides somehow that he wants to try to join X, Y, Z groups, how should he prepare himself the best for the admission procedure? What should he do before actually applying for that position in that group? What should he do before the (formal centralized or informal) admission procedure starts? Some of my own answers: Task #0: he must read all the recent papers of the group he would like to join, and know very well those related to his research field. Task #1: prepare all the admission material (we've already discussed about this) Task #2...#N... what else? What would you suggest to anyone to prepare himself to an admission procedure? Thanks a lot I'll start with some steps prior to yours in the interest of making the answer more generalizable: Determine which universities to apply to. This will involve weighing factors such as ranking, faculty members, student opinions (from online discussion sources like this one or face-to-face discussions), sub-field specialties, and location, among others. You can prepare for this by looking all this stuff up: US News & World Reports rankings for graduate programs is a good ranking system; there may be better ones I'm not familiar with. Check the department's faculty page (example) for each university to see broadly-defined research interests for faculty members. Some people will explicitly list whether they're taking on new graduate students or not. If you know anyone in the field, talk to them to see which universities/professors/labs would be good to check out. Determine which lab to apply to. This will involve a lot of the above, but specifically it will involve talking to graduate students. This question covers that topic in pretty good depth. Read up on the fundamentals of the topic you're interested in. I would suggest you be familiar with the field enough to ask a basic question about it. In my field, review papers would be a great resource for this, although I will admit that it may be hard for you to find a good one. Speak with one of the subject matter librarians in your university (i.e., if engineering, talk to the librarians in the engineering library) and ask them to help you find recent review papers on your topic. I'll concede this is a difficult task, but being able to ask even simple questions about the field shows familiarity, and will make you look better during the interview. I recall some of my graduate school interviews where I just sat there, almost completely unfamiliar with the lab's research topic, and I felt very foolish indeed. All the stuff in the question you linked to above. At this point, most of your work is already set in stone; your undergraduate grades are set, your summer internships are complete, you finished the GRE, and it isn't likely you can do anything for your professors at this point to improve your recommendation letters. Just focus on the labs themselves and learn as much as you can before making decisions. The answer to your question also depends on whether you want to apply to a specific group (which I think of as the "European model" of admissions) or to an entire department ("US model"). In the US model, test scores, transcripts, and letters of recommendation tend to be the most important factor, with the statement of purpose being a less weighted criterion, as you tend not to be "locked in" to the area you outline in your statement of purpose. In that case, selecting a group follows admission, and then you need to do your homework on the different groups at the institutions you're interested in. However, in the European model, selecting a group occurs before the admissions process begins. In that case, everything eykanal mentions in his answer is important. However, the key thing will be to convince me that you are directly and actively interested in applying to my group: Indicate how your skills and background are tied in to the projects available in my group. Show that you've done some looking into the recent work in my group. If you've established previous contact with me, raise a reminder of that. Explain why you would make a good fit in my group. If you start doing those things, you'll make me want to request letters of reference and call you for an interview. If not, it's likely I'll send your application to the "circular file" without further consideration.	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2506	Which bibliometrics index to trust more? We've already discussed about which bibliometric indeces are diffused the most, and how they work. We all know that, along the most common h-index, there are many other parameters deriving from it or similar to it. From Publish or Perish website, we can list: g-index: Egghe's g-index hc-index: the contemporary h-index individual h-index: its three variations hI-index, hI-norm, and hm-index Between these (and other) bibliometrics indeces, which one do you trust more? Which one do you think is the best one to get the scientific excellence of an author? Why? Thanks! a more succinct answer to your question is Goodhart's law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law If we are to reduce someone's scholarly worth to a number, allow me to (facetiously) suggest the Erdős–Bacon number: http://tinyurl.com/ylqt2h "Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." — William Bruce Cameron (sometimes misattributed to Albert Einstein) The short answer is NONE. A longer answer is "to get the scientific excellence of an author, read their papers and understand their contributions". The problem here is in expecting a number to characterize the contributions and quality of an individual researcher. Probably the only way in which these measures can be useful (and that's stretching it a LOT) is if they are viewed in aggregate (for a department/university) to get a very crude picture of research productivity (not excellence). But the signal is so noisy as to be useless. Really, there's no shortcut for the hard work of reading, researching and asking in order to assess the "scientific excellence" of a researcher. I was expectin' an answer like yours... and if you were obliged to choose? ;-) I really wouldn't :). It's like asking me to choose which knife to cut myself with. To give a somewhat inflammatory analogy, it's like being asked whether, if one were forced to choose one or the other, it's better to judge researchers based on race or sex. There's just no good answer. (+1) To add to this, all of the different proposed metrics are simply some type of numerical transformation based upon (essentially) the same information. Unless the information with which to base the score off improves to be a better/reasonable indicator of "scientific excellence", no amount of transformation to those metrics will make them a better indicator. The saying "garbage in - garbage out" is apropos here. Good point @AndyW: in fact the American Statistics Association did an analysis a while back showing that h-index correlates strongly with the square root of total citations. @Suresh: can I convince you to dig up a link to that ASA study? Thanks. ARgghh. I just spent a good 15 minutes googling, and can't find it. There is some discussion of this here: http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/why-the-h-index-is-virtually-no-use/ You can trust them all, equally. Each index has a precise meaning that is well defined (once the database used is given). For example, if a researcher has h-index 3, you know that she has at least 3 papers with at least 3 citation each, and that she has not 4 papers with more than 3 citation each, and this is quite reliable informations. Now, what you probably mean is whether we can trust some index to say something else; but what? Research productivity? Academic success? It's just like the number of books sold by a novelist. You can trust it to tell you how many books she sold, and it may help you decide whether you want to publish its next one if you are only interested in sales. Of course if you want to decide whether she deserves the Nobel prize, you might not want to base your decision on this index. Indices are (unfortunately) liked by managers, administrators and funding agencies rather than by researchers. Hence, you should ask these managers, administrators and agencies which indices they trust (and why). I am not sure that academia.SE is the right place to find managers...	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26429	Are there formal studies analyzing available test time versus performance? Are there any studies showing that there is a direct connection (or a lack of a connection) between extending the time given for students to complete a written exam and their performance on the exam? I think there's a lot of anecdotal evidence that would suggest that the more relaxed time constraints are helpful, but I would like to be able to point to "field studies" if possible, as that would make for a more convincing position with my colleagues. This question is so near to yours: Is it wrong to impose a challenging time constraint on exams? The difference here is asking about formal studies attempting to verify and quantify the effect, not just if it's "appropriate" or "fair." Several studies have examined the impact of extended test-taking time on performance at all academic grade levels. Many of these studies focus on individuals with learning disabilities, but generally include students without learning disabilities as a control group. I have summarized some studies here, and provided a list of additional studies which may be of interest. The studies indicate that other individual factors (academic ability and skills, perception of time, and method of test administration) may impact test performance in concert with or in addition with extended time. One study of learning disabled (LD) and non-learning disabled (NLD) college students being given a reading test that assessed vocabulary and comprehension assessed outcomes for those who received an extended test period of time and a half compared to the normal period (Ofiesh, 2000). Individuals with LD saw significant improvements in the extended time period compared to NLD students. Some NLD students did show improved scores in the extended period, but the difference was not significant. Similarly, in a study assessing the performance of elementary, middle, and high school students on the Stanford 10 achievement tests who received either the recommended amount of time or extra time, the authors concluded that NLD students exhibited no benefit or detriment with extended testing time (Brooks, Case, & Young, 2003). This did not vary whether they received a few minutes up to double the recommended time. Another study of 6th grade students taking a standardized test found that NLD students did not see a significant increase in scores in an extended-time condition, but LD students did (Huesman & Frisbie, 2000). However, NLD scores also varied based on instructions. When NLD students were given extra time, and told to take their time, their scores improved; when given extra time but told to work “quickly” but to still do their best work, they did not significantly improve, possibly because they were placed into a mindset of being timed. Another study examined the impact of extended time (1.5) on both multiple choice and problem solving tests in three university courses, but found no improvements in performance (Armitage, 1999). However, in a study of prospective graduate students who took the GRE writing test, participants who were given 60 minutes performed better than those given only 40 minutes (Powers & Fowles, 1996). A study of SAT performance for nearly 2,000 LD/ADHD or NLD high school students was examined for groups allowed standard time or 1.5 or 2 times the allotted time for verbal and math sections (Mandibach, Bridgeman, Cahalan-Laitusis, & Trapani, 2005). They found that NLD medium- and high-ability students performed best in the 1.5 time condition, but low-ability examinees saw no benefit. Extra time affected math more than verbal performance. Strong conclusions about LD student performance were non-significant in part due to small sample sizes. The authors note that low-ability students may not benefit from extra time because they lack needed problem-solving skills, while medium-ability students may benefit because they are able to check their work. Less benefit was seen for high ability students who may not have needed the extra time. The authors also noted that for longer tests, breaking the material into sections and setting time limits per section seemed to benefit all students, rather than asking them to pace themselves across all material. One study found no direct effect of extended time on written essay quality for college students, but did find that student who were allowed to use a word processor wrote more than students who provided handwritten answers, and that typed (but not hand written) essays demonstrated a link between length and quality (Lovett, Lewandowski, Berger, & Gathje, 2010). The authors propose it was not time that led to these improvements, but the flexibility to edit their answers when typed. A review of the evaluation of written exams cites several other studies regarding the impact of time on writing quality (Cho, 2003) and may be of interest. A report by Tindal and Fuchs (2000, pgs 26 – 35) provides a concise summary of the literature of test extensions or untimed tests from kindergarten through post-secondary education, including specific summaries of each study found in their review. This might be a good place to start in terms of additional literature. Although most of the examples I described here found few effects for non-learning disabled students receiving extended time on tests, I’ve also listed additional literature which may provide alternative results. Referenced studies: Armitage, C. (1999). Extended time limits on university examinations (Master’s thesis). Retrieved from: http://dspace.ucalgary.ca/bitstream/1880/24993/1/47990Armitage.pdf Brooks, T. E., Case, B. J., and Young, M. J. Pearson assessment report. (2003). Timed versus untimed testing conditions and student performance. Pearson Education, Inc. Retrieved from: http://images.pearsonassessments.com/images/tmrs/tmrs_rg/TimedUntimed.pdf Cho, Y. (2003). Assessing writing: Are we bound by only one method?. Assessing Writing, 8(3), 165-191. doi:10.1016/S1075-2935(03)00018-7 Huesman, R. L., Jr., & Frisbie, D. A. (2000, April). The validity of the ITBS Reading Comprehension test scores for learning disabled and non learning disabled students under extended-time conditions (ED 442 210). Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association, New Orleans LA. Retrieved from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED442210.pdf Lovett, B. J., Lewandowski, L. J., Berger, C., & Gathje, R. A. (2010). Effects of response mode and time allotment on college students’ writing. Journal of College Reading and Learning, 40(2), 64-79. Retrieved from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ887306.pdf Mandibach, E. B., Bridgeman, B., Cahalan-Laitusis, C., & Trapani, C. (2005). The impact of extended time on SAT test performance. College Board Research Report No. 2005-8 – 35 pages. The College Board; New York. ETS RR-05-20. Retrieved from: https://research.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/publications/2012/7/researchreport-2005-8-impact-extended-time-sat-test-performance.pdf Ofiesh, N. S. (2000). Using processing speed tests to predict the benefit of extended test time for university students with learning disabilities. Journal of Postsecondary Education and Disability, 14(1), 39-56. Retrieved from: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ649045.pdf Powers, D. E., & Fowles, M. E. (1996). Effects of applying different time limits to a proposed GRE writing test. Journal of Educational Measurement, 33(4), 433-452. doi:10.1111/j.1745-3984.1996.tb00500.x Tindal, G., &. Fuchs, L. (2000). A summary of research on test changes: An empirical basis for defining accommodations (ED 442 245). Lexington, KY: Mid-South Regional Resource Center. Retrieved from http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED442245.pdf Additional studies: Alster, E. H. (1997). The effects of extended time on algebra test scores for college students with and without learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 30(2), 222-227. doi:10.1177/002221949703000210 Calahan-Laitusis, C. (2004). Accommodations on high-stakes writing tests for students with disabilities. Princeton, NJ: ETS. Retrieved from: http://144.81.87.152/Media/Research/pdf/RR-04-13.pdf Cohen, A. S., Gregg, N., & Deng, M. (2005). The Role of Extended Time and Item Content on a High‐Stakes Mathematics Test. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 20(4), 225-233. doi:10.1111/j.1540-5826.2005.00138.x Crawford, L., Helwig, R., & Tindal, G. (2004). Writing Performance Assessments How Important Is Extended Time?. Journal of learning disabilities, 37(2), 132-142. doi:10.1177/00222194040370020401 Knoch, U., & Elder, C. (2010). Validity and fairness implications of varying time conditions on a diagnostic test of academic English writing proficiency. System,38(1), 63-74. doi:10.1016/j.system.2009.12.006 Lewandowski, L. J., Lovett, B. J., Parolin, R., Gordon, M., & Codding, R. S. (2007). Extended time accommodations and the mathematics performance of students with and without ADHD. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment,25(1), 17-28. doi:10.1177/0734282906291961 Lewandowski, L. J., Lovett, B. J., & Rogers, C. L. (2008). Extended Time as a Testing Accommodation for Students With Reading Disabilities Does a Rising Tide Lift All Ships?. Journal of Psychoeducational Assessment, 26(4), 315-324. doi:10.1177/0734282908315757 Munger, G. F., & Loyd, B. H. (1991). Effect of speededness on test performance of handicapped and nonhandicapped examinees. The Journal of Educational Research, 85(1), 53-57. doi:10.1080/00220671.1991.10702812 Runyan, M. K. (1991). The effect of extra time on reading comprehension scores for university students with and without learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 24(2), 104-108. doi:10.1177/002221949102400207	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.424847	2014-07-26T19:45:17	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/26429", "authors": [ "Bartosz", "Faiza Asad", "Sameeraa4ever", "Sree ", "aeismail", "dangiankit", "enthu", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15723", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70808", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70809", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70810", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/70815", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/71749", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/71756", "user1387109" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
36640	Should first introductory paragraph explicitly state the subject of the paper? I am trying to write an introduction for a scientific paper. I am not sure, when I am announcing my subject, should I write that this is the subject, or just mention it without announcing it outright? This is very confusing so here's an example. a. Man was always interested by aliens. This paper discusses the possibility of alien life. b.Man was always interested by aliens. Currently, scientific discoveries are shedding light on whether it exists. Which phrasing is better? Is the first one too blunt? Oh and I'm not sure whether this is the right forum to post this question, could you tell me if it's not? Neither. "Man was always interested in aliens." is needless filler. Omit it. Thank you so much to everyone for their answers, all of them were very helpful. I'm not choosing one 'best' one, there are so many useful tips. The purpose of the introduction is to focus in on the specific, and likely more narrow, topic of your research from a larger perspective. the "larger perspective" is the larger scientific problem to which your study is tied. Therefore you can start the introduction by briefly explaining the larger perspective followed by identifying the existing gaps in knowledge and gradually work towards your own question. Many books on scientific writing compare the introduction to a funnel where the wider question is focused to the appropriate width of your research question. the main point is to set your study in a wider perspective so that you can tie your results into the gaps of the larger perspective. This helps readers to get a good perspective of your research and evaluate the results vis-à-vis existing knowledge. Hence, your scenarios a and b look like a way to describe the writing strategy where in reality the two or three sentences usually requires one or a few paragraphs of text. You want to "capture" your audience when writing—that is, you want to make sure that you hold their attention as long as possible. Getting their attention by telling them what the purpose of your paper is, and what they're going to learn, is a good way to do so. While the "funnel" approach that Peter mentions in his answer is valuable (and is also discussed in general books on writing as well, such as Sheridan Baker's The Practical Stylist, where it is called the "keyhole approach"), the "key" to the introductory paragraph is its conclusion—this should be the generating point both for the introduction and everything else that follows. Coming from a psychology perspective, I have seen eminent authors adopt both writing approaches. Introductions to journal articles should generally have an opening. The opening of an introduction should generally introduce the aim of the research, the importance of the research, the gap in the literature that is addressed, and the method adopted to achieve the aim. Of course, often these themes are only touched on in the opening, and emerge more completely through the course of the literature review and are also often consolidated at the end of the introduction in a section often titled "the current study". Your question pertains to how to structure the sentences or paragraphs of the opening. The more common model I have seen used is to have a motivating introductory paragraph that relates more to importance or gap and then have a second or third paragraph that culminates in the aim of the research. However, it's also possible to do it the other way around and have a very clear opening paragraph that states exactly what the study aims to do. And then have a second paragraph that touches more on importance, gap, and context. I have found article deconstruction to be a useful tool to develop ideas about writing structure. In particular I wrote up an article deconstruction of an introduction that used the "aim-first" approach here where the first-sentence started with "The purpose of this study was ..." . I also have more detailed notes about introductions - see particularly the discussion of the opening. The best model for an essay is "get attention and state idea, explain explain explain, restate idea." However, every essay is different and there are countless strategies. The best idea is to start the essay with something that captures attention and at least hints at the topic. Then at the end of the first paragraph state your claim. You want to snag the attention of the reader, and tell them the thesis statement. Keep the "hook" relevant though. A good idea is to start with a shocking fact or tell a quick story, unless its a scientific essay. The middle is for explaining everything, and maybe a good idea is to use a paragraph to discuss the stuff from the hook paragraph. Then the end is pretty much an inverse of the first one: Restate your claim and tie up loose ends. " A good idea is to start with a shocking fact, or tell a quick story. " Not in a scientific paper, really. ... Good point.	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37501	Should I revise and resubmit? I have just received a decision letter for my submitted manuscript to an Elsevier journal. It was a revise and resubmit (R&R). Two reviewers comments were included in the decision letter. One of the reviewers suggested minor revisions. The other reviewer on the other hand recommended rejection and his comments were really unfair. Evidently, he hasn't bothered reading the manuscript completely. I am really disappointed and don't really know how to even respond to his comments. what do you recommend me to do? I am really frustrated. If the reviewer recommends rejection, then they may indeed not read the entire article. As an author, you have to write in a way that hooks the reviewers, as well as you can. There was something later in the paper that the reviewer didn't see? (I guess that is why you say he didn't read the paper completely.) Something important? Maybe it should be mentioned in the abstract. I some times do not finish reading a paper. Usually it is because there are so many things wrong with the paper that I gave up. For examples, false claims, poor English, the authors show lack of knowledge, poor methodology, problem is old and not interesting, lack of motivation, etc. Most journal articles are often a revise and resubmit before they get published.The final article that you see in journals is often never the first submission attempt but rather, crafted through continuous revising and editing. You should revise and resubmit, you would be doing yourself a disfavour if you don't. The editors had two very contrasting reviewers for your piece, one who suggested a minor revision and the other an outward reject, so a Revise and Resubmit is a pretty good outcome from that, but also highlights a stark contrast of views. When you receive harsh comments, it's good to take a step back for a few days and let the anger and frustration that you undoubtedly feel to disappear. At the moment you might feel like it's a bit of a personal attack, and have used language such as 'it's unfair' and 'he hasn't read the article completely.' These are emotional responses and are not helpful for your success. Why are the comments unfair and how can you determine whether they've read the article completely? When you are ready, sit down and read them with fresh eyes, highlighting what you can do to improve the article. There will be things in there (difficult to find) that you can utilise to strengthen the quality of your article. You don't have to address everything the second reviewer says but you might be surprised that once those personal feelings die down, the number of things you might find helpful from that second reviewer. When you do your revision, you'll need to prepare a summary report regarding all the comments, highlighting what you changed, and what you didn't. The things you do not change you provide justification for in your summary report. You would be surprised by the number of academics who never bother to revise and resubmit a paper to a journal, the numbers are outstanding. Revising and resubmitting allows for you to continue to improve your ideas and produce something of high quality. one of the reviewers suggested minor revisions. The other reviewer on the other hand recommended a rejection and his comments were really unfair. Welcome to peer review. Yes, it sucks to have a reviewer criticise your work so much, especially if you feel the comments are unfair. However, both, the editor and the other reviewer seem to give the manuscript a chance. You cannot throw your work away as soon as somebody disagrees with it. As a sidenote, try to get a bit perspective and figure out why the second reviewer hated the paper so much, without thinking that (s)he is just an idiot. The reviewer didn't bother to read the paper to the end? Yes, that's bad form, but clearly your paper wasn't exactly compellingly written either. The reviewer didn't "get" the paper at all? Maybe your descriptions are not that great. The reviewer thinks your contribution isn't strong enough? Explain better how your paper improves the state of the art. Oftentimes, the most negative comments are the ones that help you most in improving your research, even if they are clearly the ones that hurt the most. Should i revise and resubmit? Yes! Yes, you should revise and resubmit, if you still want the article to be published in the journal you originally targeted. Evidently, he hasn't bothered reading the article completely. This may be true, but once you've waited a day or two and digested the comments, look at it again. This kind of review might highlight that some readers of the journal would not understand your paper properly! Even if you think the comments are unfair, be sure to include them in your response. Treat them thoroughly, with evidence from your article and the literature, or include supplementary material with the response letter. Then, ask a co-author or trusted colleague to read over the revised article and response, to check the tone. Good luck! First, remember reviewer's "verdicts" are only recommendations. The handling editor evaluate these reviews along with your original submission to see what is a fair balance. Deviating reviews are not uncommon. Editors have two solutions at their hands, either, as in your case, make a decision based on the two, or to add a third reviewer to the mix. The former will likely happen if the editor has good insights into the topic, the latter if the editor may require more input to feel safe with a decision. After all, the editor is chosen to have broad knowledge but will not master everything. So, you have received a revision decision which means the manuscript is very likely accepted if you provide a good set of revisions and a good account of how you have treated the comments from the reviewers. A "bad" review, can emerge from a nebulously written manuscript so if you think the comments are unfair or even rude. Take them with a grain of salt and focus on whether or not they emerge from some misunderstanding or unclear writing and revise accordingly. The editor should have given you some pointers on how to view the reviews but this does not always happen, You are then left to your self to handle the revisions. Important is to not dismiss any of the reviewers just because they disagree or criticize your work. You need to consider their comments and provide a rebuttal to the editor so that any grounds for disagreement is firmly described. So carefully revise the paper, provide a detailed and polite letter outlining your actions, make sure the revision fulfils all the journal's instructions for formatting and resubmit on time. I would revise and resubmit. Not only that, I would implement as many of the harsh reviewer's comments as feasible and truly warranted. At least it will show that you are taking the journal and its personnel seriously. Remember, only one of the two said "reject". Show a good faith effort to satisfy both of the reviewers. Keep up the effort my friend!	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43609	What is a good system for generating BibTeX reference keys? When using a reference manager (or even when tracking references on a handwritten draft), it is common to have a key for each entry when referring to items, which the computer (or you in a final form) replaces with a properly styled reference later (in the style of the journal). E.g., in BibTeX, which I am most familiar with, writing \cite{Box2015a} might be replaced with "[1]" or with "(Box, O. 2015)" or with "(Box, O. 2015, Meaningful reference key format)" depending on style -- the key in question being the Box2015a part. Having a good format for the key seems useful, since one would spend a lot of time only seeing the key, rather than the full reference. Simply the author name and date, and a letter to break conflicts doesn't seem ideal. Was Box2015a Box's work on Meaningful Reference Key formats? Or was it his work on Bicycle Speed Dependency on Weather? Getting that wrong would be embarrassing, and also accidental plagiarism (since credit was not given to the right paper). What is a better format for reference keys? I personally use "AuthorYear-FirstWordOfTitle" format, it's enough to resolve conflicts and remind me which paper this is. @fjarri: I presume you do have a fallback plan for cases such as Barbará2000-Using, Stonebraker1993-The, Roucairol1982-On, Wang2000-A, Shin1998-A, Jain1996-Similarity, Yu1998-Online, Han2000-Mining, Liu1987-Performance, Yu1994-Scheduling, etc., all of which identify at least 3 publications ;) Related: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/4026/recommended-citation-key-construction @O.R.Mapper: of course, if the title starts from an article or a preposition, I take the next word. I don't see any problem with "mining" or "similarity", it's enough to remind me which of the two or three papers is it. @fjarri: I was rather referring to the case where you need to distinguish several of the publications for which one of the keys - e.g. Jain1996-Similarity - is valid. I use the same system as @fjarri, but multiple words from the title that make it both unique and easily recognisable for me. The keys get a bit long, but since I'm using RefTex (part of AUCTeX for emacs) anyways, that doesn't impact my workflow at all. For example 'Poincare1892:mech-celeste1' refers to the first volume of Poincaré's famous "Les méthodes nouvelles de la mécanique céleste". Probably, the only general rule to follow is that the key should be something that well characterizes the document. Anything more specific will depend a lot on the topics you are writing about, and vary from reference to reference: Is the title very unique, or rather generic? In the former case, a shortened version of the title could be integrated into the key. (As a random example: The title The triangle processor and normal vector shader: a VLSI system for high performance graphics might be shortened to something like TriangleProcHighPerf.) Does the publication describe a product or technique that has a name (which you might also use in your text)? If so, that name could become a part of the key. Is the publication connected to a recognizeable author name, or do you rarely see the same author name twice in the literature you deal with, in particular with respect to specific approaches? In the latter case, author names may just be arbitrary strings that do not help you remember anything particular, while in the former case, you might think about including the author name the work is associated with the name in the key. Is the year in any way special for the work? For example, is it an exceptionally early example of a supposedly modern invention, or is it the variant that has become known as "the 2011-version" of a particular approach? If so, the year could reasonably be a part of the key, otherwise, it seems superfluous. Can the publication be categorized? For instance, you may want to indicate in the key whether something is a concept draft, a user study of a concept presented elsewhere, a survey of several techniques, or a design rationale for a given concept. Are there various versions of essentially the same work published by different publishers? Different layouts and presentation forms (monochrome vs. color, ...) may have different strengths, so you may end up wanting to specifically refer to (w.l.o.g.) the Springer version and the IEEE version of some work that for some reason was published twice. In that case, including the publisher name in the key might be reasonable. I hope this helps to get the idea - I do not see a reason for a uniform key format here; instead, this case-specific format highlights the peculiarities of each referenced work and therefore seems to help best to remember which reference points to what work in my experience. For me personally, the above system generally leads to keys that never include an author name or publication year, and almost always a concept name, otherwise some fragments of the paper title. Depending on your topics, you may well end up with different preferences. I have never had a problem of key collisions while using this approach; if anything (not that it would actually cause any problem), I may have ended up with several different keys in cases where I created bibliography entries for the same publication several times rather than copying the first one to later works. To summarize: An advantage of this system is that you do not need to remember any information that is not descriptive for the content of the paper (publication year, author name, publication venue, ...) to understand the reference. A disadvantage may be that the key cannot be generated automatically, though I use one .bib file per project and my workflow is usually decide to add reference -> search for reference in JabRef to check whether it is there -> add if it does not exist -> Ctrl+K to get insertion-ready \cite-command in the clipboard, where automatic generation of keys is a non-issue. I'm using (BibTeX) reference keys that consist of three parts: the last name of the first author the last two digits of the publication year the first meaningful word from the title The idea of "meaningful words" is a bit vague, of course. Usually, that's the first adjectiv, verb (except "to be"), or noun in the title. For example, I would use box15meaningful to refer to a paper entitled "On Meaningful Reference Key Formats" but box15bicycle to refer to "Is Bicycle Speed Dependent on Weather?". (I think there is a term for "first meaningful word from the title" as the concept is used or was used in catalogues of libraries, but I forgot the term). From my perspective, the main benefits of this system are: Given the full reference, I can predict the citation key. For example, when I'm looking at the printed paper and want to cite it, I know the citation key without looking it up in the BibTeX file or using any software tool to look it up for me. Given the citation key, I have some idea which paper it is, because the key includes a meaningful word from the title. The keys are reasonably short and don't clutter up my text too much. The citation keys can be used as part of file names, so I can also name pdfs like that if I happen to have a paper available as pdf on my hard drive. For example, I would have box15meaningful.pdf and box15bicycle.pdf. The citation keys can be used as part of URLs, so I can name websites about my own papers like that. For example, if I would be Box, I might have a website like http://my-university.edu/~box/publications/box15bicycle/ where you could donwload the raw data used for my research on bicycle speed. Given two BibTeX files that both use this scheme, I can merge them by merging entries with the same key, because the same paper will always get the same reference key. The mapping from "full citation information" to "citation key" is, in many ways, a hash function, and usually are by construction easy to apply but hard to invert. We do this because we don't want to have to type 50 to 100 characters each time we cite a paper. The easiest way, frequently, to reconstruct the data from the hash key, is by looking up it up in a dictionary/table. If your bibliography database is big enough this makes it something much suited for software than for your brain. So my workflow does the following: I use JabRef as my primary bibliographic data manager, as well as to keep track of my growing collection of PDFs. The citation key format is ABCDEF1234? The first six characters are formed by the names of the authors (following some rule), followed by four digit year, and followed by disambiguation suffix. I use Vim as my editor of choice. I export my citation database from JabRef using a custom-written export filter to become a Vim completefunc, which I load through my .vimrc everytime I edit a TeX file. This allows me to use it two ways: I can type the start of the citation key, say Won, followed by <ctlr>-X <ctrl>-U and it will show me a popup list of all entries with key starting with "Won" which includes, in my case, all of my first authored papers with at most two authors. Highlighting selected entries in the list will show a "preview screen" showing the bibliographic information about that entry. I configure mine to only show the full title of the article, but it is easy enough to includes also publisher info etc. Seeing an existing citation key in the document, bringing my cursor to the end of the key and hitting again the combo <ctrl>-X <ctrl>-U the list now has just one element, but the preview window still comes up showing me the bibliographic information. If I need to insert a citation to an article whose complete author list I cannot reconstruct in my head (and hence cannot know even the start of the citation key), I can either browse through the full list provided by the completion function in Vim, or just search in JabRef. For illustrations: Before invoking the previewer: Note the \cite{...} string in the middle of the window. Putting the cursor on Alinac1999 brings up a pop-up menu (turns out Serge Alinhac as at least three papers in 1999) and a preview pane on top. I think you missed OP's point. What they say is that an author-year is a bad format, because one cannot disambiguate immediately between papers with similar author-year codes when reading the paper. I assume that having some automated tool to search and insert bibtex keys is already a given for them. (It isn't so for many researchers, though, especially the older generation). @FedericoPoloni I think you are the one who missed the point. (a) They are asking about the BibTeX key, not its presentation in the final PDF. (b) The OP asks about a good format for a BibTeX key for when editing the manuscript; my point is precisely that that is the wrong question to ask. What one should ask for is a good tool that alleviates this problem entirely. An editing tool that allows you to, after selecting a BibTeX key that is in the running text that you are editing, immediately shows you the corresponding Bibliographic Information is about as unambiguous as you can get. @FedericoPoloni: in particular, what I describe is more than just search and insert. But also on-the-spot reverse lookup via a popup menu. Let me include a picture of what it looks like. I think I have clear what you are writing about. Sublime Text 3 has something like that. The key sentence in the question, though, is Having a good format for the key seems useful, since one would spend a lot of time only seeing the key, rather than the full reference. (By "reading the paper", I meant "reading the LaTeX source".) This is almost a non-answer. The reason is that I use a similar format to what you find inadequate: "FirstAuthorLastName:Year". In my field we use Harvard style referencing so this is almost what appears in the text. The colon is not a key ingredient, it is just that I use the form "tab:xxx", "fig:xxx" and "eq:xxx", where "xxx" is the unique name I want for the object, for labelling floats and equations. My point is that for me being short is a necessity since I do not want unnecessarily long BibTeX keys or labels hanging around the document. I tried for a while to add number of authors, for example "Smith+4:2005" to distinguish from single authored "Smith:2005" but that ended up being to tiresome to set up I also shortened the multiauthors to "Smith+:2005" for a while. I use JabRef (no promotion intended) and have now simply resorted to specify that the preferred automatic key generation is "FirstAuthorLastName:Year" where JabRef will add "a", "b", "c" etc. where similarities appear. So why do I work with the shorter form. First of all, I know what material I reference. I also know the material in the field. I later also double check the references, as they appear in the reference list, certainly before I submit a manuscript. So the key point here is the trade off between adding a lot of information to a label with lower degree of "mis-referencing" and short forms with potential risk of more misses. In the end you use whatever suits you but with time you probably end up simplifying. Having written both papers and very long reports/books, I have never found this to be a big issue. I can understand that it becomes a problem if you for some reason are using a lot of references with which you are unfamiliar. So "better" is what you find best. If I understand correctly from your profile you aim to get into a PhD and I am sure your database will grow in a specific direction during the PhD, you will become intimately familiar with that set of literature, and you will perhaps change the way you BibTeX key label your references. So better is what works best for you at the moment. In the long term, the simpler the better in my experience. My system of choice is to let my reference manager, or some external database, handle the key generation. Every time I need to insert a citation, I go to the external tool or database, look up the reference (thus avoiding most of the risk of using the wrong key), and copy the citation key into my document. It sounds impractical, but actually I've found the process to be pretty smooth and not that inconvenient. The few keys that I use the most often in any given paper, I wind up remembering anyway. I use Mendeley as a reference manager, which presents metadata next to a view of the PDF of the paper. So when I look up some information in a paper, it's easy to copy the citation key directly from Mendeley into my document. I imagine there are many other reference managers that have this same feature. I primarily use Jabref and LyX. Hence, the need to encode every bit of meaningful information in the key does not arise. Hence, I have a simple mechanism of key naming, which is <FirstAuthorLastName>:<Year>:<JournalAbbreviation> If it is a book, then I replace the last part with Book. I have set up Jabref that it creates the first two parts automatically when importing. Since the journal abbreviations are not standard (yet), have not automated that. Since LyX is used to write the document and insert entries, I can do a search to find out which articles need to be cited and the key is not hugely important ... Welcome to the site! It might be worth incorporating into your answer something pointing out JabRef has LyX integration, so you can do the search in the JabRef end. (I assume that is what you mean? Or does LyX also have search? I myself sentled on the Search Jabref, click to insert into LyX method. Its been a while since i used LyX's manager) Thanks @Oxinabox. Although Jabref does have LyX integration, I do not use that. I use Jabref primarily as a glorified citation manager. Used to use Zotero - it is great, but got burned by the sqlite db, instead of plain text. What I do is use the "Insert Citation" functionality of LyX, which brings up a menu where you can also do searching, inserting as well as selecting how teh citation will look like. Fair enough, I suggest (for your own benefit) looking into the integration, its great. Instructions for setting it up are at: http://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/148287/lyx-and-jabref-problem/239572	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.426684	2015-04-15T07:36:12	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/43609", "authors": [ "David Dunaetz", "Esther", "Federico Poloni", "Frames Catherine White", "Jaap Eldering", "Manziel", "Mark Stosberg", "O. R. 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40492	Resubmission of paper has been "under consideration" for 30 days. Request update? I (re)submitted my paper to a Nature related journal (after revisions) and it has been "under consideration" for about 30 days. Should I ask for an update? If yes, is this too rude? : Dear editor, I hope you are doing well. I have noticed that the status of our paper titled “ “ has not changed for about 30 days. I am not sure what the time frame is for resubmissions. Is it possible I have missed an update? If there is anything I need to do at this stage, please let me know. What did happen in the end? Journals such as nature and Science and their related publications run on tight schedules. Not hearing from them quickly is usually a good thing since rejections are made quickly. Yes, a month may seem long but for me is too early to worry. It is difficult to say what time frame is reasonable but two months would be on the long side. Having said that, these journals have professionals working full time with the journal, unlike many others where editors work on the journal along side regular academic work. This means they rarely let any job lie around for very long. Of course, a mistake may happen, but I would not make such an assumption as a first choice. So take it easy for another couple of weeks. If there is any pressure on you for getting advance notice of publication, for, for example, job applications or salary discussions, a mail providing the cause of urgency would always be possible but if it is only pressing anticipation, sending mails to editors early is not a great idea. But in this case, estimating the time frame is more difficult than for regular journals but give it another couple fo weeks at least.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.428039	2015-02-24T10:05:20	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/40492", "authors": [ "0x90", "AlkaToneKeto", "MrPromethee", "ashish14", "guest", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/109057", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/109058", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/109061", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/109062", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/109064", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32534", "user109064" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
29713	Can I understand the rejection reason of an article by reading the reviewers' comments? My paper is rejected with this comment from editor: Unfortunately, the reviewers generally agree this paper should not be considered for publish in.... My question is do all the reviewers reject the paper? While, I read the reviewers's comment, some of them suggest some notations in order to improve my paper. A serious editor makes a decision based on the reports from the reviewers along with their own critical view of both the manuscript and the reviews. This means that both reviewers may not have made the official recommendation of reject, it sometimes happens reviewers give a "major revision" officially while in their confidential comment to the editor they provide their reasoning for providing that recommendation instead of a reject, which they think would be equally appropriate. Hence there is communication "behind the scenes" that is not visible to the author(s). It is also possible that an editor makes a decision for a reject based on reviews that recommend otherwise. In such cases the grounds may, for example, be that the editor sees that the revisions will be too complex to fit the time frame of a regular "major revision". Or, that there is some formal issue that reviewers will be unable to detect. The latter should, however, not be very common since such issues, including suitability to the journal, should be weeded out at the time of submission, not after review (thereby wasting reviewers valuable time). In the quote you provide, it seems as if both reviewers have found grounds for rejecting the paper. It is probably not very common that an editor changes such overwhelming recommendations (although it can happen). The fact that reviewers provide comments is not in any way unusual. Any serious reviewer knows that part of reviewing is to provide feedback on what is thought should be revised. Hence there is normally no major difference between reviews resulting in a recommendation for "reject" than those resulting in, say, "major revision". Any first round review that is returned without any comments and providing either an "accept" or a "reject" will, in my opinion as editor, be signalling a reviewer not willing to do the job and in fact useless for the process (manuscripts so good that they can be accepted without any action are very rare indeed). You can't really tell, unless it's explicit in the referee reports you receive. A referee could well give suggestions for improvements even if they advise rejecting the paper - they don't assume that just because the paper wouldn't appear in this journal it won't appear anywhere. It also doesn't matter whether all the referees recommended rejection - it is the editors that make the call, and that is what stands.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.428222	2014-10-10T06:10:11	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/29713", "authors": [ "Abhiram Natarajan", "LinknodeUnFound", "Sujatha Raj", "Umaru Husaini Uk", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81797", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81798", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81799", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81812", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81813", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81814", "krishnakanth kothakota", "qayyuum" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
177491	How should I admit a teaching mistake without losing authority? I made a small mistake while teaching a very simple concept. It was mainly a numerical mistake, and the essential parts of the concept were well illustrated. I want to admit my mistake and even though most students will receive it well, I fear to lose my authority with some students, mainly the ones that think that they could teach the class. Please don’t write answers in comments. It bypasses our quality measures by not having voting (both up and down) available on comments, as well as having other problems detailed on meta. Comments are for clarifying and improving the question; please don’t use them for other purposes. Especially when there are already 16 (!) real answers. Existing answers in comments and other extended discussion has been moved to chat. As a student, I actually learned a lot from watching how professors handled mistakes. In a lecture, if you didn't intentionally make a mistake, this is an unscripted moment, and therefore a glimpse into how an experienced person deals with something unexpected. I came to respect professors who were able to make a mistake and fix it; it taught me how to think, and how to be honest. By the same token, I lost respect for professors who were more concerned with the appearance of authority than just admitting to and fixing the mistake. Addendum After reading some of the other responses here, I feel I should add that I'm a white male from the US, and didn't consider other cultures or underrepresented groups when writing this answer. I certainly see how perceived authority among students could become more of an issue if the cultural norm is that a teacher shouldn't be challenged, or if the teacher is working to overcome implicit bias. I still feel, on balance, that admitting to and fixing mistakes confidently is intellectually honest and will engender more confidence and trust than ignoring mistakes, and actually provides an opportunity for a positive learning experience. However, I am not an expert on these issues, so I wanted to highlight that as a caveat. This. I really liked those lectures where a professor was asked a question that made them think on their feet because I got to see how a professor thinks. It is something I like to model these days, and it's the most fun classes where I get to do it. Whether I get the answer right or not is actually a secondary consideration; there is always the next class period where I can show the complete and worked out proof. On the flip side of this, I had a TA for physics that made a mistake that said weight increased during freefall and was removed while lifting something. That's obviously backwards, but they didn't catch it. It took a student to point it out and then the TA refused to understand it so the student had to explain it. I lost all respect for that TA, not because they made a mistake but because they couldn't understand it. I'm sure other profs & TAs made mistakes, but that's the only one I remember after +20 years. Definitely own up and people will forget the mistake. @computercarguy I think that's a great example, although I would classify that as on the original side instead of the flip side :) It actually does take a lot of skill and confidence to be able to fix a mistake in real time, which is why I learned a lot from watching experienced professors who could do it, do it. It is not sexist or racist to note that sexism and racism continue to be unfortunate factors in the level of respect afforded to different sorts of people -- it is entirely the opposite. My original answer assumes that fixing errors is cost-free (besides a hit to your ego) and so one should just fix errors without worrying about authority, which was the OP's question. But I think there are classrooms where there is unjust bias against the teacher (of course not all teachers in a given group will face this). What do you do then? You should probably fix mistakes, but maybe it is important to think carefully about how to communicate corrections without ceding authority. I wanted to acknowledge this scenario, while also stating that I have no useful advice to give about it. I would like to note that mistakes should be the exception. If a teacher is consistently making mistakes and correcting themselves, then that is a problem. Making the occasional accidental mistake and correcting it is fine; making constant mistakes is not regardless of whether or not they make mistakes. I think the genuinely legitimate authority of "the teacher" is that they have far more experience than their students. Not that they are perfect, etc. Yes, experience does tend to diminish mistakes, but does not eliminate them. In fact, part of "the lesson" can/should be about how to cope with inevitable errors! :) (as opposed to pretending that no errors will be made...) In particular, the teacher should not pretend to take up a "position" that requires "defense". :) Unless, of course, the class is a chess class. @LSpice, ha. Well, yes, and, for that matter, it is always possible to interpret any human interaction as combat. :) I've found that my own perfectionism has acted as a crutch. A way of avoiding challenge which I felt I couldn't handle. If my presentation wasn't perfect, then there'd come scrutiny and I couldn't stand up to the scrutiny. Similar to the way a smuggler drives the speed limit. Perfect presentation because they can't handle scrutiny. Unfortunately, just with like a car going exactly the speed limit, a policy of perfect presentation tends to irritate people and create friction more than the intended effect of making things go well. @LukeGriffiths, a smuggler of knowledge into students' minds? I make mistakes in class - not often, but more often than I'd like. I note them and correct them as soon as I see them (or a student points them out to me). Sometimes I'm asked if I do that on purpose to see who in the class is awake. I reassure the class that there's no need since I err often enough by accident. You may annoy the few troublemakers who think they can teach the class better than you, but you will earn the respect of the true learners. Whoa, there is actually a lot to unpack in a post that short. Presumably you're teaching in a university setting. What "authority figure" are you even talking about? If students look up to you, great! But it is not even remotely a part of your job to make sure you're "above" them in some imaginary hierarchy; your job is to teach them. Trying to enforce it in some way is usually unproductive both for the teaching and your "authority". mainly the ones that think that they could teach the class Do you actually feel contested? Why? If they want to teach the class, they are free to apply to the department asking to do so. If they don't, but feel like you're doing a poor job - why don't they serve as TAs helping other students? There are plenty of ways to handle this tension if it exists, and productive ones don't involve wrestling with the troublesome students. Finally, when correcting mistakes, consider how impactful they were. If it is something silly like 2+2=5, either don't bother or mention it at the start of the next class briefly asking students to go over their notes since they didn't catch it earlier. If it is more impactful, dedicate some time to it. You have still delivered value to them, so chin up and try to see the situation through their eyes. No one wants to spend ten minutes on someone addressing insecurities more so than they do the actual content of the lesson. Stick to the point, and keep educating them: respect is earned by doing your job well. Your job is teaching, not some sort of power play. I'd even consider asking the student to try teaching. The might just find out how hard it is. People are more afraid of public speaking than death. And trying to teach people while doing so is that much harder. Students who think they could teach the class aren't the ones who are afraid of public speaking; they are, however, the ones who overestimate their qualifications. Inviting them to teach would be a huge mistake in my opinion: bad for the audience, no lesson learned for the student. +1 for "mention it at the start of the next class briefly asking students to [correct] their notes" I think the word "authority" here is not meant in the sense of somebody who has power over another, but in the sense of somebody who is authoritative on a subject, i.e. a subject-matter expert, knows what they're talking about, worth listening to. (Definition #3 here.) Educators have a legitimate interest in maintaining the appearance of being an authority on the subject they teach, because it means students are more likely to pay attention. @GregMartin, believing yourself to be correct and having the ability for public speaking aren't necessarily related. Plenty of people will back down on their assertions if they are asked to publicly prove it. Also, when the student makes mistakes when they try teaching, they can be pointed out, too. Done correctly, the teacher can show how easy it is to make a mistake. And as long as it's done without malice, this can be a valuable learning lesson, instead of retribution, shaming/bullying, or otherwise be harmful to the student. @kaya3 That's fair enough. My point was that you as an educator should appear authoritative on the subject, but it is not a competitive thing. In most cases this perception appears naturally because you'd be more knowledgeable than students, but there are unfortunate fringe cases where the class is taught to students who excel at the subject already. In the university setting this is uncommon and usually happens when freshmen overestimate their abilities, but happens still; IMHO, sorting it out with the department is the best then. Otherwise, just keep teaching! @GregMartin I agree that "Oh so why don't you smartass come to the blackboard and explain it in my stead" is a terrible practice and backfires one way or another pretty much always. Inviting them to teach in general, however, is not necessarily as bad, provided they execute due diligence in preparing for the class, you go over the notes/presentation together and so on. Some profs organize classes in this manner from the get go even. I find it mostly applicable for advanced topics/small classes, not things like Calc I. It is a viable strategy when they feel they lack engagement. @Lodinn Maybe depends on your subject, it's not that uncommon in early CS classes, for example, especially if the department is in the unenviable position of having to teach mixed CS/non-CS students in the same class. CS seems quite behind in class placement here, the absolute beginner class is usually mandatory even when a lot of CS-track students are coming in having had an equivalent class in high school plus extracurricular programming (sometimes they have really impressive hobby projects, even). Whereas non-CS track students often find even "this is a for loop" to be overly demanding... @user3067860 Been in this situation when taking CS classes as a student. The solution is really simple: don't make it compulsory for students to do stuff they have no business doing. While new to programming people were studying for loops, those with experience were assigned some small projects and given permission to not attend classes for the most part. As a professor, 1) Raise this issue with the department and make sure they approve of your chosen course of action 2) Find alternative ways to create assignments/grade the course for vastly different student backgrounds. That's it! Back when I was in high school I remember situations where the teacher makes an obvious mistake - obvious enough that even students who haven't mastered the topic can spot it, such as a simple arithmetic mistake - and doesn't admit it. Some students joked about it privately afterwards, but the underlying reason for the jokes wasn't that the students think they understand the material better than the teacher. It was because suddenly everything the teacher says is suspect. For example, suppose the teacher says X. The students think about a homework problem unsuccessfully, and guess that maybe X is wrong. But the teacher insists X is right. Can you trust that X is right if the teacher never admits they are wrong? Even worse: at this point, the teacher is definitely not an authority figure. You're better off biting the bullet and admitting the error, especially since it was mainly a numerical mistake and the essential parts of the concept were well illustrated. Excellent point. Sort of similar to parents lying to their children about something. When the child figures out the truth, respect is lost and it is natural to question what other things they might have lied about. Frankly, you would lose respect from those capable students far more quickly by not admitting mistakes or worse still trying to cover them up. This is because they probably already know your mistakes, so their respect or disrespect would be based not on your mistake but rather on your honesty regarding mistakes. Students can often tell if you know you have made a mistake but try escaping without admitting. The best policy as a teacher is to ensure the students know that you are human, just like they are, and can make mistakes. Let them know, also, that the best learners, and most knowledgeable people, are those who never close their minds but continue to learn. Those who think they know everything, besides being wrong, are destined to remain ignorant of many things they might have otherwise learned had they been willing to make corrections to their own preconceptions and mistakes. Respect is earned, not commanded; unless you are teaching at the lower elementary school level (up through about the fourth grade). While you can always receive a certain level of respect by imposing it on the students, they will not have actual respect for you unless you have earned it. In Asian societies, students would never dare to correct their teacher because it is taboo to cause one's superior to "lose face." But this, while maintaining a certain form of "respect," loses the advantage of teaching independent thinking. Students merely copy their teachers, generally finding little advantage to recognizing a teacher's potential errors in the absence of an acceptable way to disclose them. When an error is noticed, the student just stays quiet about it. In Western societies the pendulum is at the other extreme: respect for teachers is secondary to one's own "right" to independent thinking--and correcting a teacher can become a matter of one's personal pride. I recall the story of a European boy whose family had moved to America. He was in primary school but was far advanced (a genius) in math. His father saw fit to enroll the nine-year-old in a math class at the local university. One day, the mathematics professor incorrectly worked a problem on the board, and the child corrected the professor--undoubtedly in the less mature manner of a child. The professor took umbrage at being corrected by one so young, and got very angry. The father ended up defending his son to the professor, and the professor had no defense because he had made a mistake. (Mathematics is somewhat more black-and-white than some subjects might be.) The professor had only made things worse for himself by attempting to hold himself up as infallible. When an Asian student of mine corrected me in class one day, I was so surprised that I praised him! It is great for the learners if they are alert enough to catch a teacher's mistakes, and I preferred to have it corrected than to have inadvertently taught something which might be incorrect. I always invited my students to correct me--though it was often the case that I had, instead, opportunity to explain why their offered correction was mistaken. I would appreciate them for trying, and it was a teaching moment from which all of the class could benefit. In Asian societies teachers are not supposed to appear fallible. They are not expected to admit any mistake. They are expected to maintain their superiority always. But, in my experience, the principle of earning respect in place of commanding it actually works very well with Asians, and being humble enough to accept one's own mistakes helps to earn their respect. In the end, if your authority is based on the students' respect of you, you will maintain your authority best by putting the students' learning ahead of your own pride. This is a fantastic answer (as in awesome)! In Asian societies, students would never dare to correct their teacher because it is taboo to cause one's superior to "lose face." - Not entirely true, at least nowadays. Also, Asia is big and contains multitudes. @Kimball I've lived and taught for years in several Southeast Asian countries and when I say "Asian societies" I refer to their tradition and not to the current trend toward Westernization. America is doing a good job of exporting its culture through Hollywood and other influences and Asia has changed considerably in just the past two decades. The new mixed-culture society can cause some ambiguities. Taiwan and Hong Kong are among the more Westernized countries of the region. I used to make a point of giving house points (credits) to students who picked up on my 'mistakes'. Some were glaring, and soon noticed (not accidental errors), but occasionally real errors were found. We worked as a team! I doubt it’s a good idea to demand respect even at the lower elementary school level. Respect exists in the opinion that they have of you and is nothing that you can affect more than by behaving in a respectable manner. But you may demand a specific behavior in the classroom. @HelloGoodbye Agreed. Small children are excellent observers with keen perception and sense of fairness. But they are not usually gifted with the kind of judgment needed to distinguish between good and bad role models--they simply accept whichever role model and/or authority figure who may be in their life, without question. Children may choose to like or dislike someone, they may misbehave or rebel out of selfishness, but they will not typically base their respect of someone on the characteristics that a more mature person sees. However, if authority is unjustly "demanded," they may fear. You can flip it round, and use it as a teaching moment, which also takes the wind out of the sails for anyone who might act up..... Instead of focusing on your mistake, focus on their learning. I'd tackle it like this: Before we carry on, I want to teach you one of the most important lessons in (subject). How many of you, feel you've got a good grip on the material so far? (pause) Excellent! So, how many of you spotted the mistake I made last time/last week? (pause, some hands go up, some people look down) Excellent! At this point, you can either ask someone to explain what it was, or tell them yourself, followed by the punchline, where you ask why people didn't say something. They probably won't speak easily. It's an awkward question but a really good one. If needed, pick one of your bright sparks who says they saw the error, and ask directly, why they didn't say something. It's a very valid, legitimate question. Do this in a cordial, supportive way. So they don't feel picked out for bad reasons. Then, draw the lesson from it. People in authority will make mistakes at times, whether in academia or commerce or other areas. And often, nobody will say a thing. This will happen periodically throughout their entire lives. "I want you to think about that, and decide, what you feel should happen, in situations like this." Or whatever else you feel is the lesson you want as a take-away. In this way, you flip it round. You maintain authority and initiative. The people most likely to feel they know it all, are in the position of "well, why didn't you say something?", which deflates them and reduces scope for issues. And most importantly, everyone learns a really important point, in the best way possible - seeing it taught, by their teacher. I wonder how many would post a comment on a video but wouldn't say anything in person. This will/won't work, depending on the personality of the teacher/lecturer. Some cannot be seen to be wrong, and nobody loves a smartarse. @Tim - In this case the teacher is asking, and the solution is very likely to be seen as a valid lesson and self correction. I don't think your concerns are an issue in this specific case, given that the teacher wishes to self correct, and only "fears" loss of authority (its a fear only). Also consider that ultimately all solutions depend on the person who will do them, so that could be a comment on every solution of every question. I do a lot of live programming demos in my lectures (I'm about to do another one in about 10 mins※ ;o). I make mistakes each time. It's no big deal, and it is why compilers give error messages. It gives me a chance to show how things are done that can't be adequately explained by conventional lectures, such as how to go about programming in such a way that you minimize errors and ensure that the ones you do make are found and corrected quickly and easily. I had the same approach with my chalk and talk lectures back when I taught maths. If you are not making mistakes as a learner you are too far inside your comfort zone to learn efficiently. As a teacher it possibly means you are too far ahead of the students to find their difficulties easy to anticipate. In short, don't worry about mistakes, and try not to worry about authority. You have demonstrated that you have a good grasp of the subject by the fact you have been appointed to teach it. Having said which, as a middle aged, white male marsupial, it is easy for me not to worry about authority, which is something that society needs to be working on. I suspect it is a lot less easy not to worry about authority if you don't automatically get the respect that your ability deserves because of qualities that have nothing to do with your ability to teach the material. ※ I provided several "learning experiences" during the demonstration ;o) I like to use characters ※ and ⁂ for footnotes, because the dagger doesn't resolve well and these are not characters that will be found in the programming language. You can also use superscript in posts here, even though there's not a markdown shortcut for it. @JDługosz good to know. How do you type these characters? @EarlGrey copy and paste from the above note. Keep them (and others) in a text file for handy copying. Use the Character Map applet to find it. But I like the program called BabelMap. Build a custom keyboard. @JDługosz: I usually use numbered superscripts for footnotes. No markdown support, but you can use HTML <sup>1</sup>. Then for the footnote itself, I put a bold "footnote 1:" at the start of a paragraph someone. (In a long answer, often at the bottom of the relevant section, not all the way at the bottom of the answer where readers would have to scroll far and then find their way back.) I also use the superscript code: humorous example You've received a lot of very good answers already. I'll just add that one more possible way to maintain authority and still correct the mistake is to make a joke about it. Which one depends on your sense of humor. When asked by a student why I wrote something that is wrong or misplaced or noticing that myself, I just say "because after 50 I have a brain-mouth-hand coordination problem, so occasionally I think one thing, say another, and write/do a third one". I usually add that "unfortunately, some younger people suffer from this disease too". It may look somewhat lame to you (or it may not), but usually it causes some laugh and smiles and if you can manage to make your audience smile at your will, you may be sure that you are still in full control. I also tell my students in the beginning of the class that "people usually look most stupid when they are afraid to appear stupid". The same applies to losing authority: one loses it most exactly when one acts of the fear to lose it. Just my two cents. You can also be serious and note it's especially easy (and very normal) to make mistakes at the board because you're focused on explaining, not on computing, and invite students to point out errors when they see them. @Kimball Of course! But that possibility has been mentioned several times already, hasn't it? ;-) well, maybe I missed it, but I didn't notice the other answers explaining why it's easy to make mistakes, and I imagine this is not obvious to most students You really should admit to the mistake. As others have pointed out, the absolute worst thing for a teacher's reputation is to make mistakes that students can see, and not admit them; or even worse that that, to argue with, deflect, or browbeat the students who point them out. That said: Time is of the essence. The quicker you can fix the error, the better. Within seconds, by yourself, is ideal. If a student points it out in a few minutes, or anytime in the one class session, then that's perfectly fine; usually easy to go back and fix it. But if it's outside the class session then the half-life on how useful this is starts to tick down. The particular numbers may not matter a whole lot if the essential concept or process was shown correctly. It becomes more of a burden if you need to recreate all of the work (board work lost, etc.) from scratch. If days have gone by and no student noticed, I'd be prone to let it slide for time-efficiency purposes; if a student does point it out or it's really crushing my conscience, then I've written up a handout document showing the correct solution. (Although Krantz in How to Teach Mathematics argues against even that, specifically.) When I do make a mistake in class, and a student catches it instead of me, then my standard framing response is like this: Thank you so much! I usually make about one mistake a day, and there it is. That's why we need to do the hard stuff in teams, and I'm depending on you to watch what I'm doing for mistakes like that. I'm so glad we're doing this together! One of the best solutions I’ve seen used by a math teacher of mine is to reward the students for catching your mistakes. My teacher set this up by making it so that if a student pointed out a mistake during class, she added a point to the running tally. When she reached ten mistakes caught by the class, she bought treats for the entire class. Without needing to expend money, this could also be done by giving extra extension days to the class, or any other reward. This completely changed the dynamic of the class, which did a few things: It made it so that students were proud to share their expertise and were happy to understand the material and point out mistakes. The mistakes made the student who pointed them out look good, rather than the teacher look bad, because the students were focused on the reward. It provided a clear mechanism for the teacher to fix mistakes and the students to correct mistakes. If the teacher corrected a mistake before the students noticed, she was saving herself from giving up a point to the class, and her doing that re-engaged the class to pay more close attention. If a mistake was made, a student catching it was a success for the class, rather than a failure of the teacher, and so students were quick to point out mathematical errors and it wasn’t awkward or degrading to do so. Drawbacks: Writing math could be stressful for the professor at times because she was worried about giving up too many points. I believe this was due to setting the point requirement too low. Finding a suitable reward mechanism can be tough, especially since the most motivating rewards are often those which require extra money or time spent to set up. It can be awkward or difficult to set this up in the middle of a semester since it introduces a whole new mechanism into lecture, so I recommend setting it up at the start of the class. However, if needed, this can be done later. In fact, in the OP’s original case, it could be introduced with “here’s a free point because I made this mistake - see if you can catch the other ones!” Several of our math professors would give out chocolates to people who caught a mistake. Sometimes they would run out, but the dynamic in the class still stayed the same for the rest of the lecture. I like the giving out chocolates, but, as a student, it creates a "goody-two-shoes" or "teacher's pet" dynamic if there's only a few people who keep catching mistakes. The rest of the class doesn't benefit. I particularly liked the group reward mechanism because it made the entire class support the people who pointed out mistakes rather than becoming envious of them or seeing them as annoying. If a student made such a mistake in a graded piece of work then you would probably take points off for it. That makes this a good teaching opportunity to show why one should always check one's work, because anyone can make some minor mistake. Depending on how much time you have for that topic you can go into greater detail about how you could have checked your work (estimated the answer and compared, using your answer in the original equation and verifying, etc.). Or if you don't have much time, you can just mention it in passing: "Minor correction for yesterday's problem, here is the correct result. This is an example of why you should always check your work. See xyz resource for examples of how to check your work." It's important to explain that one actually needs to check, and ideally give strategies for checking, because otherwise students tend to conflate "being good at math" with "never making arithmetic mistakes"...if you can separate those two in their minds you will both preserve your dignity and show them that even learners can produce routinely correct work, since catching and fixing errors comes from diligence rather than some stroke of genius. Just so it's said, authority is a function of attitude, not a function of action. One person can do everything perfectly and still be unable to command authority; another can goof left and right and maintain it. The key is to be calm and assertive. Don't question yourself or your capabilities, and students will naturally fall into line. With respect to the specific problem, my approach has always been to turn it into part of the lesson. Walk into class the next day and lead with: "How many of you noticed the mistake I made in last lecture?" Get a show of hands so you have an idea of how many people actually did notice (which won't be as many as you think); explain and correct the mistake; move on. There's no need for you to 'admit' you goofed — treat that as a mere obvious fact — and no need to explain anything beyond the basic issue and correction. You on't have to 'make it up' to the students, you just have to fix it. Hold in your mind the fact that you are an expert on the material and the goof is inconsequential; the force of your own self-assertion will move people past it. Yeah, I know it's a lot harder in practice than it sounds, but it does work. I would say you are making too much of this. Students do not expect perfection from their teachers. In the first few minutes of each class I always run over the most important things to remember from the last lecture, clarify things I think I didn't teach well, and present errata. In no way has this ever caused me to lose face. If you seem embarrassed when discussing the mistake, perhaps the students will think less of you. But if you just present it as a correction or clarification to the last lecture, if anything it will improve you in the eyes of your students. You set the tone in the class. Mistakes on your part or theirs are great teaching moments, not a source of shame. If your students are not respecting you much, your tone and confidence may be areas in which you can improve. Confident people are comfortable talking about mistakes they have made. Being accessible and teaching at the appropriate level are important considerations in students' evaluation of their teachers. Perfection or seeming to know everything is not. I absolutely agree with the idea that it's a better lesson to admit mistakes, show humility and adaptability, as that's teaching the students many of the skills they'll likely need in complex maths and sciences. Many could use help learning how to spot errors or thinking outside the box (such as you would show by revisiting it, since it's going off script some) That said... if teaching a course with a fairly limited timeframe, I very much encourage you to carefully consider what your personality is handling a revisit in class, how to handle it best timewise, and perhaps even consider other ways. What I mean by that is that I can remember quite a few classes where a teacher\professor made such a mistake... and then we ended up wasting a lot of time going back over it, getting lost in additional mistakes, etc. I know when I taught, I might be a little more nervous going over such mistakes, and that might open me up to more tangents or minor questions spiraling out of control on the topic. That's kind of the thing, it may indeed be a bit of a shakeup in the environment in the class, and that can indeed lead to make some students feel freer to be challenging and disruptive going forward, depending on the course level and such. It is indeed a chink in the armor. It's good to show you're real and human. But do keep wary that some students may take it as an opportunity to become too comfortable and derail your direction some in the future. Or invite many more questions of "are you sure you aren't making a mistake here as well", I got X, which in some situations can derail other students from understanding if they become too pervasive, rather than keeping quiet and reviewing their work, and usually finding they made an error. You have to feel you can maintain authority in that sense. You may well have to be stern at some later point if such questions or disruptions kept coming. And so if your concern is you may not have the confidence and force to handle that, you may want to avoid making a big deal of it. In addition, in courses where time is at a premium... you have to balance that aspect. At the least, if it's a long concept that brought you to the mistake, you may want to have the bulk of the notes rewritten up on the board before class so you can quickly remind them where you went, they can refresh through the notes for a few moments, and then you can point out the issue, and hopefully move on in pretty short time. Or it may be better if it's going to be real time consuming and complex to do like a handout (students probably won't mind that, notes they don't have to write!). You can point to that, or hope they'll look at it in their own time (very much dependent on the course level\passion for the subject again). Perhaps offer to talk about it more in office hours (or whatever concept you use for outside of class help) if anyone is one or two struggle with the idea, and the others have no issue. Or if it's more minor, you can mention in it brief passing to start the class, just that you made a minor [numeric/conversion/equation/whatever] error... Or indeed just skip it entirely if it's just not notable enough to be worth the trouble. Humility and teaching the students how to find mistakes is great, but at the same time, there's no need to try to reflect perfection. But don't worry about the students who "think they can teach the class". Maybe they can, maybe they can't, but you're paid to, and your duty is to the students who are trying to learn. There are certainly courses where I've had to make that clear to difficult students. You can't let the troublemakers shake you or overwhelm your thought processes. If you're afraid of those students, that they may be show you up or such, it shows. I'm guessing you know your stuff, you've got nothing to worry about from them, just focus on doing what your students as a whole need, and tend to forget those who choose to cause more trouble than trying to learn anything in the course. They aren't your central concern, even if they're trying to make you such. If they feel too smart for the course, they either shouldn't be taking it, or they can up the inability to test out of it with administration or whatever. But it's not your issue. They can doodle or read the paper or something else that's nondistracting. But the world doesn't revolve around them, and you shouldn't stress over such ones that think they can teach the course.	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114947	Can a department renege on a student's "guaranteed funding"? I was admitted to a PhD program last year with guaranteed funding for 4 years. The funding offer was structured as a fellowship for the first year and an assistantship thereafter. I'm done with my first year now, and I will be on an assistantship from this semester onwards. I was asked to sign a contract which states "although we will be able to renew the assistantship in most cases, renewals are contingent upon the availability of funds". Given my initial admission offer guaranteed funding, while this new contract is a bit more ambiguous, which of these contracts will hold? Is it possible that the grad school will renege on the assistantship citing a lack of funds? This is quite concerning to me, and I would appreciate any advice on this issue. I am the Graduate Coordinator of my department, so I have some experience both reading and writing letters like this. I find the phrasing "although we will be able to renew the assistantship in most cases, renewals are contingent upon the availability of funds". strange. It is not clear to me what "most cases" is quantifying over: you are only one case. But here's a key point: what is being taken away from you in going from a letter in which funding is guaranteed to a letter in which renewal is contingent upon the availability of funds? In all cases the renewal must be contingent upon the availability of funds, right? Within the culture of American universities it would certainly not be acceptable for your department to, say, go over budget on renovations and then tell a student "We're sorry, but funds are no longer available -- we warned you!" Not having the funds to cover promises made to students would be a nightmare scenario in any department that I know of. A subtle linguistic change in a contract would not affect that. However, I agree that the new letter is not exactly encouraging. In my view you are well within your rights to inquire about the meaning of it, and you should of course do so before you sign the contract. I would discuss this with the department official who wrote the letter, unless you feel uncomfortable doing so, in which case you could act through a suitable intermediary (ombudsperson, faculty advisor...). In conclusion, I think it is highly unlikely that your funding will get cut, but they are taking from you some peace of mind -- which is also worth something! I'm sorry for that, and I wish you the best. Pete: did you see this old(er) question? https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/105100/ @Yemon: Yes, I did. I don't find the language used in the other case to be so great either -- again "availability of funds" doesn't add much. In the other case, taken as a whole the language expressed to me that funds were possible but not to be counted on -- however the OP did not seem to appreciate this. You may want to review the initial offer letter that you received from the program. You may find that the language there is not absolutely "guaranteed"—there is almost always a bit of "wiggle" language such as "subject to adequate progress" or something similar that does not completely commit them to paying you for the full term no matter what. (What if you just decide to take the money and do nothing the whole time?) However, at public schools, one must also remember that they are subject to state laws and regulations that a private school would not face. The change may be coming at a policy level higher than that of the department. Yes, the initial offer letter states that funding is guaranteed contingent upon satisfactory academic progress. However, it makes no mention of the availability of funds. I upvoted this answer. The second paragraph made me think of a few relatively benign possible explanations: (i) A different person wrote the letter the second time around so used different language. (This is still possible even if the person signing the letter is the same, alas.) (ii) Someone from higher up the administrative food chain insisted on more careful language across the board. In this case, the change in language may not correspond to any actual change of facts, funds, intentions... While labor laws depend on the country/state/region, your contract that guarantees funding probably doesn't really guarantee it. From a labor law perspective, if you are even classed as an employee and the letter is seen as an employment contract, what do you think your recourse is if they do not pay you? If you were in a union position you might have a collective agreement that would provide a means of enforcing the contract, but in reality the guarantee is worth only as much as the reputation of the university. That said, it cannot hurt to ask your graduate student faculty chair about the wording. The way these sorts of things work in the US never cease to amaze me. If we offer a student a studentship contract and then said "oops, no money" 2 years down the line, we'd be expecting a law suit for breach of contract to arrive in short order. @IanSudbery sure, but what would they sue for? My, US centric, view is that there are no damages and the University would let you out of the contract. @StrongBad: not remotely a lawyer, but from a layman's point of view the damages are clearly of the amount of lost income that was promised to you... If I want to leave a 2-year mobile phone contract early, I have to pay off the remaining monthly cost until the end of the 2 year term (unless I have some good reason to leave). Why should only companies get this privilege? @IanSudbery: I think the point is that in the US system a "studentship" isn't a contract that binds both parties. It's analogous to employment in the US, which generally works the same way: either employee or employer may end it at any time with few restrictions. The parties could in principle agree on a binding contract, but they generally don't. @NateEldredge: that's the part that never ceases to amaze us. That you can have a contract that talks about things like 4 years of guaranteed funding, or 1 year of fellowship followed by 3 years of assistantship, that can nevertheless be terminated freely at any moment. In actuality it is the student and not the university who can back out at any time. It happens quite frequently that students tell their university that this semester will be their last. It is not unheard of for a student to drop out in the middle of the semester, e.g. leaving the department scrambling to cover teaching responsibilities. There are better and worse reasons for this, but I don't know any case in which the institution pursues a legal case against the student. "that can nevertheless be terminated freely at any moment." Who said that? I don't want to get into too many specifics about my own university and the advice of our legal department, but suffice it to say that I have specific experience to the contrary. @StrongBad, the university has entered into a contract to deliver something (a studentship) and then not delivered it. The damages would be the remaining value that was promised. If loosing the studentship caused the student to have to leave the program, then there may well be loss of earnings as well. A judge may or may not see a contract as existing, even if there isn't a formal contract. @NateEldredge of course you can't do that with employment in europe either. @IanSudbery I am pretty sure that is not how US law actually works and US universities work really hard to avoid students being classed as employees, being allowed to form a union, or really having any rights. @IanSudbery you can most definitely make someone (including students) redundant in the UK. I am not sure you could make a 3rd year student redundant and then given a studentship to a 1st year student, but I bet a school could if it really wanted to with an argument that a student doing X was no longer needed and a student doing Y was needed and that the student doing X was not suitable to do Y. @StrongBad The university is offering a PhD in exchange for labor and satisfactory academic progress. If the contract is terminated without cause, the university owes the student either a PhD or compensation for the difference between the value of their labor on open market, and what they were paid. Well, you can't make students redundant because they are not employees. As far as your contract with the student is concerned what the student is 'doing' is 'getting a degree'. In theory students do research because its a good way to teach them, not because the university needs the research doing (irrespective of how people acctually regard it). When you make someone redundant, you are technically making the role redundant, not the person. If a person hired to do a job turns out not to be suitable, then you are sacking them. This is hard, and comes with many hoops to jump through. @Acccumulation that is exactly NOT what the university is offering and one of the reasons the whole student/employee thing is difficult. Even for unpaid graduate students who are paying tuition, there is no contractual agreement that the university must give the student a degree. The tuition allows students to take classes for credit. If you accumulate enough credits, then you can apply for a degree. @PeteL.Clark, it's worth mentioning that you're at a university that has a grad union, and therefore grad students there genuinely have a contract (hence what your legal department tells you). On the contrary, grad students at other universities do not have this level of security. @MarcusM: Actually Georgia is a "right to work" state, which almost means that unions are illegal. It actually means that unions have no collective bargaining rights. In fact I am a member of the staff union at UGA, which was recently founded by a colleague of mine in the math department. We really have very few teeth. I assure you that this has nothing to do with university contracts. @nengel you are not required to pay the full mobile phone contract in the US. Only an "early termination fee", that drops over the life of the contract. The reason is in the US such contracts come with free or subsidized phones. You have to pay them back for that investment. A better example would be a rental contract (depending on the state) which you are often stuck with unless you can find a legal excuse to break (like termites or something). You are in the unfortunate position of being employed in a super-precarious position, not enjoying a full recognition of your employee status, and living under the US' regime of heavily employer-biased labor law (in my opinion). In the best case scenario, graduate researchers in your university are unionized, and the union is active, functional and enjoys backing and involvement from its represented public. In this case there would probably already be a struggle to remedy this situation and ensure 4-year contracts with the university having to bear and manage any issues it has with funding, making up for possible shortfalls from some sources with its general funds or inter-research-budget transfers. If that's not the case, then as other answers suggest, this technically depends on the specifics of labor law in the state you're in. Note that in a landmark 4-to-1 decision in 2016, the NLRB recognized graduate researchers as employees, mostly regardless of how the university defines their status or the source of their funding. ... unofortunately, that's not good enough. Because even you could make an argument against your termination the university may well do whatever it pleases, and the main question becomes: Do you have the will, the time and the resources to fight it? More often than not, the answer is negative. Thus, for most graduate employees - without bweing unionized, the answer is "Effectively, yes".	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.432098	2018-08-08T01:25:50	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/114947", "authors": [ "A Simple Algorithm", "Acccumulation", "Ian Sudbery", "Marcus M", "Nate Eldredge", "Pete L. Clark", "RemcoGerlich", "StrongBad", "Yemon Choi", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11262", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/52718", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/71814", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/77765", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/80651", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/82972", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/92362", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/929", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/96863", "nengel", "user3294195" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
65274	Can Zotero collections be used as hierarchical tags? Few answers under this question have inspired me with the interesting idea of using Zotero "folders" (called collections) as hierarchical tags. Zotero does allow to create folder (=collection) tree in the left pane, and one reference can be put in more such collections. But, is Zotero able to search references present in two or more collections? That would be super cool, because then we could use those collections as tags! Why not use tags as tags? (I realise they're not hierarchical, but nor are collections so far as I can see) @SimonW collections are hierarchical in Zotero - you build the collection tree in left pane. I tend to prefer organizing using collections over tags in Zotero, because collections can be used for organizing the references in the GUI in much more easier and comfortable way. Huh. I stand corrected. Actually, the tool is there)) Steps (look at the screenshot). Open advanced search Choose "Collection" as a search parameter Choose collections to search in Add more that one collection That's it!	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.433248	2016-03-17T08:53:55	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/65274", "authors": [ "Flyto", "Igor Tadić", "Kathleen McCoy", "Spammer", "Tom", "Tomas", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/183225", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/183226", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/183227", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/183255", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/206696", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/212370", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/410", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/8394", "omar Al-arabi", "黄仕宇" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
1294	Affiliation for a retiree This question is similar to Rules for affiliation for student doing unpaid research in his/her free time? and Is it acceptable to publish a paper using an affiliation with a former employer? except that I am a retiree. I intend to submit a paper to a journal without mentioning any affiliation because I am no longer employeed. I have been thinking about a footnote in the paper indicating I am a retiree from my former employer for two reasons: I am receiving pension from the company pension fund and it is a well-known company in U.S. Using their name may make me look good. On the other hand, I feel like it's cheating because I am not their employee anymore. Here is a recent paper published by someone affiliated as "Independent Scholar": http://dx.doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-12-00171.1 @mankoff Thanks for the info. Independent Scholar is indeed suitable for me. Retired people often get privileges to the university resources like library etc. As a result, is it not ethical to mention university affiliation as a retired member? The best source of advice on these issues are the journal editorial staff. Some journals may require you to list your last affiliation with the word "retired" added in parentheses; some journals may prefer you not to list an affiliation at all. Some others may not care. The institution/company may have a strong opinion (or a policy) on whether their name would appear if you are no longer affiliated with them. (It probably depends on what the paper is about, what kind of company it was, and how it related to your former affiliation or responsibilities). @Carol: but unless you signed a NDA, I don't see how an institution/company can prevent you from stating the fact that you used to work for them. That said, my answer is mostly pointing out that journals sometimes have odd and antiquated rules (perhaps one which prevents you from not listing an affiliation), and that before committing on any action, in issues concerning publishing where no universal rule is adopted, it is best to always check first with the publisher. Some journals have a 'bio' with the article, and that could be an appropriate place to list former positions. Using the affiliation at the author list implies you have implicit or explicit authority to represent the company (on that topic). The company or institution you were with may not care one way or the other. What were their policies when publishing articles when you were employed? (Did things go through an internal review process first). If you don't think it is a problem for your former company, perhaps it isn't. Here's one approach: “(Ret.)”; subtle, direct, and in the literature (see 2): 1.Department of Earth Sciences University of Bristol, Bristol, UK 2.Global Volcanism Program, Smithsonian Institution (Ret.) Washington USA 3.USGS Cascades Volcano ObservatoryVancouver USA Welcome to Academia SE. Can you please [edit] your answer to reference the paper (or other source) where you found this? What is your association with "Wunderman Writing Services"?	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.433404	2012-04-27T12:50:05	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/1294", "authors": [ "Carol", "Fazel Pourahmad", "Nobody", "Rao Gollapudi", "Willie Wong", "Wrzlprmft", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/185", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/209611", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53234", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/546", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/7734", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/94", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/99357", "mankoff" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
155817	How can I delete an article listed on my Google Scholar page that was not written by me? On top of my Google Scholar page an article appears that was not written by me (increases my citations quite a bit, but I feel it reflects badly on me). For whatever reason, the article doesn't appear on my underlying profile page, so I cannot delete it. Is there a way to delete it? I send emails to Google Scholar help but no answer. Thanks. What's the difference between your Google Scholar page and profile page? when you go on the menu on top left of the page and click on "my profile" that is the underlying profile page I meant Yes, but what's the other page then? The citation counts you see are based on the articles in your profile page, right? the "regular" google scholar page. Perhaps there is some confusion because I had at some point two scholar pages, but not sure That seems likely. I have no idea what the other "regular" page is, but if it exists perhaps someone else will answer. Thanks, GoodDeeds, in any case. Make sure to have only one single Google Scholar profile first. There should be only one version of a profile, not two different ones.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.433693	2020-09-25T12:37:02	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/155817", "authors": [ "Eckhard", "GoodDeeds", "anpami", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/120630", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/129899", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/68109" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
156117	phd admission- both professor from same university agreed to be mentor 2 professors from the same university same department have agreed to be my mentor. But none have funds, prof.1 may give me TA, while prof.2 can give me RA. Which one should I choose? Can I put 2 applications with 2 different SOPs and then decide later which prof. to go for? How can a professor with no funds give you an RA? I would counsel against two different SoP statements. If they are compared then it makes you look like you don't really know what you want. The university might be fine with two separate applications (or not). But more important than the source of funding and the activities to earn the funds is the question of what would the research be with each of these people and can one of them better support your career. Make your decision on that basis. Bot the TA and the RA experience can be valuable for an future academic, but in different ways. But that is less important than the research opportunities. I'll guess that the TA position is probably easier to manage your time than the RA position, but that isn't necessarily true, depending on the nature of the university and of the field and department. You might consider trying to set up a three way conversation to see if the two profs have some advice for you about which would be more suitable and advantageous. But that assumes that you know something about them first and are sure that it won't generate bad feelings.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.433822	2020-10-01T18:18:52	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/156117", "authors": [ "cag51", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/79875" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
8829	Article-based PhD and advisor's (new) role? My engineering university offers a relatively new option to do an article-based dissertation, where the primary research is submitted (and hopefully published) in several scientific journals (at my university it's 3). The dissertation is then shorter than a typical PhD, because it describes how the articles fit together to form the thesis, etc. It's a relatively new idea (for engineering PhDs and for me), which I find interesting as an advisor because it engages PhD students more in the research experience (publishing). Also, it is theoretically more efficient for the advisor and student (as a co-author), since time and energy spent on revising could be more focused on getting publications, and not only on a big PhD dissertation that few people will ever read. There are other advantages described here (not my university). My question is not about whether it's good or bad, but how the role of an advisor on co-authored papers might change in such cases. For example, when students write a traditional dissertation (masters or otherwise), they often struggle with communicating. Students grow and improve written communication and contents of the dissertation in an iterative and incremental process (draft revisions after feedback from the advisor). In traditional grad-student co-authorship setting, I would take a more active role as an editor (as my advisor did when I was a PhD student) on a paper, mostly because of experience and to increase chances of getting an article published. Sometimes that role is minimal, if only a workshop or conference is targeted, since it might be easier to publish there. But with an article-based PhD, it seems that the active approach in editing co-authored journal papers is essential, and in effect writing a big part of the dissertation for the student. I realize every case is different. I'd be happy to know from experienced advisors in this setting to know if and how an advisor's role must change in article-based PhDs. This is commonly referred to as a “staple thesis”. "staple thesis" -- makes it sound not as good, somehow. Is this true, or are these considered just as good as traditional theses? @James I thought a staple thesis was a traditional thesis? It doesn't mean staple as in "basic" but rather that you staple 3 publications together. @James I've also heard them called a "sandwich thesis". At least in my field, they're not only considered just as good, but the traditional "book" thesis is regarded as "Why would you do that?" Another term used is "compilation thesis". The system of article-based theses has been the norm in my field and university for as long as we have been in existence, although monographs are also accepted. We therefore lack experience with monographs, although I wrote my thesis as a monograph in the US system once upon a time. The main differences, as I see it, between monograph and article writing is that with articles, you must reach a high level very early during your PhD study. With a monograph you can work on all of it until the very last moment. With an article-based thesis, articles must be planned and written up early on. I would say that it is both common and useful to have the first paper being mainly written by the advisor so that the student can learn from scratch in every part of the article write-up. Since the goal is to make independent researchers out of the PhD students it follows that the advisor involvement should gradually decrease over time. This is of course good in theory but difficult in practise. The point is, however, that it is important to get an early start with the writing and the structure of the work has to be such that it is clear that publishable results can emerge after the first or second year. Article-based these need to be thought through so that papers can be produced. We let the advisor and student write up a time plan for the PhD work which also outlines the basic research work and the resulting papers. The plan is filed by the subject responsible. This plan is followed up annually so that changes can be discussed between advisor, student and subject responsible. This is useful since everyone needs to think things through on a regular basis. +1 for "I would say that it is both common and useful to have the first paper being mainly written by the advisor so that the student can learn from scratch in every part of the article writeup". For me (a grad student), this has been one of the most valuable experiences so far. I wrote the first draft and then could compare it, sentence by sentence, to the massively corrected version. The goal, my advisor said, is to get less and less corrections as the PhD progresses. And indeed, I am now much closer to putting together something satisfactory for a journal publication on the first try. putting together something satisfactory for a journal publication on the first try — If you ever figure out how to do that, please let me know; I've been trying to get to that point for 20+ years. @JeffE - Well, something that would only require major revisions :) Or rather, something my supervisor would find mostly satisfactory. I don't even think of the alternative (a paper accepted with only minor comments) as a realistic option. I don't know anyone who manages to pull that off. I'm not sure I agreed that one requires more advanced timing than the other - in many places, the papers are only required to have been submitted, or as ready for submission. Subjecting a student to the vagaries of the submission process seems contrived - are students who are "done" simply expected to cool their heals for 6 months to a year while journals ponder? @EpiGrad at my uni the articles need only be submitted. On the other hand, it's bad advertising if a prof lets students send immature journal submissions (especially when they're co-authored). My limited experience as a jury member in one article-based PhD showed that unresolved issues in the research (that probably prevented journal approval of the first draft) turned up in the defense. Another reason for advanced timing, IMO. This topic is near and dear to my heart, as the number of days until I finish exactly such a thesis is measured in a single digit number. If you field is dominated by journal, rather than book, publications, I think its a vastly superior system, leaves you better prepared for what you'll actually have to do in the future, and leaves your CV in hopefully a stronger place. But with an article-based PhD, it seems that the active approach in editing co-authored journal papers is essential, and in effect writing a big part of the dissertation for the student. I realize every case is different. This has not been my experience - even the most active members of my committee who are co-authors on papers can't really be said to have written a significant portion of my work. Generally speaking, I would send them a fully fleshed out draft paper for their comments (which is exactly what I tend to do as first-author on a non-thesis paper), and then we'd iterate through the draft several times as they tinkered with language, added their own pet sentences, asked for additional analysis, etc. But the paper, in its final form, is very much dominated by my work and my writing. One of the keys may be to not wait until the end of someone's graduate career to work on their writing. If someone needs you to fundamentally rewrite massive parts of their dissertation papers, in my mind they're not ready to defend. They should be at a stage of maturity where they can produce largely independent writing, in need of only the usual modifications a co-author would provide to a manuscript. I am about to finish a thesis composed of papers published in peer-reviewed journals. I am the only author to half of the papers, and the others are coauthored with my advisor. The process is as you describe, we do research together, discussing ideas, proofs (I am in mathematics), computer experiments, etc. and I usually write most if not all of the text, any my advisor makes suggestions on improvements. I really think this process is superior to writing a monograph, since you get experience in the submission/review process, and being published really counts for something. Also, being the single author on some articles is usually a requirement for getting the phd, so people will know that you did some research yourself (of course, you discuss the progress with your advisor).	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8427	How to arrange sabbatical leave? Sabbatical leave is very common as it is nice to spend a year as a visiting professor in another university and experience a new environment. It is very beneficial for the host university to have temporary faculty members free of charge (no salary is normally paid by the host university). (1) How do host universities attempt (if they do) to attract visiting professors? Of course, there are job advertisements for hiring visiting professors, but I think they are paid positions and different from normal sabbatical leave. Visiting for research purposes should be arranged with the leader of the host research group. Thus, the arrangement is at a personal level (somewhat similar to hiring a postdoc researcher. Visiting for education purposes should be arranged at the level of the department chair. (2) How can a professor find a visiting professor? Is it chancy? to meet a colleague interested to host? Or s/he must contact many professors and department chairs to find a vacancy? (1) & (2) Who should actually initiate this process? The guest professor or host university? (possible 3) Is there a system to facilitate this process, as it is of mutual interest, or everything is left to chance? For example, European Union emphasizes the mobility of students/professors through different programmes. Is there such a system for sabbatical visits (in its classical form of completely working at the host university for a period of time, not guest lecturing as it is common in Europe). Am I naïve to think that a sabbatical means not working? ;) @gerrit: Yes, very. @gerrit not working at home but working somewhere else. As the Sabbath day was not working for ourselves, but working (praying) for God ;) It is common, in many fields, for the host university to pay part of the salary of the professor on sabbatical. Also, many professors go on sabbatical to do something other than work at a different university: start a company, write a book, and so forth. I do not have direct experience with sabbaticals, however the professors I've known that have taken them have been explicitly sought out for the respective sabbatical at a particular institution (as a visiting professor), by colleagues that they personally know professionally (i.e., from being in the same field and interacting via conferences, collaborations, etc.). In other words, it boils down to networking, and almost certainly doesn't come out of nowhere. If a professor is planning a sabbatical, he or she will probably already have colleagues willing to host, or will start the process by calling up a colleague and pitching the idea. I would gather that it isn't likely that there are too many successful cold-calls to departments that lead to sabbaticals. I can speak from experience that cold calls can work. If your employer is paying your salary (you only need space at the hosting institution), a lot of universities are happy to host, even if there's no past connection, because it's the mission of the university to have visiting professors. Since space can be an issue in universities where the research bar is high (or sometimes the administration insists on some measure of excellence like h-index for invited prof status), you might have to have a good enough CV to get in. Each time I've taken a sabbatical, it has started with an email (or, in years past, a letter). Write to the person (or people) you would like to collaborate with, and let them know you have a sabbatical coming up. Of course, knowing them already will make it much more likely to be successful.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.434633	2013-03-06T23:33:11	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8427", "authors": [ "Avan", "David Ketcheson", "Fuhrmanator", "Googlebot", "Nate Eldredge", "Peter Johnson", "Roger Fan", "Weaver", "eternalstudent", "gerrit", "gingerdave", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1010", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/1033", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20372", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20374", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20375", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20401", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20540", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/3859", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/406", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/84534" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
12830	Has anyone heard of the "Central Library of Medicine Foundation"? I recently got a request for an article I'm a coauthor on, which reads: Dear Dr. NAME REMOVED: My name is Victoria Hornos and I am contacting you on behalf of the Central Library of Medicine Foundation. Dr. SANTIAGO ATEHORTUA has contacted us asking for a reprint that you wrote. He is a Terapia Intensiva and Dr. is in need of your article as Dr. is making a research on this subjet . JOURNAL NAME 2013;XX(YY):ZZZZ-ZZ On the Reasons Why This Is Clearly A Paper That Needs To Be Read, Cited, And Manifest Itself In Fame And Fortune For the Authors. If my request is possible, please send it to the following e-mail address or by fax so I can send him or another doctor on the same situation the article. Thanks very much in advance for your response. E-mail: [email protected] Fax: (+34 91) 133 30 81 Post Address: B1638 CAA Central Library of Medicine Foundation. Zufriategui 627 8º (D4D7) - Vicente Lopez Buenos Aires Argentina Sincerely yours, Victoria Hornos I'm not really clear on the legality of this request. I know many people are fine with sending PDFs to particular people, but this sounds like sending it to a clearing house, and that makes me a little nervous. Beyond that, I'm not the corresponding author, 'fbcm.md' doesn't resolve to a webpage, and well...this feels like many, many scam journal requests, but this time as a paper request. Has anyone encountered this? Thoughts? After googling for the Central Library of Medicine Foundation, I found the following post on the University of Muenster site (note I used Google Translate to translate the piece from German to English): Recently, faculty members have received many article requests from a "Central Library of Medicine Foundation", which was apparently acting on behalf of South American doctors. While researchers are usually happy to accommodate private, direct inquiries from colleagues, there is naturally some skepticism, since we do not know if this service costs the requesting physician or how much the "Central Library of Medicine Foundation" receives. After some inquiries with South American and Spanish-speaking colleagues the following picture emerges: the website www.rima.org (The "Central Library of Medicine Foundation" aka "Fundación Biblioteca Central de Medicina" aka "Red Informática de Medicina Avanzada" (RIMA)) is a non-library organization based in Buenos Aires that offers physicians and researchers to get an article for a given fee (the exact amount is unknown). RIMA neither buys the article from the publisher nor copies it from a local library (which presumably cannot afford journals), but services the requests by directly forwarding them to the authors, in many cases, Münster faculty members. This probably the name "Central Library of Medicine Foundation" is used to simulate the unselfish non-profit library. Everyone must of course know how to handle it themselves. To send a reprint by email costs only a push of a button and it helps indeed ultimately a colleague who is certainly not as well supplied with magazines as oneself. On the other hand, you will be benefiting a commercial (?) intermediary organization, which may not help you, either. But maybe it is just a clever business idea of 10 unemployed Argentine doctors, to help them earn a living. . . . So it seems that this Central Library of Medicine Foundation is a business that charges a fee to its clients for obtaining a paper, via you. Although this is probably not really legal or moral, this fee is probably lower than what, say, Elsevier is asking for the same paper. I think this situation makes a good argument for open-access journals. I appreciate the translation work :) "After some inquiries with South American and Spanish-speaking colleagues the following picture:" A missing "emerged" at the end, perhaps? I've cleaned up the Google translation to make it sound like actual English. Received a similar solicitation from the same person. She says she is in Argentina, the country code to her phone number is for Spain, and the webpage is a Moldova domain. This all seems a bit dodgy. I'd prefer to help colleagues out as much as possible...I certainly have no problem sending a PDF to an individual upon request. But this seems to be a (possibly for-profit) enterprise and I'm certain it would violate the copyright of the publisher. I just received a similar request, but this time it was from a person named "Silvia Alderico" at the same institution as above. This whole enterprise does not seem legitimate. Normally, a researcher contacts you directly and asks for the paper, or their institution pays for the paper directly. If you have a desire to fill the request legally, most journals allow you to post a version of your paper: usually the final version you submitted to the journal that was accepted for publication (double-spaced word document or PDF, with figures and tables at the end). The Central Library of Medicine Foundation is a legally supported organization The Central Library of Medicine Foundation (CLMF) is an institution of public good with transparent proceedings and a non-profit foundation. It was founded in the last century. The CLMF has developed multiple systems to assist health professionals in clinical decision-making based on best available medical evidence. All its services are free of charge. Our institution is independent from Governmental and political interests as well as from commercial interests of the pharmaceutical industry. It is supported by donations and sponsorships of private companies from Argentina as well as other countries. All members of the Foundation's advisory board, of which I am the general director, are unpaid honorary positions. The Foundation purchases from publishers a large quantity of subscriptions to the best journals in each specialty and a limited number of copies of articles from these journals are provided to medical investigators by request. In a few exceptional instances, when a physician asks for a reprint that we don't have in our library, the CLMF contacts the authors directly for a copy and then forwards it to the requesting doctor at no cost. This service does not have any profit-making or commercial purpose. Additionally, as a proof of our transparent procedures, our institutional data such as the name of the foundation and the postal and email address are always included in the request letters submitted to authors. Under no circumstances a reprint sent to us by an author is reproduced or distributed in any way on a larger scale and in no way do we profit from this occasional service. In the same way, it is also important to note that the above mentioned procedure of reprint request to authors is really unusual and of little significance compared to the rest of the CLMF services and activities aimed at promoting continuing professional development. The Central Library of Medicine Foundation is supported by the most recognized scientific societies of Argentina as well as the Pan American Health Organization, regional office of the World Health Organization (WHO). We´ve created the “RIMA Award for Excellence in the Medical Scientific Update" to recognize the work of the doctors that keep updated and to improve the quality of their clinical practice. Among the numerous awards and honors received by the Foundation for its work to support the Continuing Professional Development, is the "Sadosky Award for Argentine intelligence " given by the president of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) of Argentina. Rather than being a group of unemployed doctors who makes profit by commercializing copies of medical articles, we are an organization, which expends considerable efforts to meet the continuing professional development physicians’ requirements, despite our limited economic resources. We believe that it would have been more appropriate to contact us to clarify any question before posting comments that could jeopardize our institutional reputation and public image without any real foundation. Our organizational culture is centered around strong values such as innovation, respect, honesty, excellence and independence. We are very proud of what we do to contribute to a better quality of patient care. Could you provide some references besides your own self-assertion? I have to agree with @jakebeal... without any external links from the source agencies you list supporting your assertions, this reads very much like a self-promotion post. [needs citation] Cannot evaluate objectively without them. While this provides a partial answer as to what CLMF is, it does not really answer, what to me is the critical issue, of how it can be legal for authors to send a personal reprint of a non open access article to a foundation like CLMF. I do not see any comments that could be considered as jeopardising your institutional reputation. Please flag any comments you think are in appropriate and we will take a closer look. I have also alerted a member of the SE team, but feel free to contact them yourself with the contact us link at the bottom of the page.	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2400	How to "cultivate" a postdoc position during PhD program? Imagine you're a PhD student, and you found a research group, in another university, that you'd like to join for a PostDoc period. You want to join that group because you really like their subjects, and their projects, and/or for other reasons. You just dediced you would like to join them. Now, what could you do during your PhD to augment the probabilities to reach this objective? You might say: just relax, make an awesome work, and then, when you're ending your doctoral period, contact that group PI and ask to be hired (we already discussed how to cope with this phase). Okay, but, is there something you could do during your PhD before that moment? What could you do? Keep up-to-date on their scientific papers? Email them? About what? Visit their lab? Thanks a lot Take some work they have done and build on it in an interesting and useful way. You want to establish substantial professional contact with the head of your target group long before your doctoral period is about to end. They need to know who you are already when your postdoc application crosses their desk. It is never too early to start. Here are a few suggestions. Ask your advisor to invite the head of the group to give a talk in your department. Meet with them one-on-one. Ask about the possibility of a short visit to their lab to give a reciprocal talk. (Prerequisite: Have something compelling to talk about; be a good speaker.) Ask about the possibility of summer internships. (Prerequisite: Be a good candidate for a summer internship.) Ask your advisor to suggest a one-semester student swap. (Prerequisite: Be someone that the other person would want to hire as an RA.) More generally: Convince your advisor to collaborate with the other group. Ask the head of the group to be an external member of your dissertation committee. Ask at least two years before your defense. (Prerequisite: Have a thesis topic that they will care about.) Talk to the head of the group and/or his students at conferences. Join them for lunch, or dinner, or coffee, or beer, or whatever. (Prerequisite: Be an interesting human being. Know a few good places to get lunch/dinner/coffee/beer/whatever.) Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Cultivate multiple colleagues. Some may develop into future employers, others into future research collaborators, still others into letter-writers, still others into mentors, perhaps a few into friends, and most into nothing. (Prerequisite: Know more than one person.) Most importantly, don't think of this process primarily as "cultivating a postdoc position". Think of it as cultivating a research community. People will notice if your motivations are mercenary, if only subconsciously. @JeffE Thanx for your answer, very interestin' (as usual!). For what concerns summer internships, in the continental Europe we don't have standards procedures for them, like maybe you have in the Usa. Anyway, this might be a good way to approach another research group. Maybe this is a query for another Academia question, but what d'you precisely intend for "summer internship" in the Northern American university context? @DavideChicco.it: I don't think there is a standard here in the US either. Students in my group have had both formal internships at companies (Google, Yahoo, Disney) and national labs (Argonne, Sandia, Los Alamos) and informal "internships" in other CS departments, which were really more like visitng RAships. Some of these were through formal internship programs; others were completely ad hoc. Is this really true? Do they only hire people they already know? I would strongly recommend speaking with your advisor as a first step. He may be able to initiate collaboration between you and the researcher running the other lab while you're still performing your PhD work, allowing you to kill two birds with one stone. If this is impractical for any reason, I would recommend reaching that, as soon as you think you have a strong enough knowledge base to be able to demonstrate expertise in your field, you should reach out to the professor at the second lab and express your interest. Research grants often take many months, and demonstrating your interest in his work at an early stage may give the professor more interest in writing a grant in which you could participate. Note that I would definitely recommend waiting until you can impress the professor with your knowledge. Postdocs are hired to get stuff done. While it's true you still are a PhD student, you're essentially applying for a position as a postdoc, and if you're not an expert (or close to one) in your field, he will likely be wary about bringing you in to your lab. This last reason is why people typically wait until they're pretty far along, if not outright finished, with their graduate work before looking for postdoc positions. Thanks, nice answer. Actually, one has only one first impression opportunity, so it's advisable not to waste it. (ps: in Italian, for "to kill two birds with one stone", we use the sentence "to take to pigeons with one broad bean", with the same meaning... ;-)	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.435816	2012-07-11T12:38:27	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2400", "authors": [ "David Ketcheson", "DavideChicco.it", "Fractional", "Grijesh Chauhan", "JeffE", "Joshua", "Rohit Deshmukh", "cgb5436", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/147616", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/379", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5989", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5990", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5991", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5992", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5997", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/5998", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/81", "user1586001", "user5991" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
2008	How does the US National Science Foundation (NSF) research funding system work? Sometimes here on Academia I read messages referring to American National Science Foundation (NSF), "the USA agency that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering" (page on Wikipedia). In this question and this question we discussed about NSF postdoctoral funding possibilities. Since I am in the European Union, I don't know very much about NSF. How does NSF funding system work? How does NSF postdoctoral funding program work? Does it fund only American citizens or anyone that wants to work as a researcher in the US? Many thanks! Could you be more specific about what you mean by "work"? Are you asking about the mechanics of submitting a proposal, how proposals are selected for funding, how the agency itself is funded, or something else? (Or all of the above?) @JeffE All the system procedure for somebody that wants to get funded, for example for a PostDoctoral fellowship (or for other kind of programs). Which are all the steps from zero to having a NSF fellowship. I think your first bulleted question is subsumed by the second one, unless you actually want to know about research grant funding for PIs. @Suresh Actually the bullets were not inserted by me... ;-) I'm most familiar with the NSF mathematical sciences research postdoctoral fellowship, which I was lucky enough to get 15 years ago. The application process is described in detail in NSF's formal solicitation, but here's an executive summary: Unlike most other NSF funding, this program is limited to US citizens and permanent residents. (NSF's regular research grants formally fund the institution, not the PI, so non-American PIs can win grants; on the other hand, NSF's graduate research fellowship has a similar citizenship requirement.) There was a parallel program for international postdocs for several years, but it seems to have been retired. Applicants must be within two years of their PhD and must have no previous US federal grant funding. In practice, this means each applicant can apply at most three times: once just before graduating and twice after. Applicants do not need an academic affiliation when they apply. (Again, the fellowship funds the applicant, not the institution.) The application itself requires a bunch of NSF boilerplate, but the main content is an abbreviated (3-5 page) research proposal, a one-page project summary, and four recommendation letters (submitted separately by their authors). As usual for NSF, the proposal absolutely must contain a paragraph explicitly labeled Intellectual Merit and another paragraph explicitly labeled Broader Impact. Applicants also need an agreement from a sponsoring scientist/mentor/advisor. The sponsor separately submits a statement describing their proposed mentorship role, research opportunities available in the hosting department, and promised infrastructure (office, computer support, libraries, specialized equipment, etc.). The sponsor cannot also write a recommendation letter. All applications are submitted electronically through NSF's FastLane web site. Considering how much FastLane has to handle (basically everything NSF does), it works amazingly well. The applications are reviewed by a panel of mathematical scientists (or more likely by multiple panels, given the number of applications). Panelists are invited by the program director, but in my experience, NSF program directors are happy to hear from volunteers! Each panel recommends and ranks a subset of the applications they review. Standard NSF practice is to fund all applications strongly recommended by the panel, and some applications with weaker recommendations, depending on available funds and other criteria. (NSF is deliberately vague about these other criteria, but gender, ethnic, and geographic diversity are likely guesses.) Applications for fellowships to begin in Fall 2013 are due October 19, 2012. Yes, this is really early. Winners are usually notified in February and announced on the NSF web site soon thereafter. All applicants receive a summary of their panel reviews. The total award amount is $150,000, distributed over a two-year period. Most of that is salary, but about $30,000 is set aside for stuff like equipment, travel, and benefits from the host institution. Frustratingly, fellows are neither employees of the hosting institution, employees of NSF, nor formally self-employed; the US Treasury Department simply injects $5000 into your bank account every month. So good luck with taxes! Fellows need to submit progress reports once per year and a final report when the fellowship ends. One thing that does not appear to apply for this Fellowship, but applies for many I've seen: The applicant needs to not be in a field that has heavy coverage by NIH grants - so no PhD/MD types at Medical Schools, or those of us in Schools of Public Health. @EpiGrad Yup, I read it on the Wikipedia page: "[...] in all the non-medical fields [...]" @JeffE Many thanks for your answer, very clear. I've visited again the website and read it very carefully: it seems to me that no NSF funding opportunity is available for non Usa citizens. D'you confirm? @DavideChicco.it As far as I know, all NSF postdoc fellowships are limited to US citizens and permanent residents. But regular NSF grants don't have that limitation — PIs can have any citizenship as long as they work for a US institution. Does the Astronomy and Astrophysics Postdoctoral NSF fellowship require any reference letters? It seems it doesn't, and just needs an agreement from a sponsoring scientist at an institution. Is this right?	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.436228	2012-06-14T08:08:48	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2008", "authors": [ "DavideChicco.it", "Fomite", "JeffE", "Suresh", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/118", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/379", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/88372", "user4437416" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
24420	How to quote or summarise text from a reference that includes citations in Harvard Style? I am very much confused on referencing a paragraph and have tried to find an answer on YouTube but that didn't help! So here is my question: The lines from an article (author = aaa bbb) says: (example) Birmingham is a beautiful city as it sits in middle of the country (ABC, 2010), has people from a lot cultures (DEF, 2012), has nice food (GHI, 2011) and etc (FGH, 2013). Now can I reference it like this? BBB (2014) highlights that birmingham is a beautiful city as it sits in middle of the country (ABC, 2010), has people from a lot cultures (DEF, 2012), has nice food (GHI, 2011) and etc (FGH, 2013). Or can I just copy paste the original text as it already contains the references? You have two options. The first option is to quote the paragraph and include all it's citations. But you must include these cited works in your own bibliography. The second option is to quote the paragraph and omit it's embedded citations. But you should add this note at the end of the quotation: "[citations from original have been omitted]" Using your example, option 1 looks like this: As described by BBB (2014): "Birmingham is a beautiful city as it sits in middle of the country (ABC 2010), has people from a lot cultures (DEF 2012), has nice food (GHI 2011) and etc (FGH 2013)." BIBLIOGRAPHY ABC (2010), ... BBB (2014), ... DEF (2012), ... GHI (2011), ... FGH (2013), ... Option 2 looks like this: As described by BBB (2014): "Birmingham is a beautiful city as it sits in middle of the country, has people from a lot cultures, has nice food and etc." [citations from original omitted] BIBLIOGRAPHY BBB (2014), ... The preferred choice depends on the purpose of your writing, including the formality, the nature of the material you are quoting, and the reader. Generally, choose option 1 if you are writing formally (in a dissertation or journal article) and if the citations in the original are very important to your reader. Choose option 2 of omitting the citations improves readability and none of the embedded citations are relevant or important to your reader or your purposes.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.436893	2014-07-05T17:15:02	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/24420", "authors": [ "A Math", "Dr. F", "Igorian", "Ivan McA", "Matteo Monti", "Menasheh", "ashaw", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65529", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65530", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65531", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65540", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65544", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65581", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/71993", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/71994", "user65540" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
17649	Style in citing two authors in the same sentence I have a sentence with two concepts and two quotations from two different authors. It goes like this Some is true because of concept one, that is "quotation one", and concept two, that is "quotation two". Concept one and two are both from Author A while quotation one and two are from Author B. What would be an elegant way to cite both authors at the end of the sentence making sure: The reader will be able to attribute each concept/citation to the write author, The reader will be able to understand which work (and from which page) the quotation is from I'm assuming doing 4 citations is out of the question ? Why is it important to add a citation only at the end of the sentence ? ...Author A's concept one and concept two [A], which Author B respectively describes as "Quotation one" and "Quotation two" [B].... First off, citing papers is not about giving credit to first authors, it is about making literature traceable to readers. This is a key part of scientific writing, providing sources. The format for citations is of course focussing on first authors who may, or may not, be the main contributor (remember that author order varies between disciplines). A secondary aspect is the fact that many evaluations of academic status is based on authorship and as such authors may not be credited as much as they should. This is, however, not the reason for why we reference the way we do. So, from this perspective, I do not see why you necessarily need to emphasize the name of someone other than the first or second author (I am now thinking Harvard-style references where two-author papers have both names listed in the in-text reference). If there is a scientifically based reason for highlighting the originator, one could write Concepts One and Two (reference to B) were first developed by A [then I would argue some form of explanation of why this distinction is scientifically important should follow or be included] or A originated the concept one and two (Reference to B) [then I would argue some form of explanation of why this distinction is scientifically important should follow or be included] Note that this would seemingly take away the importance of B, which in many reference systems would look strange and implicate something may not be right with the articles. I therefore think it is wise to clarify why you feel the work of A is such that it requires highlighting. Clearly, I cannot judge the case since all details are unavailable. As a side point, reviewers will likely pick up on any inconsistencies and ask for clarification in a case such as this, unless the reasons for the formatting is either clear from your writing or well known in the community. If this is suppose to be a research paper, one can cite both the authors in Chronological manner. In your case "concept one" is from Author A and "quotation one" is from Author B and those are repeating in the same order, so citing them as \cite{A, B} will work fine. How would you indicate the page for the quotation from the work of author B? If that is the case you can mention page no. of the concepts in references and name of the authors with quotation. In some referencing styles, when you cite multiple references in one \cite{} they are ordered according to some rule other than chronology (e.g. numerical order). If the reference is at the end of the sentence and you don't have any other clue in the sentence, then the only connection is the order of appearance in the citation, e.g. [A, B], which means that the first quotation is from A and the second from B. I would suggest using citations in the sentence and not only at is end. E.g. From [A] the first is true because [..] and from [B] the second is [...] [A] is not a noun. @JeffE if [A] is referring to the reference number such as [1], in IEEE at least, it can be a noun. http://www.ieee.org/documents/ieeecitationref.pdf @JeffE exactly as user1938197 mentions. In addition, even with other reference styles the above example is valid because in text you are referring to the citation, e.g. "From citation [A]" which is "abbreviated" as "From [A]".	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.437081	2014-03-03T01:42:40	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/17649", "authors": [ "AmJo", "Animesh Singh", "JeffE", "RahulGupta", "Suresh", "Warren Whipple", "Xxxo", "capitano.nemo", "ff524", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/11365", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12552", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12575", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12718", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20121", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/47645", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/47670", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/71044", "user-2147482637" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
41996	The correct & acceptable phrase to indicate that some papers are very likely to be accepted I have several papers that are resubmitted to journals with minor revisions. I feel they are very much likely to be accepted by the time my actual Ph.D. viva takes place in one month. But I need to submit my PhD thesis now. I do not want to list those papers as simply "under review". I want to indicate they are very likely to be accepted, as they are resubmitted only with minor revisions. What is the correct and polite phrase to say the state of these papers? If you are an examiner, would you be unhappy to see that I indicate some papers are likely to be accepted? What about "Minor revision requested"? I would be somewhat unhappy if you just told me that those papers are "likely to be accepted" without a good reason why you think so, but saying that you received a "Minor Revision" in the last reviewing round is generally understood as "basically accepted". Why has this post been voted as "too broad"? I do not see anything odd with the question. Random error exists throughout the peer review process. Play it safe and simply note the stage of the review process without qualifying it further. Stating the status of manuscripts in a thesis should not be an issue. The best way is to phrase their status as expressed by the journal. We see this all the time from "submitted to", "under review in" to "revised with major/minor revision". You cannot state that they are likely to be accepted since that is not your decision and stranger things have happened. What has to be remembered is that even a paper that has been published can be discussed and criticised so the above information just means to an examiner that someone else, impartial, has possibly commented on the manuscript or that a journal has found it worthy of review. I would guess most examiners would see a status as additional "evidence" for a basic acceptable quality of the work but would not necessarily affect their judgement, which is personal anyway.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.437417	2015-03-20T12:11:45	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41996", "authors": [ "Brian P", "Peter Jansson", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/17232", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/4394", "xLeitix" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
183366	Emailing professors regarding funding for PhD after getting accepted? I have been accepted as a doctoral student (aerospace engineering, US). The email I received suggested that I get in touch with the faculty of my interest to discuss funding and research. I did try contacting two of the professors but have not heard back. Do you have any suggestion on how to reach out to professors for funding? The university is my top choice and I have two more professors whose research really connects with what I want to do. Does this answer your question? How should I phrase an important question that I need to ask a professor? Easy. Include a greeting of choice and then something along the lines of "My name is X and I am a recently admitted student to the X PhD program." Next, make sure you show in a material way how you are interested in their work. Ask a couple questions about their recent publications or briefly indicate to them your research interests (be as specific as possible) and how you think you could be a good fit for their program. Ask for a meeting to better understand what they are currently working on. Then you could ask if they are planning to take on another graduate student in the autumn. If they don't have funding to do so, they will usually tell you right away. Often it is still worth meeting them, since they might end up on your committee. The thing here is to show concrete understanding of their work and that you are a possible match, but keep it short. Leave the rest for a subsequent in person or zoom meeting. Presumably, if this is the structure of the program (admit first, then find a lab), they are expecting this type of email. Keep in mind that it is spring break right now for many institutions and you are unlikely to get a response during spring break week. Potential graduate advisors get many, many emails from prospective graduate students, so it is not surprising you may not have heard back after contacting them just once. I would suggest following up with an additional email after two weeks. Don't feel bad about following up as the worst they can say is "no, I'm not taking any students" and then at least you have an answer and you won't keep bugging them! I would also suggest trying to contact them in a method other than email as emails can get buried in a busy inbox. Some of the best advice I got when applying to grad school (in my field you typically have to reach out and connect with potential advisors and ask about funding before applying, so I did this part first) was to send actual SNAIL MAIL letters to professors. I was told by several of these professors that I ended up connecting with that that made me stand out. You could also try calling and leaving a voicemail if they have a phone number listed on their university landing page.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.437596	2022-03-17T10:56:25	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/183366", "authors": [ "Sursula", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/133549" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
21753	Making my advisor publish manuscript I gave a manuscript to my advisor while ago but he doesn't read it, what is the best action to do cause I need to publish it fast? Why do you need to publish it fast ? is there a conference deadline ? or a journal final version deadline ? or something else ? This is one of the positive proportion of questions asked here that makes me wish we had a Talk to your advisor! banner as a site feature. How about you take the time and effort it would require to explain the particulars of your situation to a bunch of random internet academics and use that to have a discussion with your advisor: why hasn't he read your paper? Does he intend to read it soon? Does he understand and agree that you need to "publish it fast"? If you have this conversation and run into a specific wall, then maybe we have something to talk about here. I have to publish it, because other people are publishing around it! He is telling me we are going to submit it soon. I have to graduate and there is a chance people will publish similar work. I cant publish on my own, he funded the project. I sent him many drafts!! Nothing works, talking, sending email,... He says we ll do it and just postpones... I dont want to do anything bad to relationship! How long ago was a while ago, to be precise? I dont want to do anything bad to relationship — If asking your advisor to do his job is going to damage your relationship, your relationship is already damaged beyond repair. @JeffE, I think what the OP means might damage relationship is to publish on her own. @Katekalle Could you expand your question? Is it a paper with your advisor, or without? How long did you wait? How does he respond to reminders? Since, you are near your graduation, that means not only you know whether your research results are publishable or not but where to publish those results as well. Consequently, similar to what Suresh suggests, one of your problems is not only to publish those results but publishing them on a suitable venue which is a) close to your area of interest b) it is a high-profile journal of conference c) your paper has a lot of chances to be actually accepted. So, it is part of your job to actually find such a venue to stress the urgency of your publishing those results. In this sense, have you checked the nearby CFPs (call for proposals) for related conferences or journals? Perhaps your advisor plans to submit your paper to an event which is 2-3 months from now and is already confident enough for your draft, so there is no immediate hurry to do the final changes now. Many advisors are very busy and allocation for their various tasks is done according to their deadlines, so perhaps this is the reason he has postponed providing feedback. If you have found an alternative venue for publishing those results with a closer deadline, it will be easier for you to convince him to check your manuscript ASAP. But in the end, we are just random Internet strangers and the most proper solution is (as others have suggested) to TALK TO YOUR ADVISOR. If talking to your advisor doesn't work, I would suggest emailing your advisor with the draft, saying that you plan to submit it to XXX on such-and-such a date and that you would be grateful for any feedback he or she can provide you before then. As mentioned by amirg, you might also run it by the head of your lab, if that's the standard in your field. (It's not in mine: computer science.) @ espertus; @amirg; @ RoboKaren; @Pete L. Clark; @Suresh; I have to publish it, because other people are publishing around it! He is telling me we are going to submit it soon. I have to graduate and there is a chance people will publish similar work. I cant publish on my own, he funded the project. I sent him many drafts!! Nothing works, talking, sending email,... He says we ll do it and just postpones... I dont want to do anything bad to relationship! I would talk to your department head. Something is not going well in your department. Original Answer: If you are submitting to a journal, you do not have to have your advisor's approval (unless you are using his dataset or it is coming out of his lab). If it is based on your own research findings, publish it as single-author. Editorial Note: You did not indicate your discipline. As state in the original response, this answer is only applicable for disciplines where your research is independent of your advisor's research, lab, or research grants. Be very careful, though, if you follow this advise, for you might needlessly damage your relationship. If you are a part of a lab, the lab head has contributed to the science the very least by getting the funds and probably by suggesting the line of research. There are many sad stories on this website alone where going single author, even when partially substantiated, have lead to probes into research integrity and other unfortunate incidents. Oops, responded on wrong comment.That's why I added the disclaimer bit to not do this if you are in a joint lab project. This is not a good advice. Especially when the OP is near graduation. For example: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21710/how-to-respond-to-allegations-of-misconduct-in-authorship-dispute I agree that this is terrible advise. Look over the question linked by Alexandros for the possible outcomes of the "ignore the advisor" approach. (-1)	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.437944	2014-05-31T22:52:26	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21753", "authors": [ "Alexandros", "JeffE", "Katekalle", "Pete L. Clark", "Piotr Migdal", "RoboKaren", "Suresh", "adipro", "alarge", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10042", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10094", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/10936", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14885", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15151", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/15952", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/346", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/65", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/938", "xLeitix" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
44668	Are lower case sub-headings a common formatting convention? I recently presented a poster at an undergraduate research conference, and they are now soliciting write-ups for the conference proceedings. I was surprised at their formatting guidelines, specifically the requirement that all sub-headings be lower case. Ex.: 1. Main Heading 1.1 this is a secondary heading 1.1.2 this is a tertiary heading I have never seen this convention. I've always thought the preferred style for sub-headings is to either use the same capitalization format as for main headings, or capitalize the first letter of the first word. I find this all-lower case format to be unprofessional-looking, and was wondering: is this a common convention, and if so, what is the underlying rationale? I have never in my academic life seen this convention: I have always seen lower-level sub-headings follow exactly the same convention as higher-level headings. Do what they tell you to do (the world has lots of strange Official Requirements for Our Unique And Special Snowflake Publication Venue), but I wouldn't worry about it for anywhere else in life. The basic rule for all publications is to follow the guide-lines to the point. In this case it seems that the conference is expecting what used to be called "camera-ready" manuscripts, i.e. manuscripts that are "published" as is and not going through additional formatting by the conference organisation. With journals, the guidelines usually concern the formatting of a manuscript which later undergoes additional formatting before being published. In any case, just follow the guidelines to the point. You would be surprised by how many fail to do so and you may even end up putting a smile on the recipients face.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.438353	2015-05-02T18:52:17	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/44668", "authors": [ "Brian ", "Public_Courage", "Schroeder", "Shoaib Nur", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122491", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122492", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122493", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122520", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122607", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122608", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/122609", "thesketh", "user130558", "user92127" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
116197	Why isn't literature search a waste of time if centralized documentation is a better alternative? I am asking this question regarding to the documents (thesis, research papers, and publications) that contain original, novel work. Before starting to write a research paper/ thesis, searching for a problem statement, submitting to a journal, staring research work for Ph.D., etc., every researcher has to do a proper literature search. It is a well-known fact that literature search is mandatory for every professional researcher. There is a finite number of existing disciplines and each discipline has a finite number of existing topics to research and to publish upon. Why is there no centralized mechanism to document the research that has happened till the previous year? If the discipline or topic is totally new anyway there is no need for the literature search. If there is such a mechanism, then there is almost no chance for rediscoveries and there is no need to search for the whole literature that is randomly distributed across the Internet, paid journals, libraries, etc. Are there a finite number of questions? Questions may be infinite, but documentation of research at a frequent basis will avoid literature search for all researchers in that particular topic. Then if the question changes, the references used become more, or less, relevant... The point in literature research is not to compile bibliographic information but to READ the relevant papers and understand what the current state of the art is. @Karl: That's what the question is about. Why don't we have a better way of accessing that information than reading hundreds of individually authored and individually structured, partly overlapping papers? @O.R.Mapper We have that, it's called "textbooks", or "wikipedia". ;-) @Karl: Exactly, that's a part of an answer I was going to write later today, but feel free to be faster, if you wish to elaborate. @Karl We have that, it's called "textbooks", or "wikipedia". - that is often one better way, and one worse way. (YMMV on which is which, of course). How will you know what you don't know without looking at what's known but not already known to you? Who decides what goes in the centralized repository? "Each discipline has a finite number of existing topics to research and to publish upon": citation needed. These central repositories exists - they are called a (digital) library. What we typically mean with "doing literature review" is going into one or more digital libraries and retrieving all information on the subject. Given how heterogenous research questions, approaches, and scientific results are, it seems fundamentally impossible to provide much more structured information than that across disciplines. That said, for some fields (notably medicine, as I understand it), more fine-grained repository structures have emerged, which allow researchers to query for specific data sets etc. "If the discipline or topic is totally new, anyway there is no need for the literature search." : But how do you know your totally new topic on hypermetabolic quiver systems isn't the same thing as what Prof. X's work called totally supernormal inverted forms? For example, I am a mathematician. I was recently leading a group of students in studying Paley graphs, which are defined on elements of finite fields. There are all of the obvious papers on Paley graphs to look at, of course; but then there are also papers that concern large families of graphs that may or may not include the Paley graphs. Then there are papers on finite fields that don't mention graph theory at all, but really describe Paley graphs. Or papers in finite geometry that are really talking about Paley graphs using slightly different language. So unless this repository actually included all of the results of every single paper ever written in full, I'm not sure it would provide much use. Of course, there are only a finite number of results in a finite number of topics that have been published about, so this is theoretically possible. Even then, looking through this repository would be not much different than what is usually called a literature search. The Annual Reviews series of journals have some of the highest impact factors across the board, so I wouldn't go so far as to say "I'm not sure it would provide much use". "But how do you know your totally new topic on hypermetabolic quiver systems isn't the same thing as what Prof. X's work called totally supernormal inverted forms?" - you might not, even with literature search. I'd even consider "same thing published twice with different terminology" as a good example of a flaw in our current approach to literature search. I think the cited claim about new topics can much better be refuted with a question like "But how do you know your totally new topic on hypermetabolic quiver systems accurately represents without measuring it with the ... ... methods proven to work based upon ?" @Allure Possibly. But that series does not have a title in math (it does have one instatistics though). I agree literature search in its current form, by reading loads of free-form documents with large overlaps1 to extract the relevant bits and pieces is not efficient. Let's first look at your individual statements: I agree with the assessment that There is a finite number of existing disciplines and each discipline has a finite number of existing topics to research and to publish upon. though I consider it quite theoretical: We are probably far from knowing all disciplines that will ever be relevant, thus it's not like a "map" where we could check which areas are still blank. The claim If the discipline or topic is totally new anyway there is no need for the literature search. strikes me as questionable, though. "Totally new" topics do not emerge out of nowhere, they result from unexpected findings in existing disciplines that pave the way for what can be called a new topic. Now, a "central repository" across all fields (because, also based upon what I wrote about "new topics", they are all linked in some way) would indeed be helpful, but is not yet feasible for two reasons: Doing and maintaining it would be a tremendous effort. Do not get me wrong, it would be much less of an effort than the net effort of all the researchers around the globe individually reading all those original papers, but as long as there is no good worldwide system to compensate those involved for the effort (and I don't really see one for now), the decentralized approach of everyone just individually publishing their source documents and leaving most of the "linking" of source documents for further use up to everyone on their own2 looks like the only achievable solution. Our technology is not far enough yet. The topic of formalizing knowledge is still in its early stages (when compared to the task of representing complex knowledge on arbitrary topics), and without that, any plan to summarize, juxtapose, and link papers can only be implemented by humans reading natural language text and, at best, producing condensed natural language text that may bring different results into a uniform scheme. Automatization of that process is not yet feasible, leading back to point one. 1: Note that I am referring to the text here, not just the novel findings or results. The results should indeed be overlap-free, but the text describing them is only a part of a paper beside e.g. problem statements or summaries of related work. 2: Except for some comparably localized efforts including survey papers, textbooks, encyclopediae, and similar. There is such a repository - see the Wikipedia article on Annual Reviews.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.438569	2018-09-01T09:35:18	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/116197", "authors": [ "Allure", "J.R.", "John Feltz", "Karl", "O. R. Mapper", "Solar Mike", "Tobias Kildetoft", "aeismail", "alephzero", "hind", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/12592", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/14017", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/32961", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/45983", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/63862", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/72855", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/780", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/84834", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/90628" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
115935	Can I edit my paper after submission if I discover additional literature? While writing my paper, I was unaware of the existence of a sequence and I named the sequence (say X). Later I found that the same sequence is already known with some other name (say Y). Currently if my paper is under review, then can I change to Y according to the literature and resend? Or is it okay to continue with the name X I sent? Note that the novelty of the paper does not completely rely on the sequence used. you will have a chance to correct this after the review. @wonderich Please do not answer in comments as it bypasses the stackexchange system. For your comment: Could you please provide an answer including the information as to why you think they should? What is "sequence" in this context? Something mathematical? @Peter: A sequence is something mathematical, yes -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence -- and that is presumably what is meant in the context of this question. From what you have written regarding the sequence name, it sounds like this it only a question of nomenclature and doesn't substantively affect either your results or the novelty of these results. If this is indeed the case, then it can easily be amended at revision. Pretty much every meaningful peer review process on a significant article will end up requesting at least minor revisions, since reviewers will generally contribute useful perspective and few manuscripts are without at least some typos. If there is a major impact (presumably on novelty), it is a whole different story. Depending on how large the impact, you might either still want to wait until revision (e.g., if it's going to replace a couple of paragraphs with a citation) or you might even want to withdraw and resubmit a new version of the manuscript (e.g., if it results in dropping an entire section). Even if you need to do something so extreme, however, I would not worry overmuch about consequences: any good editor will respect (and likely appreciate) such a decision. Withdrawal is probably a last resort. It's certainly something you should discuss with the editor before doing. if the paper is just withdrawn, it's likely that the referees' work so far is wasted. On at least one occasion, I've received a revised version of the paper mid-way through reviewing it, along with a description of what had changed, which was very local in scope and didn't affect anything I'd already gone through. +1 and I'll add that in the unlikely event the paper is accepted without review, you can write to the editor then and say you need to make this change. It sounds like the change is non-controversial (i.e. doesn't need to be peer reviewed), so you can even make the change during the production process. I agree with the other two answers (by Buffy and jakebeal), but I would also add another possibility that I've seen people make use of. First, note that I don't understand how important this change is, so I'm not necessarily saying you should use this approach — just that it's a possibility. You can contact the editors even while the paper is out for review to mention that you'll need to make this change. From what you say, it sounds like they'll probably just tell you to wait until you get the paper back to do revisions. It's also possible that they'll forward that information to the reviewer, which may preempt an issue the reviewer planned to raise. Again, I can't judge whether or not this is the right approach for you, but it has happened to me that the editors of a journal contacted me while I was reviewing a paper to pass along important information from the authors, and it helped with the process. In any case, you really should correct this at some point before publication, for the sake of academic integrity. Generally speaking the version submitted to a journal or conference is not the version published as it will go through review. However, the nature of the change can affect things. In the worst case, the paper has a predecessor that makes its publication moot, or even invalidates the conclusion. But in the usual case you can make such changes. However, the extent of the changes may make it necessary to have it reviewed again. That is easier for a journal to do than a conference, which has harder deadlines. The way to handle this is to add a note - either as a footnote or in the body of the text - indicating that the sequence has a different name elsewhere, and include appropriate reference in an updated bibliography. Of course this assumes the referee will not herself/himself point out that fact in the report. At the time of resubmission (if some changes are required) or when you next contact the editorial office, indicate clearly for the benefit of the editor (and possibly also the referee) that you have added bibliographic entries and why, and that you have added some text (and indicate where) to clarify the issue. A well written note explaining how this doesn't affect the novelty of your work should do it but, if the referee is unaware of the said reference and the paper is accepted without further review, the editor can always go back to the referee if she/he feels this compromises the integrity of the manuscript.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.439107	2018-08-28T12:23:47	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/115935", "authors": [ "Allure", "David Richerby", "Dirk", "Louic", "Pete L. 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166531	Should I convince my advisor that thesis work is not finished yet? I am a third-year Ph.D. student in computer science. I have finished all course requirements and I work full-time as a software engineer at a FAANG company. I am doing my best trying to balance time between work and school. But today I had a meeting with my advisor and he said by the end of summer he expects me to wrap up all my thesis work. Basically, I did One year of study the research material and taking graduate-level courses to study the problem One year of research to understand the problem and come up with the solution One year of solving the problem, coding, and showing my method worked What is remaining is writing a paper and defense. My advisor is very strict and I am kind of surprised he said that. I don't feel like I have accomplished anything yet and there is more to the problem. Should I try to explain the work is not finished yet? Or maybe he is getting tired of me and wants to focus on other problems. In some countries (including France) the PhD delays are very strict, and defined by law. If the PhD is funded by some HorizonEurope or Horizon2020 project, the delays are imperative. And delays for submitting a paper to any CS conference are also very strict. At last, every PhD defense has some future work section and a lot of CS conference papers have one too. BTW, I would be happy to read your paper draft -if it is written in English- in PDF - in relation to the RefPerSys project. If you want to, please email me at [email protected] It's hard to guess what your advisor is thinking. You should ask him to clarify. To me, it sounds like you have done enough to start writing up, but as @BasileStarynkevitch says this depends on the policies of your advisor, university and funding body. Also do not forget, there is the (small) chance that somebody else publishes the same approach. This is not a huge risk, but if you delay by a year it adds unecessary risk. What did you sign up to and how is that different from what your advisor is now demanding? Working full-time as both a software engineer and a Ph.D. student is unsustainable. If writing a thesis based upon the results you have is likely to suffice (speak to fellow students, read theses of prior students, speak to your advisor), I'd suggest you take that route. Reduce your workload to something more sustainable. Your thesis needn't be your best work; your thesis need only get you a PhD. Graduate, pursue the next step. Agreed. I worked full time during my engineering PhD. It was unpleasant and took forever. I read the OP and was instantly envious for how quickly they might get through it. Take it and run!!!! I'm in the same position, my advisor is telling me I have to extend, so being told you have to finish implies to me that the advisor is happy with the progress and thinks it's sufficient to defend. That seems like a far less worse outcome than being told you need to request an extension because full time work is interferring with your progress. Perhaps you are forgetting that the goal of earning a PhD is to get it finished and move on. Well, no, there are other goals, of course, but you seem to have completed them. But certainly the goal is not to make a career of being a student. I think that the professor is giving you good advice and that you have done enough by their standards, and that of the institution, that you should just write it up and move on. Your third bullet point certainly suggest that. As for "work yet to do", it is really a good thing to leave a PhD program with ideas for future research and publications. You don't have to stop, assuming that your employment permits it. And your life will probably get a bit simpler for a while if you have only one "job". I think you should take the advice and move on in your career. I'd have given the same advice as your advisor in this situation. And it wouldn't be that I was "tired of you". Not at all. I think you could improve this answer by removing the first two sentences. The goal of ... is to get it finished and move on fits for any goal because that is the definition of a goal. The last sentence ("The goal is not to make a career of being a student.") is strong. It's still a useful reminder, because when tackling any goal it's possible to lose sight of the target While I'm from a different field, the situation of handling work with PhD is similar. I'm making some assumptions based on that similarity, feel free to reject them if they are invalid. Possibly you feel that the PhD is your last chance to tackle an important research problem and make significant contributions. Possibly you enjoy the academic nature of the course and would like it to go on a little longer. As others have shared, these need not end with the program. Rather, the program is aimed at giving you some tools and directions to further refine the work that you'll do subsequently (whether that includes basic, applied or developmental research). An advisor who wants you to finish early is arguably better than one who wants you to finish later than you would like to. It may be a good idea to discuss your progress and immediate work plan with the advisor, get their suggestions and perspectives and make an honest assessment of whether you have enough results to defend the thesis. If you do, you're in an excellent position, good luck! Yah, been there, done that. Write the thesis (BTW, that is NOT trivial and much good additional work comes from the writing), defend and then get onto doing more good work, Herr Docktor. If you were planning on an academic career, I might agree with holding off. In academia, your productivity is measured in papers after you earn your Ph.D so getting in more research first allows you to blitz articles as soon as you defend. But in industry, you use your credentials as a lever. "AB.D" is not a credential and too easily bestowed while you are working.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.439554	2021-04-20T04:50:46	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/166531", "authors": [ "Bamboo", "Basile Starynkevitch", "David Waterworth", "Jared Becksfort", "Robbie Goodwin", "astronat supports the strike", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/111536", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/123103", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/19385", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/34352", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/43138", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/49043", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/58889", "https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/75206", "lalala", "user1717828" ], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
161884	I didn't hear back after a postdoc interview. Can I set a deadline for a response? I was invited for an interview for a postdoc position at a research institution in another country. At the end, the panel told me that the HR will reach out early next week. I didn't hear back from the HR and decided to follow up the next week, in which the HR told me that "the panel are yet to confirm their decision" and I should expect an update in the next three days maximum. Today was the last day of that deadline. The issue is that in a few weeks from now, I might start other activities in other universities (teaching and research on another project). I didn't confirm anything until I receive a response for that postdoc position. Can I follow up again and told them that I might have another engagement next week? I am afraid that this might backfire, because they're asking me to wait and this gives me the impression that I'm plan B or something. Of course you can ask, and of course it may backfire. Which job do you want? When would the other one start (given in another country do you need to travel during Covid, need a work visa, ...) and could it be after your engagement ends? I want the postdoc, it offers a lot of opportunities for me, but as you can guess, it's very tricky in COVID times, and that alone might be a rejection factor for me. The other one is teaching for one semestre (4 - 6 months) and research for 1 year (I might need to sign a contract). You can set whatever deadlines or other conditions you like, but it should be obvious that you can't enforce them, so they are meaningless. (And don't forget that an organization may have a simple way to deal with people who keep pestering them: every new communication automatically sends your application to the back of the queue of work they are processing.) I just informed them about my current situation. You should let them know that you have other opportunities at other universities that you need to respond to, and what those deadlines are. If they can, they will try to avoid the situation where they can not hire you because you have been forced to agree to another job. That does not mean they can. Generally speaking, people being informed is good. Setting deadlines that look arbitrary is not. Thank you for your response. So, perhaps a gentle email where I inform them about the other opportunities without focusing much about the deadlines but also expressing my interest on the postdoc might not backfire? But don't lie to them about "other opportunities". And, you might also lessen your chances with some people: "Oh, they have another offer, no reason to press on". @Buffy I will wait a day or two before sending the email. There is no need for me to lie. @Buffy While there might be the occasional supervisor who would think "Oh, they have another offer, no reason to press on," there will be far more supervisors that see the other offer as a positive. Other people wanting you can confirm your value. If I was the supervisor, and you were candidate B and close to candidate A, I would be more interested, and I would mention to candidate A, "You are my first choice, but there is another qualified candidate who I need to inform by X date of your decision". Don't give the supervisor ultimatums, or lie, but do inform them of deadlines for other offers. I have sent the email this morning (without creating any urgency). They've appreciated the update which they forwarded it to the Hiring Team. They said that I should expect another email with their response by the end of the day. This is missing a direct answer to the title question. Maybe you are plan B, but I think that setting a deadline for them is more likely to backfire than help. The easy thing for them to do is to withdraw your name from consideration - especially if you aren't the top candidate. Don't give up other opportunities and make your own decisions on what you think best for your career, but I urge patience here. They may have entirely different reasons for delay. Yes, best option is just wait and not keep my hopes high. It is most likely that they're in the middle of negotiation with candidate A or perhaps they're waiting for his/her decision given that they gave me two deadlines.. I've been the 2nd choice for at least 2-3 jobs. Because I didn't set any ultimatums they called me back when their first choice didn't work out. This includes when the first choice even starts and ends up not working out immediately. You can't and shouldn't try to "set a deadline". Instead, just let them know gently..."I am getting other offers and need to decide soon". Also, "I am very interested in this position, but may need to accept another one, if your offer is delayed too long". Given the market imbalance, I don't think competing INTERVIEWS are important or compelling. However, other OFFERS obviously are. And you are being responsible to let them know you may become off the market to them. Realistically, you're probably not getting contacted because you are not high on their list. But there is some chance they are just slow or bureaucratic. So, yeah...reach out gently to inform/check with them. But it should be more in the mode of letting them know you are in demand. Not "setting a deadline". Of course, if you have an exploding offer from someone else, let them know. But again, you are not "setting a deadline". Just letting them know when the great candidate might become unavailable. My experience in hiring/getting hired is that this is generally positive...to let people know that you are in demand. "Speculation drives the market." But be gentle and smooth about it. I've had interviews that didn't appear to go anywhere, even after a few calls, so I gave up. Several silent months went by and I eventually got hired. You can never tell when there will be an internal candidate that gets preference, but enters their resume late and needs to go through a full process before a decision is made.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.440221	2021-01-27T17:47:09	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/161884", "authors": [ "Anonymous Physicist", "Buffy", "Jon Custer", "U. 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980	How much do soft skills matter for admission decision? By reading the very intersting question Priority of application materials for admission decision about which material is most important to be admitted as PhD candidate, or PostDoc or researcher, in a university, I started wondering on how and how much soft skills count, for the same objective. As you know, besides academic degrees, grades, publications, reference letters, technical skills, project proposals, and etc., there are also soft skills that are considered by talent scouts to choose who engage. For soft skills, I mean competence like: public speaking active listening ability to manage relationships ability to show interest In scientific admission procedures, e.g. for PhD or PostDoc admission, how much do soft skills count? For a graduate student, soft skills matter only in as much as they pertain to good writing and to having good interview skills (if interviews are conducted). If you write a poor statement of purpose with an otherwise solid application, it can severely hurt your chances of admission. Similarly, in a department that does interviews, a good interview can significantly improve your chances—raising you from "on the bubble" to "admit." Of course, the converse could be true—if you come off as arrogant or incompetent in your interview, that can completely kill your chances at admission. However, those are skills that can be worked on via practice, and most universities offer workshops and training on how to improve writing and handle job interviews. Students should take advantage of those opportunities when they're available.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.440770	2012-04-02T15:04:14	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/980", "authors": [], "all_licenses": [ "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/" ], "sort": "votes", "include_comments": true }
162578	Are all postdoc jobs advertised? I recently had a postdoc interview (at a research institution) in which I wasn't selected. After receiving the interview outcome, I decided to directly email the panel a few weeks later asking for a feedback. One of the professors replied and invited me for a chat the following week. He said that he has other opportunities that are a good fit for my profile. I know that he's talking about the university where he's working and not the research intuition where I met him (with the panel). The issue, is that I checked the university's website and I didn't find any job postings. Can a PI hire a postdoctoral researcher without first advertising the job? This probably depends on local law. In some places all (or almost all) positions need to be advertised. But for "short term" employment it might be different. Perhaps the opening isn’t posted yet, but they plan to? Your availability may push the issue higher on his priority list... Hey @JonCuster, actually I have another postdoc interview in that week and I feel confident about it. I don't know if I should mention that or not.. Can a PI hire a postdoctoral researcher without first advertising the job? I see a lot of speculative answers here that aren’t backed up by anything. Unless you get an authoritative answer backed up by credible supporting evidence, you should assume that the answer is “yes”, as this is a safer course of action, risks nothing and avoid the risk of missing out on a career opportunity if you dismiss this professor’s overtures out of a misguided assumption that he can have no positions available since you didn’t see any jobs advertised. No, most of them are not. n=1: I am a postdoc and my position was not advertised. is this really specific to postdocs? or even academia? There are few things that are true for all of anything in life. A job has been advertised, you (and some other people) responded to that ad. It simply turns out that the employer might have two positions to fill, rather than just one... I must say I am kinda surprised by the question. In all countries I know, there are quite a lot of corruption/unmoralic things in politics, government "companies", companies, university, whatever. How could a student who probably had collected a lot of live experience assume positions are "always" advertised? This is not critics to the OP, I am really just wondering in what region such a person grew up. Are all postdoc jobs advertised? No. Advertising is a good idea, though. Can a PI hire a postdoctoral researcher without first advertising the job? Practices vary widely from "never" to "whenever they have the money." Advertising is less likely if the hire is already affiliated with the university. In most research-intensive countries and Universities, all academic jobs should be advertised. For many countries this is also a condition for issuing a visa for a candidate, if they need it. However, the meaning of "advertise" vary considerably: from publishing an advert on a well-known website like mathjobs or jobs.ac.uk, to pinning an A6 paper advert in a corner of a local announcement board. It all depends on the rules and customs of each particular organisation, and in some places there rules bend more than in others. Thank you for your answer. I certainly need a visa. This means the job should be advertised for a month I guess. He's probably going to tell me that he's going to open a position in the near future or something. Visa requirements vary by country - do check what your personal situation is! I can think of quite a few “research intensive” countries where this is not the case, especially for postdoctoral positions. @mmeent I will appreciate examples - I am not familiar with all the countries in the world, and I am curious to know what you mean. @DmitrySavostyanov I am not sure what you mean by "research-intensive", but the USA, Japan might be a few examples where many post-doc positions are not advertised, especially not on the website of the university. Also, visa requirements for post-doc jobs definitely not require advertisement. I knew that USA visa rules are different than what UK currently has. But it surprises me that USA funders do not require posts to be advertised. What stops dishonest PI's from hiring their relatives and students of their friends at the old boys club? Is a postdoc really an academic job though? For me that start with a lecturer/assistent prof. A postdoc is an ordinary researcher, often without any teaching load whatsoever. @VladimirF In my experience postdocs often have a substantial teaching load (although usually less than a professor). I'd personally consider any position from phD student upwards an "academic job". @DenisNardin Well I also did some help with teaching at my postdoc - even when not required. But we certainly did not call it an academic position. Those really start with a lecturership or tenure-track positions for me. @VladimirF It might vary with disciplines and countries, I can only talk about my experience and the experience of people I know. I was actually lucky to get a teaching-free position as my first postdoc, but that was the exception, very much not the rule (my current postdoc position has 5h per week of teaching) That's very interesting. In north Africa, it is expected of a PhD student to have (or assist in) do teaching activities, it's actually encouraged. In the US, and presumably some other countries, there are laws and regulations in place designed to prevent discrimination and bias in the hiring process. One manifestation is that jobs get posted in a large proportion of cases, though not always widely. Some postdoc positions arise out of situational opportunity. In such cases, the job is often created and then posted using language like "strong candidate identified". No. Not all jobs are posted either. I do even not think there is an expectation that all positions are advertised. Then what exactly do you mean by “posted”? Every year I receive 10s of unsolicited emails from people asking if I have a postdoc position open. Clearly, these people do not expect me to post positions, else they would wait until I advertise. Since clearly these people are just going through mailing lists sending CVs almost randomly, they expect 1000s of people to possibly have unadvertised positions. Even when positions are posted, they are not posted everywhere: the mere fact that not all sites have the same postings is proof of that. Indeed it may not make much sense to post broadly as you might anticipate there are sufficiently many local or regional candidates qualified for the position. There might be language barriers or other factors that very legitimately restrict the pool of candidates. Hiring rules vary by institutions, but rule #1 of a PI who has someone in mind is to craft an ad (if required) that meet the local requirements while guaranteeing the preferred candidate is selected. The very practical aspect of this is: Even if required by law, it could be that these positions are advertised but already filled. Signs of this are: overly specific requirements sometimes the publication period may be very small In my experience in the US, it is not legally possible to hire a postdoc without advertising for the position, though as people point out, there is nothing to stop people from deciding before the position is advertised who they’d like to hire, and doing the advertisement in a pro forma way. I was kind of shocked to discover when I moved to Canada that this is not the case here. At least at my university, if you have the right grant funding to hire a postdoc, you can just do so without needing to provide any evidence to the university of having advertised the position or done any due diligence in your search. My understanding is that this is because postdocs, as a temporary position, are treated differently under employment discrimination law here (postdocs at Canadian universities have a weird status where the university considers them more like students than employees, or at least in a weird gray zone). "In my experience in the US, it is not legally possible to hire a postdoc without advertising for the position" This is not generally true.	Stack Exchange	2025-03-21T12:55:49.440965	2021-02-12T21:49:59	{ "license": "Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/", "site": "academia.stackexchange.com", "url": "https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/162578", "authors": [ "Anonymous Physicist", "BCLC", "Buffy", "Dan Romik", "Denis Nardin", "Dmitry Savostyanov", "Gimelist", "Greg", "Jon Custer", "NotThatGuy", "TimRias", "U. 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