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30878 | Discovered a serious error in a reviewed paper after submitting the review, what to do?
I have been reviewing a paper where the authors apply a computational method from an earlier paper they published to a specific system of general relevance. The paper seemed ok, and I recommended major revision in the review.
After submitting the review, I've been working with this computational method myself and discovered that the way the authors applied the method is seriously flawed, so that it makes in general no sense to interpret the result in any way without further tests. If I had noted this problem earlier, I would probably have recommended rejection in my review.
What's the recommended course of action in this situation? Should I notify the editor of this additional discovery, so that the authors can directly take care of it in their (presumably ongoing) revision, or is it better to just wait for a request to review the revised version?
I haven't heard any decision from the journal so far, but I don't think that the paper will be accepted without revisions.
Tell the editor that you have gained additional knowledge and you have changed your stance to reject. Also the authors might appreciate being told directly what the problem is. Consider conferring with your more experienced colleagues who can tell you what is expected of you in your circles.
What's the recommended course of action in this situation? Should I notify the editor of this additional discovery, so that the authors can directly take care of it in their (presumably ongoing) revision,
Yes, I think so. This seems to be in the best interest of all involved: you, the authors and the journal. It may be tempting to feel "embarrassed" about this or feel loathe to hold up the stately train of the editorial process, but you should resist these temptations: part of being a professional academic is being completely willing to change and adjust to new information and/or new insight you've acquired.
or is it better to just wait for a request to review the revised version?
No, I don't think so. Put yourself in the authors' shoes: wouldn't you like to have this information as soon as possible? Revising a paper without knowing about a serious -- potentially fatal -- error sounds like it could be a waste of their valuable time. Moreover, the longer they think that the paper will be accepted with revisions, the more disappointed they will be when they learn about the true situation.
I would write up carefully your description of the error as though it were part of the original referee report. In effect this does become a new referee report, but you don't necessarily need to edit this into the old referee report: having already submitted that, the matter of it is to convey the new information. Of course, the final decision about in what manner to inform the authors lies with the editor.
I don't know about computer science journals, but most of the journals our lab publishes in don't send revised papers back to reviewers, the editor has final say. If you wait for a second chance to look at the paper, you might not get one.
@user137 In theoretical computer science I'd expect, as a reviewer, to see the paper again if and only if significant changes had been requested or made.
You should definitely contact the editor as soon as possible. It is not certain that the editor has provided your review to the authors yet and even if the editor has done so, receiving the additional information allows the editor to make additional decisions concerning additional revisions or even rejecting the paper altogether.
So it is vital that you send your additional information as soon as possible.
It is certainly advisable to notify the editor, so that she/he can pass on the information to the authors. The editor may or may not take this information into account for the decision.
When sending the information, you may want to offer to write a revised version of the review.
In addition to all other excellent recommendations I would just highlight that reporting a flaw in the paper is in your own best interest. Imagine the paper is accepted. Then others will try to reproduce the results or scrutinize the computational methods. If other researchers find flaws in the paper that may force a retraction. Depending on the popularity of the paper that may lead to wonder how it could have been accepted on the first place. In that case the blame usually goes to journals and referees. Although referees are frequently anonymous this hypothetical situation may damage your reputation as a referee in that journal. If referees are not anonymous then your reputation can be even more affected.
On the other side of the coin, if you report a potential flaw and it turns out the flaw does not exists, then probably means the authors needed to give extended explanations- your report will give them the opportunity to do so. That would not affect your reputation- referees' job is to question what its in the manuscript- even when sometimes we may be wrong.
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102845 | How should I structure exams when individual problems could use up the entire class time?
I am currently preparing for a new class in an area in which the individual problems can be very long. (My writeups for individual homework problems were often three or four pages long when I took the same course as a student!)
Solving a typical problem involves:
Identifying the correct differential equations and boundary conditions to solve.
Making the correct assumptions and simplifications.
Identifying the correct solution strategy.
Implementing the strategy and solving the problem.
All of the above steps are of critical importance, as we introduce new methods and approaches for each.
Given that, an in-class exam would only have enough time for one problem—so there would be no easy way to evaluate mastery of the breadth of the material. So I’ve been thinking of doing an out-of-class exam. The time would be long enough that the students would have time to think through things, but not long enough that they could spend a lot of time trying to look things up on the internet. The class is also small enough that it would be fairly easy to detect plagiarized work or students copying off of one another. (I suspect four to six hours is sufficient.)
Are there more viable or effective strategies for testing in such circumstances?
Could you give a more concrete idea of the type/subject of the problems that could help think on strategies for that?
Internet is pretty darn fast. If you gave them an hour the Internet would still be a tool used. Students discussing the problem but then breaking off to write up a solution might not be easy to detect.
The most time-consuming and least information-bearing step (at least for the purpose of evaluating understanding of the material) is 4. In this situation I've often just given questions asking the students to do 1-3 and explicitly told them to not go through the calculation. It's better if you prep them for this by giving such a question on a quiz first since many students tend to go on autopilot after a couple of decades of being trained to come up with an answer.
Split up the question into subsections that, in total, are the initial large question. Turn these into individual questions, in-place of the expected components of the large question.
Identifying the correct differential equations and boundary conditions to solve.
Making the correct assumptions and simplifications.
Identifying the correct solution strategy.
Implementing the strategy and solving the problem.
Wait. Do you want us to tell you how to test with a single large question, or how to make a test that would "evaluate mastery of the breadth of the material"?
One alternative would be to have multiple problems and with the steps necessary for the resolution in multiple choice questions regarding the process. This way it could be a matter of reading and thinking fast.
At the end they could one of the problems (let's say you proposed 4) and solve it completely.
-- EDIT --
Considering the new information, you could use in-class time for them to get to step 3 and let them solve step 4 out-of-class, maybe with MatLab or Octave (if that fits the course).
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51224 | Is it worth to split my book into articles and publish them individually?
In continuation of this question:
I have written a book with a new mathematical theory. I am an amateur mathematician.
I want to publish my book as LaTeX source under a copyleft license.
Does it make sense to split my book into articles and publish articles individually in math journals (after my book is already available)?
If the content wins over form, this seems unreasonable: My book is already available, why to publish articles? Moreover: Won't availability of the book already containing the content of the articles an obstacle for publication of the articles?
Having said that, I have already published one article. My second article was accepted for publication, not published due a LaTeX error and now again in review in the same journal because I made some changes in the article.
This question, and some others you have asked, are great questions to ask a mentor who personally knows your work. I would encourage you to find someone you respect who could give you some guidance locally. Happy publishing!
It seems like this has been already answered in your previous question: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/37817/19607 If you're worried about copyright/self-plagiarism issues, this will only be a concern if your book is professionally published (say with peer review), which it sounds like is not the case.
When I was in a PhD program, I knew an upperclassman who carved out several papers from this PhD thesis. You might well be able to do the same, with your book.
In order for your articles to be published in a good mathematics journal, they will have to be peer reviewed. Peer review followed by acceptance is the only real mechanism that will lad to anyone taking notice of your work. Serializing a book this way may give you a good chance to get traction with the mathematics community and to validate your ideas. Just putting a book up on your website is unlikely to achieve any of your goals because the community has no reason to trust you. Peer review is a mechanism to weed out bad ideas and highlight good ones. It's not perfect, but it is frequently helpful in this regard and is the way the modern mathematics community works.
Publishing your work as a book on your website could be an obstacle to publishing it in a journal. You generally have to transfer copyright or give some sort of license to the publisher that guarantees them some way to make money off your work by selling offprints or downloads of your articles. Some journals don't like it if there's any preprint versions floating around out there that are too close to their version. Fortunately mathematics is a heavy user of the arXiv, and so certainly pre-review copies on there (or Github) are less likely to cause a problem with the journal. Read the author agreement and copyright transfer/license requirements of the journal you'd like to submit to before putting things out on the web. The arXiv is well known in the mathematics literature, so you'd probably have better luck, more visibility, and less problems posting your articles/book there instead of Github.
BTW, LaTeX errors don't usually lead to rejection, resubmission, and re-review, they are usually just fixed after review. Hopefully your article does get published in the end, but something seems fishy about the details of your story.
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77123 | What is the purpose of women-only meetings, panels, conferences, etc. in academia?
Since entering graduate school, albeit in a STEM field, I have never been exposed to such an emphasis on women-only meetings, leadership conferences, panels, etc. I have seen most, if not all of these venues, exclusive to women. Most of these meetings are hosted by the WISE (Women In Science and Engineering) organization at this university. I am sure this phenomenon is true elsewhere.
Why is it that in academe, in my experience, it is common for women to segregate themselves in the context of raising gender issues?
How does this behavior exemplify equal opportunity?
How does this behavior develop real solutions to real problems?
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Please see this meta question about the suitability of this question.
I actually agree with you completely. I think that the women only conference concept is very well intentioned but in practice kind of terrible. I once went to an all girl hackathon and spent 2 1/2 hours not making anything and instead watching everyone pat themselves on the back for being women. Had to sit through a ton of self congratulatory "Ted Talks" while all I wanted to do was code with some other female engineers. It was.... weird.
There are reasons for it though.
I think that the biggest threat to women is other women who view them only as competition. The women only concept removes that competition from the equation so that we can have a safe space to actually support each other.
Working in STEM, it's really unfortunate but sexism is kind of pervasive, and most women don't really feel like they have the tools to deal with it appropriately. These conferences usually provide some sort of structure to help them learn.
Women have been largely ignored by the STEM community for so long that we really do need all these outreach programs. It actually does make a difference to both the women in attendance and our level of visibility and subsequently provides opportunities for growth.
For younger women, these experiences are invaluable. It tells them that it's okay to be who they want to be, that they're not alone, and that they have people who really will rally around them and support them as they grow and come up in the world. Honestly, I wish these things existed when I was a kid.
That being said, isolationism is stupid and self defeating. I'd be much more interested in something that fostered actual dialogue between genders, or provided hands-on technical training in skills that I actually need instead of congratulatory prose about what a good little girl I was for showing up.
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"Women have been largely ignored by the STEM community for so long..." is not quite right. For example, consider the first programmers - they were mostly women. (It changed only later.)
It is not the STEM community that ignored women. It's (most) women who ignore (certain) STEM fields, for the same reason (most) men ignore nursing. Men and women, on average, simply have different preferences, determined by different biology. Even in monkeys, we see that males (typically) prefer to play with trucks while females (typically) prefer dolls. Let's please embrace these biological differences instead of forcing "diversity" in the workplace, which in practice means nothing other than the discrimination of men.
My answer is focused on the sessions that usually occur within a larger conference.
The purpose of a successful session is to leave the attendees energized and feeling more confident so that they can be more productive. Please be sensitive to the fact that women, for whom those session are focused, have come to a career in science with the lifetime of acquiring not-particularly-helpful baggage from whatever typical cultural biases they negotiated previously.
I have never seen any of these sessions be closed, (there are no bouncers stopping people at the door for lack of bosom) simply that the circulars and announcements strongly emphasize that they are for the women (for the women's benefit). They encourage an atmosphere that will end up with a room full of women scientists (senior/midcareer/junior/student). The attendees, thankfully, tend to self-select for being truly supportive.
Typically, there will be some formal presentation on results of current research on stereotyping and bias, prevalence of impostor syndrome, etc, and its impact on career or motivation and confidence. In a well-run session, the primary purpose of such presentations or panel discussions is not to initiate a spiraling negativity of people comparing terrible experiences or feelings, but to get the information out because these facts are powerful. It helps in confirmation of experiences ("maybe it isn't all in my head after all") - or it simply can be comforting to realize one is not alone ("I'm not the only woman who feels like my successes are probably a mistake"). The sessions that are useful will focus then on making connections, networking, and helping women 'mentor' themselves, showing successful examples.
I have been in a STEM field over 30 years. In my 1st 10 years, I used to be surprised when I saw my reflection off of a window when walking in a street with colleagues. ("Who is that strange-looking person with them? - oh that's me"). Contrast that with having the occasional opportunity to be in a room of scientists, and also majority women. That is a pretty neat in itself, and also is a 'safe' space to ask questions or to make observations and get feedback. It also was very interesting personal observation to recognize a different level of personal comfort being in a space; most of the attendees share similar experiences/feelings that my male colleagues typically have not had (or at least not so pervasively common throughout their career).
I hope that the supportive OP would be self-reflective enough (and informed enough) by now to recognize that we all are 'biased' and that cultural stereotyping and its impact did not disappear overnight. The 'insulted' feeling is natural, (feeling as if you are being told you are inadequate?) but beside the point and not helpful. Perhaps by now you can laugh at yourself a bit realizing that what it sounded like (to me) is that you are so confident about your natural place in STEM that if you feel insulted, you assume it must mean that someone else must be wrong or that it deserves pacifying and explanation. Statistically, women in STEM are a lot less confident. The workshops are to help give little pushes to overcome those insecurities.
As a guy, I was interested to read this and other answers. I can only guess at what exactly you or other women might not feel "safe" discussing in a mixed group (or especially a mostly-male group, which would be typical I guess outside of women-only sessions). From this answer, I get the impression that expressing self-doubts (or other signs of "weakness") and getting positive support is something you wouldn't be comfortable with in front of male colleagues, or think might not even happen from male colleagues. If I'm understand that correctly, that makes sense; thanks for that insight.
@PeterCordes - your comment is a pretty accurate assessment.
Just to add I have found these conferences and events to be completely closed - including once where my code was used but I was specifically told I could not attend or present it which meant I was unable to attend the conference at all. Not really a disagreement just explaining why one may feel "insulted" (I would have said I felt "slighted" in this case)
I have never seen any of these sessions be closed, (there are no bouncers stopping people at the door for lack of bosom) Bouncer jokes apart, I find it difficult to believe that these sessions are not closed in practice. Do men attend them? Are they welcome by the rest of the audience if they show up?
@FedricoPoloni, yes they are open. I am specifically referring to sessions that tend to be embedded within a larger science/engineering conference. They are open. There are men attending, typically chairs of departments, or organization executive members, smattering of students and supportive interested parties (e.g., faculty whose graduate students are presenting at main conference).
@Carol I am not sure we are speaking about the same thing; OP writes about "women-only meetings", and I took that to mean "meetings where all participants are women". Do you mean "meetings where all speakers are women" instead?
@FedericoPoloni, Original question may have been edited or I misread, but my reading was that OP queried about the purpose of what he construed as 'women only' meetings, no matter whether they were 'for women' (misconstrued as women only) or some other event. In my field, 'for-women' sessions embedded within the major conference and have become common. General attendees might assume they are 'women-only' (and obviously they wouldn't be very useful for providing the support/networking noted above if the ratio was poor or if there were good ratio but included persistent hecklers in the mix.
The vision of the Association for Women in Science focuses on compensation, advancement, discrimination and respect. These are real problems for women in academia. To an extent, conferences for women are a result of the "leaky pipeline" of the 1970s and and 1980s where women were more likely to leave academia then men. While the leaks have been slowed, possibly stopped or reversed, at the Bachelors to PhD stage, the pipeline may still be leaky at later stages.
What is clear is that gender biases in conferences still exist (e.g., https://biaswatchneuro.com/) and the all male conference panel (aka the manel) are still all too common. In presence of these, and other gender, biases, providing women only conferences/workshops seems a reasonable approach as part of a larger strategy towards gender equality.
I don't think that this answers the OP's question.
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[Warning: Male speaking]
If enough people feel the need for such a conference, then there is a need. Since these conferences keep getting held, clearly there is a need for them.
Now, in an ideal world, conferences would be coed and everybody would feel welcome everywhere. Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world.
Many women feel that they are being judged inferior simply because they are women. Most of these women are correct about that.
You complain about being called "unsafe". Remember that there are other men than you in this world and that some of them are definitely unsafe. Also remember that "feeling safe" is not only about physical safety, but also safety from ridicule, from being ignored, and from getting your self-confidence shattered in other ways.
Most conferences are male-biased. Having woman-only conferences is not a good solution to this problem, but it is better than doing nothing about it.
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You're quite right in your observation of that segregation does little to exemplify equal opportunity, and is a poor venue to discuss gender inequality.
However, the purpose of these women-only panels, forums, conferences, scholarships, prizes, etc. is not for the express purpose of solving gender inequality or un-equal opportunity.
The purpose of this is three-fold:
1. There is generally funding and resources available to events such as these, therefore the funding and resources are used.
2. These events add value for the women who are able to attend simply by existing.
3. A field criticized for having poor female representation may be able to improve public opinion by holding events that are specifically for women. [sarcasm]How could a field of study possibly be gender biased when they specifically hold special events for the discriminated sex.[/sarcasm]
Items 1 and 3 are fairly straight-forward.
Item 2 above is not very clear. However, imagine you are artistically inclined and you are viewing two possible schools. One of which has listed many art clubs and provides several art forums. You don't know how good any of these forums are. The other school has fewer art clubs and forums. Which one is more appealing?
Similarly, if a field of study holds women-only events, there is a perspective that this field of study is taking steps to be extra-geared toward women. A woman who is deciding between a career field heavily populated by women and a field holding routine events specifically for women, may be swayed won by the field holding events expressly for women.
Frankly, and I realize it's not part of the question, but I don't see many of these approaches being very helpful for purposes of equality.
Do you have any evidence to backup your claims?
-1: When you base your answer (even partially) on sarcasm, you lose (your) credibility and (my) respect. Your argument is that imposing some instances of "X only" inherently works against "equality (or some acceptable bounds on the proportions of) X and Y". That is clearly wrong: if things are highly skewed away from the proportions you want, you don't correct with equal proportions, you correct by skewing in the other direction. Let me ask you this: what do you think is the percentage of female speakers at the most recent International Congress of Mathematicians?
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The [sarcasm]text[/sarcasm] could be rephrased/inverted to make the same point without relying on sarcasm.
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193162 | Do famous people really have the power to ruin the career of unrelated researchers?
I am a graduate student in some subdiscipline of mathematics and have had the following impressions. One of the senior faculty members (a professor) at my (not too famous) university mentioned, when talking about famous people in the field (high positions at top universities, etc.), that it is very important "not to rub such a person the wrong way". Another senior faculty member mentioned that it is very important to be political when citing the same type of people and giving very much credit and in particular that one does not criticize errors in their papers (in one case the error was anyway corrected in a subsequent paper).
To what extent are they right in saying/doing this? Can such a person ruin your reputation/career? Are there examples of this?
I understand that the answer to these questions are in principle "yes", but would like to have an elaboration if possible and also some examples of this.
Famous people are unlikely to read your papers. However, in some cases, it is a network built around such people (or even a network not built around famous people) that can cause some serious damage. I will leave my comment at that.
What part of the world are you in? I suspect this varies geographically as well as by field.
I find the ''superstars'' are not dangerous, it's usually the ''mediocre, not really superstars and are bitter about it''-type of people that are most ruthless and dangerous for young researchers, especially if you don't yet have a track record of publications and they decide to try and get rid of you.
"and they decide to try and get rid of you. " Care to elaborate on this comment? Do you have an example?
@Vertex bitter researchers can make life difficult, directly or indirectly. They might make biased recommendations or assignments. I have met such people, who for instance would never allow students/postdocs other than their own to participate in organizing conferences or meeting with guests, who would go out of their way to advocate against scholarships to certain students, and who expect total fealty from their own students.
All “famous” researchers I have met personally have been gracious and very patient, although I know of examples of famous people (with whom I’ve never interacted) with anger management issues.
@ZeroTheHero I think there's a difference between anger management and being vindictive. One is in the moment and passing while the other is a persistent, concerted effort. Anger is not necessary to be vindictive. Simply not liking them is enough.
@Vertex It's fairly common for a researcher to try and ''get rid'' of a weak PhD student that they have. I have heard people using these exact words in the common room regarding actually a very famous mathematician who had a bad student, so not going to elaborate further. I presume ''get rid of'' means try any possible means to get rid of them: try to convince them to leave the PhD, make their life difficult to try to force them to quit or convince them to change to a different supervisor. Report them for underperformance as many times as possible.
My experience (in North America) in dealing with superstars is that most of them do not care about being cited: they know where they are in the queue, others know where they are in the queue, and citations do not matter to them.
(There are exceptions of real obnoxious superstars but they are thankfully rare.)
The more toxic people tend to be amongst the wannabes below superstar level. Some of these guys feel their contribution are unfairly ignored or not recognized properly. These are a dangerous tribe and they will not hesitate to step on others to climb up the ladder of success.
I do not think it is more likely that famous rather than just regular obnoxious people will actively seek to ruin the career of random persons. It’s simpler for most brilliant people to just ignore the plebs.
This being said, I would double and even triple check before pointing an error in any paper: I have found over the years that in most cases it was I who did not understand the work properly (which can be quite poorly written). It is unlikely that these errors are serious as the work of such superstars is quickly read by others and such mistakes quickly corrected.
"wannabes" - or worse, Lion King-style hyenas who would zealously defend the current "King" to maintain their subpar status quo just because any alternative is filled with uncertainty. They may not even try to get on the "King's" good side, just be worried to death that if even kings are not invincible, what good is there in this perilous and uncertain world?
the work of such superstars is quickly read by others and such mistakes quickly corrected - Well, ideally. Unfortunately there are many cases where either there are known issues that aren't corrected in the literature for a long time, or there may be gaps, and it's not clear how serious the gaps are.
Your last sentence is crucial. Much more common than not understanding the work itself, is not understanding what kind of errors are considered “serious” vs “trivial” by people experienced in the field.
Be charitable to all, without special dispensations for people of high status
It is inherently difficult to predict the future behaviour of other people you don't know, but the mere fact that there is a reputation that is spread around warning you against valid criticism of the work of others is itself worrying; is an indicator of unheathy behaviour and scientific corruption in academia. Irrespective of whether vindictive behaviour responding to a correction is likely to occur, I don't think it is healthy to approach academic work in a political manner where you formulate your own behaviour in order to accommodate the presumed or suspected vindictiveness of others, based on their power and status in the profession. If others are not going to act vindictively then there is nothing to worry about, and if they are going to act vindictively then you should be bold and fearless and proceed in the spirit of open scientific criticism anyway. Therefore, I would counsel against any attempt to speculate on or predict vindictive behaviour by high-level academics; just be faithful to the spirit of scientific inquiry and professional courtesy and take these as your guide for behaviour.
Academics with high status should not get any special treatment here, but obviously you ought to show some appreciation for the fact that they have made valuable contributions to the discipline and put any errors in perspective. You should also approach critiques of the work of any author with a level of good faith and charitableness appropriate to professional research. People who do lots of work in a difficult field are going to make lots of errors in the course of doing this work, and occasionally these errors will sneak past discerning eyes, including in the peer review process. If you find errors in the works of other mathematicians (whether they are famous or not) you should correct those errors as appropriate and proceed using the corrected version of their work. Typically if you are citing a work and using it but correcting an error then you would have a footnote noting the error and the correction but you would not make a big fuss about it or be harsh on the author --- just make the appropriate correction, make it clear to your reader, and proceed on the basis of the corrected work. Undertake your corrections in a calm and non-judgmental way that shows respect for the fact that the totality of the work of these other authors has positive value and merit despite occasional mistakes. You should exhibit this level of appreciation and charity when dealing with errors from any of the practitioners in your profession, irrespective of their status.
As to the question of the power of famous academics, they have quite a bit of power and discretion over others within academia (e.g., decision-making ability over hiring, promotions, reviewing, etc.), but this power is curtailed by ordinary protections for other workers, the tenure system, etc. A vindictive professor might be able to exact punishment on a lower academic for a perceived slight, but it would harm their own reputation if it became known that they act in such an unprofessional way.
I may not answer for Mathematics specifically, but I would be generally less pessimistic about the politics in academia. But there are many layers to peel here.
First, "do not try to challenge famous researchers" may be a useful heuristic. They became famous for a reason, and lots and lots of resources were spent following in their footsteps. Challenging some of their results without a strong attack is unwise, and going after foundational principles of any field will cause an instinctive rejection by the community, as it have many times in the past. On the other hand, no guts, no glory - if you DO have a strong attack on a problem, it may very well be the road to fame. Planning research around having a breakthrough is not particularly feasible, however.
Second, in some parts of the world, challenging the authority has broader cultural implications. This is far from universal, but (allegedly) there are places where it may well be a career suicide.
Third, if the previous point does not apply, I would call "giving very much credit" either a poorly worded or poorly understood (either by you or a person who stated that) approach. See, "famous authors were all wrong" implies that anything based on that paper is invalid, and that stance loses immediately. Instead, try to reconcile the development of the field with your newfound results. It may not be that important to pay tribute to specific people, but failure to recognize the value of a significant fraction of research done in the subfield would easily lead to the paper being rejected, ignored, or even labeled as crankery. Starting off by antagonizing the very community receiving this work is very counter-productive, and not being sufficiently specific with the critique may, unfortunately, trigger certain heuristics in fellow researchers that will place your paper straight into the trash bin. "Giving credit" may have the same presentation as "reconciling the differences", but a very different driving force behind it. The latter tries to be impartial even towards oneself, the former makes scientific merit highly subjective and, plainly speaking, feels wrong.
And finally, there is certainly a component of having to work around personalities in academia. The higher up the ladder, the more political it gets. In that sense, yes, famous people wield a lot of power, and if you try to get a big project going, you have to consider who will be in the committee, what they believe has merit and what does not. There are not enough funds going around to pursue every venue meaningfully, and attempts to divert more resources than just venture capital from what seems to be working great otherwise would not be received favorably. Convincing other researchers that what you are working on is important is a substantial part of being an academic, and this is especially significant in mathematics as this acute observation by Alexander Woo attests.
I like to think of the formal "powers" any senior person in a field might have and how that could enable them to harm another researcher. I come from the social sciences but I'm not sure that anything I say works much differently in other fields.
Such a senior person may be involved in various aspects of the process of hiring new colleagues in their department, either via serving on the search committee, serving as department chair, or merely being an influential voice in faculty meetings. So if you seek employment at such a person's institutions, they may hold some sort of bias against you. This could be out of malice or merely due to the underlying disagreement leading them to conclude you don't know what you're talking about.
They could also have various roles in the publication process, like serving as editor, associate editor, or peer reviewer at various important journals (or conferences). Of course, a peer reviewer does not know the identity of authors in many fields but I'm not sure about mathematics. At any rate, this person's influence in the editorial process could potentially close off some small number of avenues for publication.
I'm only familiar with the US system, but part of the process for gaining tenure here is that outside peers are invited to review your file. At many institutions that use these peers, even mild criticism from these peers can be deeply problematic for the candidate's chances at tenure and promotion. Should you be so unlucky, they could cause harm in that way. But the chances of them being invited for this purpose are low and I believe it would be considered inappropriate if you had some sort of public intellectual dispute with them.
The more informal influence such a person could have is by generally using their social status in the discipline to cast doubts about you or your work. I'd say that in general talking negatively to peers about another researcher would come off as very uncouth among the people I spend any time around. On the other hand, criticizing work can be very appropriate under certain circumstances although I'd admit it is not often that I find myself in situations that would open the floor for someone to start badmouthing some non-high profile research.
Besides the above, there's always the potential of the more juvenile and pernicious forms of rumoring and attempts at retribution that any person might try to do. But I don't think many (or any) people have the power to sort of push the red button that destroys some junior person's career. In fact, the most likely person to be able to do that is a person in a graduate student's department. Even then, we know many cases where apparent bad faith by an advisor/mentor/etc. fails to completely derail a researcher's education/career.
As an addendum to the answers already given, it pays to be mindful that some academics can hold positions of various boards or committees that can either open doors to researchers or firmly close them with little explanation or oversight.
Or they may have the ear of the people who sit on those boards\committees.
This is particularly true when it comes to allocating grants or other forms of funding.
Notable academics can ensure that doors are opened to likeminded people, or people who they feel are expanding a particular field in the right direction. Often this is the direction that the academic is trying to take it. They can close them if they feel that you have the wrong mindset or are trying to take the field in the wrong direction.
This shouldn't be the case, and there are many academics who will be agnostic and open doors purely on merit. Knowing which type a person is can be important.
Personal view on these issues is that the problems fall into several categories:
Economic Issues: When many agencies (NSF, NIH, ect...) choose external reviewers, they are often attempting to find known "subject matter experts" in the field, and therefore, a famous or highly cited author in the field is "probably" more likely to be chosen. Therefore, a famous or highly cited author is more likely to have influence over your financial funding future.
Social Network Effect: Generally, famous academics have more friends, ties, and influence in the community (similar to social media followers) and whether good or bad, their comments often carry disproportional weight. If a famous author criticizes your work, it can be more damaging than if a "nobody" criticizes your work.
Social Multiplier Effect: Peer effects are captured by the sum of friends' efforts in some activity. An individual pays a price for deviating from a norm. In the latter, as an individual gains more peers who have a certain attribute, they experience greater utility for adopting this attribute. "Act like us, we'll all do better."
System Gaming: Not all, yet many academic positions have become extremely competitive, and as the Guardian notes "academics is a highly incentivized game". When faced with this competition, many turn to gaming the system. This is a well known criticism of author level metrics. However, the same applies with a social network. The equivalent of "don't insult them, they're a 'high-level' player."
Viral Infectiousness: Related to the network effect above, a famous criticism has more pathways to infect someone's career. And if it represents something good for gossip, or viral sharing, then it may spread pervasively. "did you hear what so-and-so said about them?"
Rational Ignorance: In the face of evaluating potential threats to their academic career, a busy academic can't reasonably be expected to evaluate all the possible ways critiquing someone might be damaging. So you get rules of thumb, 'very important "not to rub such a person the wrong way"'
Anonymous Denial: From many sources of funding, the reviews, and even the denial of funding, may be completely anonymous. Even if there is a conflict of interest, from the person being denied's perspective, that can never be identified. Per the economic section above, famous are already more likely to be chosen to review, and there's no way for the submitter to note that the only harsh review was from someone they criticized.
"Are there examples of this?" While neither of the examples below are specifically of the "famous" case, there are numerous examples of the type of behavior that then leads to the pervasive fear of criticizing anyone of influence:
Universities to Fear (Anonymous Issues with Schools) - Many are complaints about interviews, yet several illustrating the social issues above.
Academia is Killing My Friends (Anonymous Stories of Academic Abuse)
An Inside Higher Ed Article from Jennifer Snodgrass, also has several concrete examples of what leads to this behavior, especially the "Egos are huge. People may turn on you" section.
Note the pattern in the sites, there also appears to be a strong trend in current academia that it is not safe to talk publicly. The following article notes this directly:
The Young Academic's Twitter Conundrum (The Atlantic, Olivia Bateman) - “You can use the story, but don’t mention my name. I don’t want any trouble.”
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205870 | My university is not issuing a transcript in the form required by a foreign university. What are the options before me?
I'm from a South Asian country, and here marksheets are accepted for all kinds of admissions. Now, I have applied to a UK university, and upon uploading my marksheets, which look like this:
I received this email from them:
Thank you for your application to study on the MSc in Economics. To help us to process your application please provide a breakdown of the Economics modules you have studied in your degree. We need to determine whether you meet the individual modules requirements of background in econometrics, microeconomics and macroeconomics. Thank you for your help.
I had nothing else that I could provide them with, so I sent the syllabus, so that they could get the name and the topics included in Paper 1 and 2. But again they emailed this:
A transcript with details on the modules you have studied and the score you have obtained is required for us to review the module requirement of this course MSc Economics. A syllabus does not serve the purpose unfortunately.
So, after this, I procured a transcript from my university, which contained a breakdown of my marks for all three years (not just 3 Year), and emailed it to them along with the syllabus (because this transcript too doesn't include the name of the modules). They replied
A transcript with details on the modules you have studied and the score you have obtained is required for us to review the module requirement of this course MSc Economics. A syllabus does not serve the purpose unfortunately. Thank you for your understanding.
I'm quite afraid that my application shall be rejected because of this. But what can I do? That was the last thing my university could provide me.
Did you call this a syllabus or did they? This is not what I would call a syllabus. If you called it a syllabus, the person receiving it probably didn't even look at it before telling you a syllabus is not what they need. This looks like a transcript. Call it a transcript if someone is asking for a transcript and this is the document you have to provide.
The transcript shows your marks in the subjects, the syllabus gives them an idea of what topics were covered in the subjects. This is all I needed to transfer to a foreign University. I expect that Bryan is correct that they're simply not looking at the information you've provided them, possibly in part due to language confusion. If they don't accept the syllabus, then I'd suggest explaining your issue to the teachers of each course, and maybe they can flesh out the information more fully in an email you can forward. It wouldn't hurt asking your intended University what they are looking for.
Is it clear that they're asking for a document directly from your precious university with this information? Since I don't know how these things work, I would have guessed that I need to write a document answering the question (and attach some official documents to the end of my document in order to demonstrate that what I wrote is accurate).
How have previous successful applicants from your university/country, to this university, handled this? Is there any online group (WA/reddit/LinkedIn) where you could check?
I think you need to speak to someone at the university (as in a real human, rather than an email address), as that transcript looks fine to me (as someone who reviews grad student applications at a UK university).
Basically it appears that the admissions officer expects to see a number of modules (+marks) for the individual components if your studies. Taught by different professors, examined individually, econometrics and microeconomics are very different subjects.
@PauldeVrieze did you have multiple separate economics modules/ exams? It is common, particularly in the UK/USA to break things down into modules, but, for example, my degree in Cambridge wasn't broken down into separate modules - I just had one exam at the end of the year.
To add to this, this is a situation where I would call the department. If there isn't a phone number associated with the application process, try looking up a departmental administrative assistant on the university website. Ask them if they have received your latest email and documents and explain that this is how the University releases transcripts. Maybe there was simply a misunderstanding. If they still don't accept this, ask them specifically what information they need, then email your University registrar with the department admin CC-ed and ask if they can provide that information.
They have emailed me this:
"Dear Applicant,
Please see the module requirements for MSc Economics in this webpage:
https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/postgraduate/courses/taught/econ/economics.aspx#EntryRequirementsTab
Your provided transcript does not serve the purpose to review these module requirements. Thank you for your understanding."
I'm a little confused as what they are saying. Are they saying that module requirements are missing from my uploaded transcript? Or that the uploaded ttranscrript is not sshowing the information sought for?
The requirements state you need good marks in "Microeconomics, Macroeconomics and Econometrics or Statistics modules". You don't have these modules, you just have "economics ". Can you demonstrate that your economics course covered those 4 areas? Better would be if there were any way of demonstrating good marks in each topic.
There is also a link to look at surviving requirements for specific origin counties. I recommend having a look at that for your country to check there isn't anything in there.
@IanSudbery my degree was in the Netherlands, and there were around 11/12 modules per year (only about half economics related in my case - degree in business information systems) on a large variety of subjects.
I suggest you try to get out of your current position as middle-man in this conversation by getting the UK uni and your current uni to communicate directly. Ideally by phone, rather than email.
Two specific ideas:
Ask the UK uni to contact your uni if they need more/different info. This probably won’t work because it requires effort by the UK uni.
Ask your uni to make a phone call or write an email that says something like “we have provided all the documents that are available, and we have always found them to be acceptable to universities world-wide, including the UK, so we don’t understand what else is required”.
Good luck.
I would try to put them in contact with your university (and vice versa) so that it is clear what the university can provide and what it cannot.
If it is clear to the place you apply to that you are providing all that is possible and that it is honest and accurate, you may be ok. But it is others that need to give that assurance.
A professor of yours might serve rather than a registrar or equivalent, or a department head. But there are no guarantees.
I don't think an admissions committee would lift a finger to run this down. An approach that requires less effort on their part would be m9re effective.
@ScottSeidman, my expectation is that it would be a staff member, not the committee that followed up.
I've faced similar situations, and here is how I solved them:
Assuming the information the target university asks for actually exists, you compile the information yourself. In this case, this would mean identifying stuff like "I took this much teaching on Microeconomics, and I got that grade. I took...". You then approach someone at your home university to confirm the correctness of your data. Maybe a professor is willing to put this on letterhead and add a statement that to the best of their knowledge, the data is accurate. This could be something stamping it with some kind of official university stamp. Now you have a document you can show to the target university.
If the requested data doesn't actually exist, maybe because teaching at your home university works very differently from the expectations at the target university, you need to contact either an actual decision maker or a supportive academic at the target university to discuss what the next best thing is.
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3023 | What is a committee looking for in a dissertation proposal?
I've started narrowing down the scope of my dissertation, and I have one year before I need to defend my proposal. I'm curious to know what is expected from a dissertation proposal. What are the key elements that I should include / exclude? What criteria typically used to judge whether the proposal defense is successful? Are the committee's feedback of the proposal typically used as a criteria for the full fledged dissertation defense?
Only your committee can give you a definitive answer. What does your advisor say?
Good advice here: http://matt.might.net/articles/advice-for-phd-thesis-proposals/
JeffE is correct; talk to your chair and get feedback. That being said, you'll want to include the following in your talk:
An overview of your research topic
A discussion of relevant literature (to demonstrate that you've researched the topic)
A discussion of your specific problem
Another literature discussion, much more focused on your specific problem
Any preliminary results of experiments you may have run, if any
What you plan on doing for the next few years
(Possibly most important) Any specific issues/problems that your advisors have raised about your research. You should specifically address these to show that you're paying attention to what they say and that you listen to their comments.
The best way to prepare is to talk with everyone in advance and find out what their objections/comments/issues/questions will be as much as possible, and then do your best to prepare for that and any related issues. If that sounds like a lot of work, it's because it is a lot of work.
Dan's comments are also spot on; you may have some very difficult committee members who will ask all sorts of questions, and you should make sure your advisor is on your side from the get-go.
Should one also have partial or preliminary results to present as well?
Good point; I added it. Do make sure, though, that you have something to propose; I have a friend who tried to present his completed thesis work at his proposal, and got a lot of extra work because of it.
So, are you saying that one should hold back if you already have lots of results? Is this a good strategy?
@Paul - No, I'm saying that you should make sure to do your proposal before you complete all your experiments. It isn't really relevant to the question, and it shouldn't be an issue for most people.
Ultimately, your committee has total say about what constitutes a successful thesis proposal. As JeffE mentioned, you should ask them (particularly your chair). In my case, I scheduled short meetings (10-20 minutes) with each of my committee members. (Ideally, this should happen at least 3 before your proposal.) I asked each one "What are you looking for in my thesis [proposal] for you to judge it as successful?" I don't remember all of their answers. From three of the four members of my committee (including my chair) I had clear expectations, which I knew I could meet.
Sadly, from one member, I never really got a clear answer. Not surprisingly (in retrospect), part way through my presentation he complained because he thought that what I was presenting was off-topic. In the end, everything was okay. However, I think he was a bit unhappy and had to be persuaded to pass me. The single most important thing you can do to guarantee a successful proposal (or defense) is to make sure that your chair will strongly support you if you get resistance from another committee member. Besides that, you should schedule meetings (as I mentioned above) to ask what your committee is looking for. Start with your chair and get advice from him/her about how to approach your other members. If you don't get a good answer from one member, try scheduling another meeting to ask again (perhaps after meeting with your chair a second time to ask for help on how to approach the troublesome member).
Edited to account for EnergyNumber's comment. My own experience (mentioned above) was actually with my thesis defense, but I think the advice applies equally well to a thesis proposal, so I've edited my answer to address that (since it was the subject of the question).
I don't think that the question ist about a thesis defence at the end of the PhD: it's primarily about the proposal defence at the start.
@EnergyNumbers Oh, you're right. My mistake. I think most of the advice I gave applies to the proposal too. s/thesis defense/thesis proposal/g;
What are the key elements that I should include / exclude?
Your university should have clear regulations about that. Also, ask your supervisor/advisor.
What criteria typically used to judge whether the proposal defense is successful?
So, I'll list a few that should be generally applicable, but if your supervisor feels confident to have you submit your proposal, it's likely you've already met the criteria or close enough to doing so. While the committee can reject your proposal, this isn't like an exam at the end of a course; if you do your work seriously up to the proposal you should pass without surprises. In fact, the defense of the proposal is an opportunity to get useful feedback and guidance.
A few general criteria I believe are always applicable:
Novelty - It must be something that hasn't done before, more than a rehash of existing work. This could be in terms of the results (discovering something we didn't know, creating/manufacturing something which had not previously been attainable) or the methods (e.g. using a novel technique to prove an important mathematical theorem).
Relevance - Your work on efficient separation of mud cakes by the time spent in the sun might not be useful to anyone even if it's novel. This criterion may degenerate into "fashionability" - hopefully not.
Expected breadth of work - The research should involve enough work to be significant but not too much as to risk you not concluding it even with reasonable diligence. Of course, you might eventually be able to get it all done in a week if you're a genius and it's theory rather than experiments; but that's not likely.
Your background - Is it reasonable to assume you personally will be able to carry out this kind of research?
Means and environment - are your supervisor, research group, faculty, university and related facilities and resources likely to be sufficient support for you to pursue your line of research effectively?
Are the committee's feedback of the proposal typically used as a criteria for the full fledged dissertation defense?
So that really depends on your field and on the composition of the committee. Very often the answer is "no" (from my own personal experience it was "not at all"), but it's certainly possible.
Note, however, that if your results get published in journals and conferences, the final dissertation is, again, unlikely to be rejected - since the community will already have recognized your contribution.
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3021 | Are there any particular grants or fellowships in the sciences specifically for non-traditional students?
After obtaining my masters degree, I spent four years doing other things before returning to pursue my PhD. My advisor has a Dept. of Energy grant which has funded me, but the grant will not be able to fund me for my entire PhD program. I'll probably need another two years worth of funding to finish my degree. I may not be able to get a Teaching Assistantship, as they are limited at my institution. I've also noticed that I don't qualify for some fellowships (like NSF GRFP) because I am not a "traditional" student. What are some other options for students in the latter part of their PhD program (i.e. dissertation)? Particularly, for the field of computational science?
Actually, the NSF graduate research fellowship program does award a small number of fellowships to "non-traditional" students, who either spent a significant time out of school or are undergoing a significant change of field. You still need to apply by the end of your first year in your new program, and you'd have to make a strong case that applied math → computational science is a significant field change (on the order of physics → biology).
@JeffE: I know... Unfortunately, computational science is too close to my master degree to justify it.
In general, you're in a very tough situation. Most of the "big name" fellowships are moving away from funding older students, on the relatively flimsy rationale that they're making a bigger impact by funding less experienced students from the start of their program.
There are a few programs that do support late-term graduate students; these are typically known as dissertation fellowships. Examples include the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowships, but these also have other restrictions associated with them (for instance, a commitment to a teaching career). Similarly, the Fisher Doctoral Fellowship primarily supports environmental and energy-related research, while the Merck Fellowship Program is for African-American students in biomedical-related fields.
So there are resources available, but they are certainly very limited in scope, and you'll need to make sure you meet all of the qualification criteria. The other problem for you is that these fellowships are typically only one year in duration, so if, as you say, you are two years away from finishing, you will need to find some means to finance one year of study, either through TA's or other sources of funding. In the meanwhile, you should talk with your advisor if there are other resources within the group to help you—at least partially.
Thank you, aeismail. I'll look into these opportunities. It's a shame that there isn't more for us :(
Yes, it is. Funding for graduate study in the US lags way behind many other industrialized nations.
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20018 | Where can I find information about upcoming special issues in a field of study?
How can I find information about upcoming special issues related to a special field of study? There are good websites for upcoming conferences but I could not find any place to search for special issues.
@dgraziotin Thanks. I thought it only indexes conferences, but it awesome for special issues as well.
In addition to the two sources mentioned by William, I can add professional societies or their equivalent. It is usually these that organize meetings that result in special issues. It is rare (may differ between disciplines) that journals themselves, unless they somehow specialize, provide open special issues around a theme. Usually, it is then by invitation, or papers emanating from a workshop or symposia etc.
Hence, looking for especial issues may be a dead end and you should be looking for activities that lead to such issues.
As a final note, the term special issue signals an unregular issue in a scientific journal open for submission of manuscripts. Many conferences issue proceedings but then the prerequisite is usually attendance at the meeting and presentation of the paper there.
As far as I know, there is no website referencing special issues from different journals. However, I see two potential ways to stay informed :
Make a list of the good journals in your field, then browse their website for information (might take some time, especially to stay up to date).
Use social networks. Many journals have twitter accounts and/or blogs and they are likely to advertise their special issues through these media.
Recently, I have found one website to get special issue information regarding sci/scie indexed journal. Please go through the following website.
https://research.com/
Welcome to academia.SE. It is a good practice to indicate whether you are affiliated with the website or not.
@TommiBrander no, I am not affiliated with this website.
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13305 | When you reference an article, is it always expected that you have actually read it?
Naturally I would say "of course", but my current situation makes me doubt.
In my paper I'm briefly covering various alternative cryptographic constructions. I am (of course) familiar with all of them, but I have not (nor have the time to) read the full papers I'm actually referencing. The reason for this is that they contain lengthy specifications complemented with cryptanalysis.
I'm in doubt whether it's acceptable to reference said papers without having actually read them. Is it acceptable to do so?
Related: http://academia.stackexchange.com/q/12391/64
Also related: http://mathoverflow.net/q/43147/12357 and http://mathoverflow.net/q/98821/12357
Part of this is parallel to asking whether in mentioning the existence of a person, or reporting that they said some particular thing, is one endorsing the person or the assertion. Surely not.
When you reference a paper within whatever your context may be, you are possibly doing several things. First, you may make claims and use other authors names and reputation in support. Second, you may take "facts" from a paper and propagate these facts through yours.
Nothing wrong with that? Not generally. But, what happens if a paper makes a claim that is not at all well supported by the study? You run the risk of propagating errors so that when somebody uses your paper as a reference the original paper is still further away and after a few such iterations the source may be completely forgotten. There are many instances where either errors have been propagated or where "truths" have slowly been misquoted so that they turn into errors. This is clearly not what we want in our papers.
I would therefore say that one needs to (critically) read a paper enough to make oneself sure that the facts can be trusted and that no misinterpretation has occurred in the paper to be referenced or earlier. Hence relying on, for example, other authors references is a very weak link in the chain. One has to try to back-trace vital information as much as possible. Misunderstandings may not necessarily be born out of malice but just by oversight, but the end result is still the same. To therefore, for example, simply gloss over the abstract and use whatever seems to support some idea or vice versa is far from satisfactory.
I'd agree, this is an ideal to be aimed-for, in any case. But it's surely subject-dependent. In mathematics, chains of back-reference can be both wide and deep, and involve nearly-inaccessible sources, so that often it'd be infeasible to check everything personally. That said, indeed, if people don't check, things can get out of control... as they are, to some degree.
Good point, reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult_science
Here is my take. This is not high school and nobody is going to check whether you've read the papers. The idea is to provide references for the readers for further research not to show that you've read all the literature. Naturally, of course, you don't want to cite a paper that has nothing to do with the subject at hand so you need to have a grasp on its content but nobody expects you to be an expert on every detail in the 100 publications that you reference. Sometimes I only read an abstract to decide if I want to reference the paper or not.
Hm, I don't 100% agree with you, as Peter Jansson stated by citing a paper you basically attest "the statement due to which I cite that paper is true" - if you only read the abstract which usually merely describes the result you may end up vouching for a big error. If you really cite 100 publications, please have the decency to sort them either by importance or put them into two or more sections so one does not have to read 100 abstracts just to figure out only 13 papers are actually important
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44640 | Monochrome vs grayscale in scientific journals?
Many scientific journals accept only black & white articles.
Does this mean that only monochrome (black and white only) articles or also grayscale (gray is OK) article are OK?
The same question holds for books.
What did your editor say when you asked them?
@EnergyNumbers They have not (yet) replied
I have a confession to make. I absolutely ignore it when a publication tells me they want grey-scale or black and white.
Yes, they want it because somebody is going to put something on some dead trees, they're going to be cheap about it and not use color, and somebody might actually pick up a dead tree and see my mangled image. But either they're also going to put it in a PDF, or else I'm going to put a pre-print in a PDF and that PDF is going to go online in all its radiant rainbow glory, and that is what people will actually read.
So [CENSORED] monochrome. That is so 20th century.
Good point. I prefer to read on the computer. But quite a few people I know prefer to print the pdf and read that. And many people prefer to print black and white.
@JeromyAnglim Color printers are very common, and if a figure doesn't render well in B&W, you can always look back at the PDF. There are just too many things that color is useful for to throw it away so lightly.
I do print out all articles I find worth reading more carefully, and never in colour.
I generally agree, but I do also check that my figures are still (at least mostly) readable in monochrome before submitting. Not only do some readers like to print things out on paper, but there's also the little issue of colorblindness to consider.
@IlmariKaronen Color-blindness and black & white are rather different issues, actually: I, at least, always try to keep color-blindness in mind, particularly not doing red/green distinctions when possible. If that has a good byproduct in greyscale, well, I may never know...
There are many kinds of color blindness. While deuteranomaly (poor red/green discrimination due to a mutated green pigment) is the most common type, about the only thing you can be reasonably sure about is that a figure that looks OK in monochrome will be readable to most people. Sure, not relying too much on red/green contrast is a good first step, but not relying (only) on color to convey critical information at all is even better.
@IlmariKaronen It's a difficult balance, and I'm not sure where the boundary lies between supporting disabilities and retaining dimensions of expressiveness. Do you know of anybody who has a good, principled metric for how to draw the boundary? The one thing I know for certain is: it's not publishers I care about, it's communication with fellow researchers.
I can't say where to draw the boundary (and I suspect it's the wrong question to ask anyway), but here's a nice page on designing colorblind-accessible figures. IMO, the key take-home message should be that good use of color can make your figures easier to read, but color (hue) should never be the only thing that conveys any important distinction, at least not if you can avoid it. See the good/bad examples in particular for some very useful design tips.
@IlmariKaronen Awesome! Thank you for an excellent resource!
In general some degree of half-toning will be used, meaning that a limited set of grey scales can be output in the printed journal, so figures supplied in greyscale should come out in greyscale. Figures supplied in colour may (i) upset the editorial staff or software (extra hassle for you); (ii) be chargeable (to avoid this you may have to resubmit figures, extra hassle); (iii) reduce to greyscale rather inconsistently with what you expect. So if you submit colour figures (and I generally do), you may as well go for good clear distinctions between data sets, and print B&W yourself to check.
It is very possible (and in some cases required) to produce most figures in a way which either doesn't hinder the B&W reader too much, while still aiding the reader who works in colour. Two examples:
lines on a graph can be dashed etc. as well as coloured, with colours chosen to render different shades of grey.
colour maps can easily be chosen to be continuous and monotonic -- though this isn't usually the default.
Both of these approaches are a small step towards helping colour-blind readers as well.
You can't assume your readers will work on screen -- an interesting paper may want to be annotated (I've not yet found a pdf-markup solution that comes close to pen&paper for this). Paper copies are also easier on public transport unless you have a very good and large tablet. It's also not uncommon for B&W printing to be easier (less far to go the the printer) and much cheaper (or uncounted and essentially free) than colour.
Much of this was going to be a comment presenting the opposite point of view to @jakebeal, but another couple of sentences made it an answer.
First, off: I am not sure that many only accept monochrome or B/W (usually implying grey-scale) figures since trends quite some time are for digital publication only (where colour or B/W, technically, is an irrelevant question).
The question about true Black and White versus grey scale is a matter of technique. In the analog days of printing grey-scale images had to be rasterized and this may have been a problem for some reproducing grey-scale illustrations. Today rasterization is done digitally within the printing process and should not pose any problem. It is therefore relatively safe to say that providing grey-scale illustrations will be fine. As I stated above B/W includes grey-scale nowadays and since quite a long time back.
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29197 | When reviewing a resubmission, can I request a version with changes highlighted if the journal does not require it?
Reviewing is time-demanding. It makes huge sense to re-review if comments and changes are submitted. While first review takes a lot of time, the second can be very quick.
If authors provide a version that shows the changes - this makes re-review very fast. They also don't have to spend too much time on resonse-to-reviews letter.
Can I simply reject to re-review if such changes-highlighted version is not provided?
http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/file-compare-two-pdf-files.html might be useful
Some more tools (including cheaper ones) for this purpose are listed here: http://superuser.com/q/46123/119172 (the question mentions windows, but some of the answers apply to other systems as well)
You can certainly ask for it but if the journal does not require authors to provide such files, you are not likely to get one. So why ask? Well, by asking you provide the editors with the wish from reviewers to see this as a permanent feature and in the end such changes may be made by the journal in their instructions for authors.
The reason why I think it is unlikely your request will be immediately heard is that editors usually handle many articles and may work under severe time constraints (often on their free time outside of work). Communicating back and forth with authors of varying background requesting new versions of manuscripts is usually a time consuming venture that could delay the process by weeks, depending on the responsiveness of the author.
So, there may be a good reason to make a request but I would not expect the wish to be heard in many cases.
You could point out that if you don't get something that shows the changes, your review may be delayed by weeks as you trawl through the whole paper again. But threatening to withdraw as referee altogether may annoy the editor, who maybe is someone you'd rather be on good terms with.
What format for such "changes-highlighted version" would you like? Maybe you could just use a tool like DiffPDF?
Another problem with your original intent is that you're going to re-review by looking only at the "changes highlighted". What if there are other changes, not highlighted by the author?
OP probably has something like Latexdiff in mind: https://www.google.com/search?tbm=isch&q=latexdiff
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1834 | Is it useful to do an MBA after PhD?
I have heard of people who have gone on to pursue an MBA after their doctorates. What are the advantages/downsides of this?
Wouldn't the companies recruiting them after MBA value their doctorate experience less compared to the experience gained at an MNC? Is there a risk of them being valued as "failed" doctorates?
MBAs and PhDs are two different things. If you want to run a business, do an MBA.
It really depends on the degree and what you ultimately intend to do... What do you plan to get your PhD in, and how do you plan to use an MBA as part of your future plans?
Nature just had an article about it: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/science/articles/10.1038/nj7523-523a
No degree ever goes waste. Most people with PhD and MBA acquire director positions in companies.
"no degree ever goes waste" [citation needed]
"Most people with PhD and MBA acquire director positions in companies." That seems insanely hard to believe.
A qualification regardless of level and field of study is never a waste, one needs to realize how to use it wisely and appropriately. As we navigate life we shift perspective and interests, our education choices therefore need to reflect this. Ph.D provides sound research focus, MBA provides sound business and leadership focus. The two combined is a great and electrifying combination.
A qualification regardless of level and field of study is never a waste — [citation needed]
@JeffE I can indeed think of many examples where a qualification was indeed a waste. However, a (good) MBA is not usually one of those cases.
Right. A good MBA is not one of those cases. But many (if not most) MBAs are not good.
PhD = specialist in a subject, research skills, critical mind
MBA = Broad generalist, management, problem solving
The focus and scope is not the same.
Also like it was said most researchers who want to climb the ladder need to take the management track which often require an MBA. Put simply an MD is an MD but a hospital manager needs to be an MD and MBA.
Also to teach at a business school other than math or economics you normally need an MBA. Best is a Phd/MBA but while a lowly MBA can teach that is not usually the case for a PhD.
If a person is smart they will market their experience during the acquisition of their PhD as also providing them with the problem solving and management skill sets. If you are going to be successful in research or business these are good things to have.
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198838 | With a software engineering bachelor's (BE), how can I work on finding a cure for cancer?
I am in my last year of studies for a bachelor's degree in software engineering and I am currently considering different options for my career path. I don't have any background in medicine, but I would love to work in the medical/research field, specifically relating to cancer treatments. What would be the best/quickest way of doing so, considering my background? I don't plan on doing an additional bachelor's degree in medicine.
Here are some options I came up with:
Find a full-time position in biotech after my bachelor's degree
Do a master's degree in software engineering and find a full-time position in biotech
Do a master's degree specifically in biomedical engineering (if possible)
Doing an additional master's degree in biomedical engineering
A "cure" for cancer? Unlikely. But improving treatments for cancer? Much. Radiotherapy nowadays is basically very advanced software and physics. I am an electrical engineering that did a PhD on cancer treatment, in particular computational methods for 4D imaging with tomography.
There’s a fifth option you had not listed: Contribute actively to the development of major projects used for this type of reasearch, such as AMORPHA, BOINC, or EMBOSS. That approach requires much less knowledge of biotech and bioinfomatics and thus would be easier to get into, though you would also be making a much less direct impact.
Tuning AI systems to handle cancer research is also possible. If you have the drive, you should talk to student advisors on how to progress in this path. If they can't answer you, they can definitely find people that can.
you definitely need to build a connection with someone in cancer research field, also do you seek financial reward from this or purely a side hobby? that answer would greatly differ depending on your skill set.
@AustinHemmelgarn There is a 6th option. Earn a comfortable living. Eat fruits and vegetables. Get your covid-19 shot. Minimize driving. It is boring but curing cancer requires small changes in behavior from everyone.
computational biology is a huge field. It even spill into SE comunity, see for example this question:
https://mattermodeling.stackexchange.com/questions/10218/how-can-i-use-ss2-or-fasta-files-as-inputs-for-protein-folding-simulation-using
@emory OP would like to work towards finding a cure for cancer, not finding a cure for their cancer. Additionally, the number of non-smokers and non-drinkers having throat or lung cancer should tell you a thing or two about the meaningfulness of reducing cancer simply to one's lifestyle...
+1 on Ander's comment. Basically, at the moment there's a tendency towards the notion that cancer as such is likely to be inherently incurable. As for the question, you'll be welcomed with open arms if you're good at visualisations and/or simulations.
@EarlGrey if OP has cancer it is probably too late. Non smokers and non drinkers do get cancer. It is not just lifestyle. However cancer alley exists. So a huge part of "curing" or delaying cancer is not obviously cancer prevention but pollution reduction. It is very complex.
I have also read research that 100% of ultra old men have prostate cancer. Most men die long before they reach ultra old status. I like to think that society is using my computer skills for betterment but if all ultra old people have cancer then my meager efforts are actually causing people to live longer and are actually raising the cancer rate. Of the 1M people Trump killed through inaction, a bunch were going to get cancer. He cured them!
I am a research administrator who has supported a machine learning professor for 8 years. She doesn't do cancer research, but she is a CS person who works with hospitals and analyzes their data for them (mostly in autism, diabetes). CS departments are getting a lot more time with health data. You could look into a job like that, e.g., as a post-bac if you are interested in moving up into an academic rung. Alternatively, I have a research administration friend who works at a Cancer Institute. You could do IT-like work at a Cancer Institute or other type of hospital and support the work that way. Research administrators frequently cite supporting research as why we stay in the field (which is incredibly stressful). I have been essential in training PIs in how to get grants for 15 years--sure, I'm not curing cancer or discovering the next big thing--but I know that I am crucial in making those discoveries happen; faculty tell me this, because they don't want to do the work I do, but it is essential if they are going to run a lab at all.
Consider using a job search portal with a job skill you have, e.g., "Agile", "python", etc. + "cancer". You just have to know what type of job you are looking for (academic vs. staff). If you look at a program administrator type job in CS that is oriented towards health, that might be a really great fit. It is incredibly difficult to find qualified folks who will do that work.
Here's an example.
+1 if only for pointing out how much an industry depends on software, but kinda treats it as a necessary evil. The one-trillion-dollar electronics market is supported by the ten-billion dollar design automation market. The former doesn't exist anymore without the later... but suggest raising prices to enhance development and listen to that one-trillion-dollar industry howl. Critical software development is high stress because the specialist PhDs don't want to share credit - but it's just as important as the PhD specialists in their fields.
No additional bachelors is likely to be of much help. It would only get you an entry level position, likely far removed from research. You need something more advanced and more related to medical research. Ideally a doctorate. In the US, you could probably apply directly to a doctoral program, but elsewhere it might be more of a problem.
But a cure for cancer, or any other complex disease, requires training and skills in medical research. That is a long way from SWE. The processes are very different.
Yes, medical researchers need some amount of programming to back up their studies, but that is just support.
A research based masters in the biomedical area, whether engineering or not, might be enough.
"just support" still helps and is necessary, though admittedly not very glamorous. You don't have to be "the hero of the story" to make a positive contribution.
As others have mentioned, it will be difficult for you to pivot into the research side of things without doing a significant amount of retraining in the domain. It's also been mentioned that this will therefore cut off the "glamorous" side of the job. However, let's be realistic: Research is about incremental advancement. Disruptive change can happen, but it's incredibly rare -- increasingly so, I would anecdotally say -- as science becomes a huge enterprise involving hundreds or even thousands of people. My point being, there isn't really a glamorous side!
This is a good thing, as it will allow you to focus on your strengths; that is, software engineering. Modern medical and genetic research -- which covers, e.g., somatic mutation (cancer) -- involves huge amounts of data and sophisticated tools to process and analyse these data. The algorithms for these tools are often designed by domain experts, but software in science has a reputation for being, let's say, "thrown together". (Which makes sense, given the economic factors at play.) A software engineer thus has quite a bit of leverage to improve existing tools or develop new methods that scale with big data (and I mean really big; petabytes).
tl;dr I would look into a masters in bioinformatics. This will give you the domain grounding you'll need -- although it's not strictly necessary, but will give you an edge -- to get into the space and make positive contributions to the field.
As a software engineer, you can do a lot of work in medical fields with little to no medical backgrounds. You will obviously have to learn about the subject you work on, but rarely to a point where you'd need an entire undergrad on a related subject to understand it. However, as it was pointed by other answers, you'll struggle to pivot to something entirely focused on biomedical, such as "cancer treatment".
It obviously depends on your location, and which type of medical research you want to focus on, but I'll give you the example I know about, which is mostly mine and people I work with.
I did my undergrad in software engineering and a Master in AI. After that I found a PhD in deep learning, which is applied to a certain type of medical imaging, specifically on the subject of lungs cancer. The goal is to develop and improve this new modality to replace the current gold standard in cancer detection, to improve the diagnostic and prognosis of cancer.
I also did an internship where I worked on a totally different imaging modality, which was used for blood vessel detection, and I worked on semantic segmentation (both with image processing and deep learning).
In both cases for me, and similarly for the people I work with, learning about the medical side was not "easy". You need to go through a lot of paper (as well as other support). Which is why a PhD can be important.
Additionally, in the example I know about in industry, a lot of researcher offer ask for a PhD (not all, and the requirement may not be mandatory, but still).
While the answer may not exactly what you are looking for, i.e. "cure for cancer" (which is an extremely vast domain anyway), with a SWE background, you can very well make progress in the research against cancer.
The example I can give are as a machine learning researcher for detection of cancer (such as plain detection, classification, segmentation of tumor margin for operation, etc). You can also work as a software developer to create the software that will operates on the different imaging modality. Or create tools that will be used by researchers.
Indeed. I am one example and even got my name on a Nature paper!
If you want to be a researcher you will need a masters degree (and eventually a phd). For someone like you with a techinical background (Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, Software Engineering etc), who wants to go into biological research you should be looking for a masters in Systems Biology or Bioinformatics.
I have a similar background (Maths/CS undergraduate) and I made the jump into biological research after my PhD, it was a learning cliff - but fun! I now teach systems biology masters students and we take students with all different backgrounds. Those with technical skills do very well in our masters programme and often end up going on to PhDs and becoming researchers.
Many answers recommend getting a master's in bio-informatics, but with your background in SE, you could also consider a different degree: Artificial Intelligence. That's what I did. I found a program that specializes in simulation/computational modeling/neuroscience, did my master's thesis at an academic hospital, and now I'm doing a Ph.D. on using AI to detect dementia. I'm sure you could apply many of the same skills to cancer research.
There are many advantages (and probably some disadvantages) to doing it this way. For one, the switch from SE to AI will probably be smoother than when you try to catch up on 3 years of biomedical knowledge. You can always acquire domain knowledge as it comes along. It will also be much easier to switch careers in the future if you have an AI degree - you could move into any industry you like.
Find a full-time position after my bachelor's in biotech
This.
I've worked in biotech / bioinfomatics for 15+ years, and one of the biggest problems is poorly written and maintained software and datasets, and a general lack of understanding of what computers can and can't do. For me it is paid well and with good conditions & security (as most software engineering careers do, and doubly so once you have some bio experience). It is very much a team effort though, and there are plenty of biologists and scientists that can do the bio side, so good communication skills will help.
I suspect you could find a very fulfilling position even if it isn't directly science/research related. Something as "boring" as an appointment system or medication reminders can make a huge difference to quality of life for patients!
Since you have no experience in wet lab, you have to go down the path of computational research.
In order to do that you have to take a thesis about Cancer research in Masters. Your supervisor must be from the field you are looking for.
Next, you should go for a Ph.D. as Masters won't be enough to gather experience.
After a huge amount of self-study, you will be able to become a researcher in Cancer research.
Why get a masters if you plan to get a PhD eventually? And if you're getting a PhD, there's no reason to foreclose everything but computational research. You can learn those skills, even if it means spending your first year of a PhD program taking upper-division undergrad courses. This answer really just boils down to "get a PhD", which is definitely sufficient to get into academic research on cancer, but doesn't seem to answer the question that was asked.
@CodyGray-onstrike, Why get a masters if you plan to get a PhD eventually? --- Coz, I don't know where he lives. Europe doesn't allow a Ph.D. without a Master's.
@CodyGray-onstrike, And if you're getting a Ph.D., there's no reason to foreclose everything but computational research. --- Coz, that would simply be a total waste of time. Besides, wet lab jobs are not as frequent as computational jobs.
@CodyGray-onstrike, This answer really just boils down to "get a PhD", which is definitely sufficient to get into academic research on cancer, but doesn't seem to answer the question that was asked. --- What is missing in my answer?
@CodyGray-onstrike Where I'm currently studying (Quebec, Canada), it is generally required to get a master's before a PhD; I didn't realize you could actually skip that part in different countries:') I am considering studying abroad though, so I guess it still applies.
I think this answer takes a very narrow view of what can be 'cancer research'. For example, there are algorithms which detect cancer cells on MRI scans. To build this you don't need an ounce of biomedical knowledge and a lot of computer vision knowledge, but it's still cancer research. People with a Ph.D. in maths or physics cross over to computational modeling all the time.
If you want to work in research on cancer or in another biological field you will need a PhD, and prior to that a masters, options for the masters could be bioinformation, biotechnology, bioengineering, biophysics which would be natural ways to move from a more technical focus to gain skills in biology.
Given your lack of background in biology, you should probably do some background study for these masters. You could also look around in the biology department at your university and see if there is a biology colloquium that you could attend and perhaps speak to some of the researchers there who might be able to direct you better. They can probably also give you some insights into the field which might help you decide on what you really want to do and how to get there.
Once you have the masters, then you can apply for a PhD on a topic of interest to you, if you can find a supervisor who is willing to supervise you for it. If you apply in the US then the masters is merged with a PhD and you can go into a PhD program directly from your bachelors. However I would recommend you do a master's program in order to develop your background in biology even if you choose to do a US PhD (and are therefore in effect doing 2 masters).
Something the other questions haven't mentioned is that there is a developing focus on complex systems in biology research. Mathematically this is probably similar to the complex systems and ecosystems that you're familiar with in software and are currently studying. in this language you can probably think of cancer as a rouge process that is requesting resources (RAM, comp cycles) while avoiding the kill commands. Similarly you could probably think of parts of the immune system as algorithms that rely on pseudo random number generators. You may be able to leverage your familiarity with complex systems from computing if you learn the associated biology (or biophysics) to give a different view on these kinds of problems. This might not just be cancer research but other biological process or tools (I'm imagining CRISPR here).
PS: for context I'm a (quantum information) physicist and not a biologist, so it is natural I'd think about biology from a computational perspective.
@fordcars Does it have to be scientific research, or will engineering do? Realistically nobody is going to "cure cancer" unless they get a product to market, and that involves engineering spanning a number of disciplines: microfluidics, mechanical, electronics, and software.
I retired a while ago from a career in software engineering, and the last 12 years were spent working on medical devices, including two cancer projects: we developed code to drive robots that were amplifying RNA for a autologous tumour cell vaccines; and we developed the software for a test for HPV, the precursor to cervical cancer (instead of curing cancer, why not prevent it instead?).
If that is a path you want to go down, you might benefit from learning about developing software for medical devices. IEC62304 would be a good start.
I'm definitely open to the engineering side; maybe even more so than research (considering it is the field I've been studying). That definitely sounds like a career I'd like to have. I'll take a look at the standard.
@fordcars Diagnosing cancer is very important; the earlier we find the little blighters, the easier it is to kill them. Have you looked at kaggle? There have been several competitions aimed at detecting tumours, e.g. RSNA-MICCAI Brain Tumor Radiogenomic Classification. Maybe you could sharpen your skills?
You could consider the emulation of biological structures in a virtual environment. It may be easier to join in on an existing project, rather than having to do another degree. Bonus points if you make it a Citizen science project, when people around the world can effectively contribute to fighting cancers and other diseases, including everyday citizens who do not have any medical or biological expertise. Distributed computing projects are a fantastic way to make use of people's computers, smart phones and tablets to donate their computing power to solve real-world problems.
There have been lots of distributed computing projects.
Here are just a few select distributed computing projects running currently:
Folding@home, Rosetta@home - Uses the computational power of people's computer systems to 'fold' protein structures in 3-dimensional space. Protein structures are 'folded' (compacted) in an attempt to reach their optimal state, a stable shape that allows them to function correctly and survive in their immediate environment. Solving naturally occurring protein structures helps scientists understand the function of those proteins more accurately. Novel protein structures can also be created to aid real-world problems, such as treating diseases (vaccines), or creating new materials.
Mapping Cancer Markers - Project that attempts to find markers that relate to different kinds of cancer from the tissue samples of cancerous patients. The markers are compared to identify patterns of markers, to detect signs of cancer growth earlier and customise treatments for specific patients based on their genetic profile. This is a child project of the World Community Grid program, which has featured over 30 different distributed computing projects.
You could also consider the gamification of biological structures, which could make it more appealing for people to install and try out. Existing projects incorporate the 2D or 3D modelling and sequences of biological structures with the goal of allowing everyday citizens without much knowledge in the field of medicine, to contribute towards research in curing various diseases, including cancer. The structures may represent the inner-workings of diseases, or the medicines to fight them with, with the intention of understanding more about them in a virtual environment on a computer system.
Users of a computer program that employs this concept would be expected to interact with a spatial or logical representation of a biological structure on screen, as a kind of puzzle to be solved. The structure may be manipulated in real-time using a keyboard or mouse, and may have a suite of virtual tools that can be used to manipulate the structure in various ways, for various purposes. The gamification aspect helps to maintain their interest, while they work towards achieving a publicly recognised goal or score.
Here are some examples of existing game projects that you may want to check out:
Cancer Crusade - A 2D mobile game featuring treatment management for cancerous cells of individual patients. Use varying amounts and frequencies of chemotherapy, HAPs (Hypoxia Activated Prodrugs), and pro and anti-angio drugs, to slow down and control the growth of cancers over a period of time.
Genigma - A 2D mobile game that aims to fight cancer by studying human genomes. Originally focused on fighting breast cancer, it has since expanded to include the analysis of other cancers. Please note that the game is currently closed for data analysis.
Foldit - A 3D computer game featuring protein structure folding. Similar to Folding@home, it differs in that it allows people the ability to interact with virtual proteins structures themselves using various virtual tools in a user-friendly GUI. People are able to manipulate protein structures in real-time, and can even generate 'recipes' (think programmable sequences of tools) in the Lua language, which can run by themselves at the user's command.
Eterna - A 2D game featuring RNA folding. Similar in concept to (and inspired by) Foldit, it focuses on folding RNA strands by changing sequences of base molecules such that specific shapes are formed for medical purposes. Now available on mobile devices.
If you want to go down the path of making your own citizen science game, or perhaps even a citizen science project that doesn't require interaction (like Folding@home), consider using Unity. It is a game development environment capable of making games (and other programs) that operate on multiple platforms and operating systems, and takes a lot of the ground work out of coding. It uses the C# language natively, and other languages based on the .NET framework may also be used as alternatives.
You might consider high performance computing, which is a field that always needs people and will likely bring you frequently into contact with bioscientists needing help with scaling up their research.
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199813 | Would you publish a deeply personal essay about mental illness during PhD?
First a little background:
I am in the middle of my PhD and recently came down with pretty severe depression. I would not say my PhD work is the cause of it (I am not in a toxic lab), but the immense pressure to always deliver is definitely not helping.
I feel like I am still affected by the general culture in academia and that it is not very accommodating of my struggles with mental illness. Living up to the "student really passionate about their research dedicating their life to it" is pretty damn hard when you sometimes lose control and cry for days, can't get out of bed, and battle suicidal ideation. This makes me frustrated, because I feel like that is not fair and inclusive of people who struggle with mental illness.
Mostly for myself, I started to write a personal narrative essay describing my experience and frustration. Then I had the thought to submit it to Science Working Life — maybe there's someone out there with similar struggles that would feel seen and inspired from reading it?
Now the question(s):
Maybe this is my anxious side all over again, overthinking everything, but if you were me, would you submit deeply personal writing like this? Do you think it could have value? Would you, as a reader, value something like this?
P.S.: To anyone else struggling, you are not alone ♡
What subject are you pursuing your PhD in? I think this is a major differentiator. If it is in social sciences or psychology, I think publishing an essay like that would be to your benefit. But if it's in STEM or business -- absolutely not.
Answers in comments and tangential discussions have been moved to chat. Please read this FAQ before posting another comment.
If you do write and publish a personal piece such as this, be aware that (potential) employers, students, colleagues, etc will google you and find it. Some of them may find it inspiring, many won't care/read it, unfortunately a few may consciously/unconsciously hold it against you. If any person/institution is mentioned/implicated it could cause problems for them (and potentially you) as well.
I think it's important to have stories like this out there for exactly the reasons you mention. But unfortunately the reality is that there can be consequences.
If it's possible to anonymise this could eliminate most negative consequences while maintaining the positive ones.
thanks for your answer! I do see your point, although part of me is a bit reluctant to publish anonymously because I feel like that would fuel the stigma surrounding mental illness... But this at least gives me some ideas about what pros and cons I need to think about before making a decision
I understand the whole "publish anonymously to prevent negative consequences" and I HATE IT WITH EVERY FIBRE OF MY BEING. It is exactly that mindset that allows mental illness to continue to be a stigma.
This comment also concerns @Trunk, ShernRenTee, Ben, and anyone else who feels tempted to hint that having been through depression implies being mentally divergent.
Science says "Nearly 21% of adults in the United States will go on to develop Major Depressive Disorder at some point in their lives". Other variants are even more common.
Why should anyone in academia contribute to hiding that fact?
@IanKemp There are other ways to reduce the stigma – like people who've already climbed that ladder (e.g. celebrities, tenured profs) coming out and doing activism work. The vulnerable don't have to put themselves out there. Yes, this way is slower, but equally, reducing stigma is a means, not an end.
@IanKemp Who will bell the cat?
The essays themselves could certainly be valuable, so long as they are insightful and well-written. (The peer review process should be able to give you feedback on this so go ahead and submit if you like.) As you say, there could be others experiencing similar problems (or dealing with people experiencing similar problems) who would find your writing about your experience useful. So, in principle, it might be useful to a reader.
You should bear in mind that it is sometimes possible to submit and publish work anonymously (e.g., submit from an anonymous email without your real name and see if the editors will agree to anonymous publication, and ensure that your essays give no identifying details). This might be an option in the present situation, depending on the needs and approach of the journal in question. Anonymous publication for highly personal issues has some benefits and downsides that you would need to consider. On the plus side, anonymous publication would preserve your privacy. The downside is that it might hamper communication with interested readers (though this might still be possible through an anonymous email).
I applaud your desire to publish your story, and affirm your sense that the career culture in academia is deeply broken.
But where everyone else has advised you to anonymise your story (which I fully agree), I would advise you to go one step further and obscure easily identifiable details.
The selfish reason for doing this is that if your identity can be deduced from details in your story, then there's no point anonymising your name.
The altruistic reason for doing this is that your story will inevitably include descriptions of other people's behaviour. While you are obviously consenting to (anonymously) tell your story, other people have not consented to have their story told, and they have the right to not be identified in a story which may not represent them in the best light.
Of course you have to balance this against the detail your story must include to back up your experience. But many such details do not make your group identifiable -- for example, "I had to trudge three miles through snow every weekend to discombobulate the widgets because my supervisor would rather fund conference travel than pay for a widget discombobulobot" is both vivid and discreet. Here are a list of identifiable details that I modified from a grant guide on preparing anonymous grant proposals:
Your name
Your institution’s name
Any project codes or names
Gendered pronouns
Heavily referencing your / your group's papers
Current and previous grant results
References to named partners
Specific details of team make-up
Career length of yourself or teammates
You may certainly have to include some of these details -- but try not to include too many.
I disagree strongly that people "have the right not to be identified in a story which may not represent them in the best light". If someone has behaved badly, there's generally no legal barrier to you publicizing this in a truthful manner. Whether it's prudent to do so, and whether you're prepared to deal with any backlash or fallout, is another matter.
Rather than join the anonymization bandwagon (the answer author community here is generally of the "it's terrible out there - people are horrible! Protect yourself!" bent) I would propose the following more nuanced and step-by-step approach:
By all means write the essay! It brings good in several different forms
It can be therapeutic, at least in a palliative care sort of way. I don't think it will provide rapid relief from clinical depression, but it does offer one a window on what's going on that may be helpful. But do it with the help of a mental health professional or counselor so that they can step in if it spirals out of control and you start focusing on those sneaky, nasty destructive or hopeless thoughts that the "depression monster" likes to generate to make us feel even worse.
If the time to publish comes, you've got your writings. You may be in a different state by then and want to add some further perspectives to it, but you've got the contemporaneously written material recorded forever.
Speaking of contemporaneously written material, if ever something happens and you are harassed or discriminated against by your environment, you have this as additional documentation that something is really going on and there's a reason you might be performing differently at the moment.
But continue to question if this is the right time to actually publish
That decision is easier if you fully anonymize, but in the 21st century with the internet, writing style analysis, nosy people who spend lots of time online, etc. is it ever foolproof?
Publishing under your name could potentially have positive benefits. More enlightened coworkers and supervisors, realizing that something powerful was happening without them realizing it may really reach out and be supportive. Of course exactly the opposite may happen as well. Life is full of choices (or a box of chocolates as Forest Gump explains)
My mom always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're gonna get.
Future readers may be future employers and if they are like-minded or enlightened might really see "extra value" in you. (As you can tell, I'm not of the "everyone is horrible" bent). This could become a lifelong filter that steers you away from employers who are unenlightened when it comes to mental health, and towards people who are. Who would you rather work for, anyway?
But yes, it could blow up in your face as well. Life really is like a box of chocolates and don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
You can also ask yourself if depression is the best time to make impacting decision
The fog of clinical depression also makes it really hard to make this kind of decision. I mean it can make it really hard to decide to even stand up and walk across the room to feed ourselves or take some medicine!
Bottom line: By all means write it! But work with friends and mental health professionals you get along with well on the question of publishing right away vs later.
P.S. To anyone else struggling you are not alone ♡
Indeed! After my first (of several) bouts with clinical depression that didn't respond much to medication subsided, I was able to "write in stone" a messages to myself that I could use in the subsequent bouts.
It gets better. This too shall pass. It's not real even though it feels so real. It's temporary.
thank you so much!
People tend to think that academia is 'above' the rest of the world but it's not. Some may find your work inspiring others may use it against you... just like life. I myself wrote a critical analysis of the entire concept of mental illness, situating it in a cross-cultural perspective. I used Michel Foucault's work as a backdrop but also applied comparative mysticism. The professor in question was not helpful. I don't regret writing that essay, but I was naive in thinking that some jerk would not use it against me. And it wasn't even about me!
Say you are not using a pseudonym as discussed by five other answers, however without using the proper term.
And say a potential future employer dislikes your essay.
Would this hypothetical situation be disadvantageous?
Would you like to have a job in a place where you would have to hide your weaknesses and fight every day to just survive like in your current position?
Or would you prefer only to get jobs in places where people will understand that having the competencies and will to deal with your own personal problems is a strength?
Several top scientists have struggled with mental illness.
You should prefer to always be honest about yourself.
A well-written and honest book will always be of great value, as you suggest yourself in the P.S.
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114658 | Should I inform authorities of someone falsely claiming a non-existing PhD?
I know a person who falsely claims having a PhD in computer science.
His name card reads as "Name, PhD" and he has long been working in a high profile and remunerative position for a semi-government company.
However, he does not have a PhD!
He had enrolled for a PhD program in a X university, but his PhD program was terminated, because he could not publish any papers within the allotted time. I have complete details on this person including his registration number with the university, supervisor name, the company name, address and company supervisor name.
Specifically: the maximum duration of the PhD program in this X university is 6 years. To graduate, the university requires the candidate to publish one ISI indexed journal paper or two Scopus indexed papers. This person did not meet the requirements and, in fact, does not even have a conference paper to his credit.
I often feel like informing the company he is serving, as I find this infuriating and deeply unfair, but I just can't seem to make up my mind:
Is this the right thing to do?
Why should I report this?
Why shouldn't I report this?
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
Other than on business card, where else does he claim he has a PhD: webpage? LinkedIn? resume? interviews? articles?
There's something not completely clear in your description: are you sure the university terminated his PhD? It's not uncommon for a university to bypass its own rules on an case by case basis. If this is the case, this person might even have been allowed to defend without the required number of publications.
Check out whether they have a dissertation in the university's database. Any PhD should have a registered dissertation under their name and that information should be found in the university's library, or online database.
It is certainly appropriate for you to bring this to everyone's attention. However, it is also important that you do so in a way that will protect yourself from retaliation as you seem to suggest the person has some power.
The dilemma, of course, is that an anonymous accusation is easy to dismiss. But if you can just direct people to source of your information so that they can independently verify your claim it will stand a better chance of being heard.
It is also possible, that the "authorities" are already aware of this and are, in fact, invested in the career of the person. This happens in some places, so, depending on the norms of your location, it may be especially important to protect yourself, and in the worst case prepare for the situation that it won't be addressed.
The correct way to report it would probably be to find a public claim of where this PhD is from, and then refer it to the university in question. Even if it's anonymous, they are in a position to check (if they choose to).
@buffy what could be the best possible anonymous method to inform the "authorities" as well as the university to investigate the "fake claim"? Any suggestions or advice.
@nilāmbara, Postal mail can be hard to trace back, but your letter would need to include enough information that the receiver has a basis for confirmation. Going thorough a trusted third party is sometimes possible, but less likely. In this case, the third party would him/herself need a certain amount of power/authority so as to be trusted by both you and the "authorities." In some situations a respected religious leader might work.
I'm not sure if you are implying it, but it seems wise to make the "people" you mention be the university he claims to have a PhD from. They certainly have the biggest reason for being concerned about this for image reasons. Also, they can find out the truth easily by checking their own records.
@AnoE, actually I mean, more generally, anyone who should be informed and/or could look into it.
@buffy, recently I have come to an understanding the supervisor allegedly proclaims this student had graduated! This is false claim. I have proof that both supervisor and student are lying. What should be the best course of action in this case. Any suggestions?
@nilāmbara, i think the advice is the same. Protect yourself first.
People who need to lie about obtaining any title are clearly not capable (or not able, maybe for external reasons) of obtaining said title (otherwise they would have done so), but want to enjoy the benefits that come with this title. By not being capable of earning the title (in most cases), the person is not displaying the required traits of those who successfully (through hard work) earned that title, which, in my opinion, gives a bad name to all holders of that title.
There are, of course, some people who have earned a PhD, but still give other PhD title holders a bad name, but it is their right to do so, they have earned the title.
Those who did not do the hard work and did not earn the title do not have the right to do so and need to be reported without exception.
When reported, it should be reported to the ethics council of the university the fake title supposedly came from or the the ethics committee of the Ministry of Education (or similar).
I disagree with the first paragraph. There are plenty of good reasons to not get a PhD even if you're capable of doing it (e.g. money), and plenty of selfish reasons to lie about having done it even if you were capable (e.g. money).
Additionally, there are plenty of people who have failed to obtain a PhD due to discriminatory reasons.
As @JiK says first paragraph is wubbifh. There are lots of skilled people held on a leash under fear of dropping out. They can definitely be more skilled than people graduating fast. An unskilled candidate is no loss if he finishes (and leaves) early, but a skilled candidate sure can be.
This seems to be less a question about academia, and more a question about the workplace. How do I get company x that employed this person who lied about their credentials, to take action.
Well, it doesn't sound like you know for a fact that the person did not earn the PhD, but you are surmising it because you can not find published papers.
If you are reasonably confident that the PhD was not earned, then I think you could anonymously notify both the university and the employer. At that point, I believe, you have done your duty, you have raised a question about the credentials someone has claimed. The employer may take this seriously or not, depending on whether they have verified the credentials previously, how important it is to them to be able to prove the person has the credentials, e.g. if an engineer is designing a bridge and lives could depend on it, an employer wants to be sure of an engineer's claim that they have their Professional Engineer license.
Maybe the employer won't care because the work output is satisfactory. I would hope the university would at least make a cursory review based on the student's name and years in the program.
Beyond that, you need to consider if there could be adverse fallout for you. Could someone guess you reported the matter? Could that be held against you? What if you are wrong, and the person has their PhD?
I'm not speculating nor surmmising. I've all the requisite details on this person. My mistake, I should have been more explicit in the question. Anyway, I've updated the question now. I have known this for a very long time. it's just that I can't seem to bring myself to a consensus and then I'm also worried about the repercussions involved. This is why I've "kept quiet" for all this time. But then yesterday, I accidentally stumbled on this site and found discussions on ethics, plagiarism. This motivated me to seek expert guidance or suggestions here.
@nilāmbara - Assuming that you could actually suffer negative repercussions related to this, I hope there is no way that this other person knows you, and/or that you have not used your real name here, or that you have not posted this elsewhere with your real name. Otherwise, they could now, or in the future, discover this and suspect you have/will, or at least have discussed reporting them.
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187120 | How can I use parentheses when there are math parentheses inside?
I want to write the following sentence:
The space O(X) (O(Y)) has functions defined on it as g(x)–f(x) (g(x)–f(x)).
By which I mean:
The space O(X) has functions defined on it as g(x)–f(x) and the space O(Y) has functions defined on it as g(x)–f(x).
But the parentheses are kind of distracting to read. What should I do about it?
Your sentence makes no sense to me. If you include the context (perhaps a paragraph) in which it appears we might be able to suggest wording. This question might be better asked on math.stackexchange. If you post there, delete here.
Question on Writing SE as to whether such an expression is a good idea (featuring a detailed elaboration by me why it never is): Is elaborating the opposite case in brackets acceptable and clear?
Also: Your particular definition is weird, as the second pair of alternatives is identical and none of the functions seem to be related to X or Y. Even if I ignore the last part, the symbol O is overloaded, such that I don’t think it is clear to the reader what O(Z) would be.
It is particularly hard to see the point here since $O(whatever)$ refers both times to $g(x)-f(x)$? Is that the intent?
Why not just use words? "The spaces $O(X)$ and $O(Y)$ have the functions $g(x)-f(x)$ and $g(x)-f(x)$ defined on them, respectively."
This is from a draft that I am writing with others so it would not be easy to get consent to share it here. Sorry for the poor choice of wording and lack of context. However, I do believe it's understandable that these situations do arise for new authors like me.
Tangentially to the issue of the parentheses, the wording “has functions defined on it” is vague and nonstandard. It makes it hard to discern whether the sentence is a definition or a claim, and makes me wonder whether those are all the functions that the space has, or can there be other ones.
Some people believe that parentheses should never be used: If the text is important it should not be between parentheses, if it is not it should be left out.
If the second way of saying it is what you mean, why not just write it that way in the first place?
I'm with @David on this one. Your question says "I said A, but I meant B, what should I do" - and the answer is "say B".
@Buzz gives a good answer, highlighting that it is a style question for which people have different preferences. I personally don't like to use anything other than round parentheses, so my preferred approach to avoid the confusion is to use additional words as buffer:
The space O(X) (or, alternatively: O(Y)) has functions defined on it as g(x)–f(x) (alternatively: g(x)–f(x))...
Agreed: It is better not to separate two formulas with mere punctuation.
alternatively, or respectively, any of the two wordings will do.
In my experience "respectively" is much more common; I first read "alternatively" here.
Isn't ‘respectively’ usually abbreviated to ‘resp.’? (Maybe not for the first usage, but for subsequent usages.)
@gidds Not in math, but I've never seen that.
As @gidds says, "symbols (resp., moresymbols)" is a common mathematical usage. The "resp." breaks up the symbols, and strongly suggests that the parentheses are not mathematical.
Do you really need colons after alternatively?
@paulgarrett: that comma after 'resp.' looks wrong to me.
@TonyK, well, there is a tradition prohibiting two adjacent punctuation marks. But if the word were not abbreviated, I think a comma is warranted. But I can imagine conventions/preferences vary. :)
As Federico Poloni points out, it is customary in mathematics writing to use "respectively", abbreviated as "resp.".
This gives, for your example:
The space O(X) (resp. O(Y)) has functions defined on it as g(x)–f(x) (resp. g(x)–f(x)).
Readers used to mathematical writing will have absolutely no issue with this sentence, and they will easily "skip" over the parenthesis without being distracted.
You can even "chain" them:
The space O(X) (resp. O(Y), O(Z)) has functions defined on it as g(x)–f(x) (resp. g(y)–f(y), g(z)-f(z)).
That being said, your sentence is weird (no Y / y in the second part of the sentence), since it seems that O(X) and O(Y) are defined the same way: do you mean
The space O(X) (resp. O(Y)) has functions defined on it as g(x)–f(x) (resp. g(y)–f(y)).
assuming that it is clear that x ∈ X and y ∈ Y?
By convention, x is usually a member of X, etc.. I think it should be g(x)–f(x) (resp. g(y)–f(y)).
I agree with this usage, at least in math, but FYI not everyone does. A reviewer of one of my papers said it was wrong, and in a more general context see: https://english.stackexchange.com/q/212549/109750
@Kimball That's very surprising to me. In the Computer Science / Mathematics papers that I read (and write!), this is clearly the common usage. I understand why it may sound incorrect, but it is, by a long shot, the easier to parse unambiguously to me.
Oh, God. A (resp. B). It's a very useful, and completely ungrammatical piece of writing. I hate it, but have learned that my red pen of refereeing outrage cannot hold back this particular tide. For similar losing battles, see also: 'that' and 'which'; 'none is'; 'Jones's'; putting 'and' at the end of lists separated by a semicolon.
@DavidA.Craven I'll be curious to see how you would formulate that statement without "resp.". If you have a nicer, more correct way that is as easy to parse as this one, I'm all ears!
The spaces $O(X)$ and $O(Y)$ have functions defined on them as $g(x)-f(x)$ and $g(y)-f(y)$ respectively.
@DavidA.Craven this should be the accepted answer.
@DavidA.Craven What's wrong with Jones's? The cat belonging to Jones is Jones's cat, while the cat belonging to the neighbors is the neighbors' cat.
@AlexKruckman Sorry, I mean that it is Jones's cat, not Jones' cat.
@DavidA.Craven Oh good, we agree!
This is a style question, so there is not going to be a uniform answer that everyone agrees on. Some people use (and some journals seem to prefer) nested parentheses just like in your examples. I personally find this both esthetically unappealing and often hard to parse.
My practice (and this seems to be followed by a fair number of journals in the mathematical sciences) is to use delimiters in running text the same way that I would in mathematical expressions. For a expression like the one given in the question,* that would mean
The space O(X) [O(Y)] has functions defined on it as g(x) – f(x) [g(x) – f(x)]....
I find that more readable than text that involves the same delimiter repeated (even if the text and math parentheses are in different fonts). Moreover, this continues with further delimiters in the pattern
{ [ ( { [ ( ) ] } ) ] }
so that, for example, if a parenthetical includes a mathematical expression with square brackets, it would be marked off with French brackets, e.g.
This is the largest the function can grow {assuming, as before, that Δ[sin(x)/x] remains within the unitarity domain}, so we can conclude...
*Actually, this expression, even with the square brackets has the potential to be confusing. As a general rule, in any situation where you are using multiple delimiters like this, it is good to look to see whether you can tweak what you have written to make it more readable. For example, I think your statement would be still easier to follow with the following added clarifications:
The space O(X) [respectively, O(Y)] has functions defined on it as g(x) – f(x) [respectively, g(x) – f(x)]....
(Maybe the second "respectively" is superfluous, but it probably doesn't hurt.)
In (pure) math, I would find this use of square brackets weird (and similarly for braces, etc). They're usually just used for citations in plain text, though in math expressions some people do use them as you describe, e.g., x*[(y+1)^2-1/y].
Relying on typesetting (e.g. math mode vs. text mode) or using square/curly brackets is only confusing to the reader. It may be unambiguous, but it is not clear at all. And many formulas already have more than enough parentheses, so please do not mix them with text formatting and make it even harder to read.
Also worth saying that there are mathematical contexts where the type of bracket matters (for example $f(x)$ and $f[x]$, or $(a,b)$ and ${a,b}$, can have very different meanings). Be wary of confusing a reader in that way.
Your example is weird, as people have said, because both have functions defined as g(x)–f(x). If this is really what you want (TBH it sounds as if you do not quite understand what you're trying to do) you could just say: spaces O(X) and O(Y) both have functions g(x)–f(x) defined on them.
More generally, it is better to write: the dah-dah has a dee-dee. Similarly, the pah-pah has a bee-bee rather than the dah-dah (pah-pah) has a dee-dee (bee-bee). I understand you aim to avoid boredom and annoyance on the part of the reader, but the extra verbiage is usually worth the clarity gained. Only when the reader is seeing all this for the umpteenth time, would I use the parentheses construction.
Putting respectively or or else: in the parentheses is helpful, but at that point your wordiness is about the same as the one at a time construction, so why bother?
In this simple example (and coming from a background in physics, where we can be a little lax with our mathematical language) I would use a construction like:
The space O(X) has functions defined on it as g(x)–f(x), and likewise for the space O(Y).
(I suspect you could omit the 2nd "the space"; you could certainly omit the "and")
This fits with my general approach of restructuring the sentence to avoid awkwardness. Of course this isn't always possible
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203016 | Is it unethical to use ChatGPT to create abstracts?
I am interested in knowing whether it is ethical to use ChatGPT to write the abstract for a schoolwork/paper I wrote. The paper itself is my original work. Is it OK to use ChatGPT to help with an abstract?
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Why are you asking if it's "ethical"?
@Nik Probably because they want to know if it is?
To add up to the previous answers:
The best way to answer your question is simply to ask your academic institution about their policy (or their lack thereof) regarding the use of AI tools for scientific writing. They might be able to tell you that you're not allowed to use ChatGPT anyhow, that you may but need to acknowledge it, or to use your best judgement.
As previously mentioned, Nature recently released a series of articles highlighting the pros and cons of using AI tools in academia. Overall, my personal interpretation is that using ChatGPT can be beneficial for tasks for which the ratio "amount of time required to do it" by "epistemological importance of said task" is high. For instance, shortening an abstract to reach a certain word count, writing a summary for an internal newsletter, or writing a vanilla methods section, seem to be tasks that take a lot of time but could be delegated to ChatGPT without major issues (given proper human surveillance).
On the other side, AI tools should be avoided when dealing with sensitive tasks. Retraction Watch recently published about gross errors and fabricated references in papers generated with ChatGPT, which is terrible scientific practice.
Grumpy old man yelling at the clouds here: do not forget that, although boring and unrewarding, tasks such as writing an abstract, writing a review, studying a methods section, or summarizing the main ideas in a scientific text, are important competences in their own rights. Be sure to master them before trying to delegate them to ChatGPT.
+1 just for the last paragraph, though I'm another grumpy old man willing to yell at the clouds.
If point 3 isn't done, then point 2 will be repeatedly done due to sheer ignorance. There used to be a correlation between grammatical correctness and general correctness, but ChatGPT effectively broke that correlation so people should be conscious of that. ChatGPT can and will fabricate non-existent references. Extremely dangerous if you're a lawyer and you cite cases that don't exist.
Grumpy old lady here. I was thinking about this for a while. I came up with the question; if a student's work cannot be distinguished from the work of a bot, what are they doing at university? What is the university teaching them? Maybe the skill of gathering and collating data is best left to a machine. Like ploughing. Yes, you can use a plough unwisely or in a criminal manner. But it saves a lot of work-hours.
I've used MS Word Summarize feature to go from a 20 page paper down to a 1 paragraph abstract. I recalled it working pretty well...
In my understanding, ChatGPT has the same understanding of what passes through it as a printer does, i.e. none, beyond e.g. the printer following formatting rules and being able to execute computer language that drives generation of graphics. Go ahead and generate a summary -- and then treat it as if a rabbit had eaten papers on the topic and left a trail of scraps: check every word.
@RedSonja if a chess player's work can't be distinguished from the work of a bot, what are they doing sitting at the table? What's the point? You could save so many work hours... -- Not that I per se disagree with letting machines do boring data-gathering jobs. This has been done for decades. But there's a huge difference between writing an algorithm that gathers data according to a precisely understood specification, and letting an AI gather data according to some statistical patterns from its training that no human understands and may well be riddled with all kinds of weird biases.
Is there no quality concern when using large language models? I've never seen ChatGPT output that seemed all that good or useful to me, but I admit I haven't seen a lot.
@leftaroundabout Exactly! Though I know nothing of chess, I hope there really is a difference between grand masters and bots. But chess is supposed to be fun for the players, that's like me knitting socks when I could buy machine made ones. If a student leaves college no better than a bot then somebody was wasting their time, that was my thought.
I think this answer is a bit self-contradictory--or at least needs to be read with a lot of nuance. Shortening an abstract may be something to delegate, but writing an abstract that gives a concise sense of the importance of a paper is both difficult and hugely important. It may be the only thing most people read, and it ideally would be the product of careful thought about the most important ideas of the paper and how to convey them. I'd be tempted to say that an author who doesn't see the difference between a well-thought-out abstract & a generated one is telling on themselves...
This is an entirely personal view.
There are ethical and unethical uses of such tools. Using them to produce and publish the abstract at least borders on the unethical.
Note that ChatGPT and similar things have no mind. They have no morals. They have no judgement. They aren't intelligent in any real sense. They can and do produce garbage with no warning. If they did have mind and intelligence then publishing what they produce without citation would be plagiarism.
But, if you treat them just as tools to get some possibly interesting feedback, then you could probably avoid ethical dilemmas. We use other "mindless" tools, of course, such a grammar and spell checkers.
If you assume that everything produced by these tools is possibly wrong and you use them only for suggestions or abstractions on things you have written yourself, then you are probably fine, provided that you adhere to the disclosure rules of any publishers.
But, I also point you to the last paragraph (especially) of the answer of Camille Gontier
And I'll also note that the tools seem to be getting more dangerous as they now can probe the web, which is filled with disinformation on many important topics. Mind and morals are required to sort out this cruft and these tools have neither.
There are, or seem to be, completely ethical uses of these tools. One that seems interesting and possibly useful is the examination of large numbers of x-rays to search for subtle things that indicate the possibility of cancer. But, even here, the results need checking by skilled humans (mind and judgement) to evaluate the output.
The problem isn't the tools themselves, but the use of the tools, especially when it is misunderstood what they can and cannot do. As with other tools and techniques, one must use intelligence to guard against both false positive and false negative errors.
I guess indeed, depends how you use it. I would argue that chatGPT is a great tool to create a first draft of an abstract, but the worst tool to create the final version of an abstract.
My experience, as a non-native, it's the opposite. It's the best tool to take my first draft of an abstract and make it into a much better prose (and often shorten it as a result).
What do you think is more likely to be wrong a spellchecker or ChatGPT? If a spell checker did not highlight a word you can be pretty sure it's in one of its dictionaries (or equivalent), the only reason why the word would still be wrong is because, you, human, meant a different word which you hardly can blame on the spellchecker being "wrong".
I would strongly disagree with the notion that GPT-4 has no intelligence. It's not a human-like intelligence (it's superhuman in some ways, subhuman in others, and deeply alien in the way it does things under the hood), but I find it hard to come up with any test of reasoning not contingent trivially on embodiment that GPT-4 would fail but, say, a chimpanzee would pass, and I would strongly contend that chimpanzees have some intelligence. Also not every contribution by an intelligent entity to a paper requires citation (for instance, reviewers often only get anonymous general acknowledgement).
It is not an easy question to answer! It all depends on one's preference and how one looks at it. I'd consider writing an abstract and then rephrasing it with tools like chatGPT or asking for help when I'm stuck with a code to be ethical. On the other hand, feeding the paper and asking it to write an entire abstract based on it would be something I'd not do. There was an article published in Nature on Monday addressing similar things. One may have a look at it:
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03235-8
You have two different questions here. One in the title, one in the body of the question.
Is it ethical ?
That's a moral question without an objective answer. I personally would regard it as unethical as you're not doing that part of the work yourself and it's important work.
...because...
Is it OK to use ChatGPT to help with the abstract ?
I would say NO for an objective reason.
The abstract is a very important part of your document. It is the part of the document which, after the title, tells people if they should or should not invest their valuable time in reading the article, which they would only want to do if the article covered a specific topic in a way that was useful to them.
Put another way, it's the way we filter out all the articles we don't care about from the ones we do.
It is, therefore, far, far too important to both writer and reader (and publisher if that's relevant) to be left to chance to a piece of software with no intelligence at all (calling them AIs doesn't make them intelligent, that's just marketing, i.e. a lie).
You cannot trust the "AI", so you have to check the AI delivers a proper summary of the article. You'll basically have to put in as much effort as you would writing the abstract yourself in the first place.
Writing an abstract (or summary) is a valuable skill beyond academia.
Learning to write these types of summaries is a hugely valuable skill which has applications in all sorts of ways. The reality is that when, e.g. your boss wants a report, you'll be lucky if they even read the summary ("abstract") so that bit of writing has to be good. Learning to do this is enormously useful in careers, in business even in private life.
Using ChatGPT or similar does not teach you anything and leaves you at the mercy of it's (considerable) limitations and (frequent) errors.
Or, think of the "I" in "AI" as meaning "Intelligence level of an earthworm". Too many people assume by default that "Intelligence" means the human-level intelligence which they have, because that is the majority of their experience.
Yes! The text produced by ChatGPT tends to sound very nice, but it's also very vague and it does not know which specifics of your research are important. It might be useful for an introductory sentence, but is not good at presenting specific results, which are important for an abstract.
The argument that checking that an abstract is good takes as long as writing it yourself is clearly wrong for papers that one has authored oneself. For instance, it's perfectly consistent to think that an unreliable abstracting AI might have to sample 20 times from its output distribution to find a good abstract, but checking 20 proposed abstracts for a paper I have written until finding a good one is probably still faster than writing one good abstract myself. And that assumes a user who does plain rejection sampling, not one who iterates upon the AI output intelligently.
@Technophile Humans would be utterly lost, for the most part, if they had to play GPT-4, i.e. answer the same range of questions in the same range of languages it gets, with say 20 times more time to answer than it takes. On the other hand, I think a human could play earthworm using appropriate remote controls, and GPT-4 could probably convincingly play human for a limited time (20 minutes?) if communicating online and prompted correctly. I'd say that suggests more than earthworm-level intelligence.
In many of the conferences I'm involved with, the committee typically permits the use of ChatGPT for rephrasing, but not for original content creation. Thus, its acceptability largely hinges on your intended application. If you're aiming to rephrase existing content, it's generally acceptable. However, always consult the guidelines of the specific journal or conference you're targeting, as some might prohibit the use of ChatGPT altogether.
I think this one is the best answer
OP is doing schoolwork; it's very unlikely to submit schoolwork to a conference.
Is it unethical to use chatGPT to create abstracts?
Regarding abstracts in research publications:
No. We are doing research. Our goal is improving human knowledge. Publications are just a way to convey some novel human knowledge.
The abstract is a condensed, human-friendly version of the publication. If some program helps researchers write abstracts so that they can spend more time doing actual research, then there is nothing unethical about it, except if it plagiarizes other publications.
Ethics put aside, some publication venues have an explicit policy on the use of AI to write publications.
ChatGPT and other LLMs absolutely do plagiarise other publications. They rely on a huge database of texts, collected from the internet without author's permission, and they never acknowledge original authors.
@DmitrySavostyanov here we are talking about summarization. It makes plagiarism much less likely.
OP seems to be doing schoolwork, not research.
@BryanKrause thanks, I clarified the answer.
@FranckDernoncourt LLMs "borrow" their words and phrases from the corpus of texts published on the internet. Many authors published their texts for free never gave consent for their texts to be used to train a close-source LLM to benefit a for-profit commercial company without compensation and acknowledgement. LLM won't be able to "summarise" without having access to the large corpus.
@DmitrySavostyanov how frequent do you think plagiarism is in LLM-based summarizers? Borrowing a few words typically doesn't suffice to qualify for plagiarism. If the summarizer borrows more than a few words from other texts, that doesn't sound like summarization anymore.
Whether it's "ethical" depends on how the abstract is used.
If it's used to judge the author, then yes, since it's not your work. If it's just to get scientific work done, it's still relevant, since language is compressive, and same words from it vs. the author warrant different interpretations. If the author agrees with the output, then it becomes irrelevant (to second point).
Personally: if I can't do it myself, I refuse to let others do it, as to me that's weakness, and I shouldn't be in this field. If I do great science but can't write, then that's who I am, and I won't pretend otherwise. After I master a craft, only then I can delegate it as mindless work - e.g. I'm totally fine with using calculators, since I've mastered arithmetic, and I even used Wolfram Alpha for much of my more non-trivial homework in college, but always ensured it wasn't impeding my learning.
That said, personally, I wouldn't mind ChatGPT writing the entire paper for me1 (minus doing the science of course). Because I know I'm perfectly capable of doing it myself, and have done it many times. Fat chance it does it as well as I, but that's a matter of time. If it does it better than I, then it becomes a problem, though in that case I'd try to learn from it so it's no longer the case, or make a note in the paper that AI assistance was used. However, can't say I endorse "as long as you think you've got it" as ethical, since it assumes honesty and correct self-evaluation; there'd need to be some external check (e.g. proof of prior work).
1: but I'd not do it for other, ethics-unrelated, good reasons. I've also not thought hard on this, take with grain of salt.
The other question is: how far can you trust the result? What are the equivalent error bars? Considering that it has the same understanding of what it is processing as e.g. a laser printer.
I am relatively new to academia.stackexchange.com. This is my first answer, though I have upvoted several of the answers above. I disagree with @StevenG above, so I was not able to down-vote his answer.
Is it ethical ?
That's a moral question without an objective answer. I personally
would regard it as unethical as you're not doing that part of the work
yourself and it's important work.
I believe @StephenG is wrong and moralistic. This is an ethical question, not a moral question. Morality and ethics are different subjects never to be confused -- do so at your own peril and risk of your reputation being labeled as a pariah. Ride out of town on the same high horse whence you came.
The institutional bans are highest priority to observe and obey; the "functional" questions are second most important. There is no longer a moral obligation to suffer when learning how to write. Learning how to write can actually be done faster using AI tools like ChatGPT. Gone are the days when people have to struggle with syntax and grammar. Now people (young and old) can focus on higher cognitive activities.
...because...
Is it OK to use ChatGPT to help with the abstract ?
I would say NO for an objective reason.
Your "objective" reasons are not objective, they are personal opinions imposed on others.
If the academics in the room think people should suffer just because you or I did when we were growing up 20+ years ago, don't impose your moralistic suffering on someone else. Be practical, not canonical.
Writing an abstract (or summary) is a valuable skill beyond academia.
Learning to write these types of summaries is a hugely valuable skill
which has applications in all sorts of ways. The reality is that when,
e.g. your boss wants a report, you'll be lucky if they even read the
summary ("abstract") so that bit of writing has to be good. Learning
to do this is enormously useful in careers, in business even in
private life.
Using ChatGPT or similar does not teach you anything and leaves you at
the mercy of it's (considerable) limitations and (frequent) errors.
The last statement is flat out wrong, just preachy criticism of technology you don't understand well enough yet.
It is up to the user to learn from their use of the technology, and learn how to use it most effectively to write good prose, abstracts or whatever the task at hand is. It is a huge (and ethical) time saver when used correctly. The limitations are disappearing everyday. The frequency of errors is going down fast as the LLM models ingest more good examples of writing and source code.
If the author uses it as a writing "assistant" (aka copilot, NOT substitute) and supplies the main thoughts and gets a first draft, then learns from it, and improves it, what matters is that the end product (summary) is accurate and good writing. Pairs programming is the MOST effective way to write good quality code and pseudocode, so why not pairs writing.
In two to three years, the quality of writing by AI writing assistants will be almost indistinguishable from some of the best newspaper writers. Ye who resist how to apply it well shall perish!
It looks like this is a criticism of another answer, and not an answer in and of itself. Is my assessment true? If it is, I suggest adding an answer, and making that the focus. If it's not, I suggest making that obvious (because it's not currently). One way to add super long comments to other people's answers is to write them out on a pastebin.com paste, and put the link as your comment (should you not want to answer the question). FYI: I'm not the one who downvoted your answer. Also, make sure to be friendly and such.
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11975 | Co-organizing a workshop, does diversity matter?
I am planning on organizing a workshop as a part of a scientific conference (neuroscience). I have observed that some workshops are organized by a single person, and others are organized by multiple people. When it is organized by multiple people, they were associated with different institutes, and were not from a common academic family.
My question: is it preferable to have people from different institutes as organizers? Does it look "bad" if people from the same institute/lab organize a workshop together?
I am planning to invite around 10 people as speakers, and the organizers will have at most 1 talk altogether (except introductory/organizing short speeches).
You mean: diversity of organizers, speakers or participants? (They are 3 separate things.)
@PiotrMigdal organizers. speakers will be diverse. I clarified the question.
EDIT: To add after an edit focussed the question:
The convener line-up will be important to attract people to the workshop so getting good names is not a bad idea as a starting point. Having conveners from several institutes may be beneficial since it shows prospective participants that the workshop has wider support. It may also mean that the advertisement can be improved, particularly if conveners come from different continents. Such signals should not be udnerestimated but will highly depend on the field and where research is carried out (geographically). There is of course nothing wrong with having conveners from only one institute. In the end it will be other factors such as convenience and interest that will determine the line-up of conveners.
Answer to the original question as it was interpreted:
The first question you should ask yourself is what is the goal or purpose of the workshop. I am used to workshops focussing on specific questions, perhaps leading up to common paper or document detailing a problem formulation or providing recommendations for the future. In any case, the persons to invite would be the most suited to provide input to the goal. I have run very small workshops where I could only accept one person from any department/research group due to limited physical space. In other words, getting representation was more important than getting certain names in.
So depending on the goals you have you will probably see how you distribute invitations. If you have the space and time then it may be open but that may not be the most efficient way and invitation only may be the way out. That requires careful thinking so that you can achieve the set goal(s).
This doesn't answer the updated question, which is about choosing organizers rather than speakers.
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9396 | Should academic papers necessarily carry a sober tone?
I was reading this paper titled "Optimal Symmetric Rendezvous Search on Three Locations." While talking about the history of search problems, the author mentions the following anecdote in passing.
In 2007 a letter writer to the Guardian newspaper queried, “I lost my wife in the crowd at Glastonbury (a music festival). What is the best strategy for finding her?” A reader replied, “Start talking to an attractive woman. Your wife
will reappear almost immediately.”
While I found it quite amusing to read this, I do not often come across papers with such witticisms. Is there an unwritten rule about the tone of sobriety that is considered appropriate in academic papers? Are jokes or anecdotes fine as long as they do not appear forced?
The most daring witticism I made was an Acknowledgements to the local grocery store for serving tasty muffins at half-price before closing in a workshop paper. My advisor recommended I take it out. However, in a conversation with a colleague, he said that it would have been a nice personal touch if you were able to learn a little more about scientists and see them more as humans if such benign comments were left in.
Incidentally, the published version of the article has what appears to be a corrected version of this story: "In 2007 a correspondent to a newspaper wrote, 'If I lost my wife at, say, Glastonbury, would our chances of being reunited be better if I stayed in one spot, hoping she passes by, or if I wandered the site, hoping to bump into her?' (letter from Nick Crossland to the Guardian, June 19, 2007). A reader replied, 'All Nick Crossland would need to do is to start chatting up some other woman and his wife would immediately reappear. As if by magic' (Marjorie Moulding, June 26, 2007)"
It's not a paper, but a glance into GKP's Concrete Mathematics convinces that some amount of (self-ironic) humour is definitely refreshing.
Tell me, are the following titles sober? (1) Sturmian Jungle (or Garden?) (2) Excluding slightly more than a cycle The 1st one is a full combunatorics article containing many examples of various stuff with a common denominator, the 2nd one is a PhD thesis.
You might take a look at http://mathoverflow.net/questions/22299 for a collection of mathematical examples.
Are jokes or anecdotes fine as long as they do not appear forced?
To me, there is a single measure for this: does a sentence X contribute to the paper, or not. If the answer is no, it shouldn't be there at all.
To apply the principle to the joke: if the joke illustrates a common problem which needs a solution, or illustrates a common (perhaps insufficient) solution to a well stated problem, then it certainly has a place in a research paper.
I understand scientific writing as a form of literature. I do not see any reason for literature (including scientific discourse) not to be entertaining as well, when appropriate. But everything has its time and place. However, it shouldn't be forced and has to fit the main contribution of the paper, hence the filter rule above.
Quoting Terry Tao:
Overly philosophical, witty, obscure or otherwise “clever” comments should generally be avoided; they may not seem so clever to you ten years from now, and can sometimes irritate the very readers you want to communicate your result to.
However, you'll always be a little embarrassed looking back at yourself, so this is a pretty mild warning. I think there's nothing wrong with a little humor in papers.
That said, your example joke is definitely inappropriate to put in a formal paper because it's a joke that assumes the audience is all straight men. There may be a place for mildly sexist humor, but that place is not the workplace.
And if you don't think that joke assumes the audience is straight men, ask yourself "Would I tell this joke in front of an audience that was all women?"
In this vein, note that your paper will be read by people of all ages from many distinct cultures. What you find obviously funny may be completely opaque to someone from a different culture.
Since the witty answer was given by a women (if I get the name right), I think it's save to assume sexism is not an issue here. It's more a play toward a common cliché. Cultural difference can be an issue, although I think the responsibility lies more with the reader (recognise and adapt to the author's culture) rather than the writer, otherwise we'll have only bland PC common denominator texts.
@Raphael: women have sexist behavior too. Sexism is deeply rooted in many aspects of our societies, as is indeed shown by a lot of "common clichés".
@Raphael: the responding reader is not a representative for all listeners at all points of time. Whilst she may have felt that comment appropriate at the time of writing, that does not guarantee that no one will ever criticise such a comment for sexism. On this thread, several have already done so. There is plenty of humour that's both relevant and unoffensive, I don't think that omitting offensive jokes presents any cost to scientific literature
To add to walkmanyi's good answer: To make jokes in a scientific article is "dangerous". It is similarly a bad idea to use "quotes"! In both cases the reader may interpret the written text in many different and unforeseen ways. It is particularly problematic since readers come from many different cultures and different ways of expressing themselves, for example, figuratively. Since clarity should be a key aspect of an article, it is best to stay clear of jokes and such, keeping the somber tone you refer to.
Answering from a Humanities, Arts and Social Science (HASS) focus, to contrast the STEM focus of previous responses:
Humour may play a vital role in both the dissemination of, and methodology of HASS discoveries. HASS fields tend to deal with multiple overlaid meanings, whether they reference social meanings or cultural meanings or pure ideas. Things that simultaneously mean many things tend to be funny.
Umberto Eco's sly fable, In the Name of the Rose is a useful case here. Eco is otherwise a scholar in a field where multiple meanings are vitally important. His novel is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche, a piece of pulp fiction, while also being a sly attack on Stalinism and Academic life. Perhaps most importantly for this question, the issue of whether the innermost nature of reality (God, art / the least worst empirically tested description of external reality) can only be approached in a reverent and serious fashion, or whether the seriously funny kind of levity also gives us access to reality? Now In the Name of the Rose may not have been the best way to communicate new linguistics findings; but, a serious exegesis of In the Name of the Rose as a post-modern novel might reasonably try to recreate some of the levity of its evidentiary text.
I wouldn't suggest writing a paper full of the Big Bumper Book of Jokes, but if your evidence is naturally funny (anti-government jokes as representative of public sentiment); or, if there's an obvious irony in the case study that you can state clearly for the reader; or, if the proper presentation of your findings calls for wit; then, use it within the broader genre conventions of your discipline's writing.
Humor should be used sparingly, and when used, should not be obviously offensive. If you can imagine that someone could reasonably take offense to something, then it shouldn't be included in a formal research article. I would even avoid such a joke in a formal talk.
That said, humor does have its place in a scientific delivery. I often include a few wry remarks in my classroom lectures, but they are used sparingly, and only to lighten the mood. (I might make reference, for example, that you could do something, but only if you want your work to end up in the Journal of Irreproducible Results.)
But tasteless and overly lewd jokes should be saved for a stand-up comedy routine.
There was a physicist(?) in the Soviet Union who always cited a non-existent paper by Cheyne and Stokes ("irregular respiration brings relief"?) in all his publications (and also thanked them in acknowledgements). He had been imprisoned in the GULAG for several years when, on 1953-03-05, it was announced that Stalin had Cheyne–Stokes respiration. Another inmate, a physician, explained to him that this meant an inevitable death, and, thus, a hope for a change in their fortunes.
I am not sure if this qualifies as "humor", but I see no problem with it.
More to the point, you want your paper to be read to the end, and you want the readers to understand and appreciate the results. If a joke would illuminate your point, making it clear and unforgettable, go for it!
Also see the Alpher-Bethe-Gamow paper: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpher%E2%80%93Bethe%E2%80%93Gamow_paper
The truth is that it depends on your institution. My college required us to keep a somber tone, avoid dressing up how we presented things, etc. In other words, it had to sound incredibly boring. We were taught that academic papers were meant to deliver factual information. These other things didn't contribute to the facts or analysis, so they were unnecessary. I'm sure many other institutions might have variations of these rules. Break the rules, your paper doesn't make it. :(
Here's why I think that's ludicrous. ;) The purpose of any written work (excluding entertainment) is to convey a message. The writer must get the reader's attention, adequately get the message across, HOLD reader's attention while doing so, and (optionally) leave a lasting impression. Requirements 1, 3, and 4 are all in the presentation. So, it stands to reason that a witty, funny, or just somewhat unique presentation of content is entirely justified.
The irony of it is that many other classes taught us these principles of effective writing and captivating penmanship, then the academic papers we wrote were to avoid these things to be more successful. Makes a lot of sense, yeah?
Bonus thought. Academic papers also don't usually happen in a vacuum: many papers published in journals are competing with others. Different institutions want to make the best papers, find greatest discoveries, have highest acclaim, etc. It's not all that different from people publishing books. In light of this, I think academics have even more justification for going the extra mile to make their work stand out. Just a thought.
You're equating "somber" and "not dressing up the presentation" with "boring" and "ineffective". This is not the case. It is possible to make exciting research sound boring, and it's possible to make it sound exciting, all within the "only the facts please" setting of academic work. The reason why academic papers should ideally "stick to the facts" is because the idea is that a paper presents results and the reader is invited to verify the results and draw their own conclusions to compare with the authors' conclusions.
Let's see if I can improve on my post. There are certainly papers with just research facts that come off as exciting. A paper might succeed just fine without extra presentation effort. Yet, decades of research into learning and psychology show a good presentation goes a long way. A paper can reach a wider audience or hit their intended audience harder. So, you could say I'm saying such styles are "more" effective rather than the only thing that can be effective.
I can agree with this. But I also think that there's a fine line between effective presentation and marketing, and one has to be careful to separate opinions from fact.
I totally agree with that. And walking that line can certainly take some discipline and careful thought.
The driest book I ever read was the revised report on Algol 68. It was liberally salted with quotes. The best one was the "Merely corroborative detail" line from the Mikado, used to introduce pragmas (a kind of semantically meaningful comment). Quotes like this stopped one wanting to slit ones' wrist while reading the meat of the document.
N.B.: This "report" doubled as a VERY STRICT standard defn of ALGOL68. Full quote: {Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. Mikado, W.S. Gilbert.} c.f. http://jmvdveer.home.xs4all.nl/report.html#112 ... Another quote from the same report {Tao produced the one.
The one produced the two.
The two produced the three.
And the three produced the ten thousand things.
The ten thousand things carry the yin and embrace the yang,
and through the blending of the material force they achieve harmony.
Tao-te Ching, 42, Lao Tzu}
Sometimes humor can help readers to remember the essence of an approach. The best example I can give in this regard is from Leo Breiman's original paper about bagging predictors* (paper available here). In the conclusion he summarizes the paper like this:
Bagging goes a ways toward making a silk purse out of a sow's ear, especially if the sow's ear is twitchy.
* Used to make a stronger model by combining a set of weak ones, which is particularly effective when there is high variability between the weak models.
On very rare occasions, authors go even further and write a paper about a humorous topic, such as WHEN ZOMBIES ATTACK!: MATHEMATICAL MODELLING OF AN OUTBREAK OF ZOMBIE INFECTION. Humor can be a good way of bringing abstract matter under the spotlight for laymen to appreciate.
If it makes your point well, then a comment that is humorous can add to the paper. The cutoff for this is rather more permissive in a conference presentation, though sprinkling a few semi-relevant jokes into a presentation is best left to the keynotes.
The more eminent the author, the more they can get away with in terms of grabbing the reader's attention: How about the abstract to Can apparent superluminal neutrino speeds be explained as a quantum weak measurement?
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75602 | How can I convince my postdoc advisor to end my contract early?
I am currently a postdoc in a Computer Science discipline.
By some odd artifact of the way our university handles postdoc contracts, we are given fixed-duration (1 year) contracts with no exit clause. The only way to amend the contract (i.e. end it early) is through a mutual agreement with the advisor.
(Side note: this came as a nasty surprise to me when I started looking for jobs.)
I have found a job that is a great career opportunity for me, and I intend to take it as I believe it's acceptable to leave my postdoc early.
The job is in industry (again, my choice), and while I would much prefer to not burn any bridges I understand this is a lot to ask of my boss.
I am personally aiming for the smoothest transition possible,
with a reasonable notice period (1.5 months) and a plan for transitioning my duties, but obviously this mutual agreement issue is a big sticking point.
I am looking for good arguments to help my case, ideally focusing on the positive (it's great for them), for example:
it looks good on their "CV" to have lab members go to great places
This increases their visibility in the community
people are defined by where they've worked previously, this can increase the reputation of the lab
What arguments can I use to convince my postdoc advisor that we should end the contract early?
I realize there are many "legal" reasons why I can/should be allowed to leave, and I would have posted on workplace.sx to look for those.
My hope here is to look for some of the often-intangible "academic" benefits, and take a step in the direction of a win-win compromise.
"one cannot be forced to work". I am not a law expert but that does not contradict the "no exit clause"? Also, saying "this is a professional employer/employee relationship, not indentured servitude" is a sure way to burn bridges.
This may be location dependent - where are you located? Have you discussed this with your advisor? I find it highly unlikely that your advisor would make you stay against your wishes (but stranger things have happened).
As I understand it, everyone knows that a post-doc job is a stepping stone to a career and they shouldn't be expected to turn down career opportunities for the meager pay that post-doc life provides. My guess is this 'no exit' clause isn't enforceable. No job can 'make' you work for them. You can choose to leave but it sounds like it might burn a bridge as you say, since you did sign a document saying you would commit to some given time period.
Do you mean there is a "no exit" clause, or do you mean that and exit clause is lacking. I suspect the latter, which would normally (not a lawyer, don't even know where you are) mean the relevant employment law is your only guide.
I realize there are many "legal" reasons why I can/should be allowed to leave, and I would have posted on workplace.SX to look for those.
My hope here is to look for some of the "academic" benefits (sometimes intangible) that turn this into a win-win (or at least closer to that direction). I'm editing the question to make this more clear.
The reason none of us are suggesting "academic" benefits is that at least to me (and I would guess to many other posters) this is just the wrong framing. I would simply tell your supervisor that you're leaving; if they're a reasonable person, they'll support your decision, and you can ask them to sign whatever documents you need. If they're not reasonable, then reasoning won't be very productive, and the bridge is burned.
Just explain your situation to your advisor.
Say that you are sorry to leave and explain why the new opportunity is great for you.
You do not need to come up with reasons why you leaving early is great for your advisor. (It isn't, but they will understand.)
Advisors worry about your future.
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158733 | How to show patents in my google scholar profile?
I have a Google Scholar profile where my conference papers are located.
Google automatically added one, while I had to manually add another.
See https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ZveOfZYAAAAJ&hl=it
I'm also inventor for a few patents that appear on Google Patent.
See https://patents.google.com/?inventor=alberto+soragna&language=ENGLISH
I wonder why Google does not show the patents automatically in my Scholar profile. I see several users that have both papers and patents there.
BTW since a couple of weeks I also have a personal website where I listed the above publications (patents included), as suggested by Google scholar guidelines.
Thank you
https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41412/updated-title-of-arxiv-not-recognised-by-google-scholar
"+" and "Add article groups" allowed me to add some of my patents including their citations. Nicole's suggestion ("Add article manually") misses citations, and "Add articles" seems not to find patents. Google's UI is not up to Google's usual standards here.
I also changed "Configure article updates" to "Don't automatically update my profile." I am pretty sure the patents I added had been in my profile previously, and most likely Google's "auto update" had deleted them.
If a patent or any other publication is missing from your Google scholar profile, go to your profile and click the + icon at the top of your list of publications and select "Add article manually". You'll get a popup with tabs across the top for various kinds of publications. Click "Patent" and fill in the details.
If Google lists a publication that's not yours (it happens!), click the checkbox next to it, then Delete.
Super helpful response; as per Ulrich's answer, the manual addition was needed for patents specifically.
Your patents published on 13 August and 3 September 2020, respectively. I suspect Google Scholar will automatically add them soon.
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158821 | Should I email potential supervisor when I've already applied
I applied last week for a PhD project at a European institution (the deadline was Friday 13-Nov). Due to seeing the position fairly late, I did not make contact with the project supervisor prior to applying (though it didn't say I had to do this).
I'm now wondering whether I should email the supervisor to say hello and let them know that I applied.
Pros:
Means I don't interact with them for the very first time at an interview.
Cons:
Seems slightly weird? Ideally, I would have emailed them before applying. I don't have much to say in the email, the project was fairly well described in the advertisement. I could ask for more detail, but I don't want to sound presumptive?
I'd love to hear what people think, and what they think I should include in any email.
Assuming that they are involved in your application process (which is common in some places but not others), then you should contact them now. Explain that you saw the announcement late and want to give them whatever information they might need at this time.
I wouldn't flood them with information in the first contact but be ready to supply information if they ask for it. But an introduction and expression of interest in their work won't hurt and might help.
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158959 | Potential PhD supervisor replied short but expressed interest, what to do next?
I wrote a relatively long email to a potential supervisor and they answered quite short, saying that they are delighted to hear of my interest in the program and they would be happy to work with me. I do not know how generic this answer is, but can you tell me what would be the good next step? Should I ask them for a skype meeting?
Thanks!
Where is this? In some places it means more than in others. It can also vary by field.
This is one of the universities of California and in humanities!
Word of caution: my answer below is based on my experience in Canadian Universities and may not apply to other countries.
The way I interpret this response is: your profile is interesting and you are encouraged to list this professor as one of the potential advisors on your application.
If you want further information regarding the lab's research, it seems you will have to initiate this. Just keep in mind that at this point, the professor is likely getting a lot of enquiries. This is the likely reason for the short reply. Some professors may (at this stage) decline extended conversations and refer you to their lab web page, while others will gladly take the time to talk to you. I would send an email thanking this person for their reply, letting them know that you intend to list them as a potential supervisor (if that is indeed your intention), and asking them if they think it is appropriate at this stage to discuss your remaining questions over mail or via skype.
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162163 | Changing my information in a published paper
How can I change my position/title that was mistakenly written in a published paper?
For print editions that is likely impossible. Ask the editor.
If the paper has already been published, you can't. It's too late. Even if the print versions have not been printed, the electronic version will have been distributed, and it's not possible to issue a recall.
If the issue is severe enough you could publish a corrigendum/erratum, for which you'd have to ask the journal.
Allure is correct that a published paper is generally considered a permanent artifact that can't be retracted. This dates back to when it was printed and copied and sent out everywhere, so essentially updating it would be impossible.
I think it is worth reflecting, though, on the future of scientific publication: today, the "permanent artifact" view is just not true, as any internet paper archive can easily publish updated versions while retaining the original history, and simply redirect everyone looking for the paper to the latest version of it. Some people may retain the original copy (saved as a PDF or printed somewhere), but the vast majority clicking on a link somewhere to your paper will get the updates.
With that viewpoint in mind, depending on your field, I think it is worth at least trying to issue updates when there are errors in your paper. This is especially important for technical mistakes (e.g., a fix to a computation or calculation will make life easier for some poor grad student trying to find the error), but I think it may still be worthwhile for your case of wrong author information. What is certainly in your power:
If your paper is published on arXiv or another preprint service, simply make the correction and publish a new version there.
If you have posted the latest version of the paper on your website, again, simply make the correction and publish a new version there.
If you have posted a the publication in a publications list on your website or CV, include a brief parenthetical: "Mahmoud et. al, Paper Title, 2020, Important Journal. (Erratum: institution of last author is incorrect in official published version.)"
What may not be in your power is updating the official journal version, but you can always contact the editors to ask. I think that it is becoming more common to allow official updates and corrections (for example, there is growing social pressure to accommodate transgender author name changes). I do hope this trend continues.
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171168 | Do academics charge for talks at student societies? As a PhD student, should I ask for some honorarium when giving a talk at a student society?
I am a first year PhD student. I have been invited to give a talk at a student society in my own university (so no travel costs, etc). I am wondering whether I should ask for a small fee when giving the talk. Some points:
I have been an organiser at other student societies, and generally we wouldn't pay when professors gave a talk with us, but we would invite them to dinner (prepandemic). There was someone who asked to be paid (she said she always charges) and we agreed (she is a public figure).
Obviously it may seem a bit arrogant that I (only a PhD student) ask for a fee, but during my undergraduate studies I gave quite a few student talks / seminars for other students (for free), so I have become a bit of a big name on campus, and I believe my talks are good.
I have been paid by the university when giving a sample lecture about my area of research to prospective students, and also when helping out at other outreach events.
It's a student society after all (not a conference), so I am not sure it would look particularly great on my CV, especially given that I already have quite a few of these on my CV (albeit I wasn't invited).
The society is about the ethics of X, where X is my field. I have been an advocate of ethical considerations of my field (usually ignored), so I am flattered to have been invited and I genuinely care about this.
I generally enjoy giving talks.
But it takes me time, and obviously my research, my teaching, and my personal life also require a lot of time.
It takes me about 24 hours to prepare a good talk (for example, six evenings). ((Is this way too much time?)).
Should I give the talk? Should I ask for some fee?
Personally I wouldn't ask for money, in particular not in case of a student society. But if you do, please do not forget that such a fee would likely be taxable income, with all the associated paperwork involved.
I've never asked for a fee, and I generally decline honoraria if offered. (When my own institution offers money, I take it.)
@mlk (and others interested): Your comment about "associated paperwork involved" reminded me of something in Feynman's 1985 book Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!, so I got my copy of the book to look it up. What I was thinking of wound up being the entry titled "Thirteen Times" on pp. 256-257. Googling a random phrase in it, I found a copy of that section on the internet.
At your own university, do not expect to be paid. One exception: there may be a dinner at a restaurant after the talk, and your check may be covered by the society.
I appreciate you linking to COVID-19 in case no one had heard about it lol
@AzorAhai-him- That was done in an edit
Oh lol well then thanks @PeterMortensen
I did sometimes pay to give a talk.... (this one... in French. I paid the TGV train ticket)
For conferences I believe it is very rare that invited speakers get paid. Conference dues are always covered for invited speakers. Often hotel and transportation are too, but even that isn't always.
I would suggest to not ask a fee. It's a student society, and having served in the board of one, budget was always tight. Talks by PhDs and professors were always good since students could learn a lot and it was easy to organize and almost everybody was willing to talk about what they were doing, and always with a bottle of wine (or something non-alcoholic where appropriate) as 'payment'.
Regarding spending 24 hours on a talk - that seems like too much for a small gig at the student society. You know your field/research, and you probably have a feeling on the ethics around it, so it should be relatively easy to come up with what you want to say. I'd spend at most four hours on it, for a 30-45 minute talk. Two hours of structuring my contents, and two hours for creating the slides.
Thanks avid - For a PhD student, you should take into account your funding and whether you can spend your working hours on this, or if you should do this in your free time.
For a professor, at least, I would suggest that giving this sort of talk is really part of their 'day job', and so they should account the time spent preparing/delivering it against their usual salary. For a PhD researcher the situation may be a bit more complex, depending on their funding situation.
@avid you're right - added a bit to the answer.
You can also perfectly well re-use talks or parts of talks. You don't need a new unique talk every time for this kind of thing. Most professors probably have a few standard outlines ("this is the area I research") and then speak primarily extemporaneously. If you really want a brand new talk, base it on what you're currently studying or researching, since the work of putting together and giving the talk will also double as studying/researching. A really, really good topic for a student group talk is something that you learned previously but have partially forgotten and will need in the future.
As a grad student I had a presentation that was very much a living document. Every time I'd give a talk, it would come out of the drawer and get updated. Sometimes the updates were substantial, sometimes not, but it was never made from scratch after the first talk. Eventually it became my defense.
@avid In the US at least, PhD students are typically on a 50% appointment. If that appointment wouldn't cover this, I think it's well within the duties of the 50% studentship that you're technically paying to do, in the same way homework is a PhD student's "day job." But just IMO
Lucky you to have had a budget. I was the head of the physics students organization at a major university and when we needed money (for the bottle of wine you mentioned, or once a year to visit something), I was kneeling in front of the dean's office to beg for some money (which, I must say, he always gave without nitpicking). If somebody had asked for a fee to talk, I think we would think we misunderstood the request. But then it was in the golden years of French academia where money was not that important to us.
Treat such things as "service to the community". I'm sure plenty of people have "donated" things to your education.
@Buffy I imagine in OP's situation I would be willing to talk for free, but it is not a "service to the community". Instead it is an opportunity to talk about something I am enthused about with an interested audience (maybe I should be paying them!?!). As such, necessary preparation should be minimal. If I really thought I needed 24 working hours to prepare the talk, then it would need money.
@emory, OTOH, preparing for the talk, give you an asset that you can deploy in the future. You have a talk "in the bag" that you can bring out whenever it is useful. The preparation actually improves you in a number of ways that are useful for any academic.
@Buffy it does improve you but so does exercising or spending time with loved ones. I feel that OP could forego the 24 hour prep and give the talk extemperaneously (or with minimal prep). Then OP could collect payment in the form of received constructive criticism. Maybe we could agree that if the student society wants a smooth, polished, professional talk then they need to pay an honorarium; but they probably don't and OP is thinking too hard on this one.
The questions asks "Do academics charge for talks at student societies". The answer to this is generally no, I've rarely heard of academics charging student societies for talks, especially if they are local.
Note that this is not the same as saying should academics charge for their talks, that is a difficult and complex ethical question, but rather that, as a rule, they don't.
You can ask, but I suspect they answer will be that they have no money to pay you.
When I give local talks of any kind, I do not at all pretend to charge a fee, nor expect an honorarium, though a dinner (or free parking?) is nice.
When I give non-local invited talks, I would expect to have my expenses covered, more-or-less (I have to eat anyway), but not "make a profit" in money. In some cases there'll be benefits to me from giving the talk, or it promises to be a fun audience, so if my expenses are not completely covered, it's still desirable for me to do.
Yes, if one is in a financially delicate situation, these things loom larger... but I think the academic tradition (in more idealist milieus?) is to not expect to make a profit from telling about your own work.
Given what you’ve told us about yourself, you don’t seem to have the rep to participate in the “cash-for-public-speaking” business.
So, if you asked me for payment, I’d say “no”, I’d think to myself “who does this guy think he is”, and I’d go find another speaker, and I’d never invite you again.
Your local student society might be more generous and forgiving than I am (lots of people are). Do you want to risk it?
You don't say what discipline you are in; that may matter.
As a PhD student, especially in the first year, you should use this kind of invitation to practice giving academic talks of the kind you would give at a conference or as a job talk. In the first year you probably won't have much, but for students it can be an overview of a topic if you don't have research to present. I know what that would look like in my discipline but not yours.
Because giving academic papers is a part of the work you are training for and will be absolutely necessary in the long run, these are good opportunities as long as you don't let them be a distraction from getting your other work done.
I sometimes invite students on the job market to give practice talks to my undergraduates (if their topic is relevant to the class) and these are really helpful.
Sorry but the thought of a first year PhD asking for payment from a student association at their own institution smacks of narcissism to me. I suggest you read Umberto Eco's Travels in Hyper Reality. In it he writes on the differences between academics and intellectuals. Essentially, he argues that being an intellectual comes with public responsibilities. There's a sense of duty to engage with society and, in my mind at least, this doesn't involve grabbing for money at every turn. I sincerely hope this helps. All the best .
Unless you are a prominent figure in your field, you might ask whether there is a fee - or even expenses - or anything else but that's what you might ask about, not ask for…
I have been paid by the university when giving a sample lecture about
my area of research to prospective students, and also when helping out
at other outreach events.
If I read it correctly, it means those events were beyond your duty stated in the contract, so you get paid.
First, ask permission to your university for being paid to give lectures to an external association .
Second, since giving the talk to the Student Association is beyond your duties, you have all the rights to ask for a compensation (talking about ethics ...).
However, your interest in promoting Ethics seems to be very strong, being in itself a reasonable compensation, so I would proceed this way: you can state to the student association that you would charge 200 quids for this talk, but knowing the Students'Associations are on a tight budget, and that budget is better spent on books and beers, ask to convert the 200 quids in one beer or one book (relevant to Ethics of X).
I don't think the association is external.
Ugh. Sounds petty (almost extortion) and a good way to get disinvited.
See, for example: https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Talk:George_Bernard_Shaw#Shaw?_"We_have_established_what_you_are,_Madam"
@Buffy Seems reasonable to me. Give a talk in exchange for a share of the pizza and drinks afterwards, or some token gift like a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine.
@nick012000, if you don't say a word, you'd almost certainly be invited to a pizza get together anyway. It doesn't need to be a transaction. It can be their gift. A "token gift" that is asked for isn't a gift.
@Buffy do you mean that what I suggest to do can be misrepresented by a unreferenced crappy quote, possible subject of a dummy meme and so on with plethora of people sharing it over the various social media? Absolutely yes, I agree.
Ok. Good. So don't do things or get yourself into situations where your actions can be easily misinterpreted to your own disadvantage.
And please do not follow imaginary advantages and straw-men that led the academia at the point where is now, where work is expected to be performed for free. Not for-profit does not mean free, asking a fee and proposing to convert it into something else is not extorsion (nor a gift, what is this crap about gifting people? are people monkeys or dogs being tamed?).
If “quid” is British slang for “pound”, then it’s plural is just “quid”, not “quids”.
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185035 | Is it legal if I print PDF files of Springer books for personal use?
As a Canadian undergraduate student, I have access to all Springer books on their website, provided that I log in with my institutional account. Springer books can be downloaded as PDF files.
Because I prefer physical copies of academic titles for reading convenience, I want to print the entire PDF file of a Springer book that I'm interested in.
Is it legal to do this?
Have you read the terms of use?
IANAL but in general if you aren't depriving them of revenue you aren't doing anything wrong, as there is no tort for them to action.
@ScottSeidman are terms of use usually relevant? do they not normally ask you to refrain from doing things that are actually perfectly legal?
@user207421: But the answer to "Are they denying revenue to Springer?" is not clear. Is the answer "No, because the alternative to printing the book is just to read it online." or is the answer "Yes, because the alternative to printing the book is buying a physical copy of the book."?
@user253751 What is "perfectly legal" from a civil sense can depend entirely on the contract you are under; of course, the enforcement of contracts imposed by website terms and conditions is an active area of legal dispute.
@user253751 An example that comes up all the time in academia is in agreements with publishers. As the copyright owner, you have all sorts of rights to make copies and distribute your own work. However, if you sign an exclusive publishing license with a publisher, even if you retain copyright, there are a lot of things you can't do thanks to that contract (like print and sell copies of your own paper) that you'd otherwise be able to freely do under copyright law. And that's your own paper, not even someone else's!
Fair dealing addresses exceptions to activity that would otherwise be copyright infringement, similar to "fair use" in the US.
I'm not a lawyer, and don't live in Canada, but it seems to me that the exceptions for private study would cover making a physical copy of a work you otherwise have access to. Some other reading:
https://www.lib.sfu.ca/help/academic-integrity/copyright/fair-dealing
https://www.ualberta.ca/faculty-and-staff/copyright/intro-to-copyright-law/fair-dealing/index.html
https://uwaterloo.ca/copyright-at-waterloo/faq-1-5
However, I think it is far more likely that you'd be infringing the terms and conditions of the website that you use to access the digital resources; even if you aren't infringing copyright, you could be violating something you've agreed to by using the site. If it's prohibited by the terms, you'll have to weigh the value of the physical copy against the risk that those terms are enforceable and the publisher chooses to enforce them.
I don't know what terms that apply to you specifically through the access you have through your institution, but on Springer's site I see this at https://link.springer.com/termsandconditions ...
1.2 You may solely for private, educational, personal, scientific, or research purposes access, browse, view, display, search, download and print the Content.
So, assuming those are the terms that you use the site under, it seems like they're explicitly giving you permission to print for your own use.
I would also consider that there may be existing physical copies in your vicinity, such as at your institution's physical library or a public library in your city. Using those resources, if the particular book you want is available, would save you the costs of printing and waste produced.
+1 Good find on the terms of use! I would expect that one's license to access the content would end when your user account gets terminated at the end of one's studies, but I can't find an explicit passage describing this in the linked ToS.
@DavidMulder Yeah, I also didn't find that, though admittedly I did not crawl through all the terms with a fine comb (who ever does?); that's one of the reasons that I wonder if OP's access (which I gather is part of some institutional subscription through their university library?) might have some additional limiting terms.
This will differ a bit from the good answer of Bryan Krause. I won't repeat what he says. And IANAL, so this is informal advice only.
There is one advantage of a printed copy in that you can easily annotate it by writing in the margins. There are electronic versions of this for PDFs, but I find them inconvenient at best.
Also, some systems make it difficult to read PDFs without actually downloading them to your own system. So, prohibiting downloads seems to be a lost cause.
But, if you are printing only for your own personal use and not for distribution, then, since you have been give access to the content itself, the medium you use to read it is of less (but not zero) concern.
The reason for this answer, however, is to point out a general principle of the law, observed many (most? all?) places and that is that "The Law does not concern itself with trifles."
Your personal use of a printed copy doesn't lessen the value of the material to the publisher, since you already have permission for the material itself.
So, I'd wager that any infraction would be so minuscule that no legal authority would think it worth any effort to stop it. This assumes a single copy for personal use when permission to use the material has already been granted.
Laws differ everywhere, of course, but here is some information specific to Canada.
And, some 40 years on, I still use several textbooks from my undergraduate days. Upper division classes, sure, but Ashcroft and Mermin, Sze, and Landau and Lifshitz are true classics.
"The Law does not concern itself with trifles" is, unfortunately, much more likely to be true for people with privilege (thus not for racialized minorities, for example). Laws that are enforced only at the discretion of individual (biased) human beings always exacerbates oppression.
Re Laws differ everywhere, of course, but here is some information specific to Canada. That info appears to be missing from your answer.
So Fermat noted in about 1637. But if you print single sided you have some room to expand thoughts of course. And often an asterisk next to a paragraph is enough for your purposes.
Ask them.
Is it legal to do this?
Who else would be able to sate definitively (apart from a judge) that this is allowed or not, except the copyright holders?
Now maybe you don't want to draw Springer's attention to yourself, so maybe you could ask the college to ask as a general rule. However, they're probably more likely to say "yes" to a single student than to a college. But one way or another, they are the people to ask. The Internet can't really give you a definitive answer.
An alternative
Ask the college library (by email so you have proof) if you can do this. They might be very conservative about this, as they will be keen to avoid crossing Springer (or other copyright holders), but they may also be able to give you a statement of what you can and cannot do according to their agreement with them.
The copyright holder can be expected to answer "We prohibit you to do this" even in the cases where it's legal to do so without their permission and it does not matter if they prohibit it or not. They are not an unbiased party from which you can expect a truthful answer that is in your interests; they are not required to tell you if some legal clause grants you more rights than they wish you to have, and it is in their interests to advocate to the public that they have less fair use rights than they actually do.
@Peteris That's a very cynical viewpoint. It's also a rationale for doing whatever you want to regardless of what restrictions may apply as, in your viewpoint, you can just ignore the rights holder if you're afraid they might assert rights - that's where your argument leads.
Quite the contrary, I'm asserting that certain copyright holders (of whom Springer in particular is a notorious example) have a habit of doing whatever they want to regardless of what restrictions apply to their copyright and is afraid that the public might assert the fair use rights they have in copyright law. Copyright law is inherently a compromise between the conflicting wishes of copyright holders and the general public, and the (many!) limitations the law makes to the copyright exclusivity are there for a good reason, even if rightsholders want to ignore the rights that the public has.
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186236 | Is it unethical for nursing school assignments to require students private medical information?
The curriculum for the nursing program at my university regularly requires the student to write a detailed account of their HIPAA-protected medical information.
The assignments usually require posting the information on a discussion board that is open to 55 students and all nursing school professors from five campuses across Texas. We are then required to reply to and discuss two other students' HIPAA-protected information. Some assignments require us to reveal private information of family members, including mental health issues and conflicts within the family.
I spoke with my professor about the first assignment, which involved a three-generation genogram. She told me that I should feel better about it because that particular assignment would only be shared with multiple professors and a small group of students. The rubrics for these assignments include loss of points for using example information instead of the student's personal information.
I am appalled that these highly educated and experienced professors would trample all over the students' HIPAA rights while teaching us the importance of strict adherence to HIPAA. The practice seems to be common and entrenched in Texas nursing schools. The information we are revealing is not given voluntarily, it is a requirement.
I can't afford to be the crusader who takes this problem to the top. I want to graduate. Is there an organization that addresses this type of problem?
Do they give any justification for this? This has the feel of a research project with subjects "forced" to participate.
Buffy, this is based on the premise that the best way to learn is by personally relating to the concept being studied. I agree with that reasoning. The problem is that we are required to share that information with all teachers and fellow students. We are intelligent people. We can apply that concept without being forced to reveal private personal details in a discussion that is posted online for all eternity.
Do you mean the assignment is along the lines of "Write about a health problem that has affected you?" I assume this is is easily regulated to something you are comfortable with. Such as, one time I had a cold and I missed class.
Even if one is only revealing small bits of information, I think revealing private information of family members is not to be done.
Couldn't you make up all the information (in a believable fashion)? What means do they have to check it? Perhaps cover this in your question?
Just a tip: if that is your real name, do start using a pseudonym.
The ADA is probably more applicable than HIPAA.
An example for context: a few years ago I was involved in a study where nursing school students were recorded simulating a medical interaction (it was a script, no real medical data). In Europe the students' voices are considered personal information and therefore strongly protected: data must be encrypted, stored securely, etc. Thus we had to be very careful with this data just because it contained personal information (the voices), and this is not even close to the level of protection which would be required for sensitive information (health data).
In your case, HIPAA does not apply. You are not divulging patient information, but you are made to divulge information about yourself and others. Since the university is not a medical provider, HIPAA does not apply, and they make you divulge. But it is certainly an intrusive practice that raises privacy issues.
I can see that using yourselves as sample cases is useful for your education. Therefore, I would not expect help from professors and your dean.
The university administration might see things differently, especially since they have access to lawyers who would warn against engaging in dubious practices. This would be my first attempt. Approaching it as a group and asking to keep your names secret would be a prudent measure. Your strongest point is being asked to report incidents of venereal diseases and mental diseases in your family. While it just happens that none of your family is suffering from this, you should not be asked to share this information with other students.
If it is a public university, you can threaten with talking to your representative or with the trustees ex oficio. If it is a private university, you can threaten to bring it to the attention of trustees.
A reference to back this up: HIPAA only applies to covered entities - health care providers, insurers, etc. Your nursing program isn't a covered entity. https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities/index.html
While the setting may not be in scope for HIPAA, the fact that the information would be covered is highly indicative that there's a problem
For whatever it is worth, in the EU and UK this is "Special category data" under GDPR and processing of such data is only allowed if you match one of nine conditions (article 9). None of those apply to the scenario where the educational institution processes the data of family members. From an EU perspective it's completely unbelievable that someone could freely store and collect such data as long as they aren't a "health company".
IANAL, but I find it very unlikely that HIPAA doesn't apply. The list you linked to is indicative, not comprehensive (note the "including" and not "restricted to"). For instance, the kind of entity I work for—a company that provides genetic analyses as a service to hospitals—isn't mentioned, but I can assure you we are most certainly required to abide by HIPAA rules. More importantly, if the university is requiring such data, then they become an entity holding such data, storing (and therefore "processing") such data, and so are almost certainly a "covered entity".
The question was actually about ethics, not the law.
This is concerning indeed. The issue is far from my area of expertise, but some ideas that come to mind are:
Are you part of a student union? Ask them for help.
I think your focus on whether the practice is unethical may be misguided, since it may well be illegal (which would make it much easier for you to argue against it). Consult a lawyer about this.
Ask about legality on law.stackexchange.
Contact national or regional associations of nurses to ask for advice/help with this issue.
Good luck!
The law SE site is indeed a good place to ask something like this. They'll be able to explain things like (for example) the requirements around the secure storage and access control for personal medical information that might not be followed here.
If the OP wants to post on Law.se, though, they should make sure that it's a "general" educational question and not a request for individualized legal advice.
YES it is unethical, regardless of whether it is legal. This is not only a violation of privacy, but also a threat of long-term harm (lowering your grades and thereby affecting your future) should you not comply. For your own protection, do not provide real personal data about yourself. As suggested by a commenter, make up any sensitive information that you feel should not be shared. They have absolutely no moral right to force you to reveal real information to other people who do not have legal access to it in the first place. Secondly, as suggested by another answer, seek help from others, including course-mates who are uncomfortable with this demand, and from the university excluding the faculty, such as the board of directors and the whistleblowing department if any. (But if you do not trust even these people to keep your complaint confidential, then do not even take this second step. Your own safety has the highest priority.)
My best guess is that this is under the jurisdiction your office of equal opportunity. A lot of medical information relates to mental illness, gender and reproductive health. Student organizations? Dean of students?
By the way, I read the posting as indicating that each student was required to divulge essentially all their medical history. If they are able to pick and choose that might be unintrusive. Or less intrusive. Dean of students might still care.
This is clear nonsense, perpetrated by people who might be the best-qualified in their own fields but still, have little understanding of and prolly less interest in privacy.
Nursing school assignments require real data but equally obviously, there could never be a reason for that data to come from students; much less from today's or any other particular cohort… unless not the data itself, but learning the methods of gathering the data was what mattered.
If there was, that would be to say that information about today's student cohort was more relevant than the last… That might be true if science had moved on, and how could that movement be guaranteed in any collection of student data?
What details about however many students in today's group could be statistically significant?
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41787 | Editor's mail with no reviewer's comment
Recently I submitted second revision of my manuscript in a highly reputed mathematics journal. My first revision was a major revision while the second one was a minor (with some terms like paper is ready to be published). After submitting my second revision I got an email from the editorial board which asked for further revisions of my manuscript. But, what is troubling me is that there were not reviewer comments in the mail. Also there were no attached files with reviewers comments.
Edit: I took only three days to resubmit my second minor revision and after another five days I got this mail with no reviewers comment.
Also, there is only one reviewer for this manuscript.
Edit: At the end of the mail that I received it is written that "Reviewer's comment" but it is showing blank. Submission status is "submission needing revision" (Revise). But I am not able to find the reviewers comments.
I am worried. How come this is possible?
It looks like the editor forgot to attach the reviews. Ask for them.
Somebody has down voted with no suggestions. If the question is not suitable for the community I would be glad to delete this question.
Downvotes without explanations happen, sadly. In any case, I don't believe you can delete your questions when there is an upvoted answer.
@srijan Any updates on what actually happened? I am curious as well.
What happened in the end? I have received the same mistake mail. Asking for a revision withouth reviewers' comments!
Instead of trying to second-guess what might have happened you should simply contact the editors and ask what revisions they wish to see you perform. The reasons for the lack of information could be any of the suggestions given but could also be a mistake, an attachment that was not passed on or a mail sent by one person who has not seen your recently provided update, the list of possibilities is long.
So, e-mail the editor or journal and briefly explain what you received and how the lack of information makes revisions impossible.
My interpretation: after the first revision, both referees wrote that the remaining changes were minor. So the editor did not send the paper back to them but took a quick glance himself/herself to make sure they had been fixed. While doing this, he/she noticed a few more small mistakes and asked you to make these final changes.
Thank you for the reply. I even didn't get editor's comment. At the end of the mail it is written that "Reviewer's comment" but it is blank. I will edit my question gain.
I still don't get the complete timeline, it would be good if you could explain in detail what happened. But if all you got is a mail saying "make these changes" and then no suggested changes, the simplest explanation is that someone forgot an attachment. :)
Thanks again. Ya same thing happened. Editor's mail says "Reviewers have now commented on your paper. You will see that they are advising that you revise your manuscript. If you are prepared to undertake the work required, I would be pleased to reconsider my decision." But, i didnt receive any commments of reviewer.
@srijan Does the editor's message say something like "we cannot accept your manuscript as is." In that case, it may be a poorly worded rejection. Either way, a short email to the editor asking if there were additional reviewer comments should answer you question.
@Kimball It says nothing like that. I have mentioned that editors comment says that revise your manuscript.
@srijan In that case the "I would be pleased to reconsider my decision" phrase is rather perplexing. Maybe you should let us know what the end result was.
@Kimball I will surely let you know :).
@Kimball That paper is accepted. Thanks for your concern. :)
For this like this you really should directly ask the people involved, instead of us.
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2915 | Do Physics grad schools accept non-physics students with good Physics GRE score?
These two questions https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/110303/is-a-good-gre-score-enough-for-a-non-math-graduate-to-be-accepted-in-a-decent-pu?rq=1&fb_source=message and https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/110303/is-a-good-gre-score-enough-for-a-non-math-graduate-to-be-accepted-in-a-decent-pu?rq=1 inspire me to ask this question.
Unlike Math GRE in Physics GRE, almost everything taught in first 3 years of undergrad is examined with almost equal percentage of total questions (Classical Mechanics 20%, EM 18%, QM 12%, Optics 9%) while in math, 50% can be scored only with good calculus skill.
Can one expect to be accepted in good physics grad schools if he has good Physics GRE score?
Another question is, can one go to theoretical physics grad school only with good score in Physics GRE?
I hope this is appropriate place to ask these questions.
The "two questions" links both point to the same question.
Graduate admissions is based on lots of different factors. I don't think any one thing will make you in-eligible for acceptance, at even the best institutions---including not being a physics major. That being said, unless you have physics (or similar) experience, or are in a related field, it will hurt your application. I know numerous people with math, computer science, engineering and chemistry backgrounds who have joined (and are doing well in) prestigious physics programs (e.g. stanford, chicago, columbia).
If you have experience in a not-too-distant field (e.g. chemistry), one way to make your application more appealing - would be if you are interested in subjects somewhere between physics and chemistry (for example).
If you can demonstrate that you have excelled in your own field, and have an aptitude for physics (e.g. good GRE scores), you shouldn't have a problem!
I am studying CSE. Before I graduate I'll be taking about 24 to 30 credit hour of computer hardware and electrical courses. So can CSE be considered as engineering?
Absolutely. Day to day, doing physics is often a lot more like CSE---I think you can have a strong application.
but I can't take any electromagnetism course because my university rules are very rigid. do you think it can be a problem if I want to go for theoretical physics (may be QFT or String theory)?
As long as you do well on the GRE it won't be a problem. It's standard to take E&M as a graduate course
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2950 | Is it possible to attend graduate school in pure math after undergrad in CSE?
I am a Bangladeshi student studying CSE in the best university of my country. At the beginning of my second year in my university, an interest towards pure math grew in my mind. But my university does not offer courses in Abstract algebra, Real Analysis, Topology, Complex Analysis, Algebraic geometry, etc. I have seen this related post, but the advice there doesn't help me because there is no computer scientist in my university whose research interests lie between CS and Pure Math.
I met a few of my professors to discuss about my situation. Some of them asked me to study math by myself and also to try to study a paper by mathematicians under whom I want to work, then to write a paper which demonstrates I understand all (at least most of) the things written in the paper, and later send it to them asking if they are interested in taking me as student. They also asked me to get prepared for Math GRE. But is it possible to switch to pure math if I do so? If not, how I can go to a pure math grad school?
It will be extremely tough.
As Dave mentioned, what you want to do will be very challenging. One possibility would be to change to a different university that offers the math classes you mentioned. However, I will assume that switching schools is not an option for you. If you are very dedicated to this goal, here is one possible route.
finish your current studies in CSE
get a job in a town with a university that offers the math classes you desire
start taking one class each semester as a non-degree student. I don't know about policies elsewhere, but many school in the United States have less strict admission requirements for non-degree students. Your goals for these classes should be two-fold. (1) Learn the material as well as you can. Your understanding of this material will be important for both getting into and succeeding in graduate school. (2) Impress your professors with both your ability and your desire. When you eventually apply to a masters program, you will ask some of these professors for letters of recommendation.
apply to a masters program in mathematics. Ask for letters of recommendation from both your current professors in your CSE program and from those who know you from the math classes you take after you finish your BS.
as you near the finish of your masters (where you have worked hard to prove yourself) apply to PhD programs
I know this is a long-term plan, but with hard work and dedication you could make it work. Here is another question Advice - MS in mathematics to increase competitiveness for PhD programs? that you may find to be helpful.
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206644 | How can I put the same research on progress presented in multiple conferences on a CV?
If someone is presenting their same “research on progress” in multiple meetings and conferences, how can I strategically plan for each presentation such that each presentation is looking unique on a CV?
Or is it even necessary to make it look unique on the CV? If making each presentation unique is not a good/ethical idea, what is the best way to list all presentations on the CV without giving the impression that presentations are listed to increase the length of the CV?
If it looks like "padding" the resume it will hurt you.
Researchers routinely present on the same material for multiple audiences. Reporting these talks is not padding your resume -- you are presumably reaching more people by giving more talks.
You are allowed to give the same talk more than once, at least in mathematics... :)
... especially, if you are invited to give the same (or similar) talk more than once, that's a positive, in mathematics. Apparently in other subjects, "giving a talk" is akin to a (status-enhancing) journal publication, so you can't get credit more than one time? Crazy.
Thank you for all your comments. I received divided opinions on this topic, I would like to hear more from other people as well.
In my field, it's usual to present work in progress. Depending on how long it takes, it might be presented at 1-3 meetings.
Now, some meetings in my field ask you to assert "I haven't presented this work elsewhere," and others don't. Nevertheless, the general expectation is that you aren't submitting identical abstracts to multiple places.
So, what would look odd/"padding" to me would be seeing identical titles in multiple conferences. Again, norms in your field might be different, but you would expect to see the work evolve over time.
At least if you were in my field I'm not saying just change the title, but what I am saying is a natural evolution of a few abstracts over time is fine.
To expand on my comment that obvious padding is hurtful and easily recognized, I suggest that you do the opposite. What you are describing as work in progress, which is, in itself, a valuable thing in a CV.
I suggest that you list the topic of the research once and under it (perhaps using indentation) list the conferences and meetings in which the progress has been reported. This is honest and also shows continued interest in what you are doing. The "progress" isn't separate completed works. I'd suggest that faking it won't help.
I would be surprised to see this organization on a CV (and also question its maintainability as an organizational strategy). I would expect to see a chronological list of venues at which you've spoken, with the titles under which you gave the talks.
You should not worry about reporting each talk you give, even if it is on the same topic (and with the same materials) as a talk you gave in a different venue. You are presumably speaking to a different audience, and each presentation thus expands the impact of your work.
If you are in a field where conference presentations opportunities are tied to conference-reviewed-and-accepted publications, you should have separate sections of the CV for the conference publications and for conference talks.
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201887 | How is a student’s research experience evaluated for a PhD application?
I’m an incoming master's degree student at a top 10 computer science (CS) program. I’m applying for PhD programs. I think that people doing ML/AI have an unfair advantage when it comes to the number of papers they can publish.
My research has been mostly in the area of theory and algorithms, where you either come up with a proof for your theorem/algorithm or you don’t. I think this is significantly harder than what most undergrads do in ML/AI. I have seen tens of students with publications in ML, but 0 students with publications in complexity theory, for instance. I know that at there are people who have published papers in theoretical CS, to but my point is it’s rare (and hard).
Do PhD admission committees at the top 20 CS schools take this into account when they look at a student’s previous research experience? More generally, how is a student’s research experience evaluated?
It depends on the person: some take this into account, others do not. In any case, it should not effect how you approach the application process.
Ah, so you've noticed that people in AI/ML publish a lot of junk papers in bulk? Yeah, university professors in CS have noticed that too.
But also, some of the people who publish those sorts of papers in bulk may also be evaluating your application, and maybe they think the coolest best researchers are the ones that just publish the most papers. And also some university systems especially in certain countries favor "quantitative" measures of research output that also value quantity over quality.
So, really there is no one answer to your question: anyone who evaluates your application will do so according to their own personal criteria of what is valuable. You'll apply with the research experience you have and in an ideal world you'll be admitted to a program where other people there also value the type of research experience you have, and it'll be a good fit for both.
“ But also, some of the people who publish those sorts of papers in bulk may also be evaluating your application” even at top 20 schools?
@StackExchanger Maybe even especially at those schools, I don't know. I think it's a mistake to assume "top" schools are somehow immune from bad academic trends.
@StackExchanger top schools have even a higher incentive for producing many publications, as the number of publications by faculty is one of the numbers that defines what a "top" school is.
In both Mathematics and CS, it is well known that people in certain areas publish more than in others. (I assume this is true.) There is no opprobrium attached to working (or not working) in one of these fields, but publication records are weighted by the subfield. Taking on a Ph.D. student is such a commitment that you can expect people to actually look at publications and not just count them. Not being in a "hot" field where people only publish after lots of work might be to your advantage, since potential Ph.D. advisors in that field are not swamped.
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203922 | Can a coauthor do the presentation at a conference?
I am the first author of a research paper I did under the supervision of my teacher (note that I am a BSc student of computer science). My paper got accepted at a conference. Now I have to present the paper, but I am feeling nervous and thinking I might say something wrong. Can my teacher, who is credited with coauthoring, present the paper at the conference?
Yes, of course. This is normal, and often happens.
There is no expectation that a particular author presents the paper at a conference. I suspect, however, that your teacher will also have a view on the matter. Do they want you to present or are they happy to present? Have you discussed the matter with them? They will know what is best.
Finally, I would say it would also be good to overcome your nervousness and think about presenting yourself. I was in the same position as an undergraduate and made a presentation of a paper at an international conference, and I am glad I did. It was a very formational experience.
Agreed. Especially with the last paragraph. You only get good at this by doing it. I'd add that you should be there if at all possible in any case. On the "stage" if possible, even if you aren't the presenter.
Fully agreed. Everyone at that conference is either there for the first time, or had their first time presenting sometime. They know how you feel. Most conferences are very welcoming, especially for young students. If your teacher is there, they will likely introduce you to people to help you get comfortable (it's part of the unwritten duties of academic mentors and advisors). So I would also encourage you to present yourself.
The nervousness comes from the fact that in the Q&A section, I won't be able to properly answer something. As a result, my paper won't be published. (Note: the conference i am going to is ICCIT.)
@rafraf If you get a question in the Q&A that you can't answer quickly, just say so. Ask the questioner to come up after the talk and give you their contact information and say you'll get back to them.
If its ICCIT you must go! What a fantastic experience and a privilege for an undergraduate. The publication is not normally related to how you answer in the Q&A for any conference I know! As already stated, you do not have to know every answer on the spot. You can always say "we can discuss this later". I made so many fluffs when I first did it - as said earlier the delegates will be so supportive and welcoming to you.
@rafraf Nothing terrible is going to happen if you do "say something wrong". Your paper will not get rejected, people will not think ill of you, etc. If I were to guess, I think you are mentally applying a model that you have been used to throughout your 10+ years of school experience, namely professors eager to spot mistakes in your work and deduct points for them, to a context where it's completely not how people operate. No will be waiting for you to make a mistake so they can pounce on you.
Go for it! But get a practice run or two in first, with an audience. It makes a massive difference in your early talks; that difference might reduce over time but never goes away completely. Encourage comments as well as questions - other people are far better at spotting what flows well and what needs a little more explanation. Your professor should be able to help you set this up - generally I push for getting a large fraction of the research group involved
Sharing my own experience, I spent 13 minutes out of 15 minute just talking about introduction of my research in my first presentation. Eventually you will get better. So try on your own. Use flash cards if necessary to overcome nervousness. Using flash cards are common. After all, everyone grow with their experience in their own way. Practice a few times in front of mirror. It looks weird in the beginning but you will get used to.
My first conference presentation was on the morning of September 11, 2001. It was (to put it mildly) not a great experience, but at least I've been able to go into every subsequent presentation thinking "this one won't be as bad".
I am pretty sure that every conference I've ever been to has had several papers presented by someone other than the first author. I recall some where the presenter wasn't even an author at all. This can happen for a number of reasons-- travel visa issues, limited travel budgets, schedule conflicts, illness, etc.
However (and this is the main reason for my separate answer) I want to encourage you in the strongest possible terms to go and present if circumstances permit. In particular, you should be really clear on how the funding for this trip is handled: Air fare, lodgings, and conference fees are your main concerns.
Your ability to communicate both in writing and in presentations is absolutely vital to your career, full stop. It's not just vital to your future as an academic-- it is vital in any professional position you might hold. People usually remember who told them about an idea, even if they know they're getting it secondhand. That's just how people's minds work.
Also, after the presentation, people might want to come and talk to you about it-- this is another great benefit of conferences. You get to meet people, and even though they may be asking you about your talk, you get to ask them what they thought! This is also incredibly valuable. You may spark an idea in a listener that you'll never hear unless you're there to present and then talk to people about.
The experience of giving a talk is very valuable no matter how scary it is-- and I say this as someone who used to physically shiver in adrenaline and fear while giving talks.
I'll even give you the secret to giving a first talk: Practice!
If you can arrange to give a talk in front of a class, do it. But even aside from that, practice, practice, practice. Practice like you're trying to get to Carnegie Hall. Practice until you're bored sick of it. Practice until you could give that talk with your entire cortex removed, by muscle memory alone. Practice so you know how long the talk takes. Practice so you work out your verbal stumbles. Practice, so you can fix whatever needs to be fixed, and then practice that.
Seriously, practice: I'm (now) a decent public speaker, and the week before a new 15 minute talk, I'll probably deliver it in full about three times each day. More, the night before the talk. No matter how nervous I am, I want all that repetition to kick in.
You can do this!
And you should, if circumstances permit.
Yes, as in other answers/comments, anyone authorized by the authors can present.
Nevertheless, if you (as a beginner) have the opportunity to be the presenter, you should absolutely do it.
With my own students, I do lots of "rehearsals" for any sort of oral exam or presentation... with lots of critique-ing, revising, and doing-it-over. Yes, for such a process to be ok with everyone, there does have to be trust and understanding.
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201413 | How can I pass a statistics exam that overly relies on memorizing formulas?
Long story short, I struggle with a statistics exam at the university. Although I know how to solve all types of exercises and the rationale behind each of them, I still can't pass this exam, because we are supposed to know ninety formulas by heart. I am not complaining about the volume of work that has to be put in, because I did all that had to be done. Still, when practicing, I was looking every time on a sheet where I had all formulas needed.
During the exam, though, we were not allowed to use any help. I find it extremely hard to memorize ninety formulas by heart. I literally don't know how to memorize them; it would take me years to learn them by heart. How can I do this?
(Assume for the sake of this question that it’s too late to change the exam mode to one which does not require so much memorizing.)
Welcome to Academia SE. I took the liberty to edit your question to focus it on preparing to the exam as it is. Otherwise we might get two completely different types of answers: One that focuses on how to beat the exam you get and one that focuses on changing the exam. That being said, if you want to convince your professor to change the exam mode, you might ask a separate question about this. You might also find convincing material here and in this paper.
@DanielHatton: Sadly, I don’t find this surprising at all and have observed many exams that are similar, though not quite this extreme. The reasons for this are usually: 1) The professor thinks that memorizing formulas is relevant and a good proxy for understanding (after all, they have memorised all of them). 2) Exams that can just quiz you on this are easier to create. 3) In certain disciplines, most students are happy if they can pass an exam by rote memorisation instead of actually understanding the subject. E.g., I would expect this if this is Statistics for Pharmacists.
My guess is that the professor doesn't expect the students to know 90 formulas by hearth, but know the concepts and derive the formulas from a basic set of formulas, but some students have tried to simplify the work by using a 90 formulas sheet. For example, you don't need the formula for mean and median if you know what mean and median are.
Related question here.
@Pete: This was my thought also. For example, in extremely elementary treatments of electricity, Ohm's law V = IR is sometimes stated in 3 different ways (the other two being I = V/R and R = V/I), and to present the topic without assuming students know any algebra, students are sometimes told (or very weak students in other situations take it upon themselves) to become familiar with all 3 versions.
There is also a milder version of @pete's comment: for a Calculus class, it is a good idea to memorize the formula of the derivative of $\sec$ and, at the same time, have the skills to be able to derive the formula when the formula is forgotten.
In addition to @Buffy suggestions: A lot of formulas in statistics are variations on the same theme. If you understand the relationship between the formulas you can learn for each "block of formulas" the main formula and the relationship with the others in that block.
It does not help you, but for the statistics exam I make I allow a list of formulas. If the student needs or wants to use statistics later, I would prefer that he/she/they look the required formulas up rather than rely on a memory from a course they took years ago. If that is the way I want them to use statistics, then the exam should reflect that.
+1 I'm even wondering what 90 different formulas can be included on a basic statistics course. To get to 90 formulas I would need to put a lot of variations of the same formulas.
@Pere: Here's the formula card that comes packaged with the Weiss Introductory Statistics text: http://www.math1312.weebly.com/uploads/2/1/2/0/2120132/is9_formula-table_card.pdf
... on which there just happens to be exactly 100 bullet-point formulas (ignoring the statistical tables at the back). Of those, I think maybe about a dozen may be duplicates, algebraic rewrites, or analogs of other formulas.
@DanielR.Collins And as predicted in the answer, these are variations of significantly less than 100 formulas. But even if you distill this down to somewhere between 10 and 20 meaningfully distinct formulas, teaching statistics as 'memorize all of them and then apply the correct one' is a terrible way to teach statistics almost guaranteed to produce garbage when applied in real world setting.
@quarague: That's not remotely a correct accounting, as noted in my prior comment.
@DanielR.Collins I must admit that I had in mind a shorter Introductory Statistics course that the one covered by that formula card. Furthermore, there are a handful of formulas that I wouldn't put in a formula card (nor learn by hearth) because they are just a way to write down a concept that should be understood, like probability of equally likely outcomes.
One way to memorize a lot of things is to write each one on a separate index card and carry them about with you at all times. Perhaps write a name on one side and the formula on the other.
Never leave home without your card deck.
Then, frequently during the day, whenever you have a stray moment, pull out the deck and refresh your memory with a few cards. Perhaps put a check mark on each card when you review it.
If you master a formula, you can leave its card behind - or not.
Another help is to write the formulae down when you review it. The coordination between hand and brain helps memory.
Yes, good suggestions.
Or you can use a flashcard app on your phone, for example Anki, which algorithmically determines when to show you each card based on how well you remembered it the last time you saw that card.
@kaya3, electronic "solutions", however, are less engaging than writing things out on cards. Reading something doesn't have the same effect on learning as writing. That is also why reading solutions to exercises doesn't have the same learning effect as doing them.
I'm not sure why you would expect writing flashcards on a keyboard and then reading them on a screen, to be less effective than writing them on paper and then reading them on paper. What the electronic version adds is spaced repetition, which is one of the most effective learning techniques for domains in which it's applicable (and it's definitely applicable for memorising formulae).
Your claim about reading vs. doing also contradicts research such as this which found that attempting practice problems to learn algebraic techniques was actually less effective for learning than reading worked example solutions to those problems. It depends what the learning goal is, of course ─ this was for memorisation, not learning generalisable skills ─ but the issue here is about memorisation.
@kaya3, I question the relevance of the cited work. The goal of the memorization here wasn't to reproduce the formulae, or to produce similar ones, but to apply them. An anecdote. When I was a kid, starting in kindergarten, teachers used flashcards to teach addition facts. Later, we were taught multiplication. I actually had a doctorate in math before I finally learned the multiplication tables up to 12x12. Seeing and doing are quite different things for learning.
@kaya3, another anecdote. The valedictorian in my undergraduate class used the notecard technique to remember things. He always carried a few cards and he frequently perused them and (I assume) annotated them. Don't write too much on any one card initially. He attributed his uniform academic success (undergrad) to those cards. I picked it up only later. I have several such cards on my desk as I write. I used them for lecturing, etc.
It's strange that from this experience, you conclude that the learning effect was attributable to the cards being physically made of paper. It is much more reasonable to suppose that your valedictorian's success was a result of what he did with those cards. Digital flashcards are used exactly the same way, but with the added benefit that the application keeps track of which cards you need to review and when.
I only bring up the worked example effect because you said "reading solutions to exercises doesn't have the same learning effect as doing them" ─ the research on this topic shows that indeed reading worked example solutions doesn't have the same learning effect, it has a greater learning effect; better retention and fewer mistakes when the student applies the learned material. I realise this is counterintuitive; "doing is better than reading" is one of those common sense things that is easily over-applied.
@kaya3, no, it was the fact that he wrote them on paper himself. It was his physical act of writing that engaged the brain. Typing has much less of an effect in my experience. It isn't the paper, it is the writing. And the key words (to me) in the paper you cited earlier is "for similar problems".
I think that's an interesting hypothesis but I wonder if there is any evidence for it. Regardless, the point of flashcards is not really the writing them in the first place (though writing your own flashcards is better than using someone else's, because you can build a deck that is specifically relevant for what you need to learn), rather it's that you periodically review them.
@kaya3: I notice that the word "reading" doesn't show up a single time in the Wikipedia article you linked to. (And it's not about rote memorizing of content; it's about explaining steps of a process.) It seems like you're running pretty far with a particular interpretation.
@DanielR.Collins Really, that's your objection? The verb "read" is commonly used in the context of worked examples; so what if Wikipedia uses the word "study" instead? The paper I linked to says "read" (and also "study"). And if you want to play that game, flashcards are also "studied" when you read one side and try to recall what's on the other. If this is the only issue you have with my comments then please mentally substitute the word "read" with "study" everywhere it appears. Also note that "read" is not synonymous with "passively read".
1. Understand the basic intuition.
My best method of memorizing formulas is to simply understand the rationale (or rather "intuition") behind them.
Let me explain it on the basis of the Gaussian: Perhaps you remember how the "Bell Curve" looks like:
It is curved upwards at the center similar to the f(x)=-x^2 (parabola)
It has two asymptotes y=0 at lim x->infinity and lim x->-infinity.
The function is even (have an axis of symmetry)
That 2 facts make me suppose that it has something to do with f(x)=-x^2 and f(x)=e^-x functions. Let combine them into: f(x)=e^-x^2.
Of course what we got is some kind of ideal "Unit Gaussian Function". The last thing we need to do is to shape it with some custom parameters in order to place it in a proper place:
Standard derivation (small sigma) to determine its "width". This is our 1/2sigma.
Shift it along X axis to place its mean value/center at a proper place. This is our (x-mi) term.
Multiply it by some factor in order to give it a desired max value or the most often case: to normalize it so the probability of x taking any value from X is equal 1. This is our: 1/sqrt(2pi)sigma term.
2. Learn how to derive
Other thing I usually do is to try to learn how the formula was derived from more fundamental theorems or formulas. When I sometimes forget the exact formula, I usually try to take some time to make a very quick "proof" for the formula.
For instance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proofs_related_to_chi-squared_distribution
Unfortunately it does not work well for formulas derived using very complex integrals or differential equations. Fortunately there is not so many of them. They usually result in functions that are not elementary anyway and must be published only in a form of tables or value sheets.
Write
I didn't have to memorize a set block of formulas, but I had to memorize a lot of raw material for my qualifying exams. (I assume everyone does.)
Writing is widely reputed to aid in memorization and in my anecdotal case it certainly did: My studying consisted of the creation of dozens of pages of handwritten notes. Then condensing it into a second set of notes maybe 30% shorter. And then a third set, 30% shorter again. (Alongside more traditional attempts at study, understanding and memorization, of course.)
The reduction in length was partly an indication of how much I felt I'd already memorized, but the sensation of actually writing those notes by hand, multiple times, helped. By the time of the exams, I was able to call up key information by imagining all those times I had already written it.
In your case, if discrete formulas are your downfall, I would make flashcards out of them, and as the act of study I would start by writing new cards down from memory.
Practice
If these formulas are simple enough that you can also work problems by hand, then definitely do that, too. And when I say work them by hand, I mean it literally. Start with the problem, write down the applicable formula(s), and work the problem with nothing more than a hand calculator to handle the mechanics of the arithmetic.
(Again, I am assuming the formulas and problems would be simple enough that this is viable.)
Categorize them as much as possible, perhaps by topic.
Then order them in some reasonable way within each category, perhaps by similarity. Try to remember the similarities/small differences between them and why they exist.
Then write them down in some organized way on a sheet, and color code them by category.
The idea is you want to break this gigantic pile down into easily digestible little chunks.
Finally it's just a matter of revisiting and reviewing this colorful result regularly: when you wake up, before you go to sleep, waiting in a queue somewhere, when you're on a train ...
For memorising a set of formulae (or words in a language, names of people, or other simple facts), a good choice is spaced repetition. This is implemented by applications such as Anki, which you can use on a desktop computer or a smartphone; you write the facts you want to memorise on "cards", typically with two "sides" (formula name on one side, formula on the other). You review those cards periodically (e.g. see one side and try to remember the other), and after reviewing a card you can tell the app whether it was easy or difficult for you to recall. That feeds back into how frequently the app asks you to review that card.
This is very similar to Buffy's answer, but I've written it as a separate answer because Buffy specifically promotes the use of physical paper flashcards over digital ones. The upside of using an app is the spaced repetition: it keeps track of how well you have learned each card so far, and then gets you to review those cards at (in theory) the optimal times for increasing your memory retention.
I don't have any scientific proof for that but some people believe that having a physical piece of written paper helps our brain better remember its content. as an "anegdotical proof" I noticed that it works for me as well.
I once took a quantum mechanics course where the professor thought it was really important that we memorize all the relevant formulas. The only way I managed to get through it was to, right before the test, sit and copy the formulas over and over again on a piece of paper for 15-30 minutes. Then as soon as I was given the test, I would write them down on my scratch paper. Good luck.
This is the technique I used. It is much easier to remember them all in one go at the start of the exam, perhaps before the timer starts, than one at a time during the exam as you need them.
This is an ideal example of a problem that can be solved by using a mind palace: https://www.coursera.org/articles/memory-palace
The answer by @csstudent1418 How to pass a statistics exam that overly relies on memorizing formulas? is basically a "memory palace lite".
I don't know how much time you have. But I would recommend you learn how to use memory palaces, and then apply them to this exam and any similar memorization problems in the future
In stats, we talk about cookbooks (lots of how-to procedures to remember, without background theory) and spookbooks (lots of fundamental theory that tends to frighten rather than enlighten the students).
Actually, I find the cookbooks rather spooky, with all their mysterious "you must never" and "you must always" and I find I can cook just fine working from spookbooks.
Now to the advice: if you study a good maths prob book such as Bain and Engelhardt, you might be able to work out the logic behind the formulas, which makes them easier to memorise.
The standard way is to keep your sheet by your side while you do the exercise. When you need to look at it, don't. Instead make an active recall effort. Try writing down the formula by heart. When you fail, look up the sheet, transcribe the formula and finish the exercise. Do enough exercises and eventually you will know the formula.
Additionally, a key thing is how you do your sheet. Write it by hand, make it neat and organized by topics or type of formula or whatever sounds like a good categorisation to you. Key thing is you need to struggle to organise the sheet, for me that acts as sorting things in what feels logical to me and massively help recall.
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158988 | Formal letter to an academic person holding Master's degree
Usually it is simple: "Dear Prof. Berret...", Dear Dr. Jones...". But this time I have to write a formal letter to a person with a Masters Degree (MSc). I never met the person, can not be sure about their gender (Tracy Smith could be both man/woman). The person is active in academia, publishing frequently and their job title is "Director". What are my options?
Dear Director of... (with no name)?
Dear Principal Investigator ...?
Dear Mr Smith?
Dear Mrs Smith?
Anyone?
Where is this person located in the world? Why do you need to write them a formal letter?
Why can't you write "Dear Tracy Smith,..."?
OP here: location is North America, purpose: job application.
Obligatory The Big Bang Theory reference.
Did you see if they have a LinkedIn profile or university profile that by any chance has a picture? (But I agree with @astronat, use "Dear Firstname Lastname").
@Jeroen Actually Dear First Name last name can be considered rude. If you read it in the 'right' intonation, it can sound like scolding/talking down. Some people read it like this, so dont be surprised if the reply might be different than expected.
Can you telephone the department and ask whomever answers, "I want to write a letter to Tracy Smith. What is the appropriate title?"
Don't overthink it. Try to find out the gender and then use "Mr." or "Mrs."
Even many professors don't insist on titles most the time and a person with a master degree is usually just a (former) student, who is one step further than other students. In a second E-Mail you can then use how they call themself in their signature.
"Dear Director" may be appropriate, when the job position is relevant to your E-Mail.
(It may depend on the country how much people want to be addressed using their academic full title)
A director of something probably isn't a student
I added "(former)". But it may still depend on the country, how much people insist on their academic titles.
If you are not sure of the proper title to use because information is missing (in this case gender), then the best way is to use a general salutation, leaning towards a more formal form.
'Dear Sir/Madam,' (capitals depending on locality) or even just 'L.S.' (lectori salutem). I also see no problem with 'Dear director Smith,', but know not everyone might appreciate that. For job applications 'Dear hiring manager,' is also commonly used and acceptable.
P.S. I've never heard of Tracy as a male name. Is it just an example or is there really a place where it's common for men to be called that?
Regarding Tracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tracy_(name) .
Quite some notable men (although many more women) and mostly US based.
At least far as I am aware, truly "formal letters" for job application purposes in the US/Canada are pretty much obsolete (I can't say as much about other areas of North America, you haven't been very specific). Maybe in some particular fields where I don't have much exposure that isn't true (law? certain areas of business? politics?). There may be formal communication of contracts and such, but not as much between peers or people who will be in a direct reporting relationship.
There's polite address, sure, but politely referring to someone by name is usually sufficient when they don't have a more official title. "Dear Firstname Lastname" is fine for someone without a doctorate, professor role, or government role. Even the "Dear" is a bit quaint these days.
""formal letters" for job application purposes in the US/Canada are pretty much obsolete" No, they are required for all academic jobs I have seen in US/Canada.
In these cases, I either sidestep the issue and say "Greetings" or refer to them by their first name, e.g., "Dear Tracy."
...this is not appropriate in the whole world. Is this answer about the US by any chance?
It is and great! What's appropriate in your context? (Also looks like the OP is in North America - not sure if what I would do is applicable to the whole region)
"Mr. Director" or finding out all the titles (if anyhow possible) would be appropriate in my region. (Maybe you could add to your answer where this answer applies to?)
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159084 | How to avoid plagiarism when reciting a list of technical terms word-for-word from another article?
I'm working on a term paper that will directly lead into my Master's thesis, so I'm concerned about whether I'm committing plagiarism here. There are two issues: (1) Reproducing a list of technical terms, and (2) reproducing an equation with explanations of the different terms.
(1) I want to include a list of technical terms that were already enumerated in a research article. Here is how that article is written:
However, at the very beginning of the manure life
cycle, the fresh animal waste can be characterized with
its primary components, the feces and urine. Fecal
material contains a wide spectrum of organic compounds such as undigested litter, living microorganisms, carbohydrates, proteins, fatty acids, celluloses,
hemicelluloses and lignin (Clark et al. 2005; ASAE
American Society of Agricultural Engineers 2003).
Source: Li, C., Salas, W., Zhang, R., Krauter, C., Rotz, A., & Mitloehner, F. (2012). Manure-DNDC: A biogeochemical process model for quantifying greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions from livestock manure systems. Nutrient Cycling in Agroecosystems, 93(2), 163–200. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10705-012-9507-z
To what extent do I need to paraphrase this list in order to include it in my thesis? Would changing the order of the list items be enough to constitute a paraphrase?
(2) I want to include an equation from another source, which also explained each of the terms in that equation. Here is how that article is written:
dC/dt = CNR * μ * (S * kl + (1-S) * kr) * [C] [Eq. 3]
Where [C] is organic C content (kg C/ha), t is time (day), S is labile fraction of organic
C compounds in the pool, (1-S) is resistant fraction of organic C compounds, kl is
specific decomposition rate (SDR) of labile fraction (1/day), kr is SDR of the resistant
fraction (1/day), μ is temperature and moisture factor, CNR is C/N ratio reduction
factor, SDR is 0.074, 0.074, 0.02, 0.33, 0.04, 0.16 and 0.006 (1/day) for very labile
litter, labile litter, resistant litter, labile microbes, resistant microbes, labile humads,
and resistant humads, respectively.
Source: Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space. (2017). DNDC Scientific Basis and Processes (Version 9.5). University of New Hampshire.
How should I go about paraphrasing the equation and "Where..." statements?
The reason I am confused about this is because MIT's anti-plagiarism resource does not seem to cover these topics:
MIT Academic Integrity Handbook: Paraphrasing
The first box can be easily rewritten. For the equation I think doing what you have done here is perfect. Alternatively see Anonymous Physicist's answer.
Paraphrasing doesn't help you avoid plagiarism. Only citation does.
My understanding is that insufficient paraphrasing or quotation (i.e. copying someone's exact wording without enclosing it in quotation marks) would constitute plagiarism with or without citation
If you enclose the text in quotation marks and cite the original source, it is not plagiarism. If it is a list, a quotation makes more sense than paraphrasing.
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159038 | APA Citation Followed by in-text reference to figure
I want to provide a parenthetical citation along with a reference to a figure in my text. What is the proper way to format this?
Blah blah blah (Li et al., 1994, 1997) (Figure 1).
Blah blah blah (Li et al., 1994, 1997; Figure 1).
Blah blah blah (Figure 1) (Li et al., 1994, 1997).
Is the Figure part of your own paper, or part of the paper you are citing?
A part of a paper I'm citing.
Assuming the figure is not directly related to the citation, I would be looking to rewrite the sentence to separate the citation and the figure reference. It seems unusual that you would be introducing what is typically your own work (i.e., a figure) and citing a reference at exactly the same point. For example, you could write something like :
Figure 1 presents the results of ... based on data from Li et al (1994, 1997)
Of course, the way to do this will depend on the details of your content, but I'd generally seek to separate the two elements.
Alternatively, if the the figure is from the citation and you are reproducing it, you could do something like this:
(see Figure 1 taken from Li et al, 1994, 1997)
Or a variant:
(see Figure 1 based on data from Li et al, 1994, 1997)
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27440 | To avoid legal battle, in bussiness world reference letters are written extremely terse. How do academics get away with this?
It seems to be accepted wisdom in the business world that reference letters for former employees should be extremely terse. They should confirm that the employee worked there, and essentially nothing else:
To whom it may concern: Ellen Ripley was employed by the Weyland-Yutani Corporation from June 2137 to September 2139. Signed, C. Burke, manager."
The standard reasoning is that if the letter contains something unfavorable and the employee is turned down for a future job, they might sue their former company for libel, claiming the unfavorable statement was a lie which damaged their career. In order to avoid the possibility of such a legal battle (which, the reasoning goes, could be very expensive, even if the company wins), the company tells its managers to write letters with no content, so that there's no chance of them containing something actionable.
This question on Workplace Stack Exchange, Is there any evidence that giving references for former employees is inherently risky?, attests to this practice, and the answers provide some suggestion that the company's fears are justified.
On the other hand, in academia, detailed and informative recommendation letters are the norm. They often run to multiple pages, and contain specific information about the candidate's history and activities at the institution, as well as the writer's (supposedly honest) subjective assessment of the candidate's strengths, weaknesses, and potential. This is not only common but effectively mandatory; a minimal recommendation letter of the kind described above would immediately consign the candidate's application to the nearest wastebasket.
This would seem to be just the sort of thing that fills corporate counsel with horror, yet we do it every day. No academic employer of mine has ever told me not to do so; for that matter, I can't say that I've ever received any official guidance, one way or the other, on writing recommendations. Nobody in academia seems to be concerned that writing a letter that could be construed as less than favorable could result in legal consequences. So how are we getting away with it?
Are universities treated differently under the law, making them less vulnerable to such threats? Or do they willingly accept the legal risks in order to make the world a better place by providing actual information about their former students/employees? Or is everyone ignorant of the risk of trouble? Or is there something I have not thought of?
To forestall a couple of objections: I know that academics usually try to write only positive letters, and decline to write if they have nothing good to say, but that's evidently not enough in the corporate world. Anyway, candidates often end up damned by faint praise. Also, I know that we send letters in confidence, with the understanding that they won't be shown to the candidate, and sometimes this is backed by having the candidate sign a waiver, but I have to believe that a sufficiently determined and litigious candidate could get access anyway.
(I know this question may sound rhetorical, but I ask it in seriousness, and hope to learn something from the answers. My context is the US, but if things are substantially different in other places, that would be interesting to know as well.)
... and then the lawyers awoke to a golden, new opportunity.
@MadJack: No they don't, because students generally waive rights to accessing the letters, and therefore have no right to sue over their contents.
@MadJack: <valjean>What have I done? Sweet Jesus, what have I done?</valjean>
I'm surprised that this is the case in business. The practice you describe seems to have no function besides confirming that the candidate did, in fact, work there (which is already confirmed by calling them anyway). Perhaps academia is a smaller world, and the cost to one's reputation from such shenanigans is too high? Or perhaps graduate students are so downtrodden and destitute that they wouldn't dream of going up against big institutions with competent legal teams?
Point of information: does the university apply the usual business rules to its non-academic staff? If so then that pretty much rules out legal ignorance as an explanation.
You might want to add a country-specific tag. In Germany, for example, employees have a legal right to a "qualified reference letter" that includes information about quality of and behavior at work.
@arne.b: “that includes information about quality“ – unfortunately in a perpetually changing code that may be used differently by the author and reader of the letter (e.g., the German equivalent of “The employee has met our expectations on the whole.” usually means that the employee was a total failure), which makes it only a question of time until these letters become totally useless.
@SteveJessop: Excellent question. I have no idea.
@Wrzlprmft Actually, in Germany these wordings are more or less standardized, and have been for some time. This means that there is less of an "inflation" over time.
@shane: I had in mind the former. But it's my impression that a business manager, if asked to give an expert opinion on the quality of a former employee's work, will refuse to do so, so I want to understand why academics are willing. Some of the answers suggest my impression may be wrong, though.
FWIW, the concern in the banking industry is equally that giving a favourable reference to a candidate that later under-performs in their new job may leave the referee and their company liable to the new employer. Any claim might be supported by evidence they dig up of under-performance or other issues at the previous company that weren't disclosed, or inflated claims in the reference.
My impression is that the difference is largely cultural. The academic community in the U.S. has developed a culture of relying on written letters of recommendation, and this practice has a lot of inherent stability. Someone considering suing knows that a questionable lawsuit would permanently ruin their career, in a way that wouldn't necessarily happen in the business world. (For one thing, academia is a much smaller, more tightly knit, and more philosophically coherent group.) If a student or job applicant did sue frivolously, then it would probably be cheaper to settle, but the university would not do so: proving a point would be a higher priority than saving money. (By contrast, for-profit businesses are less likely to make unnecessary expenditures to try to defend their principles.) University attorneys know that if they advised faculty not to write or require letters, everyone would ignore them and it would just hurt the university's reputation. The culture takes on a life of its own, regardless of the legal context.
However, I believe U.S. legal precedents are actually pretty favorable for academic letters of recommendation. The key phrase is "academic deference," which as I understand it is the theory that academic judgments are not subject to legal review because the courts aren't even capable of evaluating these judgments. (Of course I'm not a lawyer and so I'm probably at least overlooking subtleties.) You can sue for reasons like discrimination, but you can't successfully sue someone who made a good faith effort to judge your academic performance or potential on the grounds that you think they judged it wrong.
The academic deference doctrine is based on a number of precedents, but it's somewhat controversial. For example, people argue that it makes it too easy to get away with discrimination (since it makes courts reluctant to examine evidence), and that lots of non-academic judgments are equally difficult to evaluate but don't have a special doctrine protecting them from review by the courts. See this article by Moss for a review of the precedents and an argument against academic deference.
Depending on the circumstances, there may also be other legal issues. For example, it's much harder to sue someone for libel based on their evaluation of your published scholarly work. In particular, you have to prove actual malice since publishing the work makes you a public figure for this purpose. In other words, it's not enough to prove that the evaluation was wrong; instead, you have to prove that they knew it was wrong or at least had reckless disregard for the truth. (See, for example, Posner's wonderful opinion on whether calling someone a crank is defamatory.) I believe this is much more clear cut and better established than academic deference is, but it is not relevant for unpublished work or other recommendation letter content.
Returning to the cultural theme, it's also worth thinking about psychological factors. If I run a business, then my ex-employees could be applying for jobs at competitors, partners, or companies that are irrelevant to my interests. Among these possibilities, partner companies I'm actively working with are only a small fraction. The generic case is that I won't care about the new employer or will actively harbor ill will towards them. If a lawyer advises me that it's best not to say anything, I may seize on that excuse even aside from the lawsuit potential. By contrast, academia is a world in which we're all partners, and that feels very different. Universities do compete against each other in some ways, of course, but there's a much greater feeling of good will and cooperation than you see between most for-profit companies. It's no surprise that very different norms and practices have developed in a far less competitive environment.
"Someone considering suing knows that a questionable lawsuit would permanently ruin their career" Wouldn't a court be likely to interpret that as an aggravating factor? "Not only did you libel my client, preventing him obtaining a job at the University of Awesome but, also, you and all your buddies attempted to punish him for defending himself through this lawsuit. It sounds almost like the mafia, doesn't it?"
@DavidRicherby: Yes, an organized attempt to retaliate would be bad, but I think the consequences would unfold on their own (assuming there was no good reason for the lawsuit). Suppose Alice writes a letter for Bob's postdoc applications that is supportive but not as glowing as Bob had hoped for, and Bob obtains the letter and sues for libel. The lawsuit would attract lots of attention, and nobody would trust any letter written for him after he sued. That would be a huge barrier to employment, and furthermore who wants a tenure-track colleague who is prone to filing frivolous lawsuits?
@AnonymousMathematician libel - a published false statement that is damaging to a person's reputation; a written defamation. Would not Bob have to prove that some element of Alice's supportive letter is false? Alice wrote that Bob could walk and chew gum at the same time. Bob's attorneys will prove otherwise. Is this really what Bob wants?
@emory: Suppose Alice wrote something like "Bob is an exceptionally promising researcher; he is even stronger than Carl and comparable with Dave, although not quite as accomplished as Eve was at Bob's career stage", while Bob thought the letter should have ranked him far ahead of all these people. He might try to prove his case by counting papers or citations. Of course this wouldn't really prove anything, and it would be a foolish decision to take this approach, but it's conceivable that someone might try.
More to the point, someone might be correct that the letter was defamatory. This is the scenario business is especially keen to avoid. In academia the plaintiff's career would nevertheless be damaged even if they won the lawsuit. That's the point at which it starts to look like a racket, but it's hard to prove if the career is harmed only in the form of future prospective employers thinking, "oh, that's the stroppy so-and-so that wouldn't accept their reference letter was true and somehow got good enough lawyers to persuade a court to agree".
As for how a positive statement could be defamatory: you can damn with faint praise. "Tom Brady is a thoroughly adequate quarterback, certainly in the top 75% of NFL starters, and is kind to animals" is positive. Jamarcus Russell would bite your hand off for it. But for Brady it could perhaps be considered either straight false (he's better than adequate) or to give an intentionally or negligently false implication even where it's factually correct (there's a clear implication that he's not in the top 25%).
At this point its a powder keg. If you have an independently wealthy academic that can afford to sue, despite the reputational damage, there is a real risk they could win. To address @AnonymousMathematician's comment "..and nobody would trust any letter written for him..." it is also true that this happens to Alice who had written the letter originally and now has been made a public spectacle of writing a bad letter. And other academics seeing this will know, you're better off not writing a letter at all unless it is a glowing review. Which is where things are almost at right now...
That almost begs the question then: has this already happened before?
Link rot, posner: https://web.archive.org/web/20140826142649/http://www.projectposner.org/case/1996/75F3d307
I believe there is a very reasonable misunderstanding here - there is a difference in a "verification of employment", being used as a "reference", and a "recommendation letter". These all have their common uses, but they are handled very, very differently.
Verification of Employment (present or past)
To whom it may concern: Ellen Ripley was employed by the
Weyland-Yutani Corporation from June 2137 to September 2139. Signed,
C. Burke, manager."
This is a perfect example of the proper, commonly accepted response to a request for a verification of employment. This sort of letter is useful in a wide-variety of circumstances, including:
Proving your work/career history to an employer
Verifying your job to a government agency or company (think insurance, banks, State benefits, etc)
Qualifying for corporate discount/membership arrangements (cell phones, computers, credit unions, etc)
This is not at all to be construed as a letter of recommendation - it isn't one!
There are cases where more information is requested, such as:
Is the employee eligible to be re-hired at the company
How did the employment end - were they fired, quit, laid off?
Salary verification (this is not the most common, but it is not unheard of and more commonly requested by banks and government agencies)
Serving as a Reference
A employer or manager may be asked to serve as a reference, where a prospective employer might wish to call and speak with them personally and ask them various questions. What questions get asked, and any potential for legal action, depends upon what is said, documentation, and consequences. Most of the legal actions revolve around claims of libel or defamation. Note that in the US you are allowed to cherry pick your own reference to provide to a future/prospective employer.
Sometimes this is requested by email or fax, in which case it is common to just treat it as little more than a verification of employment request. However, sometimes this is much more important than a mere verification - it depends upon the position, industry, recruiter, etc.
Letter of Recommendation
In industry a real letter of recommendation functions much more closely to how it is treated in academia. A person in a position to closely evaluate an employee is asked - almost exclusively by the employee - to provide such a letter. This is almost always requested from an immediate supervisor, manager, directory, or executive with a close working relationship with the employee.
All the same rules apply. These are less common in industry, perhaps at least partly because they are rare and unexpected and because unsolicited opinions tend to be discounted and distrusted much more commonly than in academia. However, they can still come in handy.
Fear of torts really isn't that big of a factor as far as I've seen, because a letter of recommendation is expected solely to be positive. I'm not aware of any case of a company suing another company because "you said this guy was great and it turns out he was useless!" It just isn't done.
And an employee couldn't very successfully sue an employer for saying something nice about them; the USA may have a reputation for being litigious, but that's just ridiculous (not that it hasn't ever happened I'm sure, but it's obviously frivolous and very rare).
To forestall a couple of objections: I know that academics usually try
to write only positive letters, and decline to write if they have
nothing good to say, but that's evidently not enough in the corporate
world. Anyway, candidates often end up damned by faint praise.
Actually, in the corporate world this is almost exactly what happens. If an employer doesn't want to provide a real recommendation, they just provide a verification of employment.
I've had recruiters contact previous/current bosses of mine (who I talked with in advance to ensure they would provide a useful reference rather than a mere verification of employment), and been told by the recruiter when such contacts were very positive. "They really gave you a glowing review!"
Most good corporate bosses will be more than happy to say good things if they have a good opinion of you, and will accept any request of yours to share their opinion. If they get asked for a reference and they don't know you well or don't have a great opinion of you, they'll probably just not say very much - unless they hate you, in which case you really shouldn't have offered them as a reference!
How Does Academia Do It?
It's really much like the corporate world does it: they recognize that libel and defamation are in fact illegal, and so avoid even a potential appearance by avoiding saying negative things. They also realize that speaking poorly of others tends to reflect badly on you, too - so "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all".
And yes, you can be damned by faint praise. If you are looking for more than an entry-level job at a company and talk about what great work you did at your last place and how valuable you were, and then they talk to the reference you provided (probably your boss or a colleague) and all they'll say is you worked there, and maybe you were a nice person who was usually punctual? Yeah, that's not going to go well in any sector.
It is underplayed here, but I agree that the content of an academic letter is safe. People as recommendation letters from professors who can say nice things about them, and the recommendation letter is more of the collection of nice moments and the details of the relationship. If the employer is looking for proof of a given skip or experience, those letters help. if it is not in the letter, it may be a sign, too. Even so, no one can accuse a professor on the basis he left out some touchier topics.
There's a piece by UK humorist Miles Kington which jokes about the possibility of suing for a positive statement. The fictitious version of the author sues for defamation over someone saying he's not funny, wins, gets an apology stating (among other things) that he's "effortlessly hilarious at all times". His employer then accuses him of not working hard enough since it's effortless and cuts his pay, so he sues again for the second defamation in the apology for the first defamation ;-)
@E.P. Hah, just re-found this and fixed that failed train of thought!
In general, yes, there is a major difference in how employees' and students' letters are handled. Applicants to US undergraduate and graduate programs are routinely asked to waive the right to see their letters of recommendation, and therefore the letter writers are free to speak in a much more candid manner and offer a frank appraisal of a candidate's positives and negatives.
It's worth noting that this is often not the case outside the US, where students are often directly given letters of recommendation that are exactly of the bland and generic format you described above. These letters, as you can imagine, are essentially useless in describing a student's real qualifications, and consequently we give those letters very little weight in our deliberations.
As I mentioned, I'm a bit skeptical that such waivers really prevent determined students from ever seeing the letters or finding out what they say. Also, I've seen similarly frank letters written for applicants to postdoc and professorial jobs, so it can't be something specific to student applications. And if the waiver scheme really worked, wouldn't business employers use it too?
Moreover, I've never received a memo from university counsel saying "don't write letters unless you know a waiver was signed". If the waiver was so essential, you'd think I would have.
I wonder how much it's viewed as an "obvious" thing that you shouldn't write such a letter.
It is my impression that, for example here in MN, those waivers are understood to be a-priori invalid, insofar as there are various rights which cannot be "signed away".
Just a small note from somebody not from the US: I have been directly given 3 or 4 recommendation letters so far, and none of them were bland and generic in the least. Although I have heard cases in Europe where the letter was sent directly to whomever was handling the application process. (All of the above only for academia)
This may very well depend on your local culture. In Germany, for instance, the standard letter of recommendation tends to be very fact-based (so-and-so worked on such-and-such project, etc.) with little "evaluation." (I'm also external these days.)
Do postdoc applicants in the US sign similar waivers? If not, then this is at best a very partial explanation, I'm afraid.
@episanty No. Neither do applicants for faculty positions or for tenure/promotion.
I'm also pretty sure that the recommendation letters are not entirely protected by the waivers that students sign. When I write letters for positions at any University of California school, I have to click through some legal language explaining exactly this: despite the waiver the student may be entitled by law to see the letter.
In Japan, the recommendation letter is a 推薦状 [suisenjyou] and it will in all but the most Westernized schools be given to the student such that they can read it and stamped with the seal of the professor and possibly an official seal from the school.
The purpose of this is slightly different than an American recommendation letter -- which is more of an appraisal of the student's abilities. By and large, the Japanese recommendation letter serves as an introduction / expression that the professor or teacher vouches for the student as someone trustworthy for the new job or school. It contains little information and not much detail on why the student would be recommended.
It was quite the pain getting letters of this format from some of the Americans less aware of the existence of what to us is such a bizarre practice.
I believe but cannot vouch that the practices are similar in Korea and China.
I'd guess part of the answer is that academics deal with the risk because they can't afford not to, because a reference serves a different purpose.
In business, my understanding is that people are largely selected for jobs on things that can be measured and compared apart from references (such as formal qualifications, performance in aptitude tests, years of experience), and on things that the hiring committee is able to assess (such as answers at interview).
While some of these play a part in academia, a large factor of hiring decisions is the applicant's research potential/demonstrated performance. This is sufficiently specialized and difficult to compare that the hiring committee cannot do that task entirely alone. They need additional experts to help make the judgements. Part of that can be done by sending papers to experts chosen by the panel, but part of it is done by receiving detailed references from people who are already familiar with the applicant's work (and so hopefully won't need to spend as much time to make a judgement).
I always show a student (or colleague) the letter I've been asked to write - noting that although s/he has (almost always) waived the right to see the letter, I have not waived the right to show it. S/he can suggest edits, or even ask me not to send it (that's never happened).
The University of Chicago does not only require signing the waiver, but as an applicant you also have to sign that you did not see the letter nor were involved in any form in its writing.
In academia, publicly grading a student's performance is par for the course. After all, you get a GPA which is a very public (if often somewhat subjective) "evaluation" of your academic strength... Writing a few words that describe, in essence, where that grade came from, is a logical extension. From there, a full letter of recommendation is not much further.
By contrast, employee evaluations are considered highly confidential; so from the outset, there are different approaches to the way a person's performance is evaluated and publicized. That difference seems to carry forward into the culture of recommendations.
I have been a manager of people "in industry" for years, and ran into this problem from time to time. On a handful of occasions I have agreed to be a reference for people who used to work for me. Typically I have done this only for people who had already left my organization, with whom I had remained in touch, and who I would not be afraid to give a good recommendation. Typically those things tend to go hand in hand... and I know that for at least one of them, my recommendation made the difference for him getting his "dream job" (I know this, because 10 minutes after hanging up the phone to the HR department of his future employer, he called me to say he had just received a verbal offer, and that they mentioned that my reference had tipped the scale). For me, doing the right thing on occasions like that is more important than following recommendations of corporate lawyers... call me reckless.
Update (quoting from http://www.aaup.org/issues/academic-freedom/professors-and-institutions):
The professional standard of academic freedom is defined by the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which was developed by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Association of American Colleges and Universities. It is the fundamental statement on academic freedom for faculty in higher education. It has been endorsed by over 180 scholarly and professional organizations, and is incorporated into hundreds of college and university faculty handbooks. The 1940 Statement provides:
College and university teachers are citizens, members of a learned profession, and officers of an educational institution. When they speak or write as citizens, they should be free from institutional censorship or discipline, but their special position in the community imposes special obligations. As scholars and educational officers, they should remember that the public may judge their profession and their institution by their utterances. Hence they should at all times be accurate, should exercise appropriate restraint, should show respect for the opinions of others, and should make every effort to indicate that they are not speaking for the institution.
AAUP, Policy Documents & Reports 3-4 (9th ed. 2001) (hereafter "Redbook").
Further down this same (rather long) article, there are numerous instances of case law. I am quoting just one that seems to indicate that academic freedom and "selection of faculty" are intertwined - this would seem to give academics the freedom to write proper detailed references (protected by "academic freedom") since such references are used "for the selection of faculty":
State v. Schmid, 84 N.J. 535 (1980), appeal dismissed sub. nom., Princeton Univ. v. Schmid, 455 U.S. 100 (1982)
Any direct governmental infringement of the freedom of teaching, learning, and investigation, is an assault upon the autonomy of institutions dedicated to academic freedom. In addition, universities perform functions, such as the selection of faculty, that are inexorably intertwined with the exercise of academic freedom.
I think that last sentence is the reason "we are getting away with it".
But academics don't just write letters for students: also for postdocs and other academic employees who are moving on. And my understanding is that the latter are just as detailed.
@NateEldredge - see updated answer.
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34164 | Is it ethical to express thanks and gratitude to a reviewer in the reply to the review text?
I want to know whether is it ethical to express thanks and gratitude to a reviewer
in the reply to review text. I feel we should express thanks to reviewers who spent valuable time to review our work.
IMHO it is more common to thank the reviewer in the Acknowledgments of your article, but of course you can also thank her/him in your response.
Once i wanted to add the anonymous reviewer as a coauthor
@just-learning: That is probably quite field-dependent. Fields that usually have very tight restrictions on paper length try to reduce everything to the absolute minimum (which, in case of the Acknowledgments, usually means that they contain a note about the grant number and little to nothing else) may rather tend to not do that.
@O.R.Mapper: That's interesting. I wonder which fields have that tight article length restrictions.
@just-learning: CS conference papers are often restricted to either 8, 10, or 12 pages. Which invariably means that the last few days of writing a paper are not so much about adding text, but about "fighting" for single lines (line breaks that will result in one page less) by removing content without losing any crucial information. When possibly useful, but essentially redundant information such as the full addresses of authors' affiliations, or DOIs in the bibliography, is among the first things to be removed, there is no space left for polite, but essentially uninformative statements.
It is not a question of ethics, it is a question about being courteous. Reviewers spend time to read and comment on your manuscript. Regardless of the type of comments you receive there will be significant voluntary work involved. It is only fair to show some gratitude. One way to think about this is that it is no different from any other type of professional correspondence.
And you should still thank them even when you wish you could yell at them instead...
Yes, how could it possibly be unethical to thank someone? This is very common.
It's very common and standard courtesy. Correctly reviewing a manuscript takes quite a lot of time and is no small effort. And in most cases, a thorough review will help make your manuscript better, so it's not strange to thank someone for helping you improve your work.
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2808 | Dismissed by my committee
I attended a doctoral program and was completing it in 3 to 4 years. I got a life-threatening sickness that set me back several years. When nearing my dissertation I was dismissed. I was told that I was let go because I had cancer. I never wanted to return to that school again, but not having completed my work has caused me great heartache and I am not able to pursue the career I desired. Is it at all possible to complete the degree elsewhere?
Had you published any of the results? This may be enough to convince an admissions committee that you are worth taking a risk on.
From the limited details you provide, it seems like you'll need some far more personalized advice than we can offer you here. I'll leave the question open anyway, just in case, but I strongly suggest you seek guidance from someone qualified to answer who is more intimately aware of your situation.
Another thing in your favour, if you had done sufficiently well and had been working for 3 or 4 years, is that you probably have developed good research skills, which would make finishing a PhD the second time around much easier. (Are you in the US? If so, there's coursework to consider as well. Maybe you can get an exception, maybe not.)
This seems to border on a legal issue.
Some universities have a rule that you MUST complete your phd within X years of starting, and this is inflexible. Is it possible that such a rule has caught you out?
In general, I think graduate schools want students to pursue their entire PhD candidacy at a given institution. Moreover, schools may be reluctant to count work done a long time ago as part of the requirements for obtaining a degree, as it likely sets a bad precedent.
Moreover, there's the question of financing. If you're in a program where students are financed through TA's, it's a lot easier to convince a school to take a chance, rather than in the sciences. The reason for this is that funding in the sciences is often tied to specific projects—which means that you will most likely need to change topics if you pursue a PhD in such a department. This would of course set your time to degree back considerably.
That said, you may find a sympathetic department that's willing to take a chance. My best advice is try to talk to the graduate admissions officers of some of the departments you're thinking of applying to. They'll help you to figure out what are the requirements and possibilities.
Finding a willing advisor seems to be sufficient to secure a position. The OP would essentially advisors, I am not sure the way has to be through the usual channels.
@Raphael: Finding a willing advisor isn't sufficient if the admissions committee has a policy against "transfers" or "restarts."
This situation surprises me: in the U.S., one could likely file (and win) a lawsuit alleging discrimination, in such a situation.
Dismissal from a college or university on grounds that one is ill is not legal, I think. Accommodation must be made, so that perhaps things are delayed, but not simply cancelled.
Outright dismissal from a job (such as research assistant or teaching assistant) on medical grounds I think is not allowed, either. One may be required to take a leave of absence if one absolutely cannot do one's job even with accommodation, but there is substantial legal (and moral) push to accommodate and reach a compromise.
I think discrimination on admissions, on medical grounds, would also be essentially illegal.
Edit: you should talk to a laywer conversant with such things, who might be willing to talk to you without a huge fee if you describe your situation to their screening personnel. The situation is rife with lawyerism, indeed. Be careful.
While this may be the case, we do not have enough details to allege anything. To the OP reading this post, I strongly suggest you exercise caution before throwing around terms such as "illegal" and "lawsuit". You have your entire professional life ahead of you still; don't ruin it now.
Yes, indeed, caution in legal matters is surely wise... but/and there is something strange here. An informal consultation with student-legal-advisor or such might be useful to help the questioner see/understand the boundaries/parameters/whatever in his/her situation. And/but I will reiterate: in the U.S., dismissal for medical condition is... not ok. If that's what happened... one should investigate what legal recourse there might be. But do_not rush into things, making too-aggressive claims, no. But don't be too passive, either... (The usual...)
It's also quite likely that the formal reasons for the dismissal were something other than just getting sick. However, the OP should definitely speak to somebody who can speak to legal matters in the country where he or she lives, just to understand what the appropriate options are.
I think you should try to fight it diplomatically but legally with the school. It doesn't seem fair or legal. It would be nearly impossible to continue in another institution unless you have relationships and also the reputation of the former school is considerably higher, which you wouldn't want to do anyway.
Depends if really the time you were away was strictly due to sickness. If you took several years more afterwards it is unlikely for you to win. Doctoral programs routinely turn away people who started, left, went to the real world, didn't like it, and want to return. They believe that somewhat freshness of knowledge and being current in the topics is important. Also they have some strange ideas about academic virginity that you want to take into account.
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9251 | Diplomurkunde and Diplom (Diplomlehrer) in English?
This might be off-topic but I thought I would try here since I know we have people who will know the answer.
I have received two documents from a prospective teacher. They seem to be German diplomas but I do not understand clearly what they really mean. The names of the diplomas are:
Diplomurkunde, and
Diplom (Diplomlehrer)
(1) translates (via Google) as Diploma Certificate. This is a bit confusing because I normally think of certificates as something and a diploma as something else (which requires more studying).
(2) translates as Graduate Teacher. This seems to be quite different from what I'm used to as a graduate teacher is something you are (or something you do) rather than something you've achieved.
Is there a more detailed explanation which would tie back to the UK or US educational system?
you should be able to create a new tag just by typing it in. The academia faq says you should only need 150 rep to create a tag (this number varies by site).
Pre-Bologna process, a German Diplom (which is no longer being awarded, and [see cbeleites's comment below] is mostly replaced now by a Master's degree) was generally the rough equivalent of a US Master's degree, attaining it is one of the requirements to start Doctorate studies.
Your applicant sent you two documents:
The Diplomurkunde is roughly the Master's diploma in the US. It is called a "certificate" (Urkunde) to distinguish it from the Diplomzeugnisse which also includes the transcript of grades. It is the one that one may consider framing and putting on the wall.
The Diplomlehrer tells you what subject the applicant received his "masters" in. In particular, he received it in Lehrer, which translates directly to Lecturer Teacher. Or, as we may say, it tells you that he received something like a Master's in education.
To clear up any doubts, though, you could just ask your applicant to ask the Akademisches Auslandsamt of the place where he received the degree to send a letter attesting to the equivalency of the degree. (That shouldn't be too hard, since now they should've converted to a Bachlor/Master system anyway.)
This letter of equivalency is called "Diploma Supplement", and the applicant can usually get it in the exam office of the university that granted the degree. It also gives translation instructions of the grades.
BTW: Some departments decided to continue the Diplom, e.g. engineering at TU Dresden (http://tu-dresden.de/die_tu_dresden/fakultaeten/fakultaet_maschinenwesen/studieninteressierte/diplomingenieur/index_html/document_view). The rule is that they have to offer Bachelor/Master courses, but are free to offer additional Diplom courses.
@cbeleites: thanks for the corrections! I completely wasn't aware that the Diplom system is still available.
"Lehrer" translates to "teacher".
@cbeleites and Willie Wong - The two diplom documents are separated by four years. Does this mean the candidate has the equivalent of two master degrees?
@earthling: beats me. Why don't you ask the candidate?
@A.Schulz fixed. Though I profess I am not exactly clear on the finer points of the difference. (I am not thinking of lecturer as the academic title, but as someone who gives lectures.)
@WillieWong It's a good question but he's German and doesn't understand UK/US academic systems.
@earthling: you can simply ask the candidate whether he holds two separate degrees. There's nothing much I can tell you based on the information you've given us. The Diploms just tell you a certain authority has given the candidate certain degree(s) on certain dates. If you need to know the details, I would second cbeleites and tell you to ask the candidate for the Diplom supplement in English.
But if all you care about is whether the candidate has received "something like a masters degree in education", I think the conclusion is that "yes, he does". Does the fact that he may have two separate degrees matter?
'Diplom' is the standard academic degree in Germany (slowly being replaced by a bachelor/master system). In the German system, it is roughly equivalent to a master degree. It usually takes about 5 years to complete.
Teachers-to-be in Germany usually take a combination of two subjects. Their studies include courses on teaching/education as well.
Since schools are subject to special federal law, teachers usually end their studies with a state-controlled exam ("Staatsexamen").
Regarding the word "Diplomurkunde": The word simply denotes the piece of paper confirming that the person holds the respective degree. It is the one you want to see.
I'm not so sure about the other one, but from my own experience, I would guess that the "Diplomurkunde" simply has the applicants name, place of birth and a date one it, while the other document has a bit more information but basically grants the same degree.
Cf the article on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diplom
It is the one you want to see — What? People still use paper for this?
@JeffE: sure. And occasionally you even have to hand in certified copies of these pieces of paper...
@JeffE: Germany is verrückt when it comes to paperwork. I was expected to show paperwork for a degree I didn't even have. (I don't have a master's.)
You better also have you high school dilpoma ready. Not to forget the Polizeiliches Führungszeugnis.
@aeismail: I know a university that required me to hand in several (I think in total ≈ 5) copies of the Diplom they gave me. Of course always with a copies of the Abitur, so they now have ≈ 6 copies of that as well (additional one for entering the university as student)...
(answering the comment)
4 years separation would be enough to do the teaching program after the "normal" subject. And it would definitively not be the parts of one Diplom (Zeugnis + Urkunde), they have the same date.
And, by the way, till now I was always required to show/hand in both Urkunde and Zeugnis of my Diplom. As I understand it, the Urkunde certifies that I have the "title" of Diplom-chemist, the Zeugnis certifies the grades of the final exams, and possibly other legally relevant additional exams (the examn that allows me to handle chemicals according to the German laws).
I'm wondering a bit about the teaching Diplom - usually the teaching studies end with "Staatsexamen" (state exams, also includes one or two theses). But this can differ a lot depending on the state, and I don't know that much about the teaching studies. AFAIK, if you have a master/Diplom in some subject and then do the teaching studies for this subject, you can get the master/Diplom recognized as the first state exam. Otherwise, what you write sounds like 2 separate Diplome.
I guess it boils down to asking and getting the Diploma Supplements - AFAIK they explain what the Diplom is about.
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8948 | How should I cite products?
This question is closely related to How should I cite a website URL? but more concrete.
I'm currently writing my master thesis. In the section "related work" I give an overview which also includes concrete products (normally software). Usually there is no academic paper published about this work and often there is only a product homepage, a git hub repository or a manual available.
How, if at all, should I cite this "products"? I thought about adding the URL just after the name of the product, adding it as a footnote, cite it as usual with a MISC BibTeX entry or not mentioning a URL at all (usually they are easy to find with Google). I'm a bit worried too blow up my bibliography to much.
I give a few examples to stay concrete, my thesis is about a pattern matching algorithm (well, very simplified) so I want to show tools that help programmers with writing regex:
The software RegexBuddy (http://www.regexbuddy.com)
The online tool RegExr (http://gskinner.com/RegExr/)
The Statically Checked Regex (a software artifact) in the Git Hub repository https://github.com/retronym/macrocosm
The function ctRegex in std.regex (http://dlang.org/phobos/std_regex.html)
Could you please also please also answer if it's OK to include a lot of citations (around 20) to mention this products although the text is only around one page, respective one sub chapter (in a work that is expected to have something around 100 pages).
I think it's closely related, but not a duplicated. As mentioned in the answer of @eykanal rules are different for standard office software and programming languages then for specialized software. And I do not use this software, I only reference it to give the state of the art.
Just give as much information as you can to uniquely identify and date the product. To quote one of my own recent papers:
Nuclear Monkey Software. Narbacular Drop. Video game, 2005.
Andy Wachowski and Larry Wachowski. Matrix Revolutions. Warner Bros., 2003. Motion picture.
According to the APA:
Do not cite standard office software (e.g. Word, Excel) or programming
languages. Provide references only for specialized software.
Ludwig, T. (2002). PsychInquiry [computer software]. New York: Worth.`
Software that is downloaded from a Web site should provide the
software’s version and year when available.
Hayes, B., Tesar, B., & Zuraw, K. (2003). OTSoft: Optimality Theory
Software (Version 2.1) [Software]. Available from
http://www.linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/otsoft/
The IEEE style is almost identical. (I'd reproduce it here, but it's in a stupid flash file which doesn't support copy/paste.)
That being said, I notice that you cited software for parsing and understanding regular expressions. While there is no official rule that I know of for acknowledging software, it is typically only used for software crucial to the development efforts (i.e., an analysis tool). To bring a somewhat extreme example, while everyone uses some form of operating system (Windows, Mac OS, Linux), no one cites their operating system. Recall the purpose of citations; to enable others to understand your frame of reference and replicate your work. You should only cite tools that are specialized to your research that others would need to continue your research.
Additionally, I've seen many neuroscience papers where some software is listed but not cited (e.g., the Matlab reference here). This is typically done for tools developed outside of an academic environment. Here, Matlab is a non-academic commercial, but both SPM and Fieldtrip were developed using grant money, and both specify exactly how they should be cited in publications (e.g., Fieldtrip; I can't find SPM's now).
Thanks for the answer. This is what i searched for. @eyekanal may you please add some words about my fear that this blows up my bibliography too much. I might cite around 20 products.
@eyekanal thanks a lot, but it's not what I meant. I think I do understand now when to cite software. But I'm still worried that I get a too big bibliography. Do I have to worry about a "too big bibliography" or is there not too big for it. (I changed the question a bit.)
In larger works such as theses, I generally like to cite software that was crucial to the development efforts. Not only do I think this will help others to replicate my work, I also think it is due attribution to the people who made the effort of creating those tools. Come to think about it, I now realize the "larger works" I do this in typically also extensively report about implementation aspects besides the merely conceptual research itself. Also, I normally restrict such citations to software that was somewhat specific to my work, and did not just provide a basic environment (i.e. no OS).
There isn’t really a ‘set’ method to cite products, but rather a paradigm: Give enough information so a veteran can identify the product – novices do not need to be able to do so.
For example, if I use an enzyme from Sigma Aldrich in a biology experiment, I write something like:
25 ng of amylase (Sigma Aldrich; Missouri, USA; P228) was added to the mix
Notice how I didn’t use a stock concentration. That’s because the information is already there. I simply quote the provider, their origin, and the product code. If a veteran now goes to the website, they can see the exact product I used. I do not write P228-1g or P228-5m, because those are volumes or masses, and that’s all irrelevant. Sometimes I’ll add a date if I think it’s relevant.
The software manufacturer may be willing to provide a few more details, like the lead developer's name(s) and so on for academic purposes. Software written for academics may already have a citation ready.
See, for example, the citation for Gaussian 09. Note that they already have a bibtex starting point also.
Gaussian 09, Revision A.1, Frisch, M. J.; Trucks, G. W.; Schlegel, H. B.; Scuseria, G. E.; Robb, M. A.; Cheeseman, J. R.; Scalmani, G.; Barone, V.; Mennucci, B.; Petersson, G. A.; Nakatsuji, H.; Caricato, M.; Li, X.; Hratchian, H. P.; Izmaylov, A. F.; Bloino, J.; Zheng, G.; Sonnenberg, J. L.; Hada, M.; Ehara, M.; Toyota, K.; Fukuda, R.; Hasegawa, J.; Ishida, M.; Nakajima, T.; Honda, Y.; Kitao, O.; Nakai, H.; Vreven, T.; Montgomery, Jr., J. A.; Peralta, J. E.; Ogliaro, F.; Bearpark, M.; Heyd, J. J.; Brothers, E.; Kudin, K. N.; Staroverov, V. N.; Kobayashi, R.; Normand, J.; Raghavachari, K.; Rendell, A.; Burant, J. C.; Iyengar, S. S.; Tomasi, J.; Cossi, M.; Rega, N.; Millam, J. M.; Klene, M.; Knox, J. E.; Cross, J. B.; Bakken, V.; Adamo, C.; Jaramillo, J.; Gomperts, R.; Stratmann, R. E.; Yazyev, O.; Austin, A. J.; Cammi, R.; Pomelli, C.; Ochterski, J. W.; Martin, R. L.; Morokuma, K.; Zakrzewski, V. G.; Voth, G. A.; Salvador, P.; Dannenberg, J. J.; Dapprich, S.; Daniels, A. D.; Farkas, Ö.; Foresman, J. B.; Ortiz, J. V.; Cioslowski, J.; Fox, D. J. Gaussian, Inc., Wallingford CT, 2009.
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173395 | How to search for a suitable journal to publish my paper?
I'm an undergraduate math major, recently I've written a paper about approximation by neural networks in a theoretical settings because I really like the mathematics involved in neural networks. It is a paper mainly based on another paper, for your information, 'Optimal Approximation with Sparsely Connected Deep Neural Networks' by Bölcskei et al.
What I've done is not something innovative at all.
I proved two results from the original paper because the author only gave a hint on how to prove the theorems, and I thought it will be a good idea to explore more.
As a result, I found some other research papers which helped me to gave the two proofs in great detail.
Now my paper is nearly complete, I just have to choose which journal to submit my paper, then do a little adjustment based on their requirements, it will then be done.
However, I'm not confident enough to publish my paper to, for example, the SIAM Journal or the IEEE Journal, because they would expect research works with more originality and innovation. How do I find and evaluate suitable journals for my type of research paper?
I'm an undergraduate math major --- It would help with answering your question if you explained why you didn't ask any of your present or former teachers, or someone else in your department.
There are journals that publish specifically undergraduate research. From your brief description, it sounds like such a journal would be good for you to try. See also these questions: https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/65166/4484 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/117224/4484 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/11094/4484
@GEdgar I didn't see specific undergrad math journals mentioned in those threads. See https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/116377/19607 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/41575/19607 https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/1439/19607
@DaveLRenfro I have tried to ask my advisor about it, and he did gave me a list of math journals and their tiers to let me choose from. I'm thinking hearing more from other professionals will help me for choosing the right choice. I'm sorry if this doesn't meet the rule of this community.
@Kimball Thanks, I'm surprised there exists undergrad-oriented journals!
My question wasn't really a matter of meeting the rules of this community, but rather the fact that for the vast majority of people here (I would guess, at least), seeking the advice of your teachers or asking another department member would be the obvious first step, perhaps even done when first thinking about the issues (i.e. before beginning to work on the problem), so I guessed that maybe COVID issues have made things different now or maybe your local customs might make this something difficult to do, and I thought it would help if you said why to avoid everyone saying "see your teachers".
When one isn't certain about where to publish something, often the first place should to go is people you know. In the case of an undergrad, you should have professors/mentors are your school who can help out. Another option is to ask the authors of the original paper who may have more of an idea. In this case, given the circumstances, an undergraduate focused journal may be ideal. There also may not be a good place to formally publish it at all. Sometimes people don't give almost any details of a proof, and you have to work it out on your own; that's not publishable in general (even if it should be). However, at a minimum, you can certainly put it up on the arXiv as an expository work there, which doesn't count for "publication" for most purposes but will still look good for things like applying to grad school.
Indeed, my final goal is to use it to raise my chance for getting into a PhD degree. I've asked my advisor and he didn't say anything like it is non-publishable, maybe because I did put some original work in it. And thanks for your information, I think I'll put it on arXiv then consider an undergrad journal to publish my paper.
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159055 | Is it necessary to write proof if one can refer to the database?
I'm a final year undergraduate Math major. So now I am writing a paper about an application of Elliptic curve. You can see my research topic from this question in Math StackExchange.
When studying the elliptic curve above, I'm following the theoretical result and approximation in Rational Points on Elliptic Curves by Silverman and Tate. It details all calculations required to find the rank, torsion point, generator of infinite order of an elliptic curve. When I have almost done calculate all properties of the particular elliptic curve from my research project, I discover the LMFDB database, which has all information I wanted.
I would like to ask, is it necessary to put all calculations of mine in my paper, which is a duplicate effort from the book of Silverman and Tate? Or is it better just include the LMFDB database in my paper and discard these calculations? I think math papers are all about rigorous derivation, every gap should be properly filled, but I'm not sure is 'using database' an academic approach. Besides, I'm not worry about the length of my papers because I have some other original results.
When you say "paper" do you mean one written for a course, or something to be published as original research in an academic journal?
It is an undergraduate research, I want to publish it in some journal.
What did your advisor tell you when you asked them?
My advisor said I can put the calculations as appendix, but I think if someone found my paper useful, they were already familiar about how to do these calculations. So I'm not sure is it a good idea or not.
Assuming the result is publication-worthy without the extensive calculations you've done, maybe you could have two versions. One version is all the work you've done yourself, with all the details, and this would be what you submit for your honors project which, depending on the university, might be made available on some kind of honors thesis archive such as this one, or which you could post yourself somewhere. This version could be of use to others wanting more details than in typical publications. The other version would be for publication.
For example, this thesis is probably not publication-worthy (too basic for research, too lengthy for publication in math exposition journals I know of), but I believe I actually recommended this (among other things) once to someone in Mathematics Stack Exchange asking for somewhere online for an introduction to Hausdorff and other dimensions and fractals.
I see. So do you think I will rather not put the duplicate calculation in my paper, right? Because I'm aiming for publication.
I don't know enough about this specific area of math to know whether this (duplicate calculation) is something you should include in the published version, which is why I didn't give any specifics or explanation about "version would be for publication". This is something you need to discuss with your advisor and/or others in this specific area. I guess my main point is to not let the extensive calculation version vanish, as others might be interested -- even you yourself in later years, in case you work on other things, and then want to get back to this particular topic.
Thanks. I will keep that in mind.
I think there are two situations where it is worth spelling out the details of what an expert might regard as a routine calculation:
(1) The routine calculation is only routine for experts, and the details of how to do these calculations are not spelled out in an easily accessible reference.
(2) The results of the calculation are needed by your paper and not already published. Including the calculation (or at least some of its key steps) serves as a proof that the results you are using are correct and is worth doing if it may not be easy for the typical reader to reproduce the calculation.
In your case both the method of calculation and the result are published and readily available, so I would just cite the page of the LMFDB that contains the results you need (following the instructions at https://www.lmfdb.org/citation) and the sections of Silverman-Tate that explain how to compute them.
p.s. I realize my answer to this 4-year old question is almost certainly not useful to the person who posted it, but perhaps it will be useful to others.
Appreciate your comment, I'm not studying mathematics anymore :) but will just mark this as solved by you.
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159128 | What do grad schools want to hear about why I'm changing PhD programs?
TL;DR: I'm reapplying to schools in the US for Fall 2021 because (1) the research project I'm getting paid to work on isn't in my area(s) of interest, (2) in general, mathematics at this university is heavily applied and computational, so there's little scope for me to do something else I'd like here, (3) I'm making much less than minimum wage (assuming a 40-hour work week for 52 weeks a year), and (4) I don't like living here. These are listed in order of importance to me. The question is, which of these points do I emphasise to an admissions committee?
More context: I'm an international student (for US and Canadian schools). I graduated with a Master's in math from a well-known university in Europe. I was "on-track" to start a PhD in Fall 2020, but due to personal reasons and global events I couldn't go to any schools in the US or Canada. I didn't want to take a year off from math, and I needed to make at least some money, so the best option seemed to be to enroll in a PhD program in Europe.
I plan to reapply to US and Canadian schools (for the reasons listed above). Only, I'm not sure how to explain that despite already being enrolled in a PhD program, I want to "transfer" to a different one. I have a solid academic record otherwise---how will this affect my application? How do I explain this in my statement of purpose?
I'd suggest that, as a guess, 95-99% of your application should be just as it was the first time, focused on your skills and likelihood of success in any new program. I think it would be a mistake to spend valuable words giving a bedsheet of reasons that you are unhappy. Even ignoring the issue altogether might be fine, if a bit risky, especially if you are crossing borders as part of your switch. You are "looking for opportunities not available locally". If it comes up in an interview you might want to raise it.
The one thing you say, however, that might resonate, is that COVID limited your choices last time around and that you picked a less than ideal situation because of it. Also, if you are interested in pure, rather than applied, math, then a quick/short statement that your current institution supports that poorly might be fine.
But keep the focus on the skills and success part, just as you would if this is your first application. People won't choose you because they feel sorry for you but because you seem to be a good fit for their programs and a good bet for success.
Thanks! A follow-up question---I've seen advice that the statement of purpose is to convince the department that you aren't going to drop out of their program. Is this something I should be worried about?
Probably not, unless there are special concerns. If you make it positive and forward looking it should speak for itself.
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41341 | Equal author contribution
I, along with two fellow doctoral students, am about to publish a paper supervised by our professor. Our professor is listed as the last author, which of course is fair as he supervised the project.
One of us, student A, is listed as the first author, which there is not disagreement on. Student B is listed afterwards, and I am the third listed author.
The ordering of student B and I is alphabetical, nothing more. This is also reasonable, as we all believe that our contribution has been the same.
However, it is not listed in the paper that our contributions are the same. Should I insist on this before submitting the paper?
Is this the same paper in your previous question, when you then thought you should be first author? Now you are asking about being 2nd vs 3rd author? I think you try to make too much hassle for one paper.
@Alexandros It's not the same
It's worth noting that that the ordering of listed authors is highly field-dependent. In medicine, the supervisor is listed last and the others are listed in contribution order. In mathematics, all authors are listed alphabetically. (There are of course exceptions to these rules.)
What field is this? Practice varies somewhat, I think.
Buried in this (and other similar questions) is the notion that one's contribution to a paper can be unambiguously assigned a single number that can be compared with the other authors. This notion should be banished from your thoughts.
@Jon Custer Perhaps not a number as in http://www.authorder.com/newpage but to determine who contributed more and who less -- that's possible. Of course, a better policy is to decide beforehand who is first, second, third, etc. author.
Well, you still are proposing that you can line up the authors in a unique order that nobody can argue with. Same difference. In reality, everyone will have a different opinion of their contribution.
In fields where authorship order matters, the difference between second author and third author is very little, pragmatically, in terms of how people will think about your contributions. Neither is the first author (whose name will be noticed in every citation), and neither is the last author (in those fields where last = senior).
What you can do, however, is what many journals now require, where you add a section at the end of the paper with a name like "Author Contributions." In this section, you write down exactly what each author did, e.g.,
R.L. performed the experiments, T.X. ran spectroscopic analysis, B.G. supplied a critical DNA construct, R.L. and T.X. analyzed the data, T.X. and B.M. wrote the manuscript, and R.L,.T.X., and B.M. edited the manuscript.
This won't change the "first impressions" that anybody has of the paper, but anybody who wants to know whether you're a significant contributor or not will be readily able to find out.
Personally, I don't think that being second or third matters. At least not to the point of arguing (in case you needed to). If you have the space, you can add a statement in the Acknowledgements section.
Realistically, only those who read the paper would be aware of that. You'd have to replicate the statement in your CV, or the distinction might be lost.
In many cases (especially seen on online sources like PubMed et al), names are suffixed with a * and explanation:
Smith J, Lee H *, Doe J *, Howard M, PhD
*: These authors contributed equally.
Whether this solves the problem or just makes the order slightly less important... That's up to your personal preference. But this is a commonly accepted method of mitigating just this issue.
The greatest benefit of this solution is that it can change the first impression of the viewer, if the * catches their attention.
If you want to highlight that everyone has contributed his/her expertise equally, you could sort the authors' names alphabetically and specify in the acknowledgement that 'the order of the authors is alphabetical'. I have seen this a few times. Of course, this is meaningful for the audience that reads the acknowledgement, which may be a small subset of the overall target audience (who may just be content reading abstract and conclusions).
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1249 | Four papers accepted for publication however not published due to some monetary issues?
I have successfully got my papers accepted in different journals. However, due to some money issues, I couldn't get them published. Now I have my final project presentations.
Will it hold value for me? I have slogged day in and out to accomplish this, but money constraints have shattered everything.
How do I manage my presentation in such a scenario?
EDIT : I do have all the email conversations and acceptance notifications and do have the feedback as well.
I've never heard of anyone encountering this problem. Is your work grant-funded? Every grant I've encountered includes money for administrative costs, such as those associated with publications. Additionally, if you don't have money for publications, how do you have money to defray other research-associated costs? Publications are the currency of the researcher; I find your story very odd, and it would raise strong red flags about the management of your lab.
It would help to know what field we're talking about. Publication practices and funding sources vary dramatically from field to field.
Man... your work may be awesome! Are you a Ph.D., M.Sc., B.Sc.? What's your subject matter? What journals are you talking about? I mean, depending on your status, depending on your university/college, I'm absolutely sure that you must have some funding, from anywhere... i.e., from your advisor (that may have interest in your work, of course), from your university (that may have interest in exhibiting its name worldwide), from a gov. agency, etc etc... Give us some more details... otherwise, as said by @eykanal, your story may be considered odd/weird by SE community
Reputable journals will waive publication charges for authors who cannot pay them, so you should ask about that. If everything goes well, then that will simply solve your financial problems. I see only two ways you can get stuck:
(1) The journal insists you can pay, perhaps because your advisor has plenty of grant money, but your advisor refuses. In that case you have a serious problem, and it is much deeper than just paying for these publication charges; you need to sort things out with your advisor.
(2) The journal does not have a procedure for waiving the charges. In that case, the journal acceptance is worthless. The journals in this category are money-making operations with no academic validity. Nobody will care that they accepted your paper, because they just wanted your publication fees.
The first thing you need to determine is which case you are in. For example, one valid reason for an advisor to refuse to pay is because the journals are not reputable. If you are in that case, then you need to rethink everything. Otherwise, it sounds like you may be in a complicated situation with your advisor.
For example, you can start by checking whether the journal publishers are listed at http://scholarlyoa.com/publishers/. If they are, then the librarian who compiled this list considers them predatory publishers, and acceptance won't mean much. If they aren't on the list, then that doesn't prove anything, since the list is far from complete, but at least you would have ruled out some of the worst publishers.
they aren't present in the list
That's good. It sounds like you either need to talk with the journals about the possibility of waiving the charges, or with your advisor about what's going on.
This would raise a red flag for me generally - I've never published in a journal that had publication fees just for publishing the papers themselves. Color charges, sure, and if I had submitted to an open access journal they have fees, but nearly every one of them has a mechanism for waiving the fee in the case that the author can't pay. My four suggestions are this:
Make doubly-sure, as @AnonymousMathematician has stated, that you're not accidentally trying to get published in a for-profit vanity press journal. These won't actually do you much good.
Contact the journal and see if you can get the fees waived, if they are indeed a legitimate scientific journal.
Get in touch with your institution's librarians. Universities often have discount deals with some publishers, are members of groups that waive the fees, etc. Make sure you're not covered that way.
Stop submitting to journals with publication charges if you don't have grant backing. Submitted, or even accepted papers that aren't in press (and it sounds like will never see the light of day) don't do you much good. Those papers are currently just rotting there - no journal is good enough for you to let your work languish without publishing it.
these are open access international journals mentioning a few ijca,ijcsi , jict.co.uk .. ijca has an impact factor 0.8 and ijcsi a 0.2
@Asp.netmylife Consult the journals to see if the fees can be waived. Are there no credible journals in your field that don't charge a fee?
There's some good advice on recognizing dubious journals at UHD: http://library.uhd.edu/journalquality. If IJCA is the International Journal of Computer Applications then it meets most of these criteria for being a low-quality journal. (Note, for example, their odd claim to be "indexed" by Scribd, which isn't an academic site at all.)
Yeah, IJCSI and JICT are also very worrisome. IJCSI advertises notification by June 30 and publication by July 31 if you submit by May 31. JICT advertises publication by June 10 if you submit by April 30. These extremely rapid review times are not the way any reputable CS journal that I know of works, and they are not consistent with careful refereeing. I've never heard of these journals, but they do not look reassuring to me. I'd recommend looking elsewhere, especially if these journals insist on page charges you cannot afford.
i know i am getting advice from very experienced people out here and i thank you for helping me out. This was my first time writing research papers plus i am undergraduate . i will pay heed to all of this from next time..
What makes these sorts of journals so problematic is that they try hard to blend in with the reputable journals, so without some experience or background it can be difficult to tell the difference. (See http://www.jfdp.org/forum/forum_docs/1013jfdp1040_1_032912094346.pdf for stories of people being tricked.)
My guide did not guide me enough and that's the main issue i did all on my own... yes i got that most journals are money making business
@Henry IJCA does not contain indexed by scribd as i have seen its in IJCSI and IJCA isn't that bad for me having written a research paper for the very first time though i agree JICT and IJCSI are no good ....
@Asp.netmylife: Huh. This page: http://www.ijcaonline.org/indexing- most definitely included Scribd, but they seem to have removed it. Regardless, IJCA still shows most of the signs of being a vanity press.
http://www.ijcsi.org/ lists scribd. Man, I hope these sort of journals do not end up tarnishing the open-access brand. I had gotten spam from one or two of these publishers, but never realised there were so many of them.
there are loads of them......that list scribd
One of the most prestigious physics journals around, Physical Review and Letters, charges an $815 publication fee even though it's not open access. https://journals.aps.org/prl/authors#pubcharges
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49937 | A professor has offered to send me a hard copy of his new book. Would it be rude to ask for a PDF file instead?
While working my way through one textbook, I spotted several errors, TeXed them up and emailed to the author of the textbook. He thanked me and asked for my physical address so he could send me a copy of his new textbook (a more advanced one). I was planning to work though his new textbook anyway, since it matches my interests. Yet I'd much prefer a PDF file and not a hard copy. Would it be rude to ask if he could send me a PDF file instead? I don't want to come over as ungrateful, yet I'd make much more use of it if I had a PDF file.
Definitely of relevance here:
He certainly does have a PDF file of the new book since the publisher offers PDF as one of the options (hardcover, softcover, and PDF file),
The PDF file in question can not be 'freely' found on the Internet (although its previous edition can).
If you ask for a PDF, you should mention that the publisher makes the book available in that format as well. (To establish that you aren't suggesting pirating it, and to make sure the author knows. A not too tech-savvy author might simply not be paying attention to ebook options.)
you could also comment that it would be easy for you to mark up any comments on an electronic copy.
Many of the hard copy books that I own come with the pdf on an attached CD so you are potentially getting both anyway.
Ask for a PDF as well. Then you get the book and are not rude, and can load it on your e-reader.
He's offered you a gift from gratitude; accept it for what it is.
Do the PDFs that they sell have any DRM? If so, he may not be able to give you a DRMed version for free and may not want to (or be allowed to by the publisher) give you a DRM-free version that could end up "freely" available on the internet.
I find it amazing how worried people are being about being polite to a professor. Professors are just people after all and in most civilised countries are not liable to destroy your life because you didn't open a door for them. If you can work out how to be polite to people in general, just act the same to the professor.
Yes, it is always rude to respond to the offer of a gift by saying "Actually, I'd rather have -------".
The PDF file in question can not be 'freely' found on the Internet (although its previous edition can). Yet. Don't think too long about this point.
I think refusing would be disrespectful, can't you just say yes that would be great, actually I would be interested in reading it electronically whilst I am out and about, could you send me a PDF copy as well as a physical copy?
Feel free to ask, but if this author is in the same position I was in when my recent book was published, the answer would have to be "no" Under my contract I got a set number of printed copies of the book, but not even one DRM'd ebook copy. I could send you an electronic copy of my manuscript, but it doesn't exactly match the published version (the copy editing got done to their copy of the manuscript, not to my copy) and besides, I'm bound not to distribute the manuscript.
It is a question of framing. Frame it as something that is good for him, not just for you. I'd write something along the lines of:
Thank you very much for your kind offer. I'm indeed very interested in the subject of book X. It probably is easier and cheaper for you if you just send me a PDF, and as I am someone who reads mostly on a screen anyway, I would be equally happy with an electronic version.
(And then you might or might not mention your postal address anyway, but in any case stress again that it is up to him to decide.)
In fact, I have had such situations before (people asking me for a copy of my dissertation [which I would have send them for free in print], but who also mailed that they preferred a PDF).
This seems reasonable to me. However, I'd recommend also including a postal address unless you really don't want a hard copy in any case. Just because the publisher has prepared an ebook version, doesn't mean the author has a copy of it. Authors often get a certain number of hard copies of their books gratis or discounted which they are then free to distribute as they wish. Even if the author has a copy of the ebook, the author may not be entitled to redistribute it.
Don't forget to mention that the PDF saves paper.
That's very polite. I still think it would be fine to ask for both, especially if it's possible to read the pdf online.
It's very annoying when people do this. If you want a PDF, say so. Don't tell me what is easier and cheaper for me - you might be wrong.
Maybe add: "This makes it easier for me to write (legible) margin notes!"
That is a very (maybe, too) diplomatic approach. Additionally, @cfr's point on the e-book's distribution rights seems to be a valid one.
The suggested email is disingenuous: the asker says they would prefer a PDF so don't write to somebody saying that you'd be "equally happy" with a PDF. It's also very annoying if you offer somebody an apple and they say they'd be "equally happy with an orange." Well, isn't that an interesting piece of information? I offered you an apple. Do you want it or not?
Yes, previous two commenters nailed it. If someone told me what would be easier for me, I would be annoyed instantly.
I would say "Awesome, thanks! By the way, did you release your book as an e-book? I have one of those awesome kindle things I take everywhere, I bet people would like to read it on the go sometimes, I know I would!"
"You do? I wonder if I could get a copy too, because I'm going away for the weekend and would love to be able to read it on the train"
Do not convince people that what is good for you is good for them as well.
Why not just say what you mean? "Is there any chance I can get an electronic copy? I am more likely to enjoy your book if I can read it on my Kindle."
The other side of the argument is that perhaps the professor wanted to write something personal in it and give it to you as a gift. It might be even better to say that you are delighted to receive the hardcover, and wonder if it might also be available online in PDF format.
This. It really sounds like he wants you to have a physical token of your collaboration. Accept it.
+1 did not occur to me, but now that I think about it this is probably the case.
You can ask him to digitally sign your PDF. There's nothing more personal than a 256-bit public key <3
Now that's funny. :)
One thing that hasn't been mentioned in the other answers is that authors often get free or discounted copies of their physical books. As part of my author agreements, I get about 20 copies for free and can buy additional physical copies at 50% that I buy in bulk. This is fairly typical.
I usually keep a stack of my (physical) books in my office to give to people who visit or exchange with other scholars. It's easy for me to drop one in the post at my office and have the staff put the right stamps on the package.
If someone asked me for a PDF or ePub, it'd be more difficult. My press does offer e-copies but they are digitally watermarked to the purchaser. In order for me to give them the ePub/PDF, I'd have to put in an individual order with the press to have the ebook made and watermarked and sent.
So PDFs are non-trivial and a pain in the ass from my perspective. Yes, it's very 19th century, like a lot of academia.
I can't imagine anyone being offended. Just say, "Thank you very much for your generous offer. However, a PDF of your book would be more useful to me. Can you please send me one instead of a hard copy?". If he can, he will. It should actually be easier for him.
Hm, I might be offended at that if I was to be in those shoes...
@Mehrdad Could you explain why?
@Niko: I'm not going to claim it's rational from a game-theoretic standpoint or something, but I think it's a don't-look-a-gift-horse-in-the-mouth kind of thing. I can imagine wordings that would be perfectly fine for me, but yours specifically would leave a bad taste in my mouth.
I think part of it is that it sounds like you're not just asking for another one, but also rejecting the gift. If I were to phrase it, I would instead say something like: "Thank you so much for the generous offer; yes, I would really appreciate it! If sending a PDF of the book may be any easier, I would find that just as useful as a hard copy, since the book is quite useful as a reference to search through electronically [or, insert some other legit reason here]. If a hard copy is less trouble then of course it would be just as valuable and I would really appreciate it. Thank you again!"
@Mehrdad But the asker says they want the PDF more. It's disingenuous to pretend that the PDF would be "just as useful".
@DavidRicherby: I know, but politeness in human interactions doesn't always make mathematical sense. It's enough of a hint that they should get what you're really saying. If they don't, then oh well... don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
@Mehrdad Why say that a PDF would be "just as useful" when it's just as easy and just as polite to say something like "I'd find a PDF even more useful than a hard copy, if that's possible"? Being polite is about not imposing yourself on others, not about saying things that aren't true in the hope that the other person will realise that the precise phrasing of your untruth indicates what you actually want.
@DavidRicherby: Because humans don't always interpret literally. If someone offers you X and you reply that Y is more useful than X, it can seem like you're just trying to find a polite way to reject X while demanding Y, neither of which is the case here. On the other hand, with my wording I think it's pretty clear that that's not the case. I couldn't think of a better way to say it while still accomplishing that goal, but if you can, props to you. Just remember that telling the professor what you "want" is not and should not be the sole purpose of your email, so optimize it accordingly.
@Mehrdad I agree that the goal is not to tell the professor what you want. But it's also to avoid telling them you want something that you don't want, or claiming to have no preference between two things when actually you do have a preference. This is easily achieved by saying something like, "Thank you -- I'd love to have a copy of the book. If possible, an electronic copy would be even better but I understand if that's not an option."
@DavidRicherby: Well your wording is fine too, I don't see a problem with it. My whole point this time was that this answer phrases it poorly, and I just tried to suggest one that I could find better. I didn't say my wording was the best possible...
@DavidRicherby Post that as an answer, good sir (with appropriate explanation about how you feel the other answers are worded disingenuously).
Yes, it sounds like a bad idea. A hard copy is a token of appreciation; you are basically saying that you don't need this gift.
Take the hard copy, which will come with a hand-written note. If not, you can sell it through Amazon and buy the PDF file.
As stated in the other answers, the author is probably offering you a hard-copy because his publisher gave him several copies. Also, it's offered as a gift and attempting to negotiate gifts isn't very gracious.
If you do want to ask for a PDF, do not pretend that this is because it's easier for him and do not pretend that you'd be equally happy with a PDF or a hard-copy. Either is a pretty transparent lie. Be honest, say what you want. "Thank you -- I'd love to have a copy. Actually, if it's possible, an electronic copy would be even better, but I understand if that's not an option." But I'd just stick with what you were offered.
Yes, it is very rude to refuse the hard copy.
Even though the PDF is practically comparable to the hard copy, the hard copy is being offered as a gift and so refusing it could greatly insult the professor. Academics are not generally proud but it is better not to take the chance. Consider the possibility that this professor rarely offers to send books to anyone but has chosen you especially.
Refusing is the equivalent of saying, "Your book does not warrant the ample space it requires in my bookshelf," or "the cost of shipping is hardly worth a permanent compendium of your knowledge." Even if this is not your intent your gesture can be interpreted as such, so why risk it when the cost of accepting is so low?
So, yes, you should take the hard copy and also thank the professor very sincerely, or else you might offend them.
I would definitely be happy about the book and accept it. Even if you don't want to have the book and it would only be on your shelf and regardless of this situation, if someone in life offers you something, they have possibly put a lot of work and effort in making it. I would consider it rude to ask for a digital copy of it, "to save paper" or "because you read it on a PDA" or for any other reason.
Your professor is possibly also a bit older and this does not have to be the case with every older person, but when I tell you that having a physical copy of a book with some ideas from someone, it is a great thing to have it as a book and this will also possibly be the thought pattern of your professor. If the professor wanted to have you a PDF file they would have emailed it to you by now.
If I would be in this situation and I wrote a book and wanted my students to have it and they ask for a PDF file of it I would possibly dismiss the class and hand them a copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People and make them write an essay about it, hehe. Again and again. This not only has to do with usability, but also with respect towards another person's thoughts and feelings.
It is another thing when you ask the professor for a copy. Then surly you can ask to have it as a PDF file or as a book if possible. The other way round this would work, however when being offered a gift in life you go by the simple rule, smile, be genuinely happy about it, gladly accept it and if you don't like it put it on your shelf and forget about it. There is more damage done in being picky about the format of a gift than simply accepting it and not letting the professor know you would prefer their gift in another format.
Sure, one or two weeks after you have accepted the gift you could very kindly ask for a PDF version of the book since you like to "have it with you when you travel on the bus to uni" or something along the line, simple reason, for you to be able to take the information in it with you wherever you are, implying you value the information given to you. This again would possibly flatter the professor and not make them think this student refused my gift and it asking for a digital copy to torrent it, no thanks.
Of course, if your professor is a PDA-loving cool dude/chick that loves the latest tech gadgets, has all their classes in digital format and only reads on PDAs you could surly ask for a PDF file straight away, it depends on the situation and the type of character your professor is.
General advise, not only in this situation but for the rest of your life: If someone offers you a gift, accept it as it is and possibly thank them for it, that depends on your manners.
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71694 | How can I make use of iterative "work in progress" versions of papers
I often find myself writing the N+1st version of the same paper: we might have a short periodic internal report, a longer report for the funding agency, and we're now writing a conference paper.
As N gets larger, this gets more and more confusing.
While the early iterations were good, they had different purposes, lengths, and level of details.
For example, the internal "work in progress" version of a paper might have many preliminary results, but almost no introduction.
The conference version needs to have a more detailed introduction, but fewer (more focused) results.
Currently, I find that writing paper version N+1 requires starting with a rough copy/paste from version N, printing all version until N, and then looking in all previous versions for any missing information.
What are some strategies for better handing these multiple iterative versions of these papers?
Note that in contrast with this question, we don't start with a complete result (something that could be considered the "superset" paper).
Early iterations are mostly rough drafts, and sometimes middle versions do diverge because of different audience/requirements.
Not sure if I understood you correctly, but if you need a better workflow for managing the progress and evolution of your drafts, then I think the question you've linked to actually answers your question.
A combination of git and modular LaTeX can help you to:
track changes in your draft(s)
make sure new versions (and new versions of new versions) start with everything that was in the version they were started from
merge changes between versions
split your draft(s) in such a way that it is easy to include different bits and pieces in different versions
greatly simplify collaborative work
reuse parts of your projects (e.g. git project setup, LaTeX macros/environments/styles, any compilation scripts)
and many more things
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85186 | Mistook new faculty member to be a student, how big a faux pas is it?
Today I was introduced in the cafeteria by a professor who I know to someone new by just their first name. Because of admissions season, I thought that the new person was a prospective grad student and I asked, "are you here for admissions?" and the reply was that "no, I just joined as an assistant professor here a month ago." I was already embarrassed enough but I think I stuffed my foot further in my mouth, when I said "oh sorry, sorry but you look so young."
The problem is that the person who I was introduced to is female, and I am afraid that I might have offended her. Am I just being paranoid or will some people really feel offended from such a comment?
Comments are not for extended discussion; this conversation has been moved to chat.
I'm a female professor in my late 20s and I'm pretty sure I look even younger than I am. I've been mistaken for a student a bunch of times and it's always been an honest and totally understandable mistake. I'm often assumed to be a grad student; heck, I discovered in front of my mirror three days ago that wearing the school logo T-shirt I somehow acquired is inadvisable because it makes me look nearly indistinguishable from an undergrad.
I know doing this is embarrassing for the person who messed up, but looking at me and concluding that I'm very likely a grad student is reasonable and something I know is going to happen unless I'm wearing a fancy-schmancy suit. Heh! I've even done it myself. One time when I was meeting a (male) colleague, each of us mistook the other for a grad student; we've been teasing each other about it since. The only circumstances under which this would bug me would be if the person doing it were trying to be patronizing, or covered it up in a way that introduced some creepiness.
But yeah. I'm accustomed to it and I know my status surprises people. When someone asks if I'm a student, I laugh it off and say, "I am a very young faculty member." Most of the time thereafter I forget it happened. You did everything you needed to in order to make amends; I'd say put the guilt aside and move forward with a professional relationship with your colleague.
Glad to finally see an answer by a woman! (Judging by the other usernames…) This should be the top answer.
Could you open up those: "trying to be patronizing, or covered it up in a way that introduced some creepiness" I think there is a true risk that OP is on his way to some of these, if my woman-English vocabulary is right.
Sure thing! I can't speak for every woman ever, but from my perspective, "Sorry, you look really young!" is neutral (I wouldn't take it as a compliment, but it'd only be insulting if the person kept going and emphasized their commentary about my appearance). These examples are all totally hypothetical, but something like, "Whoa, really? Are you sure you're old enough to be a professor?" or "Wow, you look younger than my daughter," would strike me as condescending, and anything along the lines of, "Oh good, so it'd be safe to date you," even if meant as a joke, I'd find creepy. (1/2)
What I tell people in general (based on my own experiences, anyway), is that you have to have a reeeeeeeeeally good reason to refer to physical appearance or ask about relationship status. From my perspective, an apology for mistaking me for a student is an okay place to (briefly!) refer to my looking young, because it's an explanation meant to help the person regain some face. Likewise, commenting on what I'm wearing is usually not a very good idea, but if I e.g. accidentally sat in a puddle and didn't notice, a careful way of pointing it out in the interests of being helpful is fine! (2/2)
Thanks for the answer. The conversation really was exactly the way it happened, and basically alarm bells started ringing in my head that I was being socially awkward, so I quickly said that I had to leave and left asap. My plan is to 1) not bring this up again, and 2) Remember her face so that this mistake does not happen again.
Don't worry (too much), I think this happens to everybody at some point in their academic life. Your case isn't even particularly egregious, given that the new faculty member just started as an assistant professor, so likely she actually was a grad student not very long ago. I once idly asked a fellow conference attendant who she is working with, and she told me that she is a tenured associate professor. Embarrassing? Certainly, but not the end of the world. You apologize and move on.
The problem is that the person who I was introduced to is female, and I am afraid that I might have offended her.
I am not sure whether being female makes her more or less likely to be offended. However, I can't help but notice that most such stories are about female professors, so it seems to me that we jump to conclusions about them more freely than for males (or we guys just have trouble assessing women's age accurately). In any way, I have learned my lesson to be extra-careful before assuming that a young-looking female academic is a student, and you should too.
Am I just being paranoid or will some people really feel offended from such a comment?
I would not worry too much. You can bring it up lightly on a good ocassion and apologize, if such an ocassion presents itself in the next weeks. However, don't make it a bigger deal than it is, and if she seems unbothered or hasn't even noticed, then let it go.
I definitely feel that accessing ages is way easier the "closer" someone is to yourself (gender, age, race, social group). So yes, I think males are more likely to to assess woman age (especially of woman much younger or older), but so do woman for men.
"most such stories are about female professors" [citation needed]. Btw I was asked just this week to show my "student ID" while checking out a book from the library, so please factor that into your statistics of stories. And please factor all the other times that this happened to me and to pretty much any faculty member I know (male or female) below the age of 45, and that never turned into a "story" because we found such events to be entirely unremarkable.
"I am not sure whether being female makes her more or less likely to be offended." Being continually mistaken for students or other "status errors" - being called Miss/Ms/Mrs instead of Dr./Professor, etc. is a pretty common experience of female academics. That likely colors their perception of such incidents.
@DanRomik http://theprofessorisin.com/2011/07/28/what-not-to-wear-assistant-professor-edition/ https://conditionallyaccepted.com/2015/04/28/stop-assuming/ http://www.forharriet.com/2015/01/young-gifted-and-black-facing.html#axzz4Yyw0wOC3 That someone also happens to men does not necessarily mean that it doesn't happen to women more frequently, or that it doesn't take place in a different context.
@Fomite agreed about the context being potentially different (in some cases at least). However it's also true that just because you raise the possibility that something might happen to women more frequently than to men, it doesn't mean that that's actually the case.
@DanRomik It's a common complaint among a wide swathe of my female colleagues. I've never had a male colleague complain about it being part of their experience. That's good enough for me - and while we're talking about context, the experience of a minority being dismissed until they can amass overwhelming evidence of something is depressingly common.
@Fomite ok, your anecdotal evidence is not worthless I suppose, but the point I was trying to make is that you may not be hearing such stories as much from men simply because men don't consider it noteworthy enough to mention. Also, I am not "dismissing a minority". I honestly can't say if a woman assistant professor would find it offensive to be mistaken for a grad student, so I'm making my best guess. I do know that I'm not offended when it happens, and I know that the only actual woman professor who answered here from her personal experience also isn't. That's also evidence of sorts.
I've been in similar situations, and I think there's one clear way to handle it. After you inadvertently underestimate someone's level of expertise or qualifications like this, the next thing you do after a quick apology is express interest in their work as a professional.
In this case the obvious follow-up questions after a brief apology look like:
"What's your area of expertise?"
"What are you researching?"
"Any advice for me? I hope to be on the job market soon."
Then continue with as genuine interest as possible. In short, the way to rectify accidentally treating someone like they're not an expert is to then treat them like the expert they are.
I started working as a medical doctor when I was 24 years old, and it happened to me all the time, but mostly with patients. When I get introduced by a more senior doctor, they assume I'm an intern; when I do research I don't wear a doctor's coat and patients always wish me good luck "with my studies".
I'm only mildly annoyed by this, as long as they take me seriously after finding out my role. I'd advise you to do the same: just forget it happened and treat her like the assistant professor she is.
If she were offended the damage has already been done.
I don't think you should be the least worried. You cannot guess someone's qualifications from their appearance (even if it is commonly tried). I'm a full prof who doesn't look young at all, and to this day the library staff see that I'm faculty only when they see my file on the screen, but it doesn't seem to be obvious to them beforehand. And why would it be?
You made an honest mistake. The young prof would likely be flattered or amused. And if she isn't, the onus is on her to be less easily offended.
–1 for the last sentence, not least because blaming someone for being offended is virtually always siding with prejudice. The OP recognizes that there is a real problem with STEM being unwelcoming to women and undervaluing their scientific contributions. It is a sad but true fact that the woman the OP encountered has surely been on the receiving end of countless incidents of dismissal and discouragement. Being offended by such an environment (even if some dismissals were accidental) is a perfectly reasonable response.
Sorry, but where exactly does it say that this is about STEM? And where does the OP "recognize that there is a real problem with STEM being unwelcoming to women and undervaluing their scientific contributions"?
Nothing really wrong has been done and you have already apologized for the part which you should apologize. Calling a female young is usually considered flattery, and your mistake could be maybe interpret as a "mistake", but I assume that you were not that smooth with it that anybody would consider your actions flirty. Based on the information and the assumptions I make to fill the gaps like your working culture, facial expressions and such, my advice is: Move on, and never look back. If you sweep the thing under rug it will be forgotten. Bringing it up, and dragging it further would be something that may rise suspicion or at least make things awkward.
@NajibIdrissi Depends. http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/education/grammar/woman-versus-female-0 By quick googling it also seems that some radical feminist groups are advocating the use of woman, because they claim that nobody would use word male, which is rubbish. As a non-native English speaker myself, I tend to use whichever sounds better to my ear and whatever comes to my mind. In that sentence woman sounds awkward to me because both "woman" and "young" has "-ou-" between them. Also there is age differentiation to girls and woman; female being age independent. OP uses word female. Etc.
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14180 | Will anybody actually read your research and teaching statements?
When applying to faculty jobs, how much weight is given to your research/teaching statements? Talking with a few folks on admissions committees at Very Good Departments in Big Research Universities, I was told in no uncertain terms that
your letters get you the interview,
your talk and individual meetings get you the job,
nothing else really matters,
where "nothing" includes your research statement, your teaching statement, the content of your publications, or your hairdo. Of course, I am working with a very small sample here. How true is this sentiment? (And if it is true, why keep asking us young folks to write these hackneyed teaching statements that nobody ever reads?) More importantly,
Question: For those who have been on faculty hiring committees, what are the actual criteria you use to invite applicants?
By actual (in bold and italics) I don't mean "what the job posting specifies" or "what the department charter says you're supposed do," but rather "how you actually make these decisions in a meeting right before lunch while preoccupied with a grant proposal due at midnight and the fact that the cafeteria is going to fill up with noisy smelly undergrads if you don't get there soon."
your previous title did not reflect the tone of your question and did you disservice… I second making the title more in line with the question, if somewhat less provocative. Regarding “unceremoniously”, please keep in mind that this site is collaboratively edited… the person who did so did it to help
You are right. I appreciate the community and will edit away the sarcasm. Mea culpa.
I am the chair of the faculty recruiting committee in a Very Good Department at a Big Research University. I read research and teaching statements.
I need to know that you have a compelling agenda for your future research; your letters won't talk about that at all. I need to know that you can describe and motivate your research agenda well enough to attract external research funding. I need to know that you know why (not just "that") your work is interesting, visible, important, and likely to have high impact. I need to know that you communicate clearly enough to be a good teacher, and that you care enough about teaching to formulate a coherent teaching philosophy. I need to know that your research, teaching, and career goals—as you describe them—match those of my department. I need to know that you are taking the recruiting process seriously.
In the long run, your publications (which I also read) and your recommendation letters are probably more important. But saying that your statements have no importance is a dangerous exaggeration.
Also, I don't eat in the cafeteria.
Thank you, that is a useful admonition. I think you are a good guy, and I am glad people like you are making these kinds of decisions. I also notice you have a particular zeal for the academic process (as evidenced by 33.1k points on Stack Exchange). To what degree would you say your colleagues share this zeal?
To the degree that they want to be taken seriously in committee discussion.
I agree that letters are by far the most important part of an application, but there's a big difference between not reading something and not having it be the deciding factor. Your research statement is needed to describe your research agenda; if you don't do a good job of this, you are unlikely to be hired. However, there's only so much one can learn from a research statement. For example, some people describe ambitious plans they cannot actually carry out successfully, some are very good at making incremental work sound exciting, and some may work in an area nobody on the hiring committee can evaluate confidently (perhaps that's why the department needs to hire in this area). The top candidates all have impressive research statements, and the differences between them are generally not compelling enough to matter compared with what the letters reveal. On the other hand, it's certainly possible to write a bad research statement, for example by giving the impression that your greatest ambition is to refine your thesis work forever. If you do that, you'll discover that someone was reading after all.
Teaching statements are a messier subject, and nobody can quite agree on what should even be in them. Search committee members at research universities differ in how they evaluate them: some read them very seriously, while others use them for nothing but filtering out applicants who might provoke a student uprising through incompetent teaching. I think you'd be surprised at how many people care about teaching, even in departments that are not known for teaching excellence overall, and even people who don't care about teaching know they need to maintain some minimal standards and put on a good show for the administration.
Of course, all this depends on what sort of job you are applying for. There's enormous variation, not just via the obvious categories (research universities, comprehensive universities, liberal arts colleges, community colleges, etc.) but also at the departmental level or just based on who's on the search committee. There are overall patterns, such as the importance of letters, but there is no agreement on things like whether cover letters matter.
It's certainly true that publications, letters and your performance in an interview are far more important than research or teaching statements; I'd much rather be on the job market with latter weak than the former. That said, I think you're conflating two things here: most applicants' research and teaching statements never get read. But if you get the job, it's pretty likely they were. Between TT and postdoc searches, my department currently has 623 applicants in our MathJobs queue; that's way too many to read all the research statements of. But eventually things will get narrowed to a shortlist, and then documents will get read.
Your posts about job-hunting have always been helpful (and thanks a lot for making your application package public). But this one was both encouraging and depressing. It's good to know all documents will be read in the end if you get shortlisted. But 623...? Six hundred twenty three?! That's just crazy...
@YuichiroFujiwara Well, that's MathJobs. Everybody can easily apply for every job (and of course, you have to if that's what everybody else is doing). I think that number is suppressed somewhat by UVa not being a major metropolitan area. The postdoc numbers are running 150-200 lower than what we saw at Northeastern. But of course, a lot of the people who apply are not serious candidates (for example, people graduating this year applying for the TT positions), so the numbers anywhere are also kind of inflated.
That many doesn't sound crazy to me, but I suspect it reflects the way people paper the universe these days, applying for everything everywhere, regardless of whether even they think they're a believable candidate. You get lots of junk. I think what Ben is saying is that out of any pool of applicants, something like 80% will be obviously inferior to the other 20% based simply on credentials. He doesn't need to read anything else to know this. But by the time anyone gets hired, that person's statements will get close review because this is choice they'll have to live with.
To both: That makes sense. I'm not sure about the numbers Nicole brought up though. But I can imagine the majority of applications are obviously not competitive and have no chance, at least in the case of highly competitive TT positions at reputable universities.
@NicoleHamilton I'm not sure 80/20 is really the correct balance. I don't know that it's so easy to skim the top 20% out of the top 40%. Lots of people are superficially plausible (went to a respectable university, have some publications and good letters of reference), probably at least 50% and unless they are in a field you know well, it can be hard to figure out who has done really impressive work.
As a member of a hiring committee in a small department at a primarily undergraduate institution, I read both statements.
For the research statement
I need to know that the research planned by the candidate is feasible at my institution. If he/she needs access to one of only five specialty instruments in the world, then I am suspicious that the candidate may not be happy at my institution and will likely want to move on in a few years. I also want to see projects that look like they are friendly to undergraduates. Finally, since I am in a small department, I want to see research that somehow balances our desire to find someone who complements the types of research we are already doing while filling in voids in our expertise.
For the teaching statement
Since teaching will be the majority of what the candidate will do, I read this statement for a few key items.
Is the statement cogent and organized? I do not care what the teaching philosophy of the candidate is so much as I care that the candidate has clearly thought about how they would approach teaching and learning.
Does the statement contain more specific examples than fluffy buzzwords? Even if the candidate has limited teaching experience, specific examples from classes the candidate has taken again demonstrate that the candidate has thought about what good teaching might look like.
How long is the statement? Half a page means the candidate put no effort into the statement. More than three pages means the candidate does not have focused thoughts on the matter.
Ultimnately, I make certain to read both statements carefully for the same reason I read the letters carefully. I want to make sure the candidate is the best possible match for the job.
Yes, people like to rant about the current state of the system, and most often over-exaggerate the importance given to this or that item. Some people find it sounds better to say “the system is rigged/stupid/corrupt, all that counts is whom you know” than “it's a pretty tough job, and we need that much information to make the best decision”.
I think the simplest way to make the point is this one: with the huge amount of competition and pressure on that particular job market, hiring committees use all the information they can get their hands on to make the best decision.
Going to the extreme, even things like your hairdo, your clothes and your language style do convey information to your interlocutors: does the guy know how to adhere certain basic social conventions, for one thing? It sure is a minor element compared to your publications, but it may come to play a role, because, well, plenty of other applicants will have stellar publications!
Note that my question is not a rant: it is a startled reaction to matter-of-fact information provided by actual people on faculty hiring committees. (I for one am all for the reading of statements.)
I said the people you quote are ranting… though at least one sentence in your question (“why keep asking us young folks to write these hackneyed teaching statements that nobody ever reads?”) feels borderline :)
Ok, you are right. :-)
I sat on a hiring committee last year. We read all the research statements. Candidates didn't submit a separate "teaching philosophy" but did discuss teaching experience/perspective in their cover letters.
I would bet that it depends on the job. If the job is narrowly targeted toward a specific research area, your research statement is more likely to be similar to those of many other applicants, so it may carry somewhat less weight. For the committee I was on, the job ad was very open-ended, so the research statements carried considerable weight in weeding out people whose research didn't jibe with the department's goals.
At least in my experience, it is quite untrue that the letters are the only thing that gets you the interview. In our discussions, letters were among the least discussed aspects of the applications. Committee members would not if a particular letter seemed especially glowing or damning, but that was about it.
One thing you don't mention is your CV, which I found to be one of the most important factors. We spent a lot of time discussing the research output of the candidates.
In general, my impression is that it is (unfortunately) much easier to shipwreck your prospects than to boost them. We definitely had people who gave poor interviews, or poor job talks, and thereby took themselves out of the running. So, even if people don't give the research statement immense weight, it's worth your while to make it decent, because if it is noticeably sucky it could torpedo your chances.
Every time I do an interview I see the interviewers pull out a folder and read my research statements right in front of me. So yes, I am pretty positive people read them.
I have been on search committees. I have made decisions (usually decisions about who goes on my short list) on the basis of the research statement. So make an effort to have it readable and accurate.
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203801 | Repeating definitions in the Abstract in the Introduction?
In a mathematics paper that has an Abstract immediately followed by an
Introduction section, should notation that is defined in the Abstract be
repeated in the Introduction?
Or is it fair to assume the reader will read both consecutively,
and such repetition is superfluous?
For example,
Abstract.
This paper studies the cut locus C(x) of ...
Introduction.
We let C(x) designate the cut locus of ...
More generally: a paper should always be written so that it is complete and readable even if the abstract were not present at all.
@GregMartin This should be an answer.
Thank you for making this question independent of its title :)
Personally, I like to keep the abstract free of formulas and references, if possible. Defining a notation in the introduction of the article, rather than in its abstract seems more reasonable in this respect.
I think the body of the paper needs the full definition. The abstract might not. If you can write it without formulas it will be easier to read and easier for tools to parse and tag. So
This paper studies the cut locus of [continue with appropriate words]
would be better if it's possible.
I would go so far as to give a precise definition of "cut locus" in the paper. Researchers from other universities or other countries can easily have a somewhat-similar-but-subtly-different-definition, and not stating the definition you're using in your paper just obfuscates your paper by forcing the readers to guess.
The abstract should entice you to read the paper. I’m not sure how including definitions fits this goals, unless you have a very long abstract.
I'm not sure about "entice" (we're not selling cars), but the abstract should summarize what you're doing in a clear and concise way to allow the reader to rapidly decide whether the material is likely to interest them or not and worth devoting more time to. If a definition helps that then I think a definition is useful.
@StephenG-HelpUkraine well... You may not be selling cars but you are selling your results. (Not sure about "selling" but close enough to reality). I would not state that the objective is to allow the reader to decide whether "the material" is of interest to them: I would suggest instead it is to allow the reader to decide whether the results are of interest to them, and I'm not sure how a definition helps with that.
As, perhaps focusing on the results is a better description, although I think some people will be more interested if the approach is a method that interests them. "We got this result by using this approach" sort of thing ? And, as always, it's important to drop the word "novel" in there somewhere to wake the reviewer up. :-)
An abstract is a summary, not an advertisement.
@CrisLuengo …and products should sell on merits, not on the advertisement but the reality is that if you don’t try to catch the attention of the prospective readers there will be that many fewer people to read your papers.
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19454 | If an author declines authorship, may her co-authors publish without her?
This question was raised in discussion of answers on Is it better to submit a paper to an important journal without the supervisor name or to a less important journal with the supervisor name? There seemed to be a significant difference of opinion, so I'm asking it here as its own question. I'll phrase it as a hypothetical.
Suppose that researchers X, Y and Z have collaborated on a project. Each has made major contributions which were essential to its success, and would ordinarily be entitled to co-authorship on the resulting paper. However, X decides, for some reason, that she does not wish her name to appear on the paper, but she is willing for Y and Z to publish it under their names alone.
May Y and Z ethically do so?
Of course it seems clear that X must consent to have a paper published with her name on it, and she has the right to withhold that consent. It's less clear whether Y and Z may publish anyway, effectively claiming credit for X's work, even though she consents to them doing so. It could be argued in this case that Y and Z may not publish the paper at all.
Another possible concern is that, if X has the right to decline credit for her work, she could be pressured or coerced or bribed into doing so, effectively reducing her to a ghost writer.
whose ethics would be violated in doing so?
@akkkk: Y and Z may be acting unethically by claiming credit for work they did not do.
Simple answer: authored by Y, Z, and Anonymous contributor. You can publish without their name, make it clear that there was another contributor, and not appear to take credit for work you didn't do. This is, of course, assuming they're declining coauthorship because they don't want their name associated with the paper rather than some reason where you can give a name, but just not put them as coauthor.
@akkkk: e.g. in hiring or promotion committee, it might happen than a paper with one less coauthors looks better, giving Y and Z an advantage over other applicants that would not be deserved.
I'm puzzled. Obviously one of the authors cannot deny to the others the right from publishing their work...
@o0'. This does not at all seem obvious to me. Yes, sure, if the work is easily divided into parts that X, Y, and Z did, then Y and Z can do what they want with their work if X wants to not publish the part that X did. But oftentimes that is not the case - if all three kinda worked on everything, then it is indeed a non-obvious question what happens if one of the others decides that this should not be published at all (for whatever reason).
@Doc, I think your comment would make a good answer.
It seems to me that if authors B and C write in the acknowledgment section that the contribution of person A was sufficiently important that they think A should be listed as an author but that A declined and especially if authors B and C provide a description of the reasons leading to A's refusal which is satisfying to A, in other words if B and C report accurately what has been happening, then no one is behaving unethically.
For a real life example, one can look at the acknowledgment section of S.Bloch and K.Kato's work on p-adic étale cohomology, the third author being in that case O.Gabber and the reason invoked (if I recall correctly) being that Gabber did not think the work was ready for publication (I'm unable to track the precise reference at the moment, it is not Bloch and Kato's article at the IHES in 1986).
UPDATE: Because I haven't been able to track the reference of Bloch-Kato, let me point out Beilinson-Bernstein-Deligne which starts with
Il avait d'abord été prévu que O.Gabber soit coauteur du présent article. Il a préféré s'en abstenir, pour ne pas être coresponsable des erreurs ou imprécisions qui s'y trouvent. Il n'en est pas moins responsable de bien des idées que nous exploitons et le lecteur lui est redevable de nombreuses critiques qui, nous l'espérons, ont permis d'améliorer le manuscrit.
which roughly translates as
It was first planned that O.Gabber would be coauthor of the present article. He chose to abstain, so as not to share the responsibility of the mistakes or imprecisions to be found in it. He is nonetheless responsible of many an idea we exploit here and the reader owes him numerous criticisms which, we hope, allowed for improvements of the manuscript.
+1: Including information about declined coauthorship is a very good (and rarely used) way to address these ethical issues. (I may add such a comment to one of my own papers: thanks for suggesting it!) I think that in the case you give, Bloch and Kato found the best solution to their problem, but -- I don't have intimate knowledge here and I don't want to speak too strongly -- a lot of mathematicians believe that Gabber's actions in this and related matters are at least atypical.
The fact that Bloch and Kato are not in any way junior to Gabber also makes the nuances of the situation different from much of what I discussed in my answer. It would be stranger to write a paper and say "This paper is largely the work of my thesis advisor. She declined coauthorship." Wouldn't it?
Can you add the English translation of your quote? Because as far as I understand the French it's a very nice example of how to deal with such a case.
Declining coauthorship is actually quite common behavior in my field (mathematics). It is so common that not lightly do I question its ethics. In most instances I have seen it appears rather borderline, or the ethical questions that it raises are accounted for in other ways by the profession. However, taken to the extreme I think it would certainly result in unethical behavior. Thus my comment questioning another comment made on Nate Eldredge's answer:
An author always retains the right not to receive credit for his or her work.
I think this statement is clearly too strong. If you systematically pass off your work to others, you are participating in a form of plagiarism and giving (assuming that your work is good, which I will since this is the version of the practice I am familiar with) an unfair advantage to your should-be coauthors in what is now an extremely competitive academic environment.
Stage 1: Let's start at the extreme point: if you do all the work on a paper (or project, or thesis) and then pass it off to someone else who puts their name on the paper, I hope we can all agree that not just they but also you have done something deeply unethical. As I have before, I will point to this excellent short story which describes an especially interesting case of this. The story describes realistically how the discovery that the main character has written the PhD thesis of his ex-girlfriend would get not just her but also him in trouble.
In this extreme case there is another ethical violation occurring: someone's name is being put on something which they did not have intellectual involvement with.
Stage 2: Let's imagine that a more senior author really did the work of the paper and explained it to someone more junior: possibly their own student, but it happens in another cases as well. And let's say the junior person writes up the work in the formal sense but not without a lot of help from the senior person, to the extent to which that without substantial guidance from the senior person the junior person probably would not have been able to write up the work in an acceptable way. The junior person has in some superficial sense "contributed to the work", but I would argue that really he has not. And to focus ideas let's imagine that this in a field like mathematics (or TCS, theoretical physics...) in which the idea of "valuable routine work" is largely or completely absent: e.g. the junior person did not do any interesting or independent calculations, coding and so forth.
I still feel that this is a serious ethical violation. If it results in the junior person getting a PhD thesis, then I feel bad about that. If this is a larger pattern of behavior and results in the junior person getting several publications which advance his career, then I feel terrible about this: I think the senior person is doing something really reprehensible.
Stage 3: Now imagine that the senior person had the idea for the project, had some of it worked out in advance (but not shown to the junior person), had ideas about how the implementation was to take place, but left at least some substantial part of the implementation to the junior person. Let's say the junior person did at least a substantial part of the work independently, and let's say that he did some things in a way different from what the senior person would have thought to do which is not obviously worse.
This stage is an accurate description of the relation between many thesis advisors and their students in mathematics. In mathematics this type of interaction probably most commonly results in a solo paper by the student, and the likelihood that this will occur is positively correlated with the research strength of the advisor and the department. I grew up watching this practice and therefore got used to it. Once I saw how differently other fields operate I started to wonder whether this was really ethical behavior. I think in practice it is not such a serious problem because in mathematics who your advisor is is known to everyone who knows you: when you meet someone new or talk about them with a colleague, "Who was his advisor?" is one of the first questions that gets asked. It is quite common for someone who got their PhD at a top mathematics department to have their first publication in a truly excellent journal on the topic of their thesis -- deep, cutting edge stuff in their advisor's field -- then a short gap, followed by other papers which are minor variants of previous work or are interesting and valuable but in a different, lower-to-the-ground field. When potential employers see this type of CV, we largely tend to think "I get it: the advisor really did much of their thesis work, and without her the candidate cannot continue doing work of the same quality." Unfortunately this might be unfair in the other direction: for instance some advisors really don't give much direct help to their students. That was the case for me, and luckily various people told me that my advisor has a reputation in the community for not doing his students' theses for them, with the result that some of his students have written much better theses than others (mine was somewhere in the middle). So it's not clear how to arrive at a "standard advisor discount". Taken the other way, sometimes you do see an eminent advisor writing a paper jointly with their student on the topic of their thesis work, and all of a sudden it becomes less clear what this means: there needs to be an explanation of this in the letter of recommendation (but the explanation is not always absolutely clear or convincing either: every student everywhere always did "at least half of the work" according to recommendation letters).
Most eminent thesis advisors regard the help that they give their student to write an excellent thesis as a one time gift, at which point they leave their former student largely alone to sink or swim. However in a small number of cases there are eminent advisors who just have that many good ideas and that generous a nature. Maybe they feel that the way to function as a leader in their field is to feed their former students the ideas they need to do first-rate work. I cannot imagine trying to tell these eminent people not to do this, but nevertheless the practice seems unfair in a competitive job market. It contributes to feelings that the top departments form a kind of elite club that, if admission is not granted by the age of 24 or so, will be almost impossible to join later in life. This is not good for the profession.
There are further stages. To be clear, starting with Stage 4 I would myself be a participant in the process (and sometimes I think I would be a better advisor if I were more onboard with Stage 3). If you're a senior person and you feel like you made what was really only an offhand remark to someone, then even if that offhand remark was crucial in the writing of their paper you are relatively unlikely to want to be a coauthor. I respect that very well and I have to: that kind of expertise and generosity is part of being a senior academic (in my field at least; I assume it's not so different elsewhere). At my relatively middling career stage I have already made plenty of remarks to others that have resulted in acknowledgments in their paper, and I have already turned down at least one offer of coauthorship. And there was one relatively recent case where I offered coauthorship to a very senior person: he declined, roughly because he had almost forgotten the remarks he had made to me about five years (!!) before. I hadn't, and they were crucial to writing what for me is a very good paper. So there is a continuum here and many judgment calls to make; I want to be clear about that. But I also think that we should draw the line somewhere before "An author always retains the right not to receive credit for his or her work."
I agree about the unfairness of having some top mathematicians feed ideas to their students until the students have tenure, while other mathematicians leave their students to build their own careers. Also this isn't just a matter of the top departments being an elite club, it is more a matter of individual advisors (from various tiers of schools) acting differently than other advisors. I don't completely agree about Stage 2: if the student would not otherwise graduate, and if also the student will leave academia after getting the PhD, then I would give a student all necessary help.
Comment from a field which IMHO tends to err on the side of too long coauthor lists: For (or rather against) stages 1 and 2, we (chemistry, Germany) declare in our thesis that no help was received other than that listed in the acknowledgements.
@MichaelZieve - what is the societal value of such a Ph.D. degree, presuming that the pseudo-student was and remained unable to write up anything publishable independently? Perhaps an extreme extension of the basic human right to education?
@JirkaHanika Once a department has accepted a student into graduate school, and that student has passed the preliminary written and oral exams to advance to candidacy, then I think the department has a moral obligation to get the student a Ph.D. in exchange for the student's spending years in the department rather than doing something else. I don't think about anything so grand as societal value, I just think of the student as an individual human being who deserves some certificate indicating that (s)he has worked at something during these 5-6 years of his/her life.
@MichaelZieve - Some people work harder than others, though. That's not reflected in the extreme case of the advisor helping the student "write" a thesis which the student barely understands properly, let alone contributing to its content. There should be some minimum standard of the Ph.D. title holder being capable of doing research I think.
I think that you need to distinguish between the case when everyone agrees that X's work requires acknowledgement as a co-author, but X is being difficult, and the case where X is uncertain or dismissive of the level of their contribution.
I was recently added, at the invitation of the primary authors, to the author list of an article in preparation based on my very last-minute contributions. I felt obliged to have a discussion with the primary authors as to whether I really should be added or should simply be acknowledged. In the end, I deferred to their judgment about the importance of my contribution and accepted their invitation. This is a perfectly natural and appropriate conversation to have.
However, if X thinks that the paper is bad as written and refuses to have their name associated with the work, then the remaining authors have some harder choices. They should first consider the objections or criticisms of X and see if the article can be improved. If it cannot for time or space reasons, then they should consider either offering X an acknowledgement credit at the end of the paper or whether or not they can remove X's contribution and their name from the work entirely. It's entirely possible that this may scuttle the paper submission.
I don't think that the remaining authors should submit X's work as their own if X refuses to be associated with the article in any way.
The purpose of publishing a paper should be the dissemination of knowledge and not merely the attribution of credit to the right persons for its discovery. If the authors Y and Z believe that the work is of any importance whatsoever to the scientific community, it would be unethical for them to NOT find a way to publish it. Such considerations could override some of the considerations of fairness of attribution that many here seem to be concerned about.
I agree that Y and Z's belief that the work should be published should carry some weight, but I don't think they ever have an ethical obligation to publish anything.
They should, if their jobs are funded by taxpayers' money, or if the work is of use to society.
Science is ultimately about creating knowledge and understanding. Considerations of credit and plagiarism, or, in the present case, the danger of committing "inverse plagiarism" serve to keep the incentive system fair. But withholding knowledge under this auspices is leading the thinking ad absurdum: it is putting the cart before the horse. The incentive system should serve the expansion of knowledge; the expansion of knowledge should not be sacrificed for keeping the incentive system in place. And, mentioning that the co-author declined to be named may penalise the remaining authors.
In a comment on the earlier thread, I claimed that a co-author always has the right not to receive credit for work done with respect to a particular paper. I believe this is because there are certain rights and responsibilities that researchers have with respect to publications. Particularly relevant here is the right to receive appropriate credit for their work.
However, associated with any right is also the option not to exercise said right. For instance, author X may believe that co-worker Y has contributed enough to merit co-authorship. If Y chooses to decline co-authorship, this does not prevent author X from publishing the paper.
At the same time, by exercising the right to co-authorship comes additional responsibilities. Among those is the responsibility to participate actively and constructively in the preparation of the manuscript. It is unethical to insist on co-authorship for the purposes of scuttling a manuscript through inaction.
In general, though, none of the above places the restriction on authors voluntarily relinquishing intellectual property rights to the paper (that is, not have their names appear as co-authors, but still allowing the manuscript to proceed). They also have the right to "take their marbles and go home"—essentially withdraw from the complete process, which can of course be much more difficult in collaborative projects involving multiple groups.
In short: authors have the right to accept credit, and the right not to accept credit, but must accept the consequences of that decision.
This is exactly the reason why care must be taken when inviting some other researcher into team for collaboration. If he has once been written as a co-author, he has a certain right to block the publication of the shared work. This may or may not be fair.
As a result, it is better to invite additional researchers only if they can contribute some substantial new results or perhaps some type of analysis that is difficult to do without they help (writing and evaluating some complex mathematical model about results, for instance). In such cases, the contributed part can be identified and removed, publishing without it.
Differently, if the invited researcher contributed in general discussions and planning over all project, there is no clear way to get rid of such contribution easily. Then all that remains is to negotiate, if all sides agree to publish with the fewer authors, maybe that is ok.
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76653 | Published papers with incorrect solutions of famous problems: how to raise concerns with editors?
I recently discovered the following two papers:
Bruckman, Paul S. A proof of the Collatz conjecture. Internat. J. Math. Ed. Sci. Tech. 39 (2008), no. 3, 403–407, DOI: 10.1080/00207390701691574.
Bruckman, Paul S. A proof of the strong Goldbach conjecture. Internat. J. Math. Ed. Sci. Tech. 39 (2008), no. 8, 1102–1109, DOI: 10.1080/00207390802136560.
Mathematicians probably do not need to read any further to see where I am going with this.
For non-mathematicians, the Collatz and Goldbach conjectures are two of the most famous unsolved problems in mathematics. In addition to being the focus of active research, they are also popular targets for non-experts, who have proposed countless numbers of erroneous proofs over the years.
The MathSciNet reviews for the two articles (Collatz, Goldbach), which are written after publication by independent reviewers, identify a critical error in each, which invalidates their results.
The journal in question is apparently reputable (otherwise I would not bother) and is published by a major commercial academic publisher, though its main focus is on topics in mathematics education rather than pure mathematics. It appears that the chief editor has been in charge since before 2008. I did not find any errata or editor's notes regarding these papers. (A corrigendum of the Collatz paper was published, but it fixes minor typos only, and the MathSciNet reviewer apparently took these corrections into account.)
It seems to me that the papers cannot have ever undergone proper peer review - the titles alone should have subjected them to extremely close scrutiny - and that they ought to have been retracted long ago. But in light of their age, I wonder if it is it still appropriate to raise the issue with the journal's editor, or if people will just see it as "water under the bridge".
I am also not quite sure how to explain the issue tactfully. I think with most professional mathematicians, I could just show them the citations with no further explanation, and they'd immediately understand why this is bad. Obviously that didn't happen in the first place, but I'm not really sure how much more background I can give the editor without potentially appearing condescending or insulting.
I saw the question I found a published paper that looks dodgy. What to do? But I think this case is more egregious than that one, in that the papers are not merely "dodgy" but in fact flatly wrong, and frankly, an embarrassment to the journal. The two answers there suggest "comment on PubPeer" and "do nothing", neither of which seem adequate.
Some nitpicking: "(...) the titles alone should have subjected them to extremely close scrutiny (...)" -- I am not a number theorist, but I suspect a proper referee would be able to spot a (major) mistake without need for extremely close scrutiny. I don't imagine every paper claiming to solve a famous problem is very closely scrutinized -- I would imagine most of them get summarily rejected.
@tomasz: I don't really agree with that. Finding errors in mathematical work can be very difficult. If the paper is written clearly in a standard way by an experienced mathematician, then the right person will probably be led "by smell" to the trouble spot, but it may still take some work to identify the error. If it is written in an eccentric, non-standard or obscure way, then what any sentence means can be up for grabs. Anyway, I think what Nate means is "extremely close scrutiny if they want to publish it".
Having said that, I read the MathSciNet review for the Goldbach Conjecture, and the author uses an identity in which a sum of values of an analytic (on (2,infinity)) function f over all primes p > 2 is exactly equal to the integral of f/(log x) from 3 to infinity, provided both sides converge. That just doesn't sound good, and as the reviewer points out, the first function f one might choose gives a counterexample.
This case seems kind of special. Considering that Jeff Lagarias cites the Bruckmann paper on Collatz in his 2006 review "The 3x+1 Problem: An Annotated Bibliography, II (2000-2009)" as "This paper asserts a proof of the Collatz conjecture. However the argument given has a gap which leaves the proof incomplete. The erratum points out this gap and withdraws the proof." it seems like no action should be taken…
@Dirk: I just looked at Lagarias's article and Bruckman's erratum. The situation is as Nate says, not as Lagarias says: the erratum points out misprints only. It doesn't withdraw anything. (An interesting maneuver on Lagarias's part!) Of course, after many more words, I came to the same conclusion as you: "[I]t seems like no action should be taken."
For what it's worth, this journal used to publish an occasional article of mathematical interest to me (mostly in the 1980s and 1990s; some of these are cited here, for instance), but in the past 10-15 years it seems to have devolved into something that I've not been particularly motivated to look through the table of contents very often anymore.
I believe it is a waste of your time. When you see such a claim "solution of Goldbach" etc. and the paper is not published in the Annals (or something close to it) then the author knows that there is a flaw somewhere in the paper,the editor and the referees know there is a flaw in the paper and you also know that something is wrong. Just ignore it.
@PeteL.Clark: I never meant to say that finding errors in mathematical work is easy in general, even for a specialist. What I'm saying is that someone claiming to solve a particularly notorious problem is very likely to either be a) a crackpot, in which case finding mistakes could very well be a routine exercise for an undergraduate student, or b) a non-specialist way out of his depth, most likely trying to pursue a line of proof which just doesn't seem right or is a known dead end, and in either case, a specialist should be able to spot the error without scrutinizing the whole paper.
@tomasz I did have in mind what Pete said - that the paper should not have been published unless it had withstood extremely close scrutiny. I agree that in this case a much lower level of scrutiny would have sufficed to reject it.
@NateEldredge: I thought as much, hence the disclaimer about nitpicking.
My experience from the I.T. world suggests that no matter how condescending you think it would be to explain something in clear language, the number of people who will greatly appreciates it far outweighs the few snobby people who will feel they are insulted. Actually, clearly explaining something doesn't have to mean "talking down" to your audience, but simply ensures your communication is fully understood--always a good idea. (I have found that the "snobby few" are usually imaginary and rarely materialize in actual practice, you only worry that they will.)
@Wildcard The issue here is that whatever is communicated to the editor, the message will be "you were grossly negligent in allowing these papers to be published in your journal". It is hard to imagine anyone being happy about that message.
@TobiasKildetoft, I would phrase it as an inquiry: "I was surprised to see your publication of the proof of ...etc., etc. As I have never heard this famous conjecture to be otherwise than an open problem, I delved further and found a retraction published ___ date. I am interested what sort of expert review process papers undergo before publication in your journal. Was there a note about the historical/disproven aspect of these papers that was mistakenly not published? Were they for curiosity only? I fear other readers may have been misled into thinking them accurate proofs. Signed, Name"
It is interesting to see that these articles are indeed retracted now.
Paul Bruckner also solved the Riemann hypothesis. That was a lot easier than the twine prime conjecture. See: http://www.pme-math.org/journal/bruckmaninterview.html
It is a strange case. You say that the author of the two papers is deceased. Given that and the other facts you have presented -- in particular both papers were published almost ten years ago, their flaws would be immediately suspected by any mathematician and are documented in the MathSciNet reviews -- it seems to me that the principal culprit and the principal victim are both the International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science and Technology (IJMEST).
The journal in question is apparently reputable (otherwise I would not bother)
Is it reputable, though? I hadn't heard of it before. Taking a look now, it is hard for me to tell.
and is published by a major commercial academic publisher,
Come now: we all know that being published by a major commercial academic publisher is no certificate of quality. Elsevier was caught publishing a several journals that were essentially reprinted advertisements for medical and pharmaceutical companies. That's memorably egregious, but other big companies have skullduggeries of their own. Conversely, big companies which do some really shady things also put out some really good journals, Elsevier being a good example. Taylor and Francis is a less good example: of the 46 journals they publish in mathematics and statistics, I only myself recognize three as being good...but three is enough. So major publishing companies publish good journals and bad journals: I don't think one can deduce much from this.
Back to the journal. I looked into IJMEST, and I find it a bit strange. The journal's aims and scope center it on (a kind of) mathematics and science education:
Contributions will be welcomed from lecturers, teachers and users of mathematics at all levels on the contents of syllabuses and methods of presentation. Increasing use of technology is being made in the teaching, learning, assessment and presentation of mathematics today; original and interesting contributions in this rapidly developing area will be especially welcome. Mathematical models arising from real situations, the use of computers, new teaching aids and techniques also form an important feature. Discussion will be encouraged on methods of widening applications throughout science and technology. The need for communication between teacher and user will be emphasized and reports of relevant conferences and meetings will be included.
I wanted to remark that I have a colleague who is (to say the least) active in the mathematics education field, so I know that the above description is not really that of a modern research journal in mathematics / science education. It is more along the lines of creating a shared community for mathematical teachers (which is also a worthy goal, and one that my colleague is interested in).
But the above description does not seem to be a good match for the papers in which IJMEST has published in recent years. These papers seem to be almost entirely in the field of mathematics itself: most papers state theorems and give proofs. Sometimes they knowingly give proofs of old theorems and their angle is to give new proofs, often accompanied by the claim that they will be easier for the student to understand (although in my experience as a mathematician it is common for new proofs to be accompanied by such claims). But many, perhaps a majority, of the articles, seem to be entirely devoted to mathematics, usually of the kind that is broadly understandable: e.g. lots of Fibonacci numbers. So the published work of the journal looks to be a lot closer to what is published by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA)...but without nearly as much attention to the quality of the exposition as given by articles published in MAA journals.
So something has gone terribly wrong for this journal to publish proofs of major open problems like Collatz or Goldbach: such papers should be out of scope of the journal. As @Corvus points out, submitting a paper claiming a proof of something like Goldbach to a journal like this just doesn't make any sense: such a paper should be published not only in a math journal but in one of the very top math journals, first because a correct proof of Goldbach merits publication there (such a proof would rank among the great mathematical achievements of all time!) and second because a top journal can get the top experts in the field to the vet the paper, which is needed in order for the community to accept the result.
When the editorial board of a journal like IJMEST receives a paper claiming a proof of a major conjecture, they should (I think) do one of the following things:
(i) Bounce the paper back immediately as being out of scope for the journal, or
(ii) Engage in a preliminary refereeing job to see if the paper looks serious. If so, they should reach out to the editorial board at an appropriate journal -- i.e., a top mathematics journal -- and try to do a handover of some kind.
I've thought it over for a while now (slow internet connection...), and although in general I believe strongly that any interested party can contact editors and try to get published results corrected, in this case I just don't see why that would be a helpful thing to do. I realize that I now believe that publishing short, fallacious proofs of two major conjectures in the same year is enough to irreparably damage the reputability of a mathematics education journal in my eyes. Either they are so far outside of the mathematical community that they don't understand the significance of problems like Goldbach to the mathematical community and how they have to be handled or they know and don't care: in particular, they don't really care whether the mathematics they publish is correct. I don't see how to fix either of those problems.
It is somewhat odd. I looked at the journal on MathSciNet and it seems to have some of its papers indexed (not all, unless it publishes a very irregular number of papers per issue), but the page for the journal has no indexing information, which I do not think I have encountered before.
Here's some context: https://www.jcturner.co.nz/paul-s-bruckman-and-number-theory/three-papers-by-paul-s-bruckman/
I would not recommend contacting the author, as
The people who put together the disproofs probably already have done so, and
You're likely to end up wasting time in futile argument.
I know a researcher who claimed to have solved P=NP. This researcher has done some nice work in other places, but this particular piece of work is based on hubris and naivete. Like many who have a personal area of blindness (as often happens with such famous problems), this researcher is pretty much impossible to talk to rationally about their pet subject. Thus, people basically just ignore it (which is easy since it's only ever been informally published as a preprint).
With something that has been published, you can contact the editors and see if they'll act, but if they don't I would recommend the policy of simply ignoring the article rather than making it a crusade.
I recognize that this suggestion may be controversial: it just feels wrong, given scientific ideals, to let an incorrect result stand. The edges of science always have been and always will be cluttered with junk work that is wrong but not worth anybody's time to get retracted or corrected.
I find that this is best understood by the fact that significant results generally imply more than just the result itself. If a result both correct and meaningful, then there should be a great deal of intellectual productivity that can expand out from either the result or the machinery used to obtain it. If not, then an incorrect result is much like all the other numerous dead-ends of scientific inquiry that have resulted in true but apparently useless results. That changes, of course, if an incorrect paper is likely to mislead experts or to cause public harm, in which case it's worth fighting, but that doesn't seem to be the case to me here.
If possible, it's nice to be able to lay a retraction marker down so that nobody ends up wasting their time on it. That's really all that getting the retraction would mean, however: just decreasing the likelihood of people stumbling across it and wasting their time. The ultimate fate of these papers will change little, whether retracted or not.
"it just feels wrong, given scientific ideals, to let an incorrect result stand" -- in effect, "someone's wrong in an 8-year-old article" is a stronger version of "someone's wrong on the internet". Either one can easily stop you getting to bed by a reasonable time.
It seems that Paul Bruckman was an active mathematician with some non-retracted publications, but towards the end of his life he published "proofs" of Riemann, Goldbach, Collatz, you name it. He died in 2003.
Out of curiosity, I clicked through to the original articles, and noticed that both were retracted by the journal's editor-in-chief.
Retraction notice for the Collatz paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0020739X.2019.1703070
Retraction for the Goldbach paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0020739X.2019.1703071
Both notices refer to negative reviews and (unsuccessful) corrections elsewhere; neither mentions what initially brought this to the editor's attention.
I've dealt with this sort of thing in the past. I would begin by contacting the authors, explaining the problem and asking them to issue a retraction (while avoiding the temptation to ask why, if they really believed they had proven the Goldbach conjecture, they published the proof in an education journal!!).
If that fails, I would move on to the editorial board of the journal in question with the same request.
I have reason to believe the author is deceased. Anyway, in general I hesitate to engage with people who think they have proved the Goldbach conjecture - conventional wisdom is that such interactions are rarely productive and sometimes lead to continuing and unwanted correspondence. I agree that contacting the editor is a good idea; my question is how to phrase it.
That makes sense regarding engagement with Goldbach-provers. I suppose I might write the editor and explain that by virtue of its public visibility the Goldbach conjecture attracts a great deal of attention from aspiring mathematicians [that's the nicest phrase I can think of for "crackpot"; you may have something better]. I'd go on to explain that if it had been proven, it would be a massive breakthrough in mathematics and a cause for massive international excitement. But instead, what they've published is a flawed proof; moreover a detailed explication of the flaw has been published...
...at MathSciNet. This is a potentially embarrassing state of affairs for the journal, all the more so because of the prominence of the problem in question. I'd urge the editor to either retract the paper or obtain further review in light of the MathSciNet posting and, based on the outcome of that review, consider retraction at that stage. Most likely the editor will do nothing; "Internat. J. Math. Ed. Sci. Tech. retracts paper that should obviously never have been accepted" is hardly desirable press. But you can try.
Likely the editor will do nothing. "Journal of
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854 | Keeping track of bibliography references for an entire research group
This is a related question to my previous one about keeping advisees aware of literature.
Given the relatively large number of papers that are out there, it's inadvisable to force every student to start from ground zero in building up a reference library. To me, this suggests that there should be some centralized ways of keeping track of bibliography references.
The low-cost but high-maintenance route to me would be to have an SVN repository to which people can update their own personal bibliography files. Are there other more time-efficient routes to manage this process when:
people have different computing platforms and workflows (Windows with Office, OS X with iWork, Linux with TeX, etc.)?
working with collaborators at other institutes?
it's important (according to university/workplace regulations) not to have data stored "in the cloud"?
http://citeulike.org http://wiki.citeulike.org/index.php/Groups or http://www.mendeley.com/ http://www.mendeley.com/groups/
Thanks for the links. I should also mention that I'm interested in solutions that don't involve storage "in the cloud," as it's frowned on by my institute. I've revised the question accordingly.
Which data shouldn't be stored in the cloud? Your bibtex file? Or just actual PDFs? If your institution frowns on sharing your bibtex file, I'm disappointed (see http://scienceinthesands.blogspot.com/2011/11/up-until-googles-recent-catastrophic.html)
@DavidKetcheson: The prohibition is definitely not on sharing data, it's about where the data "lives." The idea is that our data shouldn't be subject to external usage control and privacy policies. But we're certainly free to share BibTeX files and other data via university-owned media. (And obviously PDF's runs into a whole other issue.)
I don't understand the issue, but...Mendeley's privacy policy says: Your data and your content is owned by you.
Whatever personal data and original content you upload to your Mendeley account is owned by you. We do not claim any ownership rights over your research. Of course, you can delete your data at any time. Does that make your institution happy?
@David, seems like a reasonable restriction to me, if you don't want the world to be able to see your stuff it doesn't matter whether you own the data or not! Can you restrict the desktop version of Mendeley to not upload the bibliography to the internet?
@AndyW, aeismail says letting the world see it is not the problem.
What do you mean by "reference library", in terms of files? A bib file? A bunch of pdfs?
I accomplish this using the groups feature of Mendeley. It works on all three major OS's, allows you to share bibliographies easily with both your group and external collaborators. It also allows something that I think is very important -- lots of bibliographies on particular topics within the realm of what my group does. See, for example
http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1045561/runge-kutta-stability-regions/papers/
http://www.mendeley.com/groups/1070421/nonlinear-hyperbolic-pde-solvers-on-gpus/papers/
I should mention that Mendeley's web interface to bibliographies is awful. But the desktop interface is quite nice and (most importantly) can export Bibtex.
Mendeley does store your data in the cloud (if you consider a bibliography to be "your data").
Update: I stopped using Mendeley when it was bought by Elsevier. I haven't found a satisfactory replacement.
If you're using LaTeX, you can set up a .bib file on a shared drive and everyone can reference and add to it as necessary using whatever program they like. I'm a fan of BibDesk, personally.
I recommend to put this file under version control, to reduce the risk of people accidentally permanently deleting anything.
We used to maintain our own list on our (sadly now defunct) group website when I was a PhD student. The sources for the group website are in a shared (internal) version control repository to which we all have access. We maintained three shared bibtex-files:
one for internal references — everything any of us ever published
one for external references — anything not internal any of us has ever cited or found otherwise useful
one for new references; we go through them at our weekly meetings, then merge them into (2).
Simple, but works very well.
Neat! That is the kind of working routine I would wish for my group.
If you want to sync refs across multiple users but don't want to host in the cloud, you should check out sparkleshare. You'd set up a git repo on a local server to host a bibtex file, then have your users install sparkleshare on their computers and connect to the git repo. You would then use Mendeley, which has a bibtex syncing option. This will achieve a system that will distribute new refs added by any user.
hm, I take that back; it appears that Mendeley's bibtex sync is only one-way (mendeley->bibtex), so the system I described would simply leave all users constantly overwriting the shared file and never picking up the changes made by others.
For small scale projects, such as you and a few other authors working on paper(s), I would just consider plain text file (with standardized fields) in a location you can all access (plus version control). Bibtext would be an obvious solution (and most reference software that I know of can import bibtext files). Easy and minamalist to implement and update. Mike's answer seems like a better solution than this, but this is dependent upon all the members of the group utilizing such software, which sometimes isn't worth the effort to get people to convert.
For large scale operations (like you need to enter in over 1,000 papers for a lab) I would consider rolling your own database + user forms to enter in data. Fields you want from papers are fairly easy to delineate, so setting up the initial database is not too dificult. Here are a few other reasons this is nice;
You can have flexibility to put what you want in the database. For instance if you were conducting a meta analysis you may want to extend forms to include relevant statistics.
Querying on a variety of characteristics becomes trivially easy.
If you are saavy enough with the database, you can write some scripts to export the data in whatever format you want. For instance, I use the one statistical software I am most proficient in (so not a true database, but several seperate tables) to write my bibtext library, plain text citations in approximate APA format, and VBA code to find-and-replace latex like citations in word documents.
Alot of flexibility with your own database, and if you are doing a very large project it might be worth the upfront effort to develop and customize to suit your own needs.
The solution is the open source I, librarian server. It manages bibliography for groups. You can try it out online here: http://www.bioinformatics.org/librarian/
Look for "demo"
Why not just use vanilla git ? Everyone sets up their private repo and you can use github for shared syncing as needed.
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9148 | What should advisors do if one of their PhD students has to withdraw?
Unfortunately, there are circumstances when not everything goes right in a student's PhD career, or there can be personal circumstances that require doctoral candidates to withdraw from a PhD program before they have completed the requirements.
However, what is not clear to me is how to handle this situation from the advisor's perspective. What should an advisor do to:
Help the candidate, should she wish to apply elsewhere?
Discuss the situation with the group, to maintain morale?
Handle the "transition" process (during which the student is still officially on the payroll)?
Without additional details, it will be impossible to provide very detailed answers so from a general point, each case has its own solutions. The first question I would ask is, what is my part in this and how can I best help out (best may be = nothing). In general I would try to help out as much as I can unless the problem lies in the realm of a conflict or personal problems. Then there is not much you can do except suggest professional help. If the candidate is a good student then I would certainly support with any letter of recommendation I could. Since you mention morale issues in the group, it suggests some form of non-trivial problem. In some cases too much help makes people fall into a false sense of security so to be shaken can be useful as long as the reasons are very clear.
So without trying to read too much into what is between the lines, I think the degree of help depends on to what extent help can or should be given (seen from an objective point).
Probably not the most satisfactory answer but being responsible for the research education at my dept., I have seen how difficult these matters can be. In our case, I would also be a resource to help out, if nothing else just to discuss the matter. (This does not mean I run a research group completely without problems myself!)
It depends on the circumstances, but I certainly help the student if I'm able. We had one student who wanted to transfer to a Ph.D. program closer to home, and another who wanted to take a crack at programs better than ours. I was happy to support them both, including writing rec letters. I put a third student in touch with some people who worked at a software company.
Some students blow us off, in which case general well wishes and respectful silence seem to be what is called for.
A Ph.D. is 5+ years of backbreaking work, during which you make poverty-level wages, with uncertain job prospects at the other end. I can hardly blame a student for leaving, if his/her heart is not in it.
Handle the "transition" process (during which the student is still officially on the payroll)?
Support would be great.
On the other hand:
If you are talking about a PhD student who was employed at an institute, then maybe the advisor should think what he/she has made wrong concerning advising.
From my point of view, a retrospective would be worth for both - student and advisor. For instance, can you remember the first time when an expectation and an actual state of the student's work was rather different. Talked the advisor with the student regarding publications and interesting conferences? Which intervals were scheduled for meetings? Did their meetings worked out? If not, why not? (agenda, interruptions during the meeting). Which method was used by the student to assess his/her progress? Were these "story points" observed a little bit by the advisor?
Discuss the situation with the group, to maintain morale?
Yes, but firstly the advisor needs to know the actual reason concerning the end of the student's work. Talking in front of a group about a reason which was not the actual reason could be not the best when having persons in the group who are friends of the student who ends his study and work.
Help the candidate, should she wish to apply elsewhere?
If she has achieved a certain level within her scientific field, why not?
I'm not talking about cases where the PhD advising relationship has fallen apart. I'm talking about situations like visa problems, family emergencies, failing required coursework, and other non-research issues.
@aeismail the situations you mention could easily fall under the category of private information that you should not be sharing with the group. At the very least you should give the student the chance to explain to group members (if they choose to). If not, you have to leave it at "personal decision" and not go any further.
From my experience, most advisors seem to simply shake hands and part ways; I've seen a number of students leave, and in no case did the advisor do anything for the student. I view this as appropriate. Consider a work relationship, where an employee decides to leave because they (got married/got sick/won the lottery/will likely be fired for poor performance/dislike their job/dislike their boss/etc.). It's almost unheard of for the employer to assist the quitting employee to find new employment. (Note I'm not talking about firing someone, where local laws may require some sort of employment help.)
It's a similar situation here. You have a student who decides to leave for whatever reason. At that point, your work relationship is simply terminated. You can continue to interact as professionals, but you are under no obligation to assist in future endeavors.
That being said, I don't think any grad student would turn you down if you offer to help. It would definitely be a nice professional gesture. Just realize that you are under no obligation to offer such help.
Hmmm. I really have to disagree. When I agree to be a student's advisor, I'm making a commitment to their professional development, even if they decide to leave. I've helped my students find other advisors, and I've written recommendation letters for my students to join other PhD programs, because I believed that was part of my job. My first PhD advisor did the same for me when I changed PhD programs.
@JeffE Couldn't agree with you more!
If you treat students and colleagues instrumentally, and if you have no compunction exploiting the time and energy of others for professional gain, then of course, you must never offer to assist students who are no longer working on your projects or to whom you have assigned low academic-value work to benefit you but not them. Terminate the relationship and find a replacement.
@Jeff - Interesting, I didn't expect this to be so controversial. I guess all I can say is that many of the professors I know don't share your view. I know mine didn't :)
Your analogy with other workplaces is false in one aspect: in academia, if you don't write your student a letter of recommendation, their career is probably done. If the student's work has been acceptable and you believe they have the potential to succeed elsewhere, I believe you have an obligation, both to your student and to your discipline, to write the letter. Other forms of assistance (calling contacts, etc) are good if you have the time, but I would think of writing a letter as an absolute requirement.
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8118 | How to encourage administration to handle plagiarism?
I obtained my PhD about five years ago and immediately took up a postdoctoral position at a national lab in Japan to continue my research in computer engineering.
Over those five years I worked with the person who is now my supervisor, and trusted him in the same way I would trust any ordinary person, only to learn (too late!) that my trust was misplaced.
After working on a large project of his for about two full-time years, he forced
me to "leave the project". Now that the large project is nearing completion, I have since discovered that he has started to present my ideas and my work as his own.
The administration vacillates between feigning ignorance and admitting there is a problem but then claiming that they are powerless to do anything about it.
What can I do? What should I do - and why?
As JeffE would say, Run, don't walk.
@DaveClarke: if only I had known that earlier!
@Charles Morisset: Because leaving would entail relocating my entire family, etc. Not impossible but hardly a walk in the park!
Has he published your work, or just presented it?
@DaveClarke: Until now, just presented it. For him, this means there is less of a paper trail, and there are no pesky editors or the like to be found. I suspect he knows that if he publishes my work, especially somewhere reputable, I am probably going to be able to handle things by working with the editorial staff.
This can be solved. As suggested below, the way could be to talk with him. Another is to write the work up and try to publish it, probably with him as co-author.
@DaveClarke: I can't talk to him - he has literally locked me out of the office, won't answer e-mail, and even pretends he can't see or hear me on the rare occasions we bump into each other and I try to put in a "hello?". It's quite remarkable.
@DaveClarke: regarding pre-emptive publication, that is an interesting idea, but might not be easy for a number of reasons. To give just one example, the work in question is (part of) the design of a computer system, but now I'm not allowed to use that very system.
It is harder to deal with plagiarism in oriental countries than in the western world. It's even harder when your employer is a national lab.
To answer your question, how to encourage the administration to handle plagiarism?
There is something you need to know (I suspect you already know it to some extent), orientals tend to treat their faces much more seriously than anything else. This is the key.
Things may not be that serious as you would think. So far, he only presented the idea and the work as if they were his. But I agree that it's a bad sign. You need to deal with it as soon as possible before he goes any further.
Edit (I would like to argue that we do not have sufficient information to tell if plagiarism will happen or already happened.)
End of Edit
From what you described in the comments, your supervisor seems to have personal issue with you. You might have some conflicts with him without you even knowing it. The key word face is the most probable reason I could think of. There is probably some cultural thing buried somewhere you would need to figure out if you want to resolve it. It may not be that serious as you think, could be just misunderstanding.
There is some different thinkings between oriental and western world. In the western world, people take individual ownership for what they think and do. In the oriental world, some tend to think the ideas and the works are products of the whole team/group. Thus, the head of the group would present the idea and the work as the head of the group. This could be construed as plagiarism in the western world
You said they are powerless to do anything about it. This is probably due to that thinking. I must say that changing a culture takes huge efforts and long time. If you want to talk to them to encourage them to handle plagiarism, you need to
Talk to them politely, professionally and discreetly.
Wow, just wow. Thank you for this answer, is is completely orthogonal to anything I had imagined. Having said that, I am not sure I fully understand what you are talking about - at least, I'm not confident I know how to deal with the issue! I have, thus far, been dealing with people as politely, professionally and discreetly as I know how, but it hasn't gotten me far.
@Lostintranslation I rewrote my answer quite a bit.
As you've mentioned, a paper trail is always harder to deal with in presentations—and taking credit is a lot harder to define than on a paper.
Right now, you have a few key challenges: you will first need to find a new job as soon as possible. Secondly, you will need to establish the paper trail that shows that the ideas and results that you have obtained are in fact yours. This requires having a clear email trail, plus any relevant lab notebooks and supporting evidence that shows such work was in fact yours.
Beyond that, you have already done due diligence in that you have alerted the administration to the possibility of academic dishonesty on the part of your advisor, and you have also informed him of your intentions in this matter (by email, which he has received).
If you have done both of these things, then you should be able, as you suggested, to work directly with the editors of any journals in which your advisor chooses to publish this work without you.
However, one other thing that you could do is write up your work independently. Presumably, you are much more knowledgeable about the specifics of the methods and techniques that you've performed, and would be able to write a better paper on this topic than he can by himself (which he would need to do in order to publish without you). You could then offer him to publish those manuscripts. (Before sending him such a manuscript, however, I would be sure to watermark the PDF, and lock it down so that it can't be printed, edited, or copied. Alternatively, I'd only send part of the paper—by withholding the methodologies and conclusions sections, for instance.)
Let me start with plagiarism/academic dishonesty is a serious offense and it should always be dealt with. You said, "After working on a large project of his for about two full-time years..." this immediately puts us into a gray area. Did you discuss authorship at the start of the project and if so what was agreed then?
When I employ someone to work on a grant, that doesn't guarantee them co-authorship on everything they work on. Often I need someone to turn a crank and there just isn't the opportunity to make a contribution worthy of authorship. Other times I may not trust the person enough to do anything independently enough and therefore spoon feed them. In my opinion the extent to which supervisors "steal" the work of their advisees is often overrated by advisees, especially ones who have had a falling out with their supervisors.
You have a sour relationship with your former advisor and the first thing you need to do is to repair the relationship. Accusing a former supervisor of academic dishonesty by brandishing words like plagiarism is not helpful in this regards. Talking to him and explaining that you need to publish the work is useful.
I would suggest creating a list of all the projects that you worked on while in his group. From this list, you need to identify the publications that you can generate without needing any resources from him (i.e., access to HIS computer/software) and ones that you need to collaborate with him on. The goal is to identify all potential publications and establish authorship (i.e., what should have been done at the outset).
For each publication that does not need any additional resources, write a short description/abstract about the key findings, propose an author list and order, provide a time line until submission. For these publications, you should be the only one responsible for anything on the time line (apart from providing feedback on drafts). Ask him to provide feedback on the key findings, author list, and time line so that you can tailor them to better fit his needs.
For each publication that requires additional resources, you need to remember, he can ignore your previous work and just regenerate it and write the publications on his own. What you are offering is a collaboration. Again, you need to write a short description/abstract about the key findings and the additional work required, propose an author list and order, and provide a time line until submission. For these publications, the more you expect of other and the more resources you need, the less enticing the collaboration is.
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38651 | Thesis project outside of advisor's expertise
I'm working on a project outside of my advisor's experise. He doesn't have background in this area (he's not familiar with both the big picture nor the basic detail). For example, it's a machine learning project, and while the first critical thing is training data, he told me to focus on finding features. Also he's not consistent with the design of solution: sometimes he want it to be unsupervised, and when I mention training data he switched to supervised system.
I managed to do the work on my own, but without the advisor's guidance I couldn't go further. I can only go to the point of reimplemeting state of the art papers and add small modification to them. Whenever I present a new idea/working solution, he couldn't criticize it since he's not familiar with the field.
How should I resolve this situation ( ask for a coadvisor etc)? I absolutely love this project and am capable of working out the solution, just need better guidance from professor.
P/S: This project is one of the main project of my advisor since he gets funding from that.
Is the advisor the same in your previous question Not enough guidance from advisor that you asked in March, 2013 ?
Yes. This is the new project, supposed to be my thesis project.
Why does your advisor get funding for a project that's outside his expertise?
without the advisor's guidance I couldn't go further — Then, obviously, you need to find someone who can give you expert guidance. Your advisor should be able to help find such a person. (Yes, this means telling your advisor that he is not such a person.)
@Kimball Good point but I would add the question HOW he got the money without expertise as well.
Step 1:
Figure out if your professor is actually not capable of advising this project, or if you are just not communicating well. For instance, oftentimes when I hear that advisors are giving inconsistent advice, it just happens that the student often misunderstands what the advisor is trying to say (or the advisor is just throwing out ideas in a brainstorming style, which almost by definition means that some of those ideas will be conflicting - that does not necessarily mean that he does not know what he is talking about). For instance:
it's a machine learning project, and while the first critical thing is training data, he told me to focus on finding features.
Focusing on the features first does not seem entirely crazy to me. Of course you'll need to find good training data for supervised learning at some point, but identifying the potential features is indeed usually a very early step in the process, afaik.
sometimes he want it to be unsupervised, and when I mention training data he switched to supervised system.
It's a research project, he probably does not have a 100% clear vision of what exactly you need to do to make it work (nor should he). Maybe he is just throwing out ideas, and you are taking his words too seriously?
Critically question whether he or you are not understanding the project correctly. If this is the "main project he gets funding from", chances are that actually you are not understanding correctly.
Step 2:
If you decide that he actually cannot advise the project, and you can't do it alone, you can either get help or get out.
Getting help may include finding a co-advisor, but this may be difficult for various reasons (one being that most faculty are not overly interested in joining in ongoing, troubled projects of other professors for the dubious honor of being a co-advisor). Usually, it is easier to get the help of other persons in your lab more senior than you (postdocs, or even older PhD students), who have the necessary skills, and collaborate with them on your project. For this to work, you need to figure out what is "in it" for your collaborator (joined papers? something useful for their own dissertation / projects?).
If you are unable to get help, I see no other way than to get out, that is, change your project.
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51206 | Is it ethical/legal to use the University's resources for a personal project?
I am currently pursuing a PhD at Technion (Israel). My area of study lies in computational fluid dynamics (CFD), which involves high performance computing. My research requires me to develop/use complex code on large clusters (hundreds of CPUs) made available for me by my university.
I have a few projects (which might one day be monetized) on which I am working on my personal time. One of them involves using code very similar to that I am already using for my research. Is it OK (from an ethical standpoint) for me to use my university's resources (both solvers and actual hardware) for my own projects? Note that I always make sure that these projects do not affect my research, and only work on them once I am ahead of schedule.
Would it be legal for me to do so in the United States? Or can the University be entitled to a piece of the company if it found out I had been using their resources for my projects? Note that the Israeli law system is also based on common law, so I am interested in knowing if it would be legal in the US.
Note that about 70% of the cluster's processors are never used since we are currently understaffed. Also, my own solver would use at most 10% of those unused processors.
I think "which MIGHT on day be monetized" is key, they MIGHT also lead to a research paper, or you just learning something.
But what effect does you using the "actual hardware" have on other people?
@ChrisWhite the university has given our lab a lot more processors than we currently need. About 70% of them remain unused (the lab is new, new students/post docs should be joining us in the next months/year). Running my own solver on the cluster would use about 10% of those unused processors.
@ChrisWhite ahead of schedule just means that I have already more than exceeded my professors' expectation of productivity in a given amount of time (or my own that matter)
@Ian check edit
This might be a silly question, but have you asked the person/body that manages your cluster? They might have a policy on exactly this.
Every university I have ever worked at has had an explicit policy about what one may or may not use the university's computing resources for. Since many academics do consulting work, this is something that most universities should have well-thought-out policy on. Read the policy. If you're not certain how it applies to you, ask the people who are responsible for your university's policy.
It's unethical to use your university's hardware resources and then not share with them the eventual proceeds of that research. If the work you do were to produce papers, then they would share in the reputational advantage for employing you and being affiliated with your work. If it would produce a patent or a product, then employment rules at my university in the US would have us split ownership and royalties. At the very least, the university bought the equipment, paid the power bill, and paid someone to administer it. Ethically they deserve to benefit, too.
Now, I have no idea what the laws of Israel or the regulations of your university have to say about this, so you should check before you do anything.
When it comes to software (the solvers in your question), things may be different. If the software is open source under a usual license, you may generally use it for any purpose you like. Open source licenses typically do not regulate use at all, and only cover redistribution. If the software is not open source, then, in the US at least, regulation of use is generally left to the copyright holder. Any permissions that you have to use that software flow through some sort of explicit (written down) or implicit license. If someone at your university gave you software owned by the university and told you to use it for your project, then generally speaking you may use it in the course of your employment as directed by your supervisor. You probably cannot use such software for a side project without permission from the copyright holder.
Your employment agreement, contract, or university regulations will govern whether or not personal projects somehow become property of the university, shared property, or are kept entirely separate due to your use of university resources. Most universities actually want their researchers to pursue interesting ideas, but if you use their property, they want a cut of the resulting profits or an ownership interest in any intellectual property. In the US, the Bayh-Dole Act guarantees that inventions made through federally funded research can be owned by the grantee rather than the US government, and most universities pursue this ownership. I don't know if Israel has an equivalent law.
The ethics here are pretty clear to me. Don't use other people's property to make a profit without sharing the profit with them. The laws and regulations are local, so ask your boss, administration, etc. about the local rules.
by split ownership you mean 50-50? Because I agree that ethically the university deserves a share of the company / profits, but to what degree? Is it judged on a case-by-case basis or are there some general guidelines, to your knowledge? :-)
@Ant, patent ownership is the only thing I know anything about at my university, and that's a negotiated thing, but the default is 50/50.
Hi Bill, your reply answers a lot of the legal implications of something like this. Does your ethical viewpoint remain the same if you are an undergrad that pays money to use university facilities and does not partake in "official" research?
@Conor, my answer was in the context of employees and student-employees (grad students) who are under employment rules or contracts. My feelings on the ethics for non-employee students are more nuanced. At public universities in the US, tuition only covers part of the costs, so the taxpayer has probably contributed, too. I don't know how deeply to follow this idea (subsidized loans?). Universities typically have rules that cover students' work products too and are typically permissive. I'm certainly OK with that. Lots of startups come from uni projects. How much of Google did Stanford get?
Beside the concrete suggestions Bill made in his answer, which also specifically explain the situation in the U.S., you should discuss this with your head of department.
I know professors in Europe who actively encourage the use of university resources in certain cases where fresh doctoral degree holders create startups, for instance, or other creative somewhat professional uses, without trying to get any portion of the ownership or revenue. Expected benefits for the university in such cases include:
an increased visibility of the department's research
possible future opportunities for more research
simply the knowledge that the theoretical research is used in marketable products (which in turn can be presented as a showcase for the success of one's research when acquiring more funding)
Note that the respective universities generally do not try to "create products" or generate revenue from selling things. Their mission is to provide education, not to act as a business. As such, while lucrative activities are definitely welcome, there is little to no pressure that financial gain must necessarily be drawn out of each and every activity of the people at the university.
In general, though, do not use such resources without asking the person who is responsible for granting these resources in the first place. You may not negatively influence your own research, but, for instance, using resources of department-wide servers may still mean there is less capacity on those servers for other researchers.
This one is on-spot: (whether this is a printer, cluster or anything)
http://www.phdcomics.com/comics.php?f=1578
Bear in mind that many things which are accepted / ethical (or at least - not too unethical) may still be officially illegal (perhaps even printing directions to parties).
It seems this graphic largely misses the point. The graphic talks about clearly private, leisure-related uses. The question, on the other hand, talks about professional uses that are just not the primary research topic. As I've pointed out in my answer, I know department heads who are completely supportive of activities that could serve to broaden the professional horizon of their employees, even if they do not directly lead to research publications.
Also note that in some legislations, minor activities that do not overly impact work can be legally assumed to be permitted if they are "usual among the staff" and not explicitly forbidden. Not sure to what extent this applies to the target cultures the OP is inquiring about, though.
@O.R.Mapper Verbatim quote from the picture "Printing stuff for your side business". When it comes to the legal side - it varies a lot with contract, country, etc. BTW: My answer is by no means comprehensive - rather a short, humours (though not nonsensical) answer.
You're right, I must have missed that text. Though in that case I would argue that it is indeed the high volume (as indicated in the graph) that increases the risk of problems, whereas the fact that it is for one's own business can, depending on the arrangement, easily make it more legitimate to use the resources in that way than the private things such as directions to parties.
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154628 | How is a PhD student staying in their institution as a postdoc perceived by future employers?
I am finishing my Ph.D. very soon, with the only thing remaining is the thesis defence, which hopefully should go smoothly. My goal is to go into academia, so I started looking for postdoc opportunities. What I am looking for in this position is to have more publications so that I could eventually find a tenure-track position.
I recently got an offer from a university in a nearby city, and I was about to accept it. However, my advisor heard about this, and he suddenly wants to keep me as a postdoc himself after I finish. While I see some positives and negatives in both offers, I feel that there is a higher chance for me to produce publications if I stay with my current advisor. So I am considering staying.
I am just wondering that if I stay, will I be viewed in a negative light by future faculty selection committees, seeing that I stayed in the same place as a postdoc where I did my Ph.D. with the same advisor?
What is your country? In some countries (in small unis), it might be useful for faculty applications if you stayed all the time in the country (as you know local profs, language and procedures).
Did you change universities before your PhD? Other ways you've worked at several institutions?
I am in Canada, so that does not apply here.
Yes, I changed institutions three times in three different countries when I did each of the three degrees.
All bets are off in 2020. Whatever you do will be ok - you'll be able to explain anything away on the covid crisis
As someone hiring post-docs and staff members, I am leery of someone doing a long (defined as ~ >6 month) postdoc where they were a PhD student, particularly with their same advisor. Why? To me, the purpose of a post-doc is to have a clear demonstration that the new PhD can move into an at least slightly different area and rapidly come up to speed and be productive on something new. Staying where you are just means finishing up loose ends, whether correct or not. If in the 6+ month range, you've got some explaining to do to me in the interview.
I'm not upset by a few-month "postdoc" with their PhD advisor, finishing up things, as they are looking for the next position to come open. But a post-doc has to be something new - it is the time to show off your new-found abilities to learn and make progress. Why? Because that is what you are going to have to do for the rest of you career. You aren't going to keep doing your PhD project for the next 30+ years.
For my postdocs, what does showing off look like? We hand them a project, and expect that within ~3 months there should be progress sufficient for starting to submit abstracts to conferences. And then they get another new project to get going, with abstracts going out on it 3 months or so later. The point is that in the first year there should be conference presentations and papers heading out the door on the new work at my institution. They should have an interview talk based on that work. That is what a postdoc should look like, and what I look for out of their postdoc when hiring new staff members. And that does not seem to happen for a postdoc staying at their PhD institution under their PhD advisor - it is just too easy to wrap things up, not start new, well defined projects that are different.
I would like to add that for the next 2-5 years (or more based on what happens) I will be much more flexible with this. Clearly the pandemic is not going to help anybody's career trajectory, and the constraints on jobs, moving, and everything else will make life for grad students and postdocs far more complicated than usual (and everyone else, too). Still, choose wisely - what will make you better at what you want to do?
I appreciate the points you make and my point is about "ought" rather than "is", but I think that this view can be quite damaging for post-docs and PhD student (myself being one). The pressure for people to constantly move between cities and countries, uprooting their social support networks just to fufill some criteria set by senior academics who are likely very settled in their life frustrates me no end. Perhaps this should be considered more when people discuss the mental health crisis for early stage academics. This isn't a direct criticism to you btw, more at the system itself :)
@4galaxy7: I didn't see anything in this answer about constantly moving between cities and countries. The one move discussed in this answer is moving away from the influence of one's advisor and towards academic independence.
You are right - the poster answer didn't explicitly say it's necessary to move cities/countries, but a natural extension (at least in my country) of leaving your supervisor is that you need to at least switch cities, since it's unlikely someone else in the same institution will happen to have funding to hire a post-doc in the specific area. Anyway, this is just a rant and something I feel strongly about, and not suitable for comments, so I'll leave it there.
The numbers given are probably field-specific.
@4galaxy7 I see your point, but I don't think you should generalize your feelings to everyone. I'm also a beginning postdoc, and find the endless mobility is one of the nice features of academia and it also pushes one to grow as a person. Apparently, scientists can be either 'nerds' or 'adventurers' (https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2011/07/19/the-four-types-of-scientists/) which is maybe what makes the difference. But anyway, the odds for tenure are so slim, that I wouln't make big decisions that jeopardize mental health to get there, if they weren't fun by their own.
I agree with the overall sentiment, but disagree with your numbers per my post below: https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/154723/22733
@Wouter Or maybe it's the stage in life of the postdoc. Postdocs are also asking their partners/families to move cities/countries every couple of years and partners of older postdocs are likely to have real careers. To say nothing of the massive visa and moving costs to take jobs that may be interesting and fun but don't really pay very well. Suggesting not to generalise goes both ways.
@JenB - indeed, I was single in grad school, so picking an overseas postdoc was attractive and exciting. Although, now as a (much) older married person taking a multi-year assignment overseas at some point is starting to look pretty attractive.
You aren't going to keep doing your PhD project for the next 30+ years. At the same time, if you stick with a given research group, they're also not likely going to be doing the same things for the next 30 years. The circumstances in each case will be important. If you're staying on as postdoc with an institution because that gives you access to something like the LHC and your ambition is to continue to master that facility in anticipation of an opportunity at the upcoming FCC, then that could be a highly defensible choice. Each situation will be different.
@JonCuster - for context, what field are you in?
@James - materials science, accelerators, pulsed power.
Publications
I feel that there is a higher chance for me to produce publications if I stay with my current advisor
One of the very best outcomes of a postdoc is publications. Academia is essentially built on publish or perish. All other things being equal, I would go where your chances of publication are the highest.
I would also explore options for collaborating with the PI overseeing the potential postdoc in the nearby city. Is there still an opportunity to broaden your network by doing some collaboration? Just a thought.
I have evaluated a few job candidates who have a postdoc. (I work in industry, not academia). I usually do not care where they did their postdoc. I care what they did. Generally speaking, I would much rather take a candidate with three publications with their old PhD advisor than someone with one publication at an institution different than their PhD granting institution.*
Network
One thing I will mention is the benefit of opening an entire new network of opportunities by going to a new institution for a postdoc. At my former PhD institution (call it U of X), most PhD grads end up in some low level academia position (community college, non-research teaching university, etc.) Networking was really tough at this university.
At U of X, I shared an office with a lady who had an opportunity to do a postdoc at U of X. She had published several papers with her advisor already and likely would have published many more. However, U of X has mediocre to poor faculty networking (a discussion for a different day. Long story short, when a department hires a bunch of their own PhDs as professors, it's not good for networking). She decided to leave to another institution for a postdoc. She only published one paper during her postdoc, it just happened to be a really good one. She now is a researcher at an Ivy League school. Her postdoc blew her networking wide open.
Be careful to examine where postdocs from both opportunities end up. Network matters a lot in getting your first "real" job. Do not compromise network for one or two extra publications.
*Do note that I would question a postdoc who did his or her BS+MS+PhD+Postdoc all at the same place. It might not be a deal breaker, but it would certainly make me wonder if there are some underlying issues.
"I would question a postdoc who did his or her BS+MS+PhD+Postdoc all at the same place" What if they were Ivy League, or some similarly prestigious school like MiT or Oxbridge?
@nick012000: Absolutely, and in fact perhaps more so, because I might wonder if the candidate was able to function outside a highly privileged environment.
General opinion: "Prestigious" has only a loose correlation with quality across many types of thing, but definitely for institutions.
@nick012000 If they were so great that they could do a PhD/Postdoc at Harvard, why not drive up the road to Princeton? It's not the quality of work I worry about here--it's the fact that they just spent the last decade plus at one institution with one way of thinking.
@Vladhagen what if they had family, friends and a house In Harvard and didn’t want to leave that behind them? It’s down to a lack of imagination that one could not find a better criteria to discriminate between candidates than whether or not they’ve stayed at an institution their whole career.
@4galaxy7 MIT is 2 miles from Harvard. Boston University is also right there. It's not like it's in the middle of Alaska or something. Sure, we can fabricate reasons for never moving. But what is this supposed candidate going to do when they don't get a job 1 mile from Boston? They'll move, just like all the rest of us when we get a job.
@Vladhagen "They'll move, just like all the rest of us when we get a job". A very American attitude to things like your center of living. Just beware that the same does very much not apply to large swaths of the rest of the world.
This is probably more a function of what you do and how you present it when applying later than anything. If someone stays because they have nowhere else to go it is a bit negative, but your description can be stated as a positive thing.
You are likely taking your current research further than you could otherwise. It isn't just the publication count, but the significance of what you can produce.
In a new position (in some fields) you will have constraints on what you can do, depending on the PI. Not so much in mathematics, perhaps, but more in some other fields.
I'd suggest that you can make it work either way, but think about how you present your choices when you move on.
People have lives, so hiring committees hiring tenure-track faculty should not be jerks about something like this. My mom stayed at the same institution for undergrad and PhD because she was a single parent (of me), and my father and soon-to-be-stepfather were there.
The point of a postdoc is to show that you can work more independently and establish your own research program. You can do that while staying at the same school. Just...do that.
It depends on the field, but in many fields there is no longer any expectation that you can do a single postdoc and then apply successfully for tenure-track jobs at research-oriented schools. (It shouldn't be that way, but it is.) In these fields, you'll probably be doing a second postdoc somewhere else anyway.
What matters is the quality of your work.
They should not be jerks..but are they? (In my experience, many are.)
+1 Even to an audience of jerks, the quality of your work may matter more than whether you moved for your postdoc.
This issue here is not staying at the same institution for a PhD after an undergraduate degree, it is staying at the same institution for a postdoc after a PhD. The two cannot be compared. And most people in academia don’t take “life got in the way” as an excuse. Maybe they should but most don’t.
Clearly, there are some people in the community who will make judgements based purely on the fact that you have or have not moved institutions. However, I think that is not the real issue here. The more significant factor is that changing institution tends to provide opportunities to develop a broader academic profile and perspective. Thus, individuals who move around tend to gain a competitive advantage over those who do not, and come across as more impressive candidates in an interview situation.
Of course, this is a sweeping generalisation, and one can easily think of individuals who provide counter-examples in both directions. However, moving tends to provide a number of opportunities, including:
Change/evolution of research focus;
Exposure to new ideas, techniques and ways of working;
Exposure to different opinions on which problems are important in your field;
Access to a different set of resources;
An outsider's perspective on your former group's work, and its strengths and weaknesses;
Access to a wider pool of potential collaborators;
Opportunity to re-evaluate the projects and activities that occupy your time, and to have a 'fresh start'.
These will tend to have a positive impact on your overall academic profile, and help when you come to apply for jobs and grants. Thus, while there is certainly a short-term productivity cost associated with moving, in the medium/long term it pays off.
It is worth noting that most of the above benefits can be acquired without moving, if one makes a conscious effort to seek them out.
+1 to “ changing institution tends to provide opportunities to develop a broader academic profile and perspective”, which is what a good postdoc should provide.
I'll keep it short. At least in the UK I've never heard of it being seen negatively if you did a postdoc after your PhD in the same research group under the same supervisor. Most PhDs I know prefer to get a postdoc in the same group if they can. I also believe it's more efficient.
To bring a counterpoint to this perspective, in NA I've never heard of it being seen positively, although there some instances where it's not seen negatively.
It isn't necessarily seen negatively, but in many places it is seen as not having done a postdoc, just an extended phd. You may still manage to demonstrate the qualities an employer is looking for, but you need to be careful what you do during that "postdoc" so your application is convincing.
I am an example of somebody who did a postdoc in place, with the same professor and same grant. In essence, I spent an extra year at my institution while I organized my job search.
Since the time leading up to one's thesis defense is often quite stressful and chaotic, a postdoc in place is a quite reasonable and normal option. Yes, it's preferable to be writing your thesis and searching for jobs at the same time, but that often just isn't an option for many and varied reasons. These are also often additional complicating factors, such as the timing of a partner's degree or other career steps.
Furthermore, since academia tends to work on an annual cycle, if your timing happens to not be well aligned with that cycle, it's easy to end up with a full year or so of gap. For example, somebody who finishes and starts organizing their search just after the Spring hiring season completes could easily end up on 15 months of postdoc, from the end of the Spring semester to the beginning of the Fall semester a year later when a new position starts.
I would thus not be at all concerned about somebody who spends up to a year or so in a "transitional" postdoc. Once I saw it stretching to two or three years, however, I would begin to be concerned about the ability of the person to be an independent researcher.
One of the most important things as a post-doc is to show the ability to work with different people and independence (both is best, either is good).
If at all possible, try to publish your papers which do not include your supervisor as an author -- these can be solo author, or with other people. It is OK if these are "lesser", the important thing is to avoid someone looking down your publication list and see one name which occurs as a co-author on every paper you have ever been involved in, which can set off alarm bells.
To my mind, it doesn't matter where you go but you do need to eventually demonstrate independence. Basically, it can be harder to do this with your own supervisor and it can also be quite difficult to shift from being a "student" to "collaborator" (for both of you actually). This said, I'm sure there are stacks of opportunities outside of the current supervisory sphere so if you stay then make sure your future network is not identical to theirs (overlap yes, but hanging off their coat-tails entirely as a postdoc will be viewed negatively). Are there small project funds or perhaps students you can supervise with someone else to demonstrate your broader network? My advice to PhD students is you need to work out the strengths and weaknesses in your CV. Then, pair with someone who compliments your research strengths (and hopefully compliments any research weakness - ie they are strong there) and have a frank conversation with someone you trust about how you make sure you are independent and your CV is as strong as it can be. This might be your PhD supervisor or another mentor (perhaps both).
I think it's important to remember that not all publications are equal, and your publication list is not just the sum of its parts.
You say that "there is a higher chance for me to produce publications if I stay with my current advisor". True, but the point is that hiring committees know that too, and may take it into account in deciding how much weight to give those publications, particularly if your advisor is also an author on them.
I'm not saying that moving is necessarily better, just that staying being the easier way to get publications isn't on its own a good reason to stay.
(By the way, I have never been on a hiring committee so don't speak from experience.)
It is difficult (but not impossible) to demonstrate that you are capable of independent research if you continue working exclusively or at least primarily with your former PhD advisor. It doesn’t mean you should burn the bridges with your old boss, but you should clearly establish that she or he is no longer in charge of your research agenda.
You could demonstrate independence by developing other collaborations, but then why stay in your original group?
A successful transition to another group or institution is always advantageous over continued success with your former PhD advisor.
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49809 | Supervisor wants my paper in another conference, but I have paid for travel for the current one
My supervisor wants the paper at another huge conference where all the funding are given and it's more valid than the current accepted one. But I have paid all my air fares and hotel fares for the current travel. Refunding is not possible it seems. Can I go to a conference and just present without publishing?
I can't waste my money by just avoiding the conference. I have to take something out of it.
@scaaahu Yes. He is a co-author. And he is a young lecturer and not financially well. And he was not willing to come to this current conference as he have to spend his own money. He told me to attend the conference alone. Now another conference has accepted the paper and funds are also given by them so he is planning to go to that one. And Now he is telling me not to publish as he is going to publish in this new conference. And he don't want any self plagiarism issues. He too worked hard for the research. But now the problem is i have invested the money. What shall I do. ?
Sorry about the deletion of my previous comment. Your problem seems to be more complex than what you said in your question. I think not only you have the travel expenses concern, but also the double submission issue. Have you withdraw the paper from the current conference?
The conference i have paid a no-show policy. If i present only it will added to IEEE digital library and proceedings.
Maybe that another conference is good one and that will also submit to IEEE and this will cause a conflict.
That supervisor' conference is after a month after my current conference. I have not withdrawn yet & if do they may actually reject my registration as well. So my airfares and hotel fares are into hell. they cant be refunded as i know. I thought of just going to the conference and meet people and come back. At-least for some knowledge & enjoyable trip.
"I thought of just going to the conference and meet people and come back. At-least for some knowledge & enjoyable trip." This sounds like your worst case scenario, and it sounds like a good idea in any case. If the paper is presented in the other conference, would you be going there with your supervisor? If yes, would you be able to present there? And would you have to pay for the trip yourself?
@T.Verron That co-author/Supervisor is a cunning fellow. He refused this first conference because he don't like paying money himself. He told me if you can pay and go then go. Now when he thinks their is free opportunity , he is trying to go there and not caring of funds i paid for this.
It seems like he will file some disputes against me in the university if i publish. I have to pay again if i am going with him. Funds are only for him through some charity
Fire your advisor.
Unethical multiple submission aside, your complaint about the non-refundable fee sounds like a sunk cost fallacy. "I already paid for this conference so it is wasteful not to go" is a common feeling, but is not necessarily in your best interest. You have already "lost" the money for the conference regardless of whether you go or not. You should base your decision of whether to go on what you might gain by going, not what you have already lost.
@ff524 If the conference is in Hawaii and having paid the tickets and hotel to go there, it would be a shame not to go. If the conference is in an unknown, mediocre place it might make sense not to go.
@Alexandros exactly. If the conference is in Hawaii, there would almost certainly be something to gain by going :) Not because otherwise the fees paid would be "wasted" - that's in the past - but because there's some actual benefit to going. (Educational, recreational, or other benefit.)
@Alexandros: Interestingly, the more unknown a place is, the more difficult it gets to find out whether it is actually mediocre after all without going there and checking for oneself ;) (And with that said, lots of well-known places are actually very mediocre, in spite of the hype created around their excellence.)
There is only one solution:
The paper has been accepted on first conference.
You paid for going there
You go there and present the paper.
Withdraw from second conference ASAP (like Monday morning after notifying your adrvisor).
Search for new advisor, because him a) advising double (or multiple) submission of the same paper and b) pay travel costs from your own pocket for first conference, shows he knows nothing about how academia works.
He is not telling me to double submissions ?
What he said was, i am going publish this research in a another conference. He said me not to publish in this conference i have paid.
Is that a good idea to attend a conference and not publish. And what reasons i can tell the conference organizers to avoid bad name for the authors
When you submitted to first conference, has he agreed to that? When your paper got accepted, and you paid the costs, has he agreed to that? If the answer is yes, then that is the end of story,
Yes he agreed. But he is now planning to publish in another conference. He has also worked around 50% in the research and he claims that he has done equal work. For me its fine. If he is publishing i will also get a publication entry. but sad thing is he doesn't care about the money i spend. He is talking self centered.
Repeat after me. a) He cannot publish in another conference if he does not withdraw from first, because this is double submission. b) He does not know if the paper will be accepted from 2nd conference c) He cannot submit on 2nd conference or withdraw from first without the consent of all co-authors (you). d) He should pay you the money for first conference, because you planned for this trip with his consent and he is the one changing his mind.
One of the big mistakes we did was. We sent our paper to multiple conferences in fond of getting at least selected in one. The conference I paid to travel has a no show policy. if i don't present the paper will auto withdrawn. He asked me to refund money or go to conference stay way from presenting. refunding is impossible at the stage and it will be a huge loss for me. And another issue is filing something against him will create some issues in my academics and results. My parents told me just visit the conference learn something and come back like a edu trip. He will backfire in my academics
@arjino We sent our paper to multiple conferences This is called multiple submission.
@scaaahu Yes :)
You should walk away ASAP from everyone suggesting submitting the same paper to multiple conferences or journals at the same time. He is either a) an idiot b) unethical or c) clueless and sooner or later he will drag you down with him.
@Alexandros AGREED he is an unethical guy. 100% True.
Lets consider this case. Lets say he has won the war and some of the higher officials have approved the second conference is the best place to present. In this case, what is the best solution to make my spent money useful. ?
No NO @Alexandros. The paper has been accepted for presentation in the second conference. That's the actual issue here. Her wanted to go there and he tell me not to publish in the first one. IN a normal case i am ok with that. Now i have paid my fares and what is the best solution. I dont to create big problem in the university regarding this and this will backfire on me
Then withdraw from first conference, he pays you the money you gave for first conference, he goes and present the paper in second conference and then you find a new advisor. If he does not give the money for first conference then you go there and have a vacation but you still have to find a new advisor.
What my well wishers told was. Go there, meet new researchers, share knowledge, listen to ideas, Do some sight seeing, Have fun, make use of the money (Social events & Banquets). And my problem is what is the best reason i can tell the first conference organizers to withdraw my paper and doesn't affect my reputation. Some valid reason. can you suggest. i dont want to talk all these issues there. it ill be headache
what is the best reason i can tell the first conference organizers to withdraw my paper — You don't need a reason; just withdraw the paper.
I think you are focusing on the wrong issue. The multiple-submission issue may have long term consequences. It would be a problem even if you could get a complete refund of your costs for attending the first conference.
Before making any decisions, I suggest carefully reviewing all paperwork you or your advisor have submitted for each conference. You may, for example, have already assigned the copyright to the paper to one of the conferences. If so, you are better off withdrawing from the other conference. If you have assigned it to both, the situation is much more difficult.
Do not make up a reason for withdrawal. Conferences that might both accept the same paper are a small world. It is likely that the organizers of the first conference will at least scan the proceedings of the second one, and see your paper there.
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16141 | Best ways to obtain a scholarship for a Masters in financial mathematics/ quantitative finance
I am not a UK or US citizen but I would like to get a scholarship to study in a master program in either financial mathematics or quantitative finance. My GPA is around 3.65-3.7 but I will still like to study in the best school I can.
Are there any clear guidelines on how to increase one's chances of getting a scholarship in a subject like this to attend a decent school in the UK or US?
I can't answer for the US, but it is highly unlikely that you would get any sort of funding in the UK. Unfortunately UK funding is very hard to obtain (even for British students) and is, in any case, largely restricted to EU nationals. Further any Masters level UK funding is generally awarded as a precursor to a PhD. This is known as "1+3" funding. Good luck though!
Yep even I have heard that so will not think of applying to any UK universities.
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45334 | PhD scholarship in nanoporous material; how to advertise?
I would like to advertise some PhD scholarship positions located a Sydney, Australia in the fabrication of novel nanoporous material like mesoporous silica. I am finding that it is not straightforward to advertise locally and internally. Most of the big scholarship and general job sites are expensive to post too.
What other options exist for finding candidates?
Are you trying to recruit international applicants? I.e., is this question more about where in the world to find students interested in your discipline? or about how to advertise to students in Australia?
I'm in a different field but I often see these advertised through relevant societies (through their email list and often also on their website)
thank you very much for your comments. relevant societies is a good idea. i am hoping to attract local Australian and overseas students. the best response we have had so far is from the free websites http://scholarship-positions.com and the free chinese website emuch.net/bbs/ but you have to get help from somebody who speaks Mandarin to set it up. tom
Are there discussion boards, social media accounts, or email lists for societies or interest groups that are directly/indirectly part of your field? Can you email the links to other researchers (the ones you cite or who cite you)? Perhaps there are researchers who are particularly adept at their internet presence (websites, social media accounts etc) who would be willing to share the information.
In my field, there are numerous opportunities for free advertising on all of the above-mentioned areas. Most faculty I know of are happy to share opportunities like that for students, since they recognize funded opportunities are increasingly rare.
Sponsor your post in facebook & show this advertisement only to those who have interest about that particular topic.
Posting to social media is free, but only useful if you make the effort to identify and connect with people that might be connected to good candidates. Likewise, you could post to professional and academic mailing lists related to nanotechnology. Finally, you could send direct emails to the Department Chairs for relevant departments in Australia (Materials, Chemical Engineering, Chemistry, Industrial Engineering, or what ever fits).
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46324 | How generous should I be with citations?
I am wondering if it is a bad thing to cite a paper in a scientific publication for a trivial or irrelevant reason.
The specific instance I have in mind is the usage of certain terminology. I basically want to make a point along the lines:
"We define a set to be flabby if it obeys conditions X, following the convention in [Smith]. We note that other authors (e.g. [Jones]) also require flabby sets to satisfy a condition Y".
Now, it is clear that if you use some definition (which is not very classical), it should be attributed, or at least a reference should be given to some reasonably good introduction to the topic. In this case, the reference the paper of Smith does the job just fine. But what about Jones? The only reason for citing him is that he happens to be using a different convention than I. On the other hand, I cannot convincingly make the point I want to make without some reference; and I'm concerned that I might be confusing the reader if I don't make this point. It could be that Jones gets an extra epsilon of recognision because of one more citation to his paper, which I personally don't mind at all. But it is maybe slightly weird that I cite a paper which I am not, strictly speaking, using.
I suppose this particular case is not really that important. What I am would really like to know - although that's perhaps too vague for SE - is whether it is generally OK to cite papers just because it is convenient for me, without worrying about whether I actually use the results of that paper in my work.
(If relevant, my field is pure mathematics.)
I agree with the answers that you should include a reference for the convention that you don't use, but I would add that you should find a reasonably well-known source for that convention, for example a standard textbook. If the convention in question is used in well-known sources but [Jones] is some obscure paper, then your choosing it as your reference will look like an attempt to give Jones an undeserved citation.
I love sheaf theory and the nomenclature thereof.
@AndreasBlass If you turn this into an answer, I will vote it up.
Even things that you aren't directly using may be quite relevant for establishing context.
The only thing that ever keeps me from being generous with citations is page limits. Otherwise, any citation that fits well with the flow of the scientific narrative and helps place your work in the context of related work is good for everybody involved, and I see not reason not to err on the side of inclusion.
Thanks! Erring on the side of inclusion was in fact my first instinct - just wanted to confirm it's not a bad practice to do it.
Exactly. Context. Explanation. There are larger purposes to writing than any competition for "novelty" or "impact factor". Clear, helpful writing that doesn't play games is excellent.
-1. No reason not to err on the side of inclusion? What about readers who just want to understand the paper without having to look up too much irrelevant material in addition? As a reader, do you really find bloated bibliographies helpful?
jakebeal is right on, both that you should include the citation, and why. I want to respond to something you said:
But it is maybe slightly weird that I cite a paper which I am not, strictly speaking, using.
because it's part of a recurring misconception about how citations should be used. Papers shouldn't be the bare minimum necessary to claim priority on whatever's being done in them; they're supposed to be written to help other people understand what we've done. There's nothing wrong or unprofessional about including content which "merely" makes the paper easier to understand. What you're describing is squarely in that category: pointing out the alternate convention helps some readers avoid confusion, and providing a citation both supports that this is an alternate convention and gives some hint where in the literature the alternate convention is found.
Yes, good: claiming priority ought not be the deciding feature. :)
A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, I thought that citations should be kept to a minimum: really, I didn't want to burden the reader with references to trivial or generally known stuff.
Along the years, however, from discussions with colleagues and from received paper reviews (e.g., countless please provide references for the notation/equation you employed on p. X), I've grown convinced that what I once thought trivial or generally known is not really so: after all, even people working in the same field can have different backgrounds (e.g., physicists and engineers don't speak the same language).
Thus, today I think that one should provide as many references as possible: to better explain the context, to provide extended information on notations and background theory, and to outline existing differences in notation and terminology (as in your case).
So, be generous: you'll never know who your reader actually is, and providing more references won't hurt.
Answering to your particular case: Your citing Jones is only confusing to the extent that it invites the question of why you prefer Smith's definition to Jones'. If you can explain this preference (briefly), you defend your approach against potential criticism and, doing so, have a better reason for citing Jones in the first place.
I don't think this is really an issue in mathematics. When there are multiple definitions of a term, the choice is usually a matter of convenience, more than anything else. For example, the natural numbers may or may not include zero. It would be silly to use the definition N={0, 1, 2, ...} and then write N{0} all the time if you mostly needed to exclude zero.
that makes sense. the issue then is field-specific. in political science, i couldn't go ahead and use a non-conventional definition of say, advocacy coalitions, without justifying this decision.
Still, a few words explaining preferences about conventions would be helpful to the reader, surely!?!
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84941 | Have American universities cut back on H1-B visa sponsorship of new international faculty and F-1 student visa sponsorship for PhD students?
Concerning industry, I've read that Google and Amazon have cut back significantly on its H1-B visa sponsorship of new candidates (though it's unclear what the renewal rate is for currently sponsored employees.)
Is the same sort of thing happening in academia? Are American universities cutting back its H1-B sponsorship of new, international faculty candidates and student visa programs for its international PhD applicants?
I don't think those are really comparable. An H1-B visa requires a lot of work on the part of the company, and legal fees that are commonly in the thousands of dollars. Students get an F-1 visa, and all the university has to do is fill out one form and send it to the student. The rest of the visa application process, including fees, is up to the student and costs the university nothing.
If a department is considering foreign applicants from the 7 "ban" countries or even from other majority Muslim countries (such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt), they might well wonder whether those students would be able to get F-1 visas to come to the US this fall. It's certainly a potential issue for departments to consider. I doubt that you'll be able to get an authoritative answer here, but it's something that might well be covered by news outlets like "The Chronicle Of Higher Education" in the coming months.
With respect to faculty hiring, departments might be less willing to hire faculty from the affected countries and other Muslim majority countries for fear that those faculty couldn't get H-1B visas and permanent residency. Again, it would be challenging to document any effect, but I'd expect to see this covered by news organizations.
The current ban was stopped by court,
we are waiting if supreme court of USA will take complaint from Trump administration but that will likely not happen because of the composition of a court.
Regarding American universities, occupations that are related to academia (post-doctoral fellow, research fellow, etc.). You can check referenced link and put desired profession name in search menu and compare rates of awarding H1B by the universities.
Conclusion is honestly that university never awarded so much H1B in a first place, and it is a noticeable trend of declining H1B sponsored by academic institutions ( institutes, universities, hospitals... etc..)
website myvisajobs.com give you opportunity to search and compare different occupation and employees.
There are two problems with this answer. First, although the total number of H-1B visas and green cards issued to researchers and faculty in the US may be small in comparison with the total number issued in all industries in the US the relevant question is what fraction of persons employed in those kinds of positions are getting H-1B visas. Second, the link above points to statistics on one very narrow job classification- academics end up classified under many different categories.
"Are American universities cutting back its H1-B sponsorship of new, international faculty candidates " this was the question, I provided really nice link where you can check institution, possition and number of places granted by years. @BrianBorchers
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8460 | Drawing Lines when Giving Ideas to Undergraduate Students
I teach quite a few 'unprepared' students and I find they struggle with finding source material on which to base their reports. Basically, they need to read a lot and apply theories to different companies.
Where should I draw the line when giving them advice? I certainly do not do any searching or reading/filtering for them but if they choose a company and need to report on it, is it acceptable to give them some ideas about famous events at that company which might have happened a decade ago (or more but would still be acceptable for the purposes of the report)? Or, should I require them to do search, even for old events, and if they can't, then they can't and fail?
The purpose of teaching, which includes both your lectures, later guidance on their projects and also includes evaluation, is for them to learn new skills. So, the question you should ask yourself is: what skills do I want them to learn, and how do I achieve that best?
Typically, it seems to me that (if you have enough time for it), it is very important to teach them not only to read, filter and digest information, but also to search for it (Information Age and all). So, you might want to make “searching for relevant information” a required skill. But that doesn't mean you should help them acquire it. In fact, you probably should:
advertise it as an important part of what they are expected to learn
help them learn it, i.e. show them how it's done
evaluate them based on their performance
However… even if you do all that, it still doesn't mean you can't help them if they miss something. After all, if you are teaching them how to best look for information, they might realize it's a good idea to come to the expert they know in that particular field… you, their teacher. So, maybe they will come asking
here are the relevant events I found about X in the archives… do you think I missed something?
or even:
I see a spike in the data around the fall of 1974, and I have searched but couldn't find any event possibly related to that company, do you know of anything that might explain it?
in which cases you might want to answer them, if it seems they did their due diligence.
+1: Good answer, I especially like the 3-point approach to teaching: 1) clarify expectations, 2) give examples/demonstrate, and 3) evaluate.
The goal of education ultimately needs to be to teach people how to learn on their own; a graduate student who receives a PhD but can't become proficient in a field they haven't been active in as a graduate student has not been properly equipped for the real-world challenges of being a researcher.
I think the problem most students are facing is too much information on the net.
For example, if your assignment for them is to figure out the Impact of 2008 financial crisis to GM.
If they google for "2008 financial crisis GM", they would get about 4,030,000 results.
The first one on the list is, Scholarly articles for financial crisis 2008 GM. If you click on that, you get 300,200 results. Do you expect them to read through all of them? I don't believe so.
I believe most undergrad student today do know how to search. But, they may have trouble with filtering them out because of the large volume of info they get on Internet.
In order to help them, you need to figure out how much time it would take them to find the info you want them to find, assuming they would do the search themselves.
In other words, you need to do the homework first. Pretend you know nothing about the subject. Search on the net. Find the info yourself. If you can do it in a reasonable time, then you can expect them to do it.
Using the example above, I cannot find the document you want me to find in a reasonable time frame unless you tell me specificly what you are after.
The line you want really depends on the assignment and student's willingness to learn. I don't think typing keywords is a problem, how to choose keywords and what to do after the search are what's troubling them.
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7908 | Value of light-to-none peer reviewed pay-to-publish articles
I have been approached by an international student about doing a PhD with me. As an MSc student in his home country he has published 3 articles in pay-to-publish venues, that are known to have little peer-review process, with his supervisor as second/senior author. These articles are not particularly good and likely would not have been publishable in more traditional venues.
I am struggling with how to evaluate these articles and the candidate. Should I simple ignore the place/type of publication and evaluate the work on its own? Can articles in pay-to-publish places really be fairly evaluated? I am worried that changing his behavior will be difficult. I don't want to accept a student whose goal is to publish things in pay-to-publish places.
From your description, it sounds like the problem is more likely to have been the MSc supervior than the student. As evidenced by some of the questions we've seen here, it's very hard for people new to academia to figure out which venues are reputable on their own---and the advice we give usually includes talking to someone in academia. If the supervisor's name is on the publication, that presumably means the supervisor encouraged publication in these venues.
Especially if it's a journal which does a small amount of peer review, I wouldn't assume, without further evidence, that the student has any idea that the papers weren't fully peer reviewed. If the supervisor isn't active in the international research community, I'm not sure I'd even assume the supervisor knows that.
+1 because the advisor is more to account for the venue than the student at MSc level. Furthermore, if a PhD candidate were involved in any publications (editing process) it's a plus for doing a PhD. The OP should try to find out what the role of the candidate was in individual publications. If he did a lot of the editing, that could be a big plus reglardless of the venue.
I second Pedro's answer, but I note that it's not actually clear from your description whether the journals they published in had peer-review. Note that some well established peer-reviewed journals charge publication fees to the authors. One example of relatively high-profile journal following that policy is Physical Review Letters (flat publication fee of $690 per article).
Now, if the articles in question were not peer-reviewed, then you should treat them as any non peer-reviewed publication: book chapters, arxiv papers, blog posts, etc. Read them, see what they're worth. (Well, you'd do the same thing for peer-reviewed articles.) In addition, it probably depends on your field, but at least in mine being a MSc student without peer-reviewed publications is not a hanging offense :)
The journals are known for having a lite touch peer review process. Essentially you name the reviewers and get to chose which of their comments to deal with. I edited the question to clarify this. In my field you also do not need publications to get into a PhD program.
My problem is I think I am treating them less then a non peer-review publication. There are reasons to publish book chapters (e.g., to be able to attend a conference) and arxiv papers are free and little extra work
(Just to be pedantic: Many book chapters are as rigorously reviewed as journal articles. It all depends on the book.)
@F'x PRL, as well as all the APS journal except the new PRX journal which is explicitly open-access (gold version of OA) do not imposes any author to pay something to publish. You can nevertheless transfer any articles to some creative commons if you pay for that. There is also a "free to read" politics the APS is using pragmatically. You also have to pay if you want preprint of your paper. This is nevertheless an outdated practise, since no more people send preprint by mail since arXiv exists :-)
@Oaoa PRL has a publication charge (“To help defray editorial and production expenses, authors of published Letters are expected to pay a publication charge of $690”)… they don't enforce it strictly, though
@F'x Sorry then, I thought your answer said the APS charges authors in a systematic way. I wanted to temper a bit.
I have one addendum to the great answers by F'x Pedro, and Henry.
If you believe the work is good and your lingering concern is about that the student has some miscalibrated idea of what publishing should entail, talk to them about it.
If she/he is a Masters student, she/he probably isn't particularly set in their ways in terms of how they want to publish. A conversation with them — about this anything else that is worrying you — is a very sensible thing before you agree to spending the next n years working with them.
That is indeed a tough question.
What would raise the most red flags for me is the fact that he does not have any articles in regular peer-reviewed journals. This raises, again in my opinion, the question if the candidate has simply bought himself/herself a publication list.
The student's academic merits should definitely be judged based on the content of the articles themselves, irrespective of where they were published, no question about that.
What would worry me, though, is this student's views on research, publishing, and the academic process in general...
Someone who is just applying for a PhD in my field doesn't really need publications, so most people wouldn't buy a publication list. It is your last point that is really my issue. I am not sure what it says about his views on research and if I would be able to easily change those views.
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11135 | Requesting a copy of the PhD thesis from an author?
I think that many unpublished theses are available in libraries etc and reading relevant theses is a normal part of research and does not involve asking the author's permission. But suppose a humanities PhD student has seen a thesis title (2008, so presumably in electronic format), that is relevant to their PhD subject and they want to read the thesis but unlike most theses it is not available in the student's libraries or online etc, probably due to the author's geographical location. The author is now a lecturer with a page on the university website. Should the student just email the author and say "Hello I am a PhD student in your field, can I please see your thesis?" Is this a big deal? Are there any do's or don'ts in making this request?
Thank you...
The first thing to do is to check whether a version of the thesis has been published in some other form (for example, as a book).
@Anonymous Mathematician it does not show up in author searches (Amazon etc) and on the the author's university page it is listed as a thesis but not as a published book.
I was pleasantly surprised recently to learn how many "unpublished" PhD dissertations in math are available through MathSciNet http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/. This is a service of the American Math Society. It does require a subscription, but most major universities (at least in the US) subscribe. One thing I like about getting theses this way is that the authors must choose to "opt out" rather than "opt in", so I've found pretty good coverage. (I realize the original question was about humanities, but I think this information could be useful to others.)
Asking for thesis or other publications is an accepted behaviour in academia. Sometimes people are even willing to share the raw data that went in their publication.
A PhD thesis is usually a published work, and is normally archived in a university's library. Almost all dissertations are available via reprints. So you could ask your own library how to order a copy of the thesis.
Alternatively, as you suggest, you can contact the author directly. As Anonymous Mathematician suggests in his comment, you can ask for a copy of the thesis, but you should definitely explain why you're interested in the thesis. However, it may be possible—and even more so for a humanities thesis—that the author is currently preparing it for publication, and may therefore be reluctant to share it via electronic means. However, it is just as likely that they're willing to share it.
I don't think it is a big deal, unless as discussed in other answers they have reasons not to respond, however "Hello I am a PhD student in your field, can I please see your thesis?" is maximising your chances of not getting a response. Remember you are asking for a favour from a busy stranger you need to give him a reason to treat you as worth responding to. Write a polite, well-subjected, but not too long e-mail, e.g.
Subject: Request for a copy of your PhD thesis
Dear Dr. X,
I am writing to you today to request an electronic copy of your thesis
- "Boring yet strangely intriguing title".
My name is Bill Bloggs, I am a PhD student at the university of stuff
and things. I have seen your thesis referenced by XX and I was
wondering whether you would be willing to send an electronic copy of
your thesis to me so that I can read it as it seems relevant to my own
work in blah and bimble.
Thank you for your time,
Yours sincerely,
Bill Bloggs.
Thanks to all for your replies. Just to update you - I wrote a nice email to the author's two different addresses. I know for sure the email sent to the correct addresses but I got no reply - which is maybe a bit rude! But luckily the holder library scanned the paper version for me - expensive but at least I got it...
If you are worried about contacting the author directly, the ProQuest Database might be a place to start if the person whose dissertation you are looking for has already graduated and submitted to the final copy the their university, which appears to be the case in the scenario you mentioned.
In most countries once the dissertation is submitted to the university it comes into the public sphere (still copyrighted but its existence and content can no longer be thought of as private) so there should be no problem with contacting either the author or the Library of his or her PhD institution and requesting a copy politely.
In my field in the social sciences, scholars are divided into "article people" and "book people," depending on the nature of their projects (and of course, many people work on both, but there are differences in preferences and focus).
Oversimplifying a bit, article people tend to write their dissertations on something like a 3-paper model, where they combine published or publishable articles, and add on a front and back end. The book people simply write, for their dissertations, something that looks like a book.
The issue that the "book people" have, is that it generally takes longer to actually turn the dissertation into published book through a contract with a proper academic or university press. (and in my field, unlike what some of the previous posters said, a dissertation is NOT considered "published," it is considered an "unpublished dissertation manuscript" and should be cited as such.).
Because these book projects take much longer to complete (often will take a whole 4-5 years more), many PhDs working on books request a "dissertation embargo" with their school library so that their dissertations will not be made public immediately.
If you are having a hard time, finding a recent dissertation, this embargo might be the reason. You can of course email and ask the author, but some are worried about getting "poached" and other issues regards to dissertations that are being developed into proper books.
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14783 | Writing letters of recommendation for more than one student to the same department
Suppose multiple students have asked me for letters of recommendation to the same graduate department in the US. Am I expected to explicitly compare the students to one another? Am I supposed to do this in both letters (assuming they haven't been submitted yet)? Do I need to explicitly state a preference for one over the other, or can I just get away with listing relative strengths and weaknesses (for instance, "X is stronger academically, but Y has more research experience and is a stronger programmer")?
I am confused. By saying "X is stronger academically, but Y has more research experience and is a stronger programmer", you seem to be doing comparison already.
What I mean is: do I need to say "I would take candidate X over candidate Y" or not?
do I need to say "I would take candidate X over candidate Y" or not?: I'm not sure what "need" means in this context, but I don't think there's any reason to feel obligated to make such a comparison. It would probably help the stronger of the students a little to do so , and likely sink the weaker of them. You'll have to decide how you feel about that: if you only think one of them has a chance of admission, maybe it's not so bad. If you're genuinely unsure who you think is stronger, you can opt for a more Solomonic formulation. Listing relative strengths and weaknesses is reasonable.
Don't make it a recommendation for student A and a condemnation for student B though!
@user14449 Again, you can do whatever you want. I think you only want to say "X is better than Y" if you think Y has absolutely no chance already, but it's normal for people to write (in a letter for X) "You may have also seen the application from Y, another student from our department..." and then list what you see as the strong and weak points of each candidate.
Since each individual student is asking for a letter of recommendation it would be appropriate to approach each letter as an individual task and not implicitly cross-reference between the letters by making comparisons. Direct comparisons between the specific students should not be made. It is after all the person or committee admitting the students to the program that will make decisions who may fit the best and their criteria may not be the same as yours. It is, however, reasonable to make implicit comparisons such as ranking each in relative terms to, say, all students you have encountered or some other frame of reference. This way each student is compared to a group and not each other. This is what one commonly does anyway.
I can imagine that you may get a request for more details by the person/committee if there is a difficulty in separating students. You could if you are willing, add a comment to the fact that you are willing to answer any questions that may arise during the process regarding the student in question.
While writing recommendation letters, you can write about each applicant's strengths.
You do not need to compare them to each other, but you can say whether you consider them in to 10%, 20% etc (some schools explicitly ask for this information).
More than one student can be in the top 10%, for example. If you have a good formula to calculate this, you should just follow that. It will make your letters easy and consistent.
While I agree the students are competing they can still both get in! Especially if we are only talking two students applying to a cohort. Schools will remember students from particular institutions, and more quality students is a good thing as it suggests they were better prepped for grad school.
On the flipside, I fail to see how providing potentially disparaging remarks (even if indirectly in saying I would choose A over B) provides help to the student getting the positive hand. That is, if you say A is a better student than B I don't see how this helps A against any of the other competition applying to the program besides over the B individual. Your creating a false dichotomy in doing so.
IMO the letters should really be orthogonal to one another (that is A's actions should have no bearing on B's letter) and you should focus on the individual in the recommendation.
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9579 | Advantages of delaying/accelerating PhD application
I'm an Australian maths undergraduate student, and our academic year ends at the beginning of December. I understand that PhDs in the USA (and elsewhere?) generally start before this time, about September. So, if I want to pursue a PhD overseas, I have a long time to kill in between my undergrad and postgrad degrees.
Consequently I've been investigating the possibility of cramming the remainder of my undergraduate degree into one fewer semester, so that I can graduate at the beginning of July (2014), just in time to start a PhD overseas.
However, this would mean I would have to send out applications in December this year, before I have actually finished my degree. I am particularly concerned because in Australia the last year of an undergraduate maths degree is an "honours" year, which comprises the main research component and the most serious coursework.
Does anyone have advice or experience?
Would I be substantially more competitive for a top university if I delayed for a year and had an honours thesis and good results from many advanced classes under my belt, compared to applying early and having only a promise of an honours thesis? Or, would it be a minor issue with good letters of recommendation?
Some departments/universities allow you to start at times other than the Fall semester. I started in the Spring semester (January).
Austin, I was led to believe this was not the case (in America, at least). Is this only a possibility with smaller universities? Is the application deadline the same?
@Matt: Every department is different. Some have spring admissions; others don't. Moreover, the distinction is independent of other splits like large/small or public/private or top-10/other. You just have to check each department individually.
If you do not have a master's degree, it will be very difficult for you to get a PhD position in most European universities—the UK is an exception to this. You would need to enroll in a master's program and complete that before you are hired as a research assistant for a PhD.
The academic year does start around September in the USA and I think most European countries. At least in Europe, this doesn't necessarily mean that you would have to start your PhD in September. For example, I did my PhD in the UK and started in June.
Note that your 'competitors' won't have finished their degree yet either when they are applying. They will be slightly further along, having already started their final year, but not significantly so, I think.
Is cramming the rest of your undergraduate degree into one semester less at all a realistic option?
I do think you are likely to get stronger letters of recommendation once you are in your final year, because you will have been doing more advanced work and will probably have closer contacts with faculty.
I don't think that having some time between your honours year and your PhD is necessarily a bad idea. My husband started his PhD only two weeks after finishing his MSc, and he really could have done with more of a break. I had almost a year between my MSc and PhD, but I spent six months of that doing research.
One of my friends from Australia managed to get part-time teaching work at his undergraduate university until he went to the UK for his PhD. Or if money isn't too much of an issue, you could take the opportunity to go travelling.
EDIT: I'd just like to add, along the lines of Dave Clarke's comment, that you should bear in mind that your honours year will likely be a lot more challenging than previous years, and so 'accelerating' this year might turn out to be a bad idea. I certainly worked harder in my fourth year of university (honours in New Zealand, so quite a similar system to Australia) than I have in any year since.
Thanks Tara, I hadn't considered that my competitors also would not have finished their degree. In my case it's possible to finish early because I took some extra courses earlier in my degree.
I understand the situation in Europe is a little different to the USA -- in the US a PhD combines coursework and research components, whereas in Europe I believe I must study an separate master's degree first? I expect such a degree would be less flexible for starting time, because coursework would operate on a yearly schedule?
+1 for "I don't think that having some time between your honours year and your PhD is necessarily a bad idea."
In the UK you needn't necessarily do a master's degree before your PhD. My friend from Australia went straight into his PhD from honours and did well (this was in maths). Most UK students (at least in maths, I can't say for sure for other subjects) have no research experience before starting their PhD, so if you do some research in your honours year, you will be fairly well prepared. And even if you do have to do coursework, it's quite likely that second-semester entry would be possible.
I would not accelerate things, to avoid getting worse grades that you want.
If you find that you have a half year of free time, fill this usefully either by working (earn some cash, gain some experience), travelling (spend some cash, gain some experience) or by doing research (perhaps a professor will even pay you to do something useful for 6 months, or maybe you can get a 6 month RA position).
Getting good scores will obviously help you. Working or travelling ... well, you'll thank yourself later. And research experience will help your application (and CV).
+1 The risk of getting worse grades by accelerating the final year is definitely worth taking into account! And as for the rest, I definitely agree. It can be really hard to find time for non-work travelling later on.
| Stack Exchange | 2025-03-21T12:55:49.566119 | 2013-04-23T14:51:15 | {
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10045 | How to decide whether a statement requires citing a reliable source
When writing a paper, I usually face the problem of deciding whether a sentence is cite-able or not. Let's say I am writing about optimization of an algorithm. And I used Java to implement it. So, in the introduction, I would say something like "Java is a class based object oriented language..." This information is available in many java books and online tutorials. Does the ubiquity of the sentence make it un-citeable? Or do I cite that fact. I have read many prominent papers that simply use that sentence without quoting a source.
Or do we only cite numerical facts that go like "Java is x times slower/faster than c++". I once read an article that says "when writing a paper, you should cite every sentence that you happen to read some where." But this is unrealistic; and we might have almost as many citations as the number of sentences in the paper.
Is there any rule that dictates on what is quotable or not?
I suggest you change the question to say, "How to decide whether a statement requires citing a reliable source."
It ultimately depends on the community you are submitting to, but Wikipedia has a rule that says "cite if >50% likely to be challenged" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:LIKELY which could serve as a heuristic for you. It's unlikely your first example would be challenged whereas the second one would be highly likely in my opinion.
Yes, there are rules on what requires citation.
Generally, publicly-known information (widely known, common knowledge, etc.) does not need to be cited. Your sentence about Java being class-based would fall under this category.
Information which is based on someone else's work (analysis, research, pictures, etc.), whether quoted or paraphrased, should always be cited. Your sentence about Java being x time slower/faster than C++ would fall under this category.
If you are unsure, cite it to be safe.
Wikipedia has specific rules about what is "likely to be challenged" which could be an interesting heuristic to keep in mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:LIKELY
Also you have to consider how important is the truth of that statement for your results. "C++ is a high level language" may be challenged (depends if you compare it to Assembly or Python), but doesn't affect the results of your computation.
These are not rules but the way I think about it:
if the information is basic introductory text book material, you may not need to cite it.
If the information can be found in advanced text books (not intro-level), cite a book that you are familiar with and that supports that statement.
If the informaiton is only found in research papers obviously those are what you reference.
If yu are uncertain, you simply quote a higher level: uncertain if it goes into (1.) then do (2.) etc. It is worse to miss referencing than providing a citation/reference "too much". In the worst case someone might suggest removing the refence/citation.
It depends of the audience at which is aimed the article.
In theory, in a scientific document you must explicitly list the basis for all your assumptions, and defend them. If the correctness of the thesis described in your article depends on fact $A$, then you either prove $A$ or give a reference to someone who proved $A$. In practice scientific reports skip some references assumed to be common (e.g. definition and properties of the logarithm): it used to be important to save printing space (not so true now with electronic proceedings), it stays important to keep the article uncluttered. Given the reasons for skipping some references, there cannot be any absolute rule about which ones to skip: the decision depends of the audience you are aiming at, and in particular of your evaluation of the knowledge in common between you and them: put references when they are necessary to your audience (and do not clutter your article when they are not).
For instance, your sentence about Java being class-based would be unwelcome (in addition of unnecessary) in an article aimed at researchers in computer science, because this fact is supposed to be well known (and agreed upon). But it might be welcome in an article aimed at students (in computer science or not), or researchers in other fields than computer science (e.g. biologists). On the other hand, the fact that Java is slower than C++ might evolve in time (e.g. java compilers getting better), or be argued against (different type of applications): you should always give a reference for this kind of statement if you did not argue or prove it yourself.
Hope it helps!
+1 for explaining the "audience" thing. That might explain the inconsistencies I see in well written famous papers. I have seen the same fact cited in some of the papers, presented without citation in the others.
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185202 | How much is too much when defining and explaining terms in depth in a dissertation?
When writing a dissertation for a PhD in computer science, where the research is interdisciplinary, is it OK to define and include in depth explanation for an extraordinarily large amount of terminology in the preliminaries and background?
Currently, in my preliminaries and background section, which follows the introduction, I have 50 definitions but will have more, many of which are trivial or common knowledge to some readers. Each definition comprises a substantially long paragraph. My reasoning and upfront explanation is that I hope to make the dissertation more accessible, friendly to non-English first language readers, and that the interdisciplinary content requires more definitions and explanations than usual to make the dissertation understandable to those in my field.
"dissertation more accessible, friendly to non-English first language readers" unless anyone on your committee doesn't speak English as a first language, don't worry, because no one else will read it
@AzorAhai-him- Do you think the committee will feel obligated to read those sections? I don't want to burden them, but still like to make the dissertation a good resource for anyone who possibly might decide to read it later on, and tell the full story without expecting too many prerequisites.
Maybe you could move a lot of these definitions into a "symbol/notation appendix" and a "glossary appendix"?
Please make your dissertation welcoming to those not in your specialty and to those who do not share your language fully.
I often read dissertations when I am trying to get to know a new subject. I know many people read my dissertation, as it picked up lots of citations over the past few decades. I have no idea why people say only a few people will read your dissertation. That seems insulting. I have read a few undergraduate dissertations to find some formulas spelled out. More commonly, I read masters dissertations, and many more PhD dissertations, mostly those in fields that were not where I got my graduate training.
The exception is if you are in a harsh field where being nice to your readers is seen as a sign of weakness. Even then, you might be brave and buck the trend. Most importantly, do listen to your advisor. Don't spend forever writing this. Often the longer version takes no more time as you need not decide what to cut out, but at some point you need to pick a style and power through. Your committee can tell you to add detail or take out detail.
My advisor taught me that a good mathematician writes a "full-proof" version of every paper that nails down every detail, and then edits that down to make the published version. He wanted my dissertation to be the full-proof version of a few papers. Later, one is to only publish the short and efficient versions, but had the full version on a shelf to pull down if someone questioned you on a point.
If your dissertation is structured correctly, your committee can skip over sections that give background that they know well. Your advisor will get stuck reading it all. One does get paid for this, however.
In case the OP is interested in specific examples, among the many theses (Masters and Ph.D.) I've cited just in Stack Exchange groups alone are these Masters theses: De Moivre's Theorem and On the Development of Descriptive Set Theory and On Volterra Spaces and Continuous Nowhere Differentiable Functions.
Generally in order to be reader-friendly, it is more advisable to explain too much than too little. If you explain not enough, some parts of your thesis may be incomprehensible, which devalues them. If you explain too much, people still can understand your stuff, even if they may lose a bit of time. For sure "explaining too much" is not a reason to fail your PhD (unless there is something like a word count limit and an excessive account of basics stops you from explaining you own work properly).
The only problem I see is that there may be the odd expert reader who is annoyed about having to read so much they already know (they may even believe everybody who reads the thesis will know this-or-that, whether that's true or not), and this may give them a certain negative feeling when going on reading. This however should not normally be a problem; the quality of your original work is what it is, and explaining too much doesn't affect the readers' ability to see this quality. This is what you should be assessed on, so I believe it can't hurt, even though personally I'd for sure ask your supervisor and maybe others for feedback about that stuff; even if it won't make your thesis fall, if being nice to your main readers means explaining a bit less, I'd recommend to be nice.
Definitely err on the side of too much explanation in a thesis, for many reasons. As for "the odd expert reader who is annoyed about having to read so much they already know", I read "odd" as referring to the collection of expert readers and not to the larger collection of readers, since I assume most any expert can easily skip over basic material -- if not, then the "expert" is probably not all that expert in my opinion. Also, if there really does seem to be too much basic "filler material", I suspect most anyone would assume that possibly the student's supervisor asked for it to be included.
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8713 | How to handle ego clashes within an academic department
I am a new assistant professor in my department. While all faculty members have been welcoming so far to me, I find there are two or three distinct groups or coteries within the department. The coteries are distinct and comprise set of people who wouldn't mingle with people from another coterie. It is a bit awkward for me because there are even senior professors in different sets, and I want to be affable with everyone in my department.
How do I handle this sense of discomfort? Should I talk with the Chair? But the sectoring is pretty well-known and prevalent for a long time and there is little the Chair can do about it (or so I think!)
How do academic departments handle this situation of clash of egos usually? I am sure mine is not the only place where this clash is seen.
This sounds like every single department I know.
@Suresh - Maybe the OP would like to know how you deal with it - the way Pedro suggested?
Pedro's answer is very complete. I don't have much more to add.
The best advice anyone can give you, in my opinion, is: Don't get involved.
You're entering a new environment and it's in your best interests to just get along with everybody, as you already suggest you are trying.
If the issue pops up in any discussions, just avoid it. The last thing you want to do is get caught-up in a territorial dispute of which you probably don't want to know the origins, and that serves no purpose to anybody, least of all to you.
I would only advise discussing things with the Chair if these divisions start negatively affecting your work, and only discuss it in terms of how it affects your work. As you've pointed out yourself, chances are he/she can't do anything about it, or worse, he/she may be involved.
Things like this can happen even in the best departments, and the best thing that can happen in such a case is that new staff bridge whatever divide may be there by ignoring it completely.
Thanks Pedro, but however hard I may try, I am cornered into a situation where I have to choose one over another. I fear getting alienated by both groups, thus seriously scuppering all chances of my tenure.
Can you be more specific about the situation where you have to make your choice (while of course protecting the identities of everyone involved) in your question?
@Irwin: It's pretty much ubiquitous: right from department talks to seminars to invited lectures - if one group does all the organising, the other fails to turn up and vice-versa. And the divide extends ad infinitum.
@Assistant_Professor: In such a specific case, I'd show up at the seminars and lectures of both. If they have timing conflicts, then you could try asking both sides to move them, emphasizing that you really want to be able attend both seminars/lectures. This is, of course, assuming you're interested in both. Just pretend you never noticed there was a division. No matter how awkward it feels, it will be less awkward, or dangerous, than having to take sides.
With respect to coteries there is no difference between a university department and any workplace, corporate board, political party, sporting team, primary school playground, etc...
Coteries are just a fact of life everywhere one goes...
At some point in time you will start collaborating with people in your department on research in which you have a shared interest. Hence, by default you will eventually drift into one of the coteries, otherwise you'll be a loner in the department...
So, you'll have to eventually choose one of them, and to be a successful academic the correct choice should be based on shared research interests.
I would prefer to be loner than involving in some sort of war.
that's a false dichotomy.
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37520 | What exactly is an embargo for a journal?
I was trying to access this article and was told this journal is "embargoed" for more than a year. This is the first time I have seen the term embargo used in an academic setting.
This answer talks a bit about the idea of journal embargoes. Wikipedia has more information but I do not find it helpful at all.
As I read (on Wikipedia), it seems embargoes in journals are for future stories (and not for everything ever published). The article that I am seeking is from two years ago.
This question implies that embargoes deal with the relationship between publisher and author, which does not make sense in the context of my request.
This answer implies that embargoes are about limiting access electronically, but, again, it seems I can buy the article for $40 so clearly it is available electronically.
So, what exactly is an embargo (in this context)? Does it really mean that I simply have no access to this through my university account? It looks like it is available to the general public (if you pay) but not to those of us with access through university subscriptions.
I don't see any mention of an embargo on that page (using Ctrl+F to search for the word). Can you give some more context?
I can download it using my university subscription - its likely that it is embargoed ONLY w.r.t your university account. Voting to close since issue seems to local to a particular subscription account...
@ff524 I Googled "Taylor & Francis embargo" and found the article http://editorresources.taylorandfrancisgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Guidance-on-HEFCE-OA-policy-August-2014.pdf. In there, it says "Taylor & Francis-published journals have embargo periods of 12 months for S&T and 18 months for SSAH.". I am wondering if that's what the OP was talking about.
@scaaahu I don't think so - that document is referring to when T&F allows an author to publish a postprint of an article in e.g. an institutional repository. It's not about the version of the article posted on T&F's website that may be downloaded by anyone with an institutional subscription.
@ff524 I was told by my librarian (who is normally excellent but currently unavailable) about the embargo. I have no link I can provide but the wording implied it was not just my account which is impacted.
So far as I know, your understanding of the typical use of "embargo" for journals is correct: it is when a journal wants to be the "first to press" with its article, and so places a gag order on the authors and their institutions so that they don't go talking to the press first.
There is another place where journals also often want to be "first to press," however, and I suspect that this is what "embargo" refers to in this case. It is often the case that a journal makes its content available through multiple routes: immediately through the publisher for a premium, and with time-lag through larger accumulations, such as PubMed or ScienceDirect.
Thus, I think that what is probably going on here is that your institution does not judge this journal important enough to subscribe to directly, but gets it as part of a time-lagged "package deal." You should check with your librarian how long the time-lag is, and then decide whether it's worth waiting or if you want to ask a colleague to help you get around the paywall...
Thanks. I did not know there were levels of subscription. Still, could it be that an article is published and 28 months later (now - Feb 2013), it is still unavailable for some subscribers to a journal? That seems an exceptionally long time.
That should be 23 months (today - Feb 2013).
@earthling Entirely possible. I just looked up that journal through my own institutional access, and saw it's in a bundle with an 18-month lag. A 24-month lag would not be so different. There may also be other contract-driven problems: talk to your librarian, who should be able to tell you what's actually going on.
It turns out this is exactly what is happening. My school simply has cheaper package which includes a delay. Checking a friend's account at another school (which is willing to pay more for their subscription) has full access to the article without the delay.
@earthling Glad that turned out to clear up the mystery!
Some journals have adopted a model for open-access whereby the published version is pay-to-view for a fixed period (e.g. the first year) and becomes freely available after that embargo period.
However, in this particular case, as other people (including me) have no trouble in accessing that particular article, it looks like your institution has restricted access, either to that article or that journal.
I understand your point but my university does subscribe to this journal. At any rate, could it be the embargo period is > 23 months (which is the time between Feb 2013 and today)?
@earthling something else is going on in this case: I can see that article just fine, through my university. I'd guess your institution has restricted access.
Embargo is often use when an academic journal authorizes the publication of its articles (usually author-versions rather than publisher-formated version) in an open repository, but only some time after publication in the journal. So, during the embargo, only paid subscriptions give access to the article, while after the embargo one can also access the article or at least a version of it on some repository (assuming that the author took advantage of this possibility, or that the publisher does it itself which is rarer).
This is much discussed when talking about green open-access (i.e. open access via author deposit on open repositories), but it may not apply to the case you describe.
Within this context it sounds like your library doesn't subscribe to this journal directly and none of the databases they subscribe to includes the current year. Journal publishers can make deals with the database publishers so that one database vendor has priority access by creating a one year embargo to a journal such that only that vendor can publish the current year, but often will offer a subscription to a set of years that has a one year delay to other database providers. The library typically pays for access to print serials, databases that host print serials, and various library consortia that provide access to interlibrary loaning services but it seems that none of these options provides access to the current year. The issue is not that the electronic access doesn't exist, but that your institution doesn't have any subscriptions or consortia connections with the vendor that made the deal.
*correction: databases that host electronic serials
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24267 | Are automated online quizzes effective for formative feedback to students
I would like to increase my use of formative feedback (feedback showing students whether they understand material correctly without impacting their grades) and would like to integrate it with online quizzes.
I'm wondering if this has been found to be effective.
My goal is to make it simple and automated. While I could write one myself (school generally does not pay for things like this), I would prefer to avoid building it (or paying). What I'm really looking for is something like forms in Google docs but would also somehow automatically and instantly score the answer (limiting student answers to multiple choice) and displaying the results to the student as soon as the submit button is pressed.
So, this is a compound question: Does using online auto-scoring quizzes help students (I believe it will) through formative feedback and is there a way to get Google forms to give immediate results?
My lecturers often do this too, could you use Survey monkey?
@C_B How can Survey Monkey help me here? I'm not aware of using them for instant-feedback quizzes.
What learning management system does your school use for posting info or student grades? Common ones are Blackboard, Moodle, Canvas, Edmodo, Desire2Learn, Sakai.
@Adrienne Our learning management system is a very old one: email. This is a very low tech university. So far, all of the technology I use I've written myself...but I've got too many other things to do.
Does online quizzing help?
Yes. Some references are listed below. Auto-graded quizzes with no points will help motivated students self-regulate their learning.
Of course, those students are the ones most likely to succeed. If you assign some small points then students who are more likely to postpone studying will develop better habits.
Can Google Forms give instant results?
Well, quick and easy results, but not instant results, using scripts. The K12 education world is more nimble with free LMS options. Many teachers use the script "Flubaroo" to grade the form answers within Sheets, and then the script "Autocrat" to automatically send emails. I'll let you google for the latest blog posts and youtube videos on these scripts.
As best I can tell, you may need to manually trigger the process after each quiz ends. But perhaps that's a good excuse to check student answers and see how they are doing?
_
References:
Bälter, O., Enström, E., & Klingenberg, B. (2013). The effect of short formative diagnostic web quizzes with minimal feedback. Computers & Education, 60(1), 234-242.
Kenis, R. M. (2011). Effects of Scheduled, Unrecorded Quizzes on Students' Self-regulated Learning.
Olson, B. L., & McDonald, J. L. (2004). Influence of online formative assessment upon student learning in biomedical science courses. Journal of Dental Education, 68(6), 656-659.
Kenis' master thesis gave me some great ideas. As for auto-grade, I think Flabaroo does that now (that feature is in beta) but I actually will take your advice and use this an an opportunity to keep track of how students are performing (but not counting performance on these quizzes towards their final grade).
If your school uses any sort of online learning platform (like Moodle), they often (and I know Moodle specifically) do this.
There is no virtual learning environment, unfortunately. I am familiar with Moodle and their quiz functionality (works fine for this) but there is no Moodle (nor a server on which to install it).
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75925 | Is it a bad idea to point out flaws/weaknesses of your model in your paper?
In a modeling paper I am writing, I know that there are some limitations.
Is it a bad idea to point out the limitations? Am I just giving the reviewers more straw for them to reject my paper?
definitely clearly point out what domain(s) your model is most valid in and what domain(s) your model is least valid and why. if your model is meant to help someone get a grip on some complex interaction, that only helps when these someones apply the model to where it is meant to be applied. it reduces the efficacy of the model when it gets applied to contexts where it is already known to be flawed.
To add to what the others say: If I think the authors haven't considered an obvious issue I'll assume it's because the work is low quality and the authors are incompetent. I'll give my report accordingly. If an obvious issue exists and I don't agree with the authors' discussion of why it's not significant, I'll question it, but I won't assume the authors are incompetent. If I ever thought the authors knew about an issue and are hiding it... every paper of theirs I ever referee from then on would receive a very, very close investigation with no margin for error.
Sophisticated readers will always remember that "all models are wrong, but some are useful". If you have no description of the shortcomings then your sophisticated readers may assume you weren't astute enough to recognize them and judge your paper accordingly.
Do not write with the goal of 'getting the paper published' - it doesn't serve the fundamental purpose of writing papers which is to disseminate knowledge and document it for posterity's sake. This is what ails academia today in fact, people hiding facts, even skewing results, or simply churning out tripe that follows the money trail, but teaching us nothing new. It would be refreshing to see something honest and original, submitted out there for a change. Do not fear the rejection.
@robertbristow-johnson: The definitely in your comment is a bit confusing since the question was whether it is a bad idea to point out the limitations. I assume you meant one definitely should point out the limitations, is that right?
@MichaelGeary, yes. i am saying that, assuming the author knows where his/her model is valid and where the model is less valid, that the value of the published work is increased by clearly describing the "domains of validity" (or whatever term you wanna give it). leaving it out decreases the value of the published paper.
Science is not about getting papers published; it's about writing papers that move a field forward. So don't let worries about reviewers prevent you from adding content that you feel should be there. Indeed, modeling papers that hide their limitations are much less effective at advancing a field than those that clearly explain them.
Good reviewers recognize this and often look in the Discussion for a clear exposition of the model's limitations as well as its strengths. That said, to be worth anything a model must make useful contributions despite these limitations, and it's your job to explain how your model does that.
This, so much this. Address the obvious questions in the paper. A well reasoned discussions of the strengths and weaknesses of a model or an experiment is a wonderful thing.
speaking as a software dev often trying to understand an algorithm from a paper, the paper is almost completely useless without a discussion of the limitations. It makes it much harder to actually determine if the work is in any way useful.
@Mindwin Science is inherently social. As long as papers remain the primary venue for sharing results, models, etc., science is inextricably linked to the act of writing papers. It's just not about writing papers to get famous.
Personally, as both and author and a reviewer, I strongly prefer papers that are clear and honest about their limitations. I typically see good declarations of this sort take one of several forms:
The results are limited to a specific class of cases, but those cases are quite interesting and important.
The results are limited, but they are still a major improvement over the prior state of the art.
The results are limited, but the work needed for necessary extensions to broader coverage is clear and unlikely to pose major scientific obstacles.
Clearly, if you are submitting a manuscript, you believe your work is interesting and valuable despite its known limitations. Explicitly stating those limitations gives you a chance to make that case for value clearly and directly.
If, on the other hand, you attempt to hide your limitations, many reviewers may notice them in any case, and may hold them more harshly against you.
From my experience reading chemical literature, there is nothing more suspicious to my eyes than a paper which contains nothing but a recipe and a few successful results. That works if you are going to bake cookies, but chemical syntheses of that caliber are always a gamble.
Any really good scientific paper will discuss not only what succeeded, but also what failed, and why. There is absolutely no requirement that papers be written as if you were trying to sell something and therefore only contain positive points. The really good chemical journals (e.g. Organic Syntheses) will contain discussion of any pitfalls or possible failure points as well as discussion of potential hazards, etc. - and that's what sets them apart from other less reputable sources!
I would rather have a 15-page review that exhaustively covers the mechanism of some exotic chemical transformation - rather than a two-paragraph paper which frankly could have been written on the back of a napkin at lunchtime.
I would like to add to the other answers by looking at this issue from another perspective. Sure,if the reviewer realizes you left out certain parts on purpose, he might have a hard time trusting your honesty on other parts of the paper (making the review process more difficult).
However, even with the premise that you did not leave out these parts on purpose, failing to see and mention relatively obvious limitations of your work can give the impression of inaccuracy and oversight in your research. Naturally, this can create doubts about the accuracy of other sections of the paper.
Write about them
It is not about selling a product but adding knowledge to the community. Especially in science, knowing its errors and limitations is a crucial part of every result you provide.
Every (good) reviewer knows that.
Pointing out the weaknesses will definitely make the paper higher quality and more useful.
It may make it either more or less likely to be published. That's definitely something to consider even if you are altruistic - the paper isn't going to help many people if it's not published. But all things considered I'd say including the caveats will make it more likely to be published.
If the reviewer realizes the limitations himself, and they are significant and worthy of mention, their omission would make the writing appear either clueless, negligent or dishonest.
If the reviewer doesn't realize them himself, their inclusion would still give the paper more credibility, make it clearer and better framed, and give the sense that you know what you're talking about; and the paper would still be worthwhile for the results it does have. Omitting the limitations could make the paper seem "too good to be true" and make the reviewer wonder what he's missing.
And there's the remote chance that the reviewer would buy into a paper that appears to have fantastic results, and reject it if he is hinted the results are a bit more mundane. Such a reviewer is probably gullible and uninformed about what makes a good paper, and it's a bad habit to assume your reviewers will be such.
So, however you look at it, mentioning the weaknesses is definitely the way to go. You shouldn't overplay it though, it is expected that you will be mostly positive about the paper and not go out of your way to discredit it. No need to write "Ultimately, the analysis in this paper is totally useless, because the model makes assumptions X, Y and Z which are completely unrealistic."
You must include all of the parameters in which your model operates including any that you don't understand or have a possible confounding effect.
This is science. To not include them is evangelism.
Including the limits and known issues of your work shows that you have thought the subject through and still consider your work to add to the topic. To NOT include limits will force reviewers to do this work for you and they will not be appreciative.
There is nothing wrong in noting the edges of your work. Science is the exploration of things we don't know. If we knew them there would not be limitations and you wouldn't be writing about them.
Finding a useful model is craft, art, and skill. Very important, quite valuable, not science. How and what this model fits and when it stops fitting for what reason: that's science.
You are contemplating omitting the one thing that makes your paper worthwhile as a paper. "I thought I'd do it this and that way, and it worked." is not an academic paper but a lab report. It provides no insight.
If you are handing in a lab report and skip the science, you may or may not get your paper accepted. But then others will get the credit for actually working out the science, and it will be to your detriment.
High moral standards & selfless service to the greater good of humanity aside, there is still a very good selfish reason for pointing out the limitations of your work: if you do it yourself, you can then discuss it on your terms right there, whereas if reviewers find it, you couldn't. What I mean is something like "My method has such and such limitations, BUT it's still good, because
There are still many important cases where it DOES work...
... or it covers a few cases not covered by any existing methods
It may be possible to overcome some of the limitations in our future works
It looks promising because of blah-blah-blah
Etc."
In every research paper I've read (or written), there was a "Discussion/Limitations" section, composed more or less like that. If you don't write it yourself, a reviewer would kindly do that for you, although it would probably look more like "the proposed method seems to have such and such limitations, whether it's still good I have no time to research - reject."
Furthermore, unless your field is completely new and revolutionary, a typical reviewer has already read tons of papers on the subject, has probably done some research of his/her own, and knows quite well what are the typical problems and difficult cases - they expect you to know and discuss them, including inevitable failures of your approach with some of them. If they don't see such discussion in your paper, it gives them impression of you being incompetent, or dishonest, or both.
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29482 | Why would a senior PI need to take a part-time job at another university?
A senior professor works at one university, has his own lab and research group(s). Recently, he took another part-time job at a better university. So why do professors need to take part-time jobs? Is it because his main university started to pay half salary or is it because he needs extra funding to work together at another university? Or just because he lacks funding and seeking opportunity somewhere else?
Does this professor reserve to right to ask the new faculty to employ or joint pay his research fellow? Or this is more usual that he needs to pay his staff with his own funding.
Are you a student or a professor at the university?
I am not a professor
thank you for reviewing my question, i ask here as know few about the academic world, do you know the answer? and if this is a good question?
Most people take additional work to get more money, or get something else out of the deal that is worth money. That being said, I feel in poor taste to inquire about this professor's specific scenario.
the question may sounds stupid, but it is necessary for us students also to know the academic system. really looking forward to know the answer
Maybe you could just ask that professor yourself... Might be enlightening.
Perhaps the prof is doing some friendly department a favor, and covering some dire circumstance. Really, could be anything.
I remember in the 2nd meeting of one of my classes, the professor announced he had been diagnosed with cancer and was taking a medical leave. The university hired other professors to take over his responsibilities. It could be as simple as that.
I am a faculty member at a third-tier university. If a first-tier university in the same city offered me a part-time job and I could fit in the time required, I'd take it so fast it would make your head spin.
Maybe he has multiple ex-wives?
A senior professor works at one university, has his own lab and research group(s). Recently, he took another part-time job at a better university. So why do professors need to take part-time jobs?
Of course there's no way to say for sure based on so little information, but I wouldn't assume it has anything to do with finances, actually. The most likely explanation is that he wanted to be associated in some way with the more prestigious university. Maybe just because it sounds impressive (either to society at large or on papers/grants), maybe because he hopes to move there fully in the future, maybe because the association might help him attract strong students or postdocs, maybe because he is collaborating with someone there or managing a joint grant, etc.
Does this professor reserve to right to ask the new faculty to employ or joint pay his research fellow?
There's no way of answering this without much more information. Some people have affiliations with other universities that consist of just a title (with no salary or research funding at all), others genuinely have part-time jobs, and some have negotiated deals involving all sorts of things. In general I wouldn't assume there's any agreement to provide joint funding for research fellows, but there might be.
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88321 | Is it plagiarism if someone else came up with something before you did?
Say you come up with an idea, but X already has written about it before, even though you don't know about this.
Is it plagiarism to then publish the idea, even if during publishing you still are not aware that X came up with this idea first?
That is, can you accidentally commit plagiarism in this way?
You can (and should) prevent this from happening by doing a proper literature search before working on your ideas!
Plagiarism requires dishonesty or negligence. If you were completely honest and weren't negligent, you did not commit plagiarism. Period.
@JayFromA: Supposing the similar idea is published in a different field, and is described in unfamiliar terms so that your literature search doesn't happen to hit on it? Lesser instances of this happen to me all the time, when I do a Google search for something using what seem to be to be natural search terms, yet someone else can do a search on what they think are relevant terms and get back a bunch of different results.
@JayFromA How do you do a "proper" literature search ? And how do you prevent using slightly different wording and not finding any results ? I mean you could search through every paper ever written, but even then noone knows what people are currently working on that isn't published yet, but that would take an unreasonably enough time.
@DavidSchwartz How can negligence ever constitute plagiarism?
@DavidRicherby I can imagine lots of ways. For example, say you find something you wrote on a piece of paper. You don't remember whether it was original or you copied it from someone else. You negligently fail to check and publish it as original work when actually you copied it from someone else. Here's another: You think of something you think is original. You negligently fail to do basic literature searching to see if someone else already published it and publish it as original work. Someone else already published it in a place you would have found had you not been negligent.
@DavidSchwartz The "piece of paper" mechanism seems a bit far-fetched to me but OK. However, independent recreation followed by a failure to do an adequate literature search is not plagiarism: it might be hard to convince people that you didn't plagiarize but plagiarism is fundamentally an act of deception, not of negligence.
@DavidRicherby the piece of paper is far-fetched, but something I've seen students do is paste text into a notes file when learning a topic, then paste again into their final work without caring where the original came from (it's pretty obvious when the source is wikipedia and the writing is much better than the rest of their work)
@DavidRicherby I agree that plagiarism is fundamentally an act of deception, but it doesn't follow that negligence can't be an act of deception. For example, if the standard in a field is to conduct a diligent search to determine if your claims are original before publishing them, then being negligent in that search is deceptive because the act of publishing implies you were diligent. It's the same as a car dealer selling a car while being negligent in ensuring it's safe to drive -- that's deceptive because selling the car implies it's safe.
Like integration, you mean?
@DavidRicherby I have witnessed acts of academic negligence where the person justified their negligence by claiming that they did not want to "stain" their own thought process with the knowledge of other people's work on the topic. I don't think there's a particular term for this act of negligence, so I am happy to refer to it as "plagiarism".
@LeeMosher I'm sorry, but something not having a name isn't any sort of a reason to call it plagiarism. I mean, I don't think there's any particular term for the act of writing a paper without drinking any coffee, so let's call that "plagiarism", too!
@LeeMosher Lev Landau (as the story goes) was famously disinclined to read anybody else's work, and found it more straightforward to re-deduce all of mathematical physics from first principles, when required. His papers do indeed have rather thin bibliographies (and are regarded as valuable for the clarity of their thought). I don't think anyone thinks this was plagiarism on his part, but equally don't think folk can get away with this unless they're quite as good as Landau (which is approximately zero people).
No, but, ... (as other comments and answers have said... ). .............
Personally, I would say yes, it is, but if you had not known, then you're right, it had only been an accident. It's trying to prove that it had only been an accident that makes this tricky. In the meantime, I would go with others' comments that say it is our responsibility to do a literature search beforehand if not to protect ourselves, than at least to check that we're not saying something that's already been said (similar to read others' answers here on SE prior to posting new ones).
It isn't plagiarism if you didn't copy it. It is prior art.
@DavidSchwartz : and how do you prove you didn't know about it?
@vsz Exactly. One of the reasons negligence is almost always considered equivalent to dishonesty is because they are so difficult to distinguish and there's really no reason to treat them differently for precisely the reason I explained, negligence is often inherently dishonest.
Related: How common is it to reinvent the wheel in acaemia?
If you publish an idea that turns out to have been previously known, but you were unaware of the prior work before you published it, then it's not plagiarism. Depending on the circumstances, it could be considered poor scholarship, or even negligence if you really should have found the reference. However, it's not a form of academic dishonesty if you truly didn't know.
If you come up with an idea on your own, learn that it was previously known, and subsequently publish it as original work without disclosing the prior source, then it's definitely academic dishonesty. I wouldn't use the word "plagiarism" if you came up with the idea independently, but it's still misconduct to act like you're unaware of the idea's history.
The trickiest case is if you may have been aware of the idea in the past, but forgotten about it. That's a horrible mess, since the rest of the world has no way of knowing whether you genuinely forgot or are being dishonest. (You really don't want to have to argue that you aren't a thief, but rather massively screwed up.) This is the only case in which I think accidental plagiarism is really plausible.
This is not at all common, but it can happen more easily than you might hope, so it's best to be careful to keep track of what you've heard about. The worrisome scenario is the following: you hear Smith give a talk, but you don't really understand it or care very much, so you basically forget about it. Some years later, you are faced with a similar problem and come up with more or less the same idea to solve it. You don't realize how similar it is to Smith's talk, but you may have been influenced by subconscious memories, so you haven't really discovered it independently. When you publish your idea, Smith writes to you to say "How dare you use my idea without giving me any credit! I know you were at my talk, since we chatted afterwards, and your colleague X confirms that he remembers you there as well. Did you really think you could get away with this?"
If this happens to you, how can you prove that "you truly didn't know"? Of course you could hope people give you the benefit of the doubt but doesn´t it all go back to bad literature search if the idea was already published?
Yeah, you generally can't prove it. If you're lucky, you'll have a good reputation for honesty and the way you express the idea will be different enough that people will believe you. If you're not lucky, you may never escape the suspicion of plagiarism. (But that doesn't mean you were actually guilty of plagiarism, just that you couldn't prove you weren't.)
As for bad literature searches, if the idea was easy to find in the literature, then the best you can hope for is looking sloppy or lazy, which isn't a good outcome. On the other hand, sometimes it's not so easy. (Maybe it was published somewhere very obscure, or it came up in a completely different research community where a reasonable person might not have done much looking.) In that case, you have more of an excuse for not knowing it, even though you have to acknowledge it once you know.
There’s actually a name for unconscious influence by something you don’t knowingly remember. I’d link to it but I can’t remember what it is.
@JDługosz Cryptomnesia
@Miles, I'm not entirely sure that JDlugosz didn't remember what it was. :D
@anonymous mathematician, this is really the answer I was looking for, thank you. I have one important followup qurstion: If you are in a situation where you've published something that is similar to some other idea that is easy to find, but out of lazyness you didn't find it: would in that case the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" apply, or would it be presumed that you've been dishonest? In other words: if there is no "smoking gun evidence" that you've been in contact with that earlier work, would there still be the presumption of dishonesty and punishment by your university?
Interesting (maybe) non-academic example of this: Mick Jagger and Keith Richards unintentionally plagiarised kd lang's "Constant Craving". Of course they could never prove it was unintentional, but once the similarity was pointed out they gave her a writing credit on "Anybody Seen My Baby?". Given how well-known her song was, this would probably have been considered negligent in academia...
"Depending on the circumstances, it could be considered poor scholarship"-- agreed. In my field, this would be extremely embarrassing and reputation-diminishing, as it would indicate that one did not read one's own field. However, I imagine graduate students are more likely to fall into this than postdocs and faculty, in which case your supervisor should be able to prevent this from happening (if only by asking, "Did you read x/y/z?"). Side note: this actually happened to me the other day, where I thought I had an 'original' idea and then discovered a whole monograph about it. XD
@SteveJessop Great, now I have "Constant Craving" stuck in my head... ;)
If you completely 100% wrote a paper based on your own findings and then find another paper with similar findings before you go to publish (but maybe mildly focusing on a different aspect), then what obligation would you have to cite the other author? Citation and referencing refers to giving credit to a work that you read as inspiration for yours or to provide credibility. I mean no offense, but citing things simply for being similar makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
@TheGreatDuck: If nothing else, you should cite the earlier work and point out why your work differs from it so that the referee is less likely to say "there's nothing new & interesting in this paper, don't publish it."
@MichaelSeifert alright, but let's say you are self-publishing. It isn't plagiarism if you never used it as a reference. Plagiarism is just referring to another work without providing a proper citation.If you've never read the other work,then yes it is good to refer to it in hindsight for reasons of comparison, but there shouldn't be an issue of plagiarism when neither work refers to the other.I could write a paper on trying to solve a difficult math equation on my own for leisure.That doesn't mean I ripped off some other paper about the same equation assuming it's easy enough to stumble upon.
@AnonymousMathematician "If you come up with an idea on your own, learn that it was previously known, and subsequently publish it as original work without disclosing the prior source, then it's definitely academic dishonesty. I wouldn't use the word "plagiarism" if you came up with the idea independently, but it's still misconduct to act like you're unaware of the idea's history." But is it academic misconduct as in plagiarism type misconducts or is it misconduct in the sense that it just indicates incompetent research? I'd argue that either is bad, but one just indicates poor writing ability.
I happened (two or three times) to ask twice the same question on SE. I had forgotten I had the problem and that there was (or not) a solution to it. This was thankfully found via the automatic search propositions (the question was very specific and did not show up in a search) and would have been otherwise closed as duplicate -- but the real world does not have this notion (unfortunately)
I would think that if other similar research was published between the time one wrote one's paper and the time it was published, the best action would be to write an addendum recognizing the additional research and identifying which parts are similar to one's own, and which parts of one's own research have independent value.
There is such a thing as independent discovery. In the 17th century, Newton and Leibnitz apparently discovered calculus a year or two apart, but without either knowing about the work of the other. Nowadays, information travels at "warp" speed and "a year or two" would be an unacceptable time lag. Even so, it's possible that two people would publish similar findings, drawn from common sources, days or even hours apart. (And on SE sites, it gets even more intense; sometimes people "publish" similar answers minutes or even seconds apart, neither knowing of the other.) Under such circumstances, concurrent publication is usually excused, but it also behooves one to do a literature search to see if the idea has, in fact been published previously.
What about badly worded or named discoveries? What if a work is so unknown or not accesible to most/your search? I guess even then the time lag would be acceptable or not?
@HopefullyHelpful: If a work is "unknown and not accessible," to the point where you and others honestly didn't know, and reasonably didn't know of it, then you deserve credit for popularizing the work. Then it would be up to the other person to clarify his position, using his previous work as a "hook." I remember reading that the credit for the invention of television hinged on the testimony of the inventor's high school science teacher, who testified to the clarity and completeness of a formulation that predated a rival's earlier publication.
Perhaps the best historical example of this was Darwin and Wallace independently coming up with the theory of evolution.
"Newton and Leibnitz apparently discovered calculus a year or two apart". It was more than a year apart. I think there is some evidence that Newton discovered the basics of the calculus while still a student.
As a more recent example, credit for the discovery of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) as the cause of AIDS was in dispute for quite some time, as it was independently discovered by two teams working separately. A French team at the Pasteur Institute announced the discovery of a virus they called LAV in 1983. In 1984, a US National Cancer Insitute team published their discovery, HLTV-III. How can both teams have discovered a virus responsible for AIDS? Because LAV and HLTV-III were ultimately found to be the same virus.
Building on David's comment:
If you inadvertently reinvent the wheel, without contributing anything additional and meaningful, your paper is unlikely to get published anyway. So let's start with the assumption that you inadvertently reinvented the wheel, did not credit the original inventor, and then added something meaningful. It is likely the review process would trigger a correction in this situation.
I think it would be helpful to review what plagiarism tends to look like. I have seen the following, as a copy editor:
Neglect to give credit for a creative assertion
Lift text from someone else's work, without putting quotes around it
Same as 1 or 2, but from your own previously published work
Other types of sloppiness I've seen:
Cite the wrong author(s) for a creative assertion or quote
Make a significant mistake in the citation
Cite the wrong work (but at least getting the researcher right)
As addition to the other answers: I think it is possible to distinguish if you are academically dishonest or that you really invented the wheel again.
If you reinvented the wheel, you will have worked with the new method a longer time to verify that it really works and you will therefore know its merits and its disadvantages. Moreover the path how you invented will be almost always different from the original author, so it will give you very specific insights which you intuitively grasp, but it does not give you the insights if you followed another path.
So a short interview (preferably with the original author if he/she is not malignant) would settle with high probability if you really invented the method yourself.
The Newton-Leibniz controversy is a good example: Newton used the "fluxion" approach, always dividing out the resulting equation and neglecting the remaining part while Leibniz see them as "differential", a ratio of infinitesimal changes, so he could cancel out e.g. (dy/dx) * dx = dy. Both used the same method to finally get the derivative at one point, but their interpretation varied. Both methods were attacked for their lack of rigour, but Leibniz approach was formally more elegant and easier to handle, so his integral notation prevailed.
There is a famous example for this question. Some people re-discovered calculus in the following paper:
“A Mathematical Model for the Determination of Total Area Under Glucose Tolerance and Other Metabolic Curves”, Mary M. Tai, Diabetes Care, 1994, 17, 152–154.
You can laugh, but no, they did not commit plagiarism.
More details.
Some assumptions here are that you are intellectually honest, you use a reputable publisher, and the prior work in question was done some time before yours. If your due diligence (and your publishers) didn't discover it in mainstream publishing in your field, it couldn't be considered plagiarism. While this answers your question, it still leaves open the likelihood of conflict over credit. Even without political considerations, history is replete with antagonism that carries for generations. While we as a society consider publishing important work of any kind to serve mankind, you can see how vital it can be to the author.
Real plagiarism involves deliberately copying someone else's work. I saw this when editing a paper for a PhD candidate who was worried about his English. Parts of the paper were badly constructed, but other parts were letter perfect. So I used Google to check for some of the unique phrases in the well-written section. Bingo! Wikipedia!
I did not tell him what I found. Instead I fixed the most glaring of his errors in English, gave him a note that Wikipedia was not an acceptable source, and hoped that his advisor and his examination committee would discover his malfeasance. They needed to hang him by his thumbs.
Generally if you find that you have inadvertently used someone else's idea without attribution it is good if you can later publish something that corrects the situation. It's better to do it that way than to have someone else point you out as a possible thief.
This is basically a definition of plagiarism, which the existing answers already cover, plus an anecdote that has nothing to do with the question.
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25699 | Asked editor for review prolongation to do further experiments, can't meet deadline. What do?
My paper received a good review, but we've been implicitly asked (interpretation of my supervisor, not mine) to do two experiments to verify a method I use. We then asked the editor for some time to perform these experiments, which the editor accepted. Then two things happened:
The experiments were messed up due to some unfortunate technical error and now I can't meet the deadline.
After some deep digging in preliminary experiments and literature, I found data that could replace these experiments just good enough in my opinion.
The question is now: Should I ask for more time to retry the experiments, or should I just send the literature/preliminary data to the reviewers? Which choice would be wiser?
You should ask both your supervisor and the editor which is the best way to proceed. Your supervisor might find it acceptable to reuse existing data; the editor might give you time to redo the experiments.
Which choice would be wiser? This is completely a judgement call that depends on your specific paper. Nobody here can answer it for you.
Based on the reviews and the willingness of the editor to provide an extension, your paper clearly is worth it for the journal. You should definitely contact the editor, briefly explain the problems (don't focus on excuses but on what remains to be done) you have had to meet the deadline and ask what can be done. It will be advantageous to provide a solid plan for the remaining work so that this is clear from the beginning to the editor. So assess the remaining work, make up a realistic plan for what is required and provide this to the editor. If all this requires the assistance of your advisor then plan it together. In the end, it will be up to the editor to provide an extension and a clear plan is necessary.
In my own experience as editor, I much more appreciate realistic plans than optimistic ones that fail. In your case it seems as a case of force majeur and such things happen. I am, however, always suspicious of long excusing accompanying letters since I really do not care about the reasons but need to focus on the timing of revisions for planning issues and the like.
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12569 | What is the etiquette for CCing faculty in eMails?
I'm working in an international collaboration (Germany and Netherlands). It happens quite often that I'm asking technical questions to fellow postdocs by email, just sending the email to this single person. When I receive the reply, I almost always see that the head of the group has been put in CC.
I'm wondering why this is done. Is this some kind of etiquette I'm not aware of? I imagine that as a group leader you get flooded with emails, so why would you request more?
I like to know when people ask about my group's research.
Yes, that sort of etiquette (CC'ing the PI of each involved partner in a collaboration, even for exchanges at lower level) exist in some groups. It is particularly true of recent collaborations, either because they have been established recently or because the research is still in its infancy. In both case, I suppose it is nice to help PI's stay on top of how things are progressing, both on the science and on the interpersonal relationships (like, is everyone acting professionally).
It's not universal, but it is common. It depends a lot on the nature of the relations between the PI's and their groups. I tend to ask students/post-docs to keep me in CC of the first few emails to our collaborator after they arrive/we start the project, then after sometime I tell them to drop me when it's evident things are going well.
In your situation, the safest course of action is to keep people on the CC list. You didn't CC them, but someone did, so don't drop them unless they ask for it. Also, ask your own boss how he likes to do things.
“I imagine that as a group leader you get flooded with emails, so why would you request more?” — Whatever you do, you will be flooded with emails. You don't read them all, but you may skim those for tone/content, keeping an eye on things.
It is a fairly normal practice to cc: your boss on correspondence that is outside the organization, especially if he or she has a vested interest in the response. As you note, though, it does require some judiciousness to keep from overpopulating your boss's inbox. I'd say it is more rare in the case of technical back-and-forth, but I have seen it before.
I have also seen the "cc the boss" mentality from people who want the boss to know they're keeping busy -- I wouldn't suggest this kind of toady behavior, but it does exist.
The bottom line is that you shouldn't be concerned to see others do this on their correspondence, and you could certainly ask the head of your group if he or she wants to be cc'd on correspondence from you.
I haven't heard the excuse to let your boss know your busy, but I do know people who often do it as more a lack of authority or CYA.
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7931 | How do you thematically include accidental findings ("serendipity") in a dissertation or paper?
I'm asking for approaches to include interesting, but not perfectly fitting results in a dissertation or a paper.
During my PhD project I have made an accidental discovery, which is what I believe you call serendipity. The finding is related to the overall topic of my dissertation and certainly interesting, but it interrupts the "leitmotif" of my argumentation, as this discovery is really just the result of a stupid mistake. So my question here is: How do you eloquently include stupid mistakes (aka accidental findings) in a dissertation or a paper without sounding stupid or breaking the flow of arguments apart? Is there even a generalizing answer to this question?
If it's good research, publish it. If it's not good research, don't.
It's worth publishing, but it needs more work, but is certainly worth a section in a dissertation at the current state.
When I was in grad school, a labmate of mine worked for five years to get no results on his main project (bioreactors), but ended up making a significant advancement in the field of electrochemistry. He published this work and ended up following this line of research for a few years. Moral of the story: definitely write it up as a section, and if it's important, publish.
I have no idea why you put stupid mistakes = accidental findings. Could you explain it?
@PiotrMigdal, I made a stupid mistake during an experiment which led to this finding. Hence, it was an accidental finding. :-)
Have you heard the saying that great discoveries aren't marked by a cry of "Eureka", but by "oh. that's interesting. I wasn't expecting that" (credit probably Feynman, but I forget who)
@EnergyNumbers Sure, and I'm completely aware of the situation, but yet I have to implement it in the dissertation somehow. ;)
@EnergyNumbers it's Asimov, I've added it to my answer :)
Does it matter how you discovered your results? Will you also write "These results were obtained while thinking in the shower. These were obtained bashing my head against the desk. These were obtained by divine inspiration."
If the finding is significant enough,how about writing a separate research paper?
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' but rather, 'hmm... that's funny...” (Isaac Asimov, thanks to EnergyNumbers for reminding me of it)
If you're worried that it will distract the flow of your thesis, why not put it in a “special” part of your thesis (e.g., an appendix) and refer to that from the main text, at the point that would be most logical.
[Following the description of your experiment.] In the next few sections, I describe the results obtained from operating the Pocket Helium Flux Positron Annihilator on a variety of samples: metals (section II.B), graphene (section II.C) and heavy water (section II.D). You will also find in Appendix A a description of the observations made following an accidental operation of PHFPA without a helium flux [you may not want to be specific and say: some moron forgot to replace the bottle] which allowed to check what happens when electroneutrality is violated on the µm scale.
An appendix is a good place, or maybe a small section as the end of the relevant chapter.
I used an appendix for a similar ancillary finding during my research as well. By having it there I supported my discussion/evaluation, reinforced my methods and rigor, and it also helped to support the premise of 'a valuable contribution to [my] area of science'. Your mileage may vary, but I found it useful. (Full disclosure, I'm still working on it but so far, so good :)
"you may not want to be specific and say: some moron forgot to replace the bottle" - perhaps a "secret appendix" is in order for such things. If nothing else I can see it being a useful way to relieve thesis-induced stress. :-P
You can always thank the moron in your acknowledgements for an unspecified but significant contribution or so ;)
Also, as this answer and others suggest, there is no grand law of research that suggests you must present your work in the order that it happened. Usually we choose to imply a more logical structure to the work.
Thesis is a good place to place things not yet developed enough to make a full paper.
If it is at least tangentially related to you thesis topic, just add a relevant (sub)section (e.g. in further discussion, or near to the place where it is the most related).
BTW: Many groundbreaking discoveries were accidental. So I don't see a reason to value them less than ones planned in advance.
Again, if "accidental" means than some values were set such as a mistake - again, mentioning such is related to motivation/story, not the value of results.
The traditional ways people introducing important or interesting peripheral information without breaking the flow or core thrust of a manuscript is with footnotes/endnotes or with an appendix as F'X has suggested.
If it's a short aside, consider making it a long footnote. If it's longer, put in in an appendix and reference it either in the footnote or in the text. Long — even paper-length — appendixes are not abnormal in dissertations.
In the social sciences, there is traditionally a section in the concluding chapter that discusses limitations of the present study and scope for future research.
You can include your 'discovery' in this section. In this way, you are presenting your 'discovery' and suggesting some ways in which it can be researched - two-in-one, I suppose!
The other section in which you can include your 'discovery' is where you highlight what contribution your research is making to the body of knowledge in your field. This is traditionally another section in the concluding chapter of a social science dissertation. You can 'wrap' your 'discovery' as an accidental but important contribution to knowledge.
In my case, I talked to a number of people in my field as part of my stakeholder consultation. I soon discovered that they were telling me far more than what was needed for my topic. I summarised this information in my concluding chapter and said that it represented an important contribution to knowledge because it would lost if not captured in writing (the stakeholders were mostly from the older generation).
So, there are many ways to include it in your dissertation.
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16957 | The chances of postdoc position higher in PhD country
Are the chances of getting a postdoc position or full academic position higher in the country you are going to study your PhD in? What if you are not a citizen? Is it important to take into account postdoc stage and career path possibilities when you decide the country you want to study PhD?
See: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/9133/why-should-or-should-not-a-university-have-a-policy-of-not-hiring-its-own-phds/
The question @posdef linked is definitely something you should read. While I'm not sure if the chances are higher or not (so, I'm not making it an answer), it might be better (to your academic career) to try and get a postdoc position in a different country than the one where you got your PhD.
In my surroundings (Germany, Switzerland), normally it's not a problem to get the first postdoc after you get a PhD in the same country.
However, a PhD in some country that is (sometimes wrongly) believed to have an inferior level of scientific merit may actually block the further scientific degree carrier abroad: impossible to start PhD studies a second time ("already has PhD"), and impossible to get a postdoctoral position as well ("bad PhD").
As a result, it is important to weigh the situation and think where and how to earn the PhD degree. I know people who have dropped basically complete PhD works right before defence just to be able to restart in another country.
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19481 | "This is very interesting as a project" What is the next step to obtain PhD position?
I am submitting to several schools for PhD position in CS. I am following the advices about how to contact professors.
One professor I sent to suggesting some idea about her previous research and asking that I want to indicate my desire to work under her supervision. She replied "This is very interesting as a project. Please apply for the next deadline". It is very encouraging response. However, the admission decision is at the department level. So I will have to apply and there are several other requirements which I am not completely sure if I entirely meet.
I feel like I must focus on this positive side in order to increase my chances, but I do not know how. Should I keep in touch with the professor although she can do nothing now until the decision is made? Should I send more details about the suggested idea in order to show how motivated I am (I am not sure if she's part of the admission committee). What is the second step to increase my chances to get admission?
Do you think sending more emails to the professor is annoying or does show my enthusiasm? Any thing I can do to support more application at this time?
Update for who may concern
The application has not been accepted.
I am not sure I understand the question. What is the second step? Apply to the PhD. What else?
@scaaahu What is the next step to increase my chances to get the admission. Thanks for helping out clarifying my question
The second step is to submit a strong application: Good grades from a good department, a compelling statement of purpose (which reiterates your interest in your target advisor), and strong letters of recommendation that address your research potential in personal, specific, technical, and credible detail. And then write the professor to tell her you've applied and reiterate your interest.
As long as you're building a strong application, you should send it to several other schools as well (minus your interest in that particular advisor, of course).
There is absolutely nothing you can do to guarantee admission to your first-choice program, so you need to cultivate other options as well.
last advice, do you think mention that "I had contacted the professor and she had sent positive opinion" in the statement of purpose is a good idea or it might be perceived as "showing off"?
@hawk: If you keep the PI informed of your application status, she'll let the evaluators know of her interest in your project directly, which is far more meaningful to them than your claim.
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16899 | Canada vs. Australia for the academic career
Two days ago I was in discussion with a colleague of mine about the possible PhD studies destinations. We both agreed that the chances of getting post-Doc job or any full position are higher in the country we finish PhD (Maybe you have different opinion). However, we ended up discussion two potential (native English-speakers) countries, namely, Canada and Australia. We both had a vague idea about post PhD stage (academia or industry), so we had not much to share. My question is which country is generally better in terms of the following (computer science field):
Research sector prospects (is there any studies indicate which country has stronger research profile in computer science - my gut feeling is Canada at least from the world universities ranking in computer science)
Academic career path (What are the possible career paths for PhD graduates? (tenure track, postdoc, lab researchers ... etc.).
Finance benefits (taking into account the living cost in both countries, which of the countries, the academic career stand stronger comparing to the industrial jobs in terms of financial benefits)
Any advice to improve the question is most welcomed.
This seems far too broad.
@NateEldredge It is disappointing that I am almost sure that who voted to put this question on hold have not read the entire post down to the last line.
I'm voting to leave closed for now, and I've read it all. I'd suggest narrowing down what you mean by your bullet points, or asking about one or two of them at a time in separate questions. Your third bullet, "Job chances..." is almost specific enough, but even that seems hard to answer, as there are an awful lot of personal factors involved, and separate sectors of computer science to consider on the job market even within academic or industrial and not both.
The reviewers and voters are acting as they're supposed to. The problem is that this a very broad, opinion-based question. "Better" is just too unspecific a criterion to allow for a reasonable answer.
@aeismail Thank you, I tried to narrow down my questions. I hope it is easier to answer now
I don't think I follow your parenthetical in the first (edited) bullet: Is your gut feeling that Canada has no world class CS, or that it does, where Australia does not?
@MatthewG. I said that my gut feeling is Canada has stronger profile in CS research. My analysis is based on the universities ranking where Canada has much more universities in the top ranking universities in the world comparing to Australia. That does not mean Australia has some strong Universities. On top of that, this is only one metric, I posted the question seeking approval, disagreement and more factors
@Hawk Oh! Ok, I totally mis-parsed your sentence, leading to an ambiguity. Mea culpa.
Just a quick comment though, about 20% of the institutions in Canada would require you to have a working knowledge of French to become a professor (University of Montreal, University Sherbrooke, University Laval, etc.). This is something to take into account, especially since a strong portion of CS research (at least related to deep learning and machine learning) takes place in Montreal.
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21348 | Programming Interview for PhD Admission in Computer Science
A prospective supervisor is interested in me, and has asked me for programming interview. As I have been told, his research group does a lot of system programming, and he is seeking a good programmer.
I have no industry experience in programming, though I have programmed for assignments, projects, and a Master's thesis. I know that, as a computer scientist, it is essential to have good programming skills. I tried to search for some tips about programming interviews for prospective PhDs, but could not find anything.
Does it differ from industrial interview? Did anyone have similar experience? Any references or tips?
This is the first time I've heard of this. By "academic" do you imply that you have never programmed before but have only discussed topics, or do you mean that you have only programmed the petty assignments that come with a Bachelor's program?
@JonathanLandrum I have programmed my assignments, projects and master thesis implementation. I even taught programming in lab as a tutor. But all this is incomparable to industrial programmers who spend 8 hours daily dedicated for programming.
In that case you should be fine. I don't know what country you will be attending school in, but in the US where I am from, it is not uncommon for PhD students to only have a Bachelor's level of programming ability. But even in Europe, with a Master's degree, you are on par with everyone else.
I think you have much too high an opinion of "industrial programmers who spend 8 hours daily dedicated for programming". Some of these people are excellent programmers, and some of them are not.
Thanks for sharing, but it would be better if you formulate your edit as an answer, so that it can be upvoted (and also accepted by you).
@xLeitix Thank you for your suggestion. I have posted it as an answer
I had the interview yesterday. I would like to share the experience as it might be useful for anybody who might go through similar kind of interviews in the future.
The interview was via Skype with an outsourced software engineer (not the prospective supervisor), and we used shared .doc file to solve two programming problems about strings. By the way, most of programming interviews I had (mostly industrial and this academic one) pretty much involve strings manipulation and sometimes data structure.
The interview lasted for an hour whereby I was given 20 minutes to solve each problem and 10 minutes to discuss. The general impression was positive. The concept was always known, yet I needed some practicing to make my code works.
I was given the choice to choose the programming language I like to write in.
I would say, bachelor level of programming is enough. You will just need to revise and practice a little bit your information. You might need to focus on the logic you follow more than the small details that differ from language to another.
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118266 | Why don't I want to learn anything?
I'm an undergraduate student, rising senior. I've been immersed in academia now since freshmen year, and I'd like to pursue a PhD in Computer Science in the future. I'm posting here because I just feel hopeless right now.
I've had research experiences at top schools, like MIT, and now, at a top research company (where I've been for a couple of months).
I know to the readers these sound impressive, but with every experience, I feel like I let my mentors and advisors down. I feel like they all had really high expectations for me -- and I just disappointed them.
With every opportunity -- and in every scenario, whether it was in school or some other aspect of my life -- I noticed a common pattern in myself :
I just didn't want to learn.
I did very well in high school. I do very well in college. But I just don't have the motivation to learn ... anything. I want good grades. I want to build the projects I have in mind. I want to finish my research project and get that publication. But I don't want to put the work in. Everything I achieved through academics was done under some combination of procrastination, stress, fatigue, and luck. I never really cared about what I was learning. I often did things just the day before, or late. I only learned just enough to do the assignment or get the grade I want. I always thought -- I can learn it the way I'm supposed to later. I just wanted the results. I wanted to look good on paper. I didn't want to feel ashamed in front of my mentors and co-workers, so I always did just enough to look like I was doing something.
These couple of months that I've gotten the opportunity to work as a research intern at a top research company (I didn't even get an interview to get there, I think I just got lucky), I've felt like shit. I knew nothing about NLP when I got here, and now it's the focus of my project. I've been working with neural nets for 2 years now, but I still don't fully understand the basics. I just feel like I should know this by now. And with every meeting, I feel like I'm doing the bare minimum -- just enough to look like I was doing something.
I feel too slow. Whenever I have to learn about a new topic or read a new paper, I get overwhelmed. I think I will never understand it enough to be able to contribute anything meaningful. And when I see how knowledgeable, motivated, and quick people are about their work, I get discouraged. I feel like time is quickly passing me by, and I am crumbling under every passing day.
Now I'm contemplating whether I will even have potential for an academic career in computation, or an academic career in anything, or a career at all. I know I love solving problems. I know I am creative and have good ideas when I really understand something. But that's what I'm worried about. What if I never attain that level of understanding?
I just don't know -- is this normal and must I just learn to deal with it? Am I experiencing this just because I'm at a different level than my co-workers here, who are PhD's and research scientists? Have academics gone through this phase where they feel like they just can't do it?
Or is there some underlying issue? What have been people's experiences?
Have you considered depression or burn-out as a reason? Or maybe Academia is just not a good career choice to you? We act like as it would be shameful or dull, but It is not: Academia is a strange career choice, don’t fit all the people, even if they are smart.
Do not listen to the Impostor Syndrome.
Imposter syndrome is getting a lot of attention these days, but I also recommend you research the connection between task difficulty and motivation. That seems to be one of the important keys to understand behavior such as procrastination. Generally tasks too hard are not very motivating because of little progress (reward) and tasks too easy are not very motivating because you get bored. Which btw. is why games are so successful in generating motivation. And the research line of work has lots of tasks, both too hard and too easy. So learning to deal with this is very important.
Of course if you go to "top" schools expectations and pressure will be highest, maybe you can find places that will leave more space and time to be yourself.
Possibly related, and wonderful to read anyway: https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2219/how-should-i-deal-with-discouragement-as-a-graduate-student
I just wanted the results. Sounds like you're just efficient and goal-oriented. Some people thrive on going down rabbit holes; and some on going from A to B as efficiently as possible. Perhaps you're the engineer/problem solver type more than the explorer/philosopher type. Both can make good scientists.
@JeffE The thing with impostor syndrome is that, sometimes, it's actually correct. Plenty of people are smart enough to understand and recognize their own limitations. Throwing impostor syndrome around all the time can lead to people second guessing, incorrectly, what might be a very correct assesment of their situation. Sometimes the right answer is that OP is actually on the wrong career track and that they might be altogether happier and more successful doing something else. I don't think that distinction is easily made from an armchair on the other side of the world.
You describe me exactly through undergrad and grad school. In my experience, I felt like I was faking it until I was able to think of small projects on my own. To develop them myself, and I had to go back and learn things I had "faked" with more rigor to defend my work to others; this finally motivated me to learn. Quickly, I realized that most people are doing this too, and their daunting expertise is only in the tools they've needed to complete specific tasks in their careers. You'll eventually find your motivation, but for complex fields this takes a lot of time.
@J... Being on the wrong track (This is not what I should be doing) and impostor syndrome (I’m a faker; all my successes have been trivial or due to luck) aren’t incompatible. But you have to get rid of the latter to see the former clearly.
This sounds like a classic case of burn-out. You've been working hard, maybe too hard, and it isn't fun anymore. I think a lot of academics do that at some point and you need to find a way past it to be successful.
Some of the solutions can be fairly simple and others not. Getting advice from a counsellor or therapist may be needed. Probably useful in any case.
Some people can just find a non-academic activity to spend time and effort on. I usually recommend something physical, but that will also engage your brain in a different way. My own go-to activity is Tai Chi, a mind-body fusion. In the past, I also used bicycling and skiing to get away from the academy.
Such things can even be beneficial in solving academic problems, such as mathematics. When you get stuck on a problem, often letting it go for a bit will let your subconscious mind work on the problem and get you past the block. This too is a common experience.
On a larger scale, a year away, doing things that aren't so academic or that use your mind in a different way can be helpful. Students who had the means, often spent a year "bumming around Europe" after graduation. A museum tour of the great cities.
But if you just keep pressing and increasing the pressure, you probably won't improve.
You might also want to look at some other answers here that discuss Imposter Syndrome (search for the phrase here to get some idea of what it is and how to deal with it.) I'm not reading clear signs in your question that you are "suffering" from that, but take a look.
+1 for this: "Getting advice from a counsellor or therapist ... Probably useful in any case." There is such a thing as preventative care in mental health!
-1 As nothing in the post described someone who was working too hard in the past. I mean, still could be burn out, but burn out tends to happen to people who describe that they used to be motivated.
Welcome to the high ability/high achievers club, or ‘HAHA’. We’re happy to have you!
But in seriousness you make two errors. The first is thinking you are letting your advisors down, which while you don’t specify, is often a reaction to advisors constant commentary on what to change. Advisors don’t push inept students. They critique and challenge the good ones.
Second, you believe your lack of motivation is a personality flaw, when it is actually a characteristic of most successful academics. Once you find the topic that flames your fire you’ll be relentless. Topics outside of your interest just isnt worth your time, right? Join the club.
Lastly, you are falling prey to imposter syndrome - you’re too slow/not smart enough/not productive, etc. 75% of us feel that way but lie about it. The other 25% of people work 23 hour days and sacrifice the rest of their life.
Unfortunately, you likely won’t believe all of what I’ve just said...I didn’t until much later. But your feelings are the rule, not the exception.
All this impostor syndrome talk, but people forget there are a lot of real impostors too. I'm not judging op, I simply don't know enough about them, but this answer doesn't seem to suggest any course of action other than “suck it up“, which wouldn't have needed all that bragging speculation.
There are a lot of good answers, but one topic I want to also address this:
And when I see how knowledgeable, motivated, and quick people are about their work, I get discouraged.
One aspect of it is the fact that in (young) academia, there is 1 thing people are terrified of, which is to be considered "not smart". Peers around me showcased their intellect in any single way possible. Every discussion was one to be won, mainly by technicalities. Nobody admitted not fully understanding a talk (however complex it might have been). Not (yet) knowing about an important topic was taboo.
Don't get bedazzled by your colleagues' displays of intellect. A lot of it is an act, and even when it isn't, it doesn't mean you're inferior. Even in academia, not everyone has a 150+ IQ, or needs it for that matter.
I agree, a lot of apparent dazzling displays have a background story anyway. That they previous experience of a particular thing that you don't, then automatically you're on the backfoot. This happens to everyone it is just day to day stuff.
I want to build the projects I have in mind. ... I just wanted the results.
Wanting practical results on projects that are interesting to you is a great place to start when looking for lost motivation. Find a simple project you are interested in, that is not too large or abstract, and have a play with it. Learn only what you need to learn to get it working, on an as-needed basis, and see if you enjoy this. If that works out, think about extending your project to make it bigger, and learn more as needed to expand on it, until it is how you want it to be. You might find that this gives you an interest in the underlying abstract subject material, since it is now connected to a practical problem of interest to you.
Most of my own training is in statistics and economics, and like you, I muddled through classes with decent grades and often minimal effort. I have always found that learning something I'm forced to learn is laborious, but learning something I need to understand to do a project I am interested in is a lot more fun. For example, a few years ago I was playing Guess-Who with my (then) two-year-old daughter, and I wondered what the optimal subgame-perfect strategy in the game would be. That led me to muck around with the problem for a couple of weeks, and teach myself a whole bunch of game theory, and a bit of discrete math to boot. I had done classes on game theory before, but I was never really motivated to learn it properly until I needed to apply it to a problem of my own.
From your description of your education and career, it sounds to me like you are not motivated to learn because the learning has little to no connection to any project outcome that you are actually interested in. Working in a field as esoteric as neural nets, where the end product is removed from the underlying theory by many levels of abstraction, is likely to exacerbate this feeling. Since you are in computer science, you will have different interests to me. But regardless, forget about what they want you to do at work, and think about some of the fun projects you'd like to build on your own. Maybe you have an idea for a small computing project you could try in your spare time. Start by making something small and don't worry if it has any broader significance or value to others; treat it as a toy problem, solely for your own recreation. Most likely you won't know how to do every aspect of the project ab initio, so that will necessitate learning the bits you don't know how to do yet. If the project is fun and motivating, then you will probably find that learning those bits will not be a chore. You might even find that the project gives you a renewed interest in a more general field.
If you have not already done so, make sure to read the "plate story" about the physicist Richard Feynman (see his excellent book, "Surely you're Joking Mr Feynman!").
Feynman talks of having suffered career burnout, where he was not accomplishing anything. He decided to avoid trying anything important, and just work on toy problems that were interesting to him (e.g., figuring out the physics of why a plate wobbles when you throw it up in the air). As he puts it, "So I got this new attitude. Now that I am burned out and I'll never accomplish anything, I've got this nice position at the university teaching classes which I rather enjoy, and just like I read the Arabian Nights for pleasure, I'm going to play with physics, whenever I want to, without worrying about any importance whatsoever."
Yes, exactly: one should not self-censor on some grounds of mythical "importance"... but, rather, follow one's curiosity, without censoring. Yes, for start-up-company-oriented engineers, as opposed to academic scholars, this may not make sense. But I think it is the real crux-of-the-matter for academics. Don't self-censor. Be curious, and indulge that curiosity. Don't think about "funding" or "marketable products" and so on... unless, of course, that is really your goal... :)
Yes, in theory it could be burnout or impostor syndrome and what not and it's not bad to ask yourself whether those things could fit. Were you in the past more motivated and did everything become too much to handle? Did you get any negative feedback from third parties or is it just you who thinks you aren't doing well enough?
Anyway, an option that's not brought up in other answers and sounds like it could fit with what you are experiencing: Is it possible you were too smart to need to learn in the past, and now that you need to learn you realize you don't really know how to motivate yourself to do so?
It's something I have seen a lot of people struggle with (including myself) and some of the more extreme cases literally end up with young people hitting a complete stone wall they aren't able to get past. This is a quite well known problem gifted people have and tends to show during the end of high school or early during their university career (although I know of people who only hit this wall during or after their PhD), but only in recent years has there been a bit more attention to this problem.
Anyway, if you think that this might be the case for you: You will have to ask yourself what you want in life. Either you can use that intelligence to allow yourself to be lazy for the rest of your life - at a not too hard and not too easy job - and focus your energy on different pursuits. Or you can go down the path of trying to learn how to study. The latter will be a long process where you will need to find small stuff that motivate you and start binding that into the things you wish to achieve. Some of the other answers touch upon how to achieve this, but the approach will be slightly different if you don't take it as "regaining past motivation", but rather as a way to teach yourself how to study.
is this normal and must I just learn to deal with it?
Yes, this is perfectly normal. You also need very much to learn to deal with it, or unhappy times will be coming your way.
You need to reframe this until you get it into a non-self-destructive perspective. For example: you say you are "only" interested in the results of your work, not in doing it "right". You are feeling bad about this. But... convince yourself that the rest of the world is also primarily interested in results; few care about how you arrived there. There are very many archetypes of how to get work done, and all of them are as valid as the next one.
Then, you are afraid that you don't really understand things that you work with. Let me assure you, you are by far not alone. I'm working in an IT company as a team lead with a lot of contact to colleagues, customers and management of all levels, and the amount of people that really understand what's going on is, on all levels, much smaller than one would expect. Things get along just fine, anyways.
What you really need to worry about is to get into a "flowy" state concerning your life. If that means that you find a few hobbies that really interest you, or get into Meditation, or go hiking a lot, or straighten up personal issues that you didn't mention, is obviously up to you (and you may need to get a bit creative there). Too much work, too little play leads easily to your current state. Also, if you really don't understand what you are doing, and this leads to internal stress all the time, you indeed may want to look into shifting your work around so it maps better.
My experience is that people automatically and effortlessly learn those topics that really interest them; and vice versa, if someone has to do something that does not interest them, they usually never really get it. So see if what you are doing is really what interests you - if you find that you don't actually care about the topic, then accept that and hunt for another. How you do that you should find out yourself - either look on the side, or make a hard cut, you should know yourself best in that regard.
Good luck!
You mentioned that you wanted the end product, the goal, but were less interested in the steps to achieve it.
This reminded me of the end of my academic pursuit of the "Next" degree. I wanted the letters after my name and it was the next step in school, which I had enjoyed up to that point. But after moving around the variety of math and computer science subjects I figured out (took a while) that the only thing I was truly interested in was the final achievement. I was not actually interested in the courses/subjects needed to get there. The path should be your passion or at least parts of it.
Side note; I know now that a skill I developed in school was "Finding the Path". This means given a goal getting all the steps in place to achieve it. I rush to do this when I hear of any result/goal/degree; make the path and get going. Then I look around and see that this is not really a goal I woke up this morning looking for.
Answers here are quite correct in that students, gifted and otherwise, will hit the wall at some point and often have a crisis when they do.
Your counselors are there to pull you along and not let you get discouraged. They already believe that you have decided on the path. If you have doubts then you must let them know or else they will not be able to give you the best advice.
I'm familiar with the Imposter idea and do not, myself, see it applying in your case.
The problem isn't you, it's the system. Globalism (one-world fascist government) leaks far down to all aspects of society designed to retard progress and reward corruption, dishonesty and stealth. Schools and colleges are particularly targeted since it is easier to dominate people whose lives have been made pointlessly convoluted; in your case you're likely being "required" to learn tons of unrelated stuff that you will never use, which also creates debt that you'll be enslaved to for decades unless you got very lucky. I'm not saying all colleges are "colleges" in name only though the less on-topic your classes are the more red flags should be flying in the wind...besides those red flags.
I left a for-profit "college" in the 2000s after I realized it was a pointless waste of time and money. I had learned nothing useful and had accrued lots of pointless debt. So, in combination with not encountering people willing to carry their own weight I spent ten years working on creating my business. Granted, mine is exceptionally ambitious, though you could learn if you knew that your efforts had purpose and build something that would help people to the extent that they would be willing to pay you. You will need to learn about the secret political corruption going on in the world - if you do not know the politics that are involved then you do not know what is involved. Disregard the tools calling "conspiracy theory", that's one of their dead terms that only effects those who can't think for themselves. You are smart to get through everything thus far and you can and will learn tons though it will be much healthier when you break away and find your real purpose. Mine? Making money while genuinely helping people far beyond what anyone else on the planet can in my line of work
The first thing I would recommend is asking yourself the question: "what are you trying to achieve?" Is it I want good marks/prestige or is it I want to do X? If its the first one then that might help to explain your lack of motivation, in a sense you are lacking any real goal. If it's the second one then try to remember and focus on why X excited you and try to make sure the research you do is somehow related to that. From what you wrote I suspect the answer is "I want to do X", though you may be using "I want good marks/prestige" as a proxy and therefore are starting to burn out.
Given that you did very well at high school and undergrad work so far, one possibility is that you aren't use to doing difficult things, which could be as bad as you don't really know how to learn. If you tended to just absorb things in high school then you may have missed out on learning how to learn, if that's the case (and even if it isn't) you could take a look at the online course "Learning how to learn" or the book its based on "Make it stick".
At a research level this will be much worst, most research material is written by people at least a few years into their PhDs, and each paper is on a small topic. Therefore just having a goal "I want to understand Neural networks" is too broad a goal and too undirected. You may have an ultimate goal "I want to understand why and how neural networks work" (which I believe is a research goal, i.e. nobody could answer that, though I don't know the field), but the subgoal you are working towards may be "I want to understand when I should use a convoluted Neural net" (though that may be too broad as well at the moment), or even just "What did the authors do in paper Y".
As you learn more and more reading and understanding papers becomes easier. In part because you can skip to whatever part of the paper has useful details and in part because you know where this fits into the field of research. Once this happens you can start returning to setting yourself broader goals (but if you move into a different field you tend to start again at just trying to understand a paper).
Finally with respect to your supervisors, I agree with the others with looking into the imposter syndrome (and the Dunning–Kruger effect). I think often a supervisor will try to push students if they are excited in their work or if they see potential in the student (in order to try to help them be their best).
Note that the question seems mainly related to psychology. So StackExchange Academia might not contain the most qualified people. I will provide my opinion which did help me, I hope it can help you (and others who stumble across this question) as well.
As a computer science student who felt 'down' pretty much all the time I have done some reading. Generally I think reading some self-help material would be beneficial for many academics. Note that self-help books do not describe formal logic. Please read material of multiple authors and don't take it too literally.
What helped me in these self-help materials was to define a clearer goal for myself based on a better life-goal. Life-goals like 'high grades' or 'get rich' are considered not good. Self-help books helped me in understanding why these goals will let one down in the long run and how one could pick them better. For me the goals also helped me in taking some difficult decisions which I now think were the right ones since I feel happier.
Edit: Easy accessible starters material can be found on YouTube. In my opinion Tom Bileu and Mark Divine are good.
Everybody here is giving you an essay. I don't have my motivational essay handy, but here's a list:
You Can Do It. Say it 1000 times a day. Repeat until you die.
Motivation is a lie. Embrace the cold hard truth of Discipline. Do the thing anyway.
Learning is like a hammer.
Hammer nails one at a time.
Make a list of other nails that you want/need to hammer.
Throw it away, make a newer smaller list of things you will actually practice on daily.
Hammering for the sake of hammering is masturbation. Hammer new stuff anyway.
When you have a hammer, everything is a nail. Always be on the look out for a bigger, better hammer. Get better at spotting nails.
An end goal where you are fully self-actualized, surrounded by loved ones, academic accolades, personal and professional success is vanity. Talk to friends, get the academic merit badges, and try your best anyway.
Unplug, unwind, tune in, and drop out. But don't run away. Run towards something.
Childhood dreams lead to adult aspirations. When the dream dies, all that's left is to adapt. Grab a little piece of sanity, some concrete thing to stand on, and you hold on to that thing with both hands. There is no magic bullet, no secret sauce, and no quick easy path to anywhere from where you are right now. Just hammer the bloody nail.
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98833 | Do I point to mistakes in a paper if I cannot contact the authors?
I am about to submit a manuscript in which I point to some methodological errors that I found in some literature. The error may significantly change part of the results and conclusions if those papers.
I thought I should first contact the authors of those papers to discuss the issue with them. Especially, to check if they actually made that mistake or if their methods were not detailed enough.
However, most of the authors that I tried to contact did not answer back (I checked their actual email address) or did not remember the details of their analysis.
What should I do? Am I "allowed" to point to some papers that I repute wrong only on the base of the details given in their method section?
Have you tried asking the ones that answered, but did not remember to contact the other authors which they think should be the ones that do remember?
Of course you can publish it if you think someone is wrong. This is the entire point of science. Always do so in a nice way though: it is very well possible that everything appeared to be correct with the knowledge at the time the paper was published. Or that it is you who misinterpreted the methods (possibly because the paper was a little vague), as you suggest in your question.
Even if it was really a mistake: everybody makes mistakes from time to time and that is nothing to be ashamed about. You did the right thing by contacting the authors first. Not only is it the correct thing to do, but I have also seen this lead to new collaborations that resulted in multiple papers.
If both the paper and the errors were important, it is your responsibility as a scientist to correct the errors. But if the errors are minor, the result is "unimportant", or you are not 100% sure that there actually is a mistake, you could also decide to simply ignore the paper. There are plenty of bad and/or unimportant papers out there and frankly, they do not deserve the attention even if it is to correct mistakes.
Good points. You might want to point out in your cover letter to the editor that you unsuccessfully tried to contact the original authors, that will make a good impression. And be polite, because the editor will quite probably invite the original authors as reviewers, or even suggest that they write a comment on your paper. Even if they didn't answer your email, they might be more active if they are contacted by a journal editor.
Did you try contacting the publisher of erroneous paper, not the authors? Having a conversation with them might result in better success in reaching the authors.
In reference to "Especially, to check if they actually made that mistake or if their methods were not detailed enough." and "did not remember the details of their analysis."
Be very careful when you write your manuscript, and do not assume that authors made this mistake. It is perfectly fine to say something like, "There are two ways to do this procedure, and it isn't obvious in the literature which is the right way. In fact, many authors do not specify whether they do A or B. We show that only B is correct." It is also fine to say, "If the authors did A, it would bias their analysis by [...]" - and to point out whether or not there are signs of this effect.
This is both polite (by providing the benefit of the doubt) and also allows you to make a more conservative, but confident claim. This also helps you! If you write your paper assuming other people did their analysis wrong, a referee could say, "No, we didn't do A, we did B, everyone who isn't an idiot knows to do B" - and that doesn't bode well. But if you say, "Given the methods commonly described, it's impossible to tell if these results are accurate," this is both true and much more difficult to dispute!
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164279 | How can I deal with low-key plagiarism?
I am relatively new to academic publishing. However, there is an uncomfortable situation which I have already encountered multiple times by now (about five). It is what I would call "low-key plagiarism". I will explain what I mean by this (completely made-up) term in the following.
I don't have many papers and citations yet, so I tend to check out papers that cite me to see how my work is being used and if the new result is relevant to my own work. In the mentioned occasions, I found that the authors used my work extensively or built directly on it. The way the citation was phrased, however, implied that my result was only tangentially relevant or somewhat helpful. Sometimes the relevance is also disguised by citing further irrelevant literature.
The goal of the authors in both cases seems clear: to mislead a reviewer or readers into thinking the result is more significant or innovative. Of course, an ideal reviewer should spot this. However, in highly specialized fields and if the formulation is sufficiently vague, this is very difficult and does not happen practically.
I am not sure if this should really be called plagiarism. It is the kind of borderline case where, most likely, nobody will bring up the argument publicly. If someone does, the authors will most likely say "but we cited you here and there". No matter if plagiarism or not, it is certainly misleading to reference in this way.
When I find a citation like this, it feels very uncomfortable to me. Especially for interdisciplinary research, people might start citing the newer result and forget the older one completely if the citation chain cannot be tracked properly. This is the exact same effect as completely leaving out the citation (i.e., plagiarism) would have.
How can I deal with this kind of misleading citation practice? Should one just get over it? Should one contact the authors to express disappointment without asking for consequences? Should one fully escalate and demand a correction or bring the editor's attention to it? Should one do it even if the chance of success is low and the chance of hurting one's own reputation by being perceived as petty is high?
Concrete example
As suggested by Dan Romnik, I've tried to come up with a fictionalized example for what the misleading paper might be saying. The example contains three tricks which I have encountered on separate occasions. 1. List citations to hide relevance. 2. Shifting the citation to a supplement and omitting the citation in the main text summary of the method. 3. Attaching the citation to a meaningless side sentence instead of to the main result.
Here is the example: Let the main text contain no reference to the paper, except for a bit in the introduction citing it as previous literature as part of a list citation. Instead, it is stated in the methods that
We derive our main result using some abstract formulation of the method for brevity.
The method summary thus misses the citation, which is shifted to a supplement.
In the supplementary material, it is stated that
Introductory discussion to notation. Eq. (1) coming straight out of my paper. We derive our main result based on this equation by solving some integrals for a special case. This includes a completely standard step, which was also investigated in [1]. Our result is then obtained this way: concrete formulation of the method which was abbreviated in the main text and which is a special case of my method.
where [1] is my paper. Therefore, even if the reader looks in the supplementary material, they will not know that the central Eq. (1) is straight from my paper. The citation is there, but attached to a completely meaningless side-sentence. Of course, a careful reader could go and compare the two papers, but without that, it is not clear how the result was used.
Even if the example is not great, maybe this gives an idea of what kind of tricks I mean. One of those can be accidental; in sum, they are likely intentional and designed to mislead. They certainly do mislead, but are they plagiarism?
Most papers are some tweak of a prior paper. One goal is to publish in a different journal so it's viewed as slightly more new.
To clarify: Your concern is that the sentence in which the citation of your work isn't appreciative enough?
@AzorAhai-him- Not really. My concern is that I believe the sentences in which my work is cited are systematically misleading the reader. I guess not being appreciative is another effect though.
Interesting question, upvoted and I think this can lead to a really good discussion. However: can you give at least one concrete example that illustrates the problem you are describing? This stuff about “assume that the citations are clearly misleading” isn’t very helpful because what I expect would happen (because I’ve seen it happen many times here) is that each answer will still make slightly different assumptions about what the problem is that you are describing, leading to confusion and pointless disagreements. So an actual example with (suitably redacted) details could really help.
Misleading them into what? Entire years-long projects are often reduced to single-sentence citations when people build on them. That's just how science is. What is someone supposed to do when they "[use] your work extensively"? Write a paragraph extolling it? I agree with Dan, please include an example.
@DanRomik Thanks for the upvote and the input. I will do that! Actually I had one in my initial draft for the question, but thought it might break anonymity. I will try to give a fictionalized version of the example. Hopefully that will also address Azor's concern.
In your example, is "Eq. (1)" something one would only ever find in your paper? Or would one find that equation (or perhaps a simple algebraic equivalent) elsewhere?
@BryanKrause "Eq. (1)" was introduced by my paper in this context and even the conventions are the taken over in the citing paper. I can't be certain if my paper is the first mention of the equation in the general literature, but I checked that it appears in no other of the cited papers.
Thanks, I think it’s a pretty convincing example and posted an answer with my thoughts.
Hmm ... fyi your examples don't contain a list citation
@AzorAhai-him- true, but I’ll pass on coming up with that fictitious introduction ;)
Don't worry; the given example will not fool anyone. If a paper gives an equation out of the blue without explaining where it came from, that's a huge red flag. "Here is an equation we pulled out of our asses, ... and by coincidence, later in our paragraph, here is a reference to someone's paper[1]. If you happen to look into [1], try not to see the equation."
You will also find that someone will cite you for not real reason. I think that you assume too much relevance for your work (I do the same, this is not a criticism). Enjoy that your work is cited, at least.
This is a sad obvious consequence of publish or perish. If those authors did not have the urgency of getting something published, they ma spend 2 years more in pushing the science to do much more with your work than just a tiny increment. They need to hide how tiny it is because its important that they have a publication
Some good points being made and good answers, as always, by Dan Romik and Buffy. I'd just like to add, I'm sorry this has happened to you. It sounds grossly unfair. Thank you for your contributions towards science!
I happen to have just read my university's plagiarism guidelines for students (see https://ethz.ch/students/en/studies/performance-assessments/plagiarism.html), and your example seems to fit their last bullet point exactly. So at this (somewhat prestigious) institution, I presume there would be strict consequences in such cases.
There have been a lot of useful comments, which I have upvoted. Thanks to all for that! I won't respond to them since they seem to stand alone just fine, but wanted to say that some of them may qualify as answers.
Being harsh, doesn't that detailed exposition come down to "The citation gave my work less respect than it deserved"?
Since as you said, this is "low-key" why not first take it up with the offenders and if that gives no useful result, with their institution, their publisher or both?
I agree with your assessment that this is misleading behavior on the part of the authors. I have run into this kind of behavior myself, including from authors who were famous researchers (and who were famous because they actually did very good work and not because they were good at misleading people about doing good work). It seems like it’s just human nature for some people to feel a need (probably driven by insecurity and lack of self-worth) to play up their own greatness and belittle others’ achievements.
As for what to do, I’d say just keep publishing good work and don’t worry about it. It’s not worth the time and energy it would take to fight such petty misconduct, especially when there is no hard evidence for a dishonest motive. Moreover, the advantage that these authors derive from such underhanded behavior probably does not outweigh the disadvantage of other people looking down on them and not wanting to work with them (I’m willing to bet you’re not the only one who noticed this), so their behavior is self-defeating and self-punishing. And your own contributions are documented in the scientific literature, so in case a dispute ever arises over something important, the truth will will be easy to establish and will come out.
+1. I like this answer a lot, because it has a very positive and constructive mindset. The input I got from people around me was more harsh, either in the direction of "just leave it, you're being oversensitive" or even along the lines of "we'll do the same to them in our next paper then". I'll reserve the accept tick for a bit to motivate others to contribute.
"it’s just human nature" It's the nature of the science funding system.
@AnonymousPhysicist sure, some of it is competition-driven. But the famous researchers I mentioned did not have any funding problems. So I stand by what I said that it’s human nature.
Regarding the human nature, with good people there is also a reasonable chance that they came up with the ideas independently and only found the prior work at the last moment. This makes it much more tempting to just add a single, barely sufficient citation somewhere in the introduction, instead of replacing large parts of the paper with a comment that X did it first. Though this seems not to be the case in the question, where even the notation was copied.
It isn't plagiarism to suggest that your work is less relevant than you think it is. It is only plagiarism if they use it in any way without a citation and then give the impression that the ideas in the work are their own and not yours.
But, if they are clear about whose ideas are whose, then you should let it go - as plagiarism anyway.
Saying misleading things, or misinterpreting your work to others is also malfeasance, of course. People need to be honest about their own work and the work of others.
And if they say that you did X and they did Y when, in fact, you previously published Y then that is back to plagiarism again. But "almost Y" rather than "Y" likely doesn't count.
I'll also note that if the citation is there, then a reader can settle in their own mind how much of an advance the newer paper makes over your original contribution. It is when citation is absent that the thread of scientific knowledge is broken.
Thanks for your answer and +1! I think this is very useful already in getting the terms straight. Would you mind also having a look at my edited question including examples of some of the tricks I was alluding to? I believe that this fulfills "the thread of scientific knowledge is broken", but a concrete statement on such a case would be useful.
I agree with the other answers, in that you should probably let it go. But I think it would also be helpful to point out a broader lesson that I learned through similar experiences: take your frustrations as opportunities to get better.
Like you — and most researchers — in my early years I was particularly anxious for the recognition that I felt my hard work deserved. Naturally, I would get annoyed when I saw other people getting recognition for work that was based off of mine, but didn't give me any credit. I actually had two really egregious examples of this during grad school, and they ate away at me. It upset me, which just made life less enjoyable; it embittered me, which led me to close off from possibly productive collaborations and friendships; and it distracted me from my own work. These were all bad for my career and for life outside of my career.
I realized that this was heading in a bad direction, and resolved that every time I start to get annoyed with colleagues I should take a step back and think about what I could have done better to avoid this situation in the first place. This helps because I stop thinking about those annoying colleagues for a moment, and therefore become more objective in seeing the situation for what it is. More often than not, it actually helps me see things from their perspective, which gives me much greater peace of mind and helps me be more effective going forward. This is true for everything from teaching and mentoring, to how I give talks and write papers, all the way to office politics.
So let's apply this to the concrete example above. The basic fact here is that your work didn't have the impact you wanted it to. This is undeniable. This may be due to intentional malfeasance or negligence on the part of those other authors, but that won't get you anywhere. You also need to consider other possibilities. Maybe your paper didn't actually say what you thought it said; you might just understand parts of their paper because of all the background work and thinking you've done on the topic, but didn't actually include that in your paper. Maybe your paper wasn't as clear as you thought it was. Was Eq. (1) so novel that it was the main point of your paper, or was it just the starting point for both you and them? Was it clear to them that their result was actually a "special case" of yours? Was yours couched in esoteric general formalism that they found hard to apply to their case? Should you have talked specifically about that special case in your paper? Was the result given context that was explained clearly and prominently in the abstract and/or introduction? Did you discuss your work with people other than you supervisor and/or collaborators before publishing so that you could work out how to explain things better? Did you use the referee reports during publication to actually improve the paper, rather than just respond to comments to placate the reviewers. Did you go to conferences and interact with people after publishing to make your paper known? Could you have possibly done a better job on any of these points? The answer to that last question is always yes, so focus on that.
To summarize: stop thinking about them, and start thinking about yourself.
A few notes:
This process shouldn't get you down on yourself, or exacerbate any impostor syndrome. You're in the position you're in because you are good, but every one of us can get better.
Also, don't be afraid to be an academic rainmaker — someone whose work provides inspiration and a starting point for others. That's exactly the position you want to be in. You won't always get the credit you deserve, but eventually it will build up.
I still get annoyed at colleagues all the time. In fact I'm currently writing a paper that shouldn't need to exist. Don't people know that a simple boost is just a special case of a general BMS transformation?! They should have just understood my first paper, and not written all those papers that misapplied it so badly and got everything wrong ARRGGG!!! ... Ah, but I guess I was striving for generality like a mathematician, without thinking about the astronomers who actually need to use it for relatively simple cases. Readers misunderstood my paper, but maybe it's not all their fault. My point is: You get to feel your feelings, but use your brain to try to understand and redirect those feelings.
Excellent answer. I particularly like the point about engaging with reviewers. If a reviewer misinterprets something that I wrote then it means I was not clear in my explanation, not that the reviewer is an idiot (thought the latter might also be true)
A bit of a heads up to Mike. Saying you "agree with the other answers" is a bit dangerous, since others might later appear that you don't agree with. Also note that the ordering of answers isn't fixed. It is a bit safer for yourself to specify which answers you agree with. Even "earlier answers" can be a bit ambiguous with editing. I sometimes edit posts when it is obvious at the moment, but can't guess here. Not a criticism, just something to think about.
Let it go, you won't be able to get a published paper changed in retrospect.
But if you review papers, keep this in mind and ask the authors to give proper credit to cited work. This would be the right point to change misleading texts when changes are likely.
useful comment, not really an answer. OP proposes multiple ways to deter people citing them specifically (not just whomever they get to review) from this behavior in the future, the only justification here ("won't be able to retro-change") does not concern that.
Nice, you have another citation to show! Great. :-)
Is that plagiarism? No. They built on what you published and referenced your work.
Is it fair? Depends. I can imagine it's a mixture of
Perhaps they read your paper a while ago when they started out with that research and mentally incorporated it into their idea of a general canon of prior art, and made it mentally their own. We all do that when we learn. They would then indeed — inadvertently — misrepresent the importance your paper has for their work.
They really think (as Allure said already) that the "stepping stone" they built on which they took from your paper is pretty standard.
It is also possible that your work is indeed one of several works about the same theme complex, and that you don't know as many of the other, similar works as they do. You would then consider your paper more unique than it seems to them. The differences to other papers may seem larger to you as the author than to uninvolved third parties. (This does not diminish your achievement; often certain things are "in the air" and worked upon independently by more than one group or person, often with similar results.)
In general, I'd be happy that somebody could use what I wrote. Since they work in a related area: Do they do interesting stuff? Would it be worthwhile to get to know each other? Keep an eye out for them at the next congress, once we can travel again!
Based on your example it sounds possible that the authors actually do consider the "completely standard step" to be completely standard. In other words, they could've done the step without your paper to guide them. As an elementary example, say you need to compute the derivative of a complicated function. You could work your way through it, or you could cite the paper that did the calculation for you. If you opt for the latter, giving it heavy credit might not be warranted.
If the above does not apply to your case, then blame the culture of asking for sexy results. Everyone (and I mean everyone, including non-academics like journalists or the government) want sexy results. We want Big News that generate excitement, citations, and funding. It's why theories such as MOND, which tries to do away with dark matter, attracts so much press time even though they're on the fringe of astrophysics; it's why null results are hard to publish.
Given that, writing a paper with "these guys did awesome work, we extended it in XYZ" is like saying "these guys did awesome work, you should've published their paper [and not mine]". If you've ever received a rejection not because your paper was wrong, but because it's not novel enough, you'll know what it's like. It also means that when you submit to a new journal, you'll need to make your paper sound more exciting ...
Ultimately this culture won't be changeable by one person, and it's not clear how one would change it even if one could do so (e.g. Nature wouldn't be Nature if it started accepting all technically correct papers regardless of novelty). You'll probably have to learn to live with it. On the bright side, your contribution is marked in the academic record, and you will be able to point out what you accomplished if it's ever necessary.
So OP should “blame the culture of asking for sexy results” for people making a conscious decision to behave dishonestly, instead of blaming those specific people? What about all the other researchers who operate in the same culture but don’t make such decisions? Perhaps we should acknowledge that culture or no culture, people are still responsible for the decisions they make as individuals? I might accept that the culture was a contributing factor, but the way you present it seems very one-sided.
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167361 | How should I credit the advisor's help in my thesis?
I am graduating soon and in the last minute my advisor found an issue in one major theorem in my thesis. In an hour, my advisor sent me a write up with a fix. The result is a little bit different than what I have, but it does the job.
I was not expecting him to fix this issue. We were supposed to meet and discuss this issue. Instead, my advisor just sent an email with this fix. Since this is the major result in my thesis and my advisor's contribution is more significant than mine, what is the appropriate way to acknowledge this in my thesis?
If it is actually the major result in your thesis, I highly doubt that an adjustment to your theorem or proof that your advisor could throw together in an hour or even in a day is actually more significant than what you did. And I also doubt that your advisor was staring at this for an extended period of time before revealing what they were working on at the last moment. It's much more likely that the issue is more or less trivial and the main ideas of what you worked on are correct. Especially since your advisor didn't express a change of heart about you graduating.
@Ian, there are a lot of other factors. My advisor came back after staying in ICU for 2 years and we have to wrap up things quickly. I did much more than my thesis, but we don't have time to put everything together since I need another year or so to finish off everything. I am trying to put together what I have and graduate before time runs out. The issue is a bit more complicated. Moreover, this last minute change nullifies a lot of work I did since we were assuming that I proved a stronger result. This change makes significant parts of my work is unrelated and we don't have time for changes.
Clearly your advisor thinks well of you and thinks you are ready to move to the next level professionally. You both missed the issue at an earlier stage. Had he found it then he might well have pointed you to a fix rather than providing it.
He is probably as pleased as you are that a fix was possible.
So thank him for support and guidance (perhaps "particularly on Theorem X") and move on. Remember this incident when you advise your own students.
I know this type of comment is prohibited on this site, and if it gets removed, so be it, but wow. What a great answer.
I like the last line of your answer (and the rest of it as well).
Thank you, I will do this.
+1, but I wouldn't mention the concrete theorem. Helping, finding errors, filling the odd gap is what advisors do.
@MartinArgerami Normally nor would I. Here the OP refers specifically to on important theorem, so the special mention might be appropriate.
Just write a short paragraph at the end thanking your advisor for all their help during the writing of the thesis. If you ever turn it to a research paper, they’ll be a coauthor obviously.
Yes, if I am fortunate to complete and publish this work, he will be the coauthor. Thank you for your suggestion.
When I wrote my Master's thesis, I had several parts where other group members and my advisor contributed parts, even if those were only helpful discussions that lead to further insight. Apart from mentioning this in the usual acknowledgements at the end of my thesis, I also added references to "private communications" with the respective contributor wherever possible or added a short entry in the references section that described the exact contributions from said person.
Thank you thats helpful.
With other group members this might be a good idea. For the advisor, I would expect major contributions to a mather's or PhD thesis.
You credit your advisor's help at the front pages of your dissertation, where he or she is listed as your advisor. In a regular advising relationship, the contributions of the advisor are diffuse, at multiple levels, and impossible to quantify or pinpoint meaningfully. No need to make special mention of the very special circumstances that you relate, it will already be understood that your advisor has had a significant impact on your work.
So the advising relationship is sufficient formal recognition; the rest you can reserve for the acknowledgements section, and for your in person conversations. (For comparison, it would be a rather different situation if someone other than your advisor had contributed a fix to a problem of the magnitude that you describe.)
This is your thesis advisor's job, even though this might be a borderline case. He does represent your findings with his own name, after all.
What I would suggest is to thank him in the preamble, and make a footnote in that specific place the contribution took place in the text.
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8855 | Undergraduate not doing homework (case method)
I've recently started teaching undergraduate students using the case method (management subjects). However, I'm finding that most of the students simply don't do the reading at home. Even though I (so far) have used only short cases (just a few pages), they still just don't do the work.
For those unfamiliar with the case method, if the students do not do the reading before coming to class, there is little to discuss in class. In the end, I feel like the class time is wasted.
Because of the design of the course, I actually don't have the flexibility to have this affect their grade other than to simply fail them. I cannot, for example, reduce their grade by 10%.
If anyone uses the case method with undergraduate students, I'd love to know how you get students to actually do the reading / thinking work required before they get to class.
Could you clarify I actually don't have the flexibility to have this affect their grade? Did you mean the grade is either pass or fail?
Yes, it is pass/fail.
Are there going to be exams?
@Raphael No, but there are assignments on which they will be assessed. However, the assessment for the module is strictly pass/fail.
@earthling Make the assignments so hard resp. the assessments so strict that those who don't prepare (probably) fail. Demand some percentage of assignments points for passing the course.
@Raphael It's no problem, I can fail them simply for not doing the homework, however, then I will end up failing 80% of the class and I'd like to see if there is some way to avoid that.
If they see every week how close they are from failing, chances are they will prepare better (i.e. do the homework, if the assignments are designed properly). The vague thread of "I'll might fail you in the end!" does not work as well. Of course, that's extrinsic motivation.
Is the reading material interesting? When I was an undergrad I skipped over any reading material that was boring simply because it ended up wasting more of my time than it was worth. Is the reading material in a digital format so that students can read it on their Tablets/Phones/computers/etc? The less convenient it is to do the assigned reading, the less likely students will actually do it.
Have you actually talked to them about it? I am in one class (graduate level class) where the students were not doing the reading. The professor indicated he was very disappointed in the class. Most students felt bad enough that now they are doing the reading and participating in discussions.
@James Actually, I have spoken with them about it but I just get silence and looks of shame. They are quite shy but embarrassment doesn't seem to phase them. Strange to me since they are all Asian (in their home country). The strong students do the work but the weak students do not. The weak students are unwilling (or unable, but I believe unwilling) to answer the question about why they don't do the work.
If students can pass the course without doing the reading, only the self-motivated will read.
@G.Smith Often there is not a lot one can do does not imply there is nothing you can do. The issue may be tough to deal with. As a prof, the OP needs to find a way to motivate his students. If I tell you there is not a lot one can do to solve a problem in topology, do you just give up as a mathematician? (I read your profile).
@G.Smith You probably misunderstood my point. IMO, motivating undergrad students is part of Prof's job. Grad students should be self-motivated, no arguement there. There are courses undergrads need to take to fulfill the requirements. The profs need to motivate them to learn more. I understand your point. I don't disagree. Just in the OP's case, we need to help him to do a better job. That's all.
@G.Smith To be clear, it is not the teaching undergrads that's new. It is teaching them using the case method which is new.
I have some experience with lab practice in physics and chemistry, where we routinely ask students to read up on the work planned and do some preliminary calculations before they can come to the lab, in order to maximize their use of actual lab equipment. It's sometimes hard to motivate students for things that should be done in advance, but there are ways you can improve their involvement:
Make sure that the amount of material is compatible with the time they have to study it, and the demands on their time by other courses. If you're going to require something of them, it should be within reasonable limits. Also, make sure you convey that point to them: I have, on a few occasions, had to reschedule things to give them more time, because the material was very heavy and taking more of their time than I had assumed, or because they just had many other things to do (e.g., a full week of exams).
Be crystal clear that reading the material before classroom is actually one of the requirements of the class, and that it is entirely necessary to actually pass the class.
If you want further motivation, introduce some sort of evaluation of their reading at the beginning of the lecture: get two or three students to come up, and argue the case (or whatever it is you do in those lectures) before the others. Then, give them a frank assessment of how they fared, including “you failed miserably because you didn't do your homework”. Even if that evaluation doesn't count for the final passing/failing grade, it will motivate them and might introduce some friendly competition.
If some of them still don't do a thing, fail them. After all, you had told them (and more than once) that reading the material is a requirement for passing.
2, 3 and 4 are sort of sticks. Do we want to give the students some carrots?
@scaaahu good point… I count #3 as a carrot, as increasing student participation should help better motivate them. And the only carrots that actually work are actually those that raise their internal motivation, i.e. making the exercises more relevant to them, more interesting/appealing.
The most important part of this method of teaching is acting like they did the reading, even if it is obvious they did not. Ask them questions. Yes, the first few sessions will be painful, but they will get the idea, even if only to avoid embarrassment. If you start acting like they did not do the reading, then you will never get them to do it.
@BenNorris - it's difficult to act like they did it when I ask them their opinion on it and they just stare blankly. When I ask them what was most interesting, then they start to read (but there is not time in class to read a few pages of text and still have time for discussion). They don't seem to feel embarrassment because they (non-readers) are in the majority. In the end, I am just falling back to lecturing and I'm not seeing any progress being made (after eight sessions).
@scaaahu - got any carrots in mind?
@earthling Not really other than praising those who did do the reading.
when I ask them their opinion on it and they just stare blankly — Stare back. Wait. Wait. Wait. Wait. Do not say anything until they answer. Just wait, even if it means you're just staring at each other for an hour.
As a student myself -- it's basic physics, most students will take the path of least resistance to pass the course. Negative reinforcement will only get you so far, if you start failing half the class for not reading anything, they'll just skip-read enough to pass. I'd look for a deeper problem or cause other than just saying "the students won't do what I tell them".
@earthling: I would say don't fall back to lecturing. If they know that you will just tell them what was in the reading anyway if they don't read it, they probably have little motivation to start doing the reading. Sitting through a lecture is much less effort than participating in a discussion class, so they probably prefer it that way.
I think encourage and praise are important.
Encourage them to say things even if they have no idea what they are talking about. If they say something wrong, point out why it is wrong. And tell them this is exactly why they need to take this class - they are there to learn.
If they say things right, praise them. Particularly, to those weak students. Everybody has his own weakness and strength. The weak students will get things right sometimes. Praise them when they did right.
Initiate the discussion in the classroom is your job. Find some hot, interesting topic to start your class. The topic may seem to be unrelated to what you are going to discuss in the classroom in the first place. Lead them to discuss the issue you want them to discuss. Encourage the discussion. Praise them when they arrive at right conclusions.
Once they are used to the discussions in the classroom, it will be natural for them to do their homework. This is because they are afraid of embarrassing themselves. They know they must prepare enough so that they can have something to say in the classroom and say the right things so that they would earn the praise instead of embarrassment.
Of course, you need to tell them if they keep quiet throughout the whole semester, you'll have no choice but fail the ones who never say anything because you have no basis to pass them.
Finally, I'd like to use this place to thank JeffE. I remember he said "scaaahu's excellent advice" in response to one of my first answers here. I was very much encouraged by this remark. I felt like my answer must not be a bad one. Otherwise, why did he say that? Thus, I continue to participate. You can see how important is encourage and praise to a mature adult. Not to mention undergraduates.
You're welcome!! (And it was excellent!)
I teach courses that include lecture and discussion. If reading is not completed it is difficult to get the most out of the material. One thing to try is to begin with a 'low risk' reading assignment - something more fun and popular, or pepper your reading list with scholarly and more popular reading. There has been a lot of scholarship on the value of using graphic novels with college students. Decoding images and text at the same time is good for developing brains and can serve as 'bridging' literature to more complex readings. Fun reading can be a hook.
I also have all my students on Twitter. This is new for me this semester. I have seen increasing participation from students if I ask them to post a discussion question, based on the readings, on Twitter. I was able to assess the depth of their knowledge of the materials based on the relative sophistication of the question. Most posted something, which I measure as engagement, what I am seeking.
I allow the use of social media in class as well - Storify is a fun way to get students to summarize readings by harvesting multimedia from the Internet.
I know I'm basically just reiterating the earlier answers here, as most of these points have already been raised in one form or another (by F'x and scaaahu in particular), but I'd just like to add my summary of how I'd approach the problem.
[Note: Oh, wow, this answer turned out way longer than I thought it would. If you don't want to read all of it, I've highlighted the key parts so you can just skip the rest.]
For some background, I'm a graduate student in Helsinki, and I've grown up and studied in Finland. While Finns generally aren't quite as focused on "face" as people from some Asian cultures are said to be, we do tend to be rather shy and quiet, and sayings like "talk is silver, silence is gold" or "it is better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt" definitely find resonance here. Thus, getting a lively classroom discussion going here can indeed be hard, something which I've heard several teachers from other parts of the world comment on.
First, as you correctly note, you will need to make the students understand the importance of the assignments, and vague threats of "I may have to fail you" aren't going to do it. It's completely natural for students to try to minimize their workload, and if they think they can pass the course without doing the homework, most of them (except the few truly motivated ones) won't do it. And if enough of them think so, it's likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, unless you're actually willing to fail the majority of your class.
To address that, I'd suggest that you introduce a points system and make it clear to the students that:
X points total are required to pass the course,
each exam / project (out of m during the course) is worth up to Y points,
each discussion class (out of n) is worth an additional Z points, and
getting any points for a discussion class requires active participation in the discussion.
Having all this clearly set out in advance lets the students make their own informed decisions about how to prioritize their tasks. In particular, setting a definite pass/fail threshold means that they'll know exactly how much work they need to do to pass the course, and that if they don't meet that threshold, they will fail.
Yes, some students will probably use this as an excuse to skip some fraction of the discussion classes, figuring that they'll still score enough points in the exams to pass — but those are the same students who otherwise probably wouldn't bother with the homework at all, figuring that you wouldn't fail them just for that as long as they did reasonably well in the exams.
Choosing the point scores and thresholds is up to you, but a fairly common choice around here seems to be that the exams make up 50% of the possible points, and 50% of the total is also the minimum level needed to pass. Thus, in principle, one can pass the course without any classroom participation... as long as one is confident of getting an absolutely perfect exam score. (FWIW, as a personal anecdote, I did that once as an undergrad — I signed up for the final exam of a course with such a grading policy, mistakenly thinking it was a stand-alone exam, and managed to just barely pass. Got the lowest possible passing grade, though.)
So much for the stick; you'll also want a carrot to go with it. I'd suggest telling your students that the aim of the course is not to stress them out, and that you're willing to adjust the homework to fit their workload, within reason, as long as they'll tell you in advance when they expect to be busy and when they'll have more time. Depending on how varied your students' schedules are, this might even involve some personalized assignments for students who, for some reason, won't be able to attend as many classes as they want or need to.
Such small kindnesses go a long way towards building goodwill and motivation, but there's a more subtle trick involved here as well: asking for adjustments to the homework is itself a form of classroom participation. Sure, it doesn't actually involve the subject of the course in any direct way, but as scaaahu notes, an important part of the process is to just get the students to speak up in class about something, whatever it is.
Another reason why discussing the appropriate amount of homework with the students can help is that, psychologically, being involved in making a rule makes people feel invested in it, and thus much more likely to follow it than if it were simply imposed on them by an external authority. I'm pretty sure there's actual psychological research on this, if I just knew the right keywords to find it, but it's definitely an effect I've noticed in practice. Effectively, by setting up a mutual agreement with your students about the appropriate level of homework, you're depriving them of the mental excuse that "there's way too much stuff for me to do, I'll never have time for this."
As I already wrote above, I also think scaaahu's suggestion of encouraging classroom discussion in any form, just to get the students used to it, is a good idea. In particular, while stressing that active participation is necessary to earn points for a discussion class, I'd also suggest explicitly noting that having read or understood the material is not required (albeit highly recommended), as long as one is willing to ask questions and discuss the topic. Of course, you can still make demonstrated familiarity with the material a requirement for getting the full points, if you want.
One way in which that could help is that, just possibly, some of the students who say they haven't read the material (but can't say why not) actually have read it, but just don't feel that they've understood it well enough to discuss it without "appearing stupid" or "losing face". If you manage to convince those students that they'll at least have to ask questions about the material, they may even come to realize that their understanding of it is neither as poor nor as embarrassing as they thought.
Finally, since I mentioned my background in the beginning, let me include a couple of tips and traps I've noticed specifically regarding Finnish audiences. I can't say whether or not these might apply also to your students, but they may be at least worth considering. (There are also some implicit assumptions about classroom style in the way I've presented things below, but the general points should be adaptable to different teaching methodologies.)
(Also, just to be clear, by "Finns" here I really mean "me, and some other people I've observed in class". Of course, as with any cultural or ethnic group, there's a huge amount of within-group variation, so nothing here should be construed as universal rules.)
One is that Finns generally don't like to interrupt when someone else is talking; it's considered rude. By the same token, if they do feel the need to interrupt you, they're likely to just politely clear their throat (or, in a classroom setting, raise their hand) or say "excuse me..." and wait for you to stop. Thus, one way to kill off any hope of an active classroom discussion is to just talk too much yourself.
Going off on a long uninterruptible monologue whenever someone asks something remotely relevant is particularly bad — you may think you're rewarding the asker by seizing on the topic they brought up, but it's more likely that you're just teaching everyone in the class not to ask too many questions if they want to get on with the course. Engaging the asker in a back-and-forth discussion is a much better approach, both because it gives them a better chance to participate, but also just because it gives them a chance to tell you "oh, I get it now, thanks!" without having to interrupt you.
Another trap is that Finnish students tend to be quite reluctant to answer questions which they consider trivial — there are several reasons for that, but I suspect it's partly a side effect of the early school system, where the teachers generally try to learn the progress level of each child and to direct questions of different levels to different students. While this is generally an excellent way of dealing with a heterogeneous group of students and making sure everyone gets to participate, it does have the side effect of teaching the more advanced students (who, of course, are the ones who mostly end up in academia later) not to even bother raising their hand for questions they feel are below their level, since they won't get to answer them anyway.
The problem here is that, if you don't already know your students well, you can end up asking a question and getting no answers, and having no idea whether the question was way too easy or way too hard (or just possibly both). My suggestion for dealing with that situation would be to ask something like "OK, so you all know this?" and seeing who nods. If not all do, direct the question to someone who didn't.
A third point, somewhat related to the first, is that Finns stereotypically don't like asking questions if they believe they can find the answer by just listening or reading more instead. (If you look at my Stack Exchange profile, you'll see that I'm a perfect example of the stereotype; I just counted that, excluding meta sites and code golf, I've posted well over a thousand answers and just four questions across the entire network. And most of those are self-answered.) If your students are like that too, they may be much more likely to speak up if they believe they have a reason to disagree with you than if they just don't understand something (even if they might actually phrase their argument as a question).
One rather cheap, but potentially effective, trick to encourage student participation in situations like that could be to deliberately make trivial mistakes, like replacing a plus sign with a minus in a simple equation, and see if your students spot them. If they do, thank them and encourage them to keep an eye out for anything else that might seem funny. If they don't, you can always just "notice" the mistake yourself a little later and correct it. Either way, you end up looking a little less like an infallible authority.
And, yeah, I realize that I've gone way off on a tangent at this point, so I'll just stop here. Sorry.
I took a graduate course in immunology a couple of years back. The requirements to pass the course were simple:
each student made 2-3 presentations in front of the class of basic research studies from a provided list. We had to create our own powerpoints, include the paper's graphics or provide our own, understand every line of the article, follow the footnotes, and possibly read related studies for perspective. Be prepared to answer questions from the class and the professor. Describe the research in our own words to prove we actually understood it.
while others are presenting, we were expected to have already read the article being presented, and be prepared to ask intelligent questions.
Write a paper based on other peer reviewed articles.
Each of these requirements was worth about 1/3 of the grade. You couldn't pass if you slacked off on any of them. Everyone had to show up for class prepared.
Obviously, this is a graduate level of responsibility, but I feel strongly that undergraduates can be just as responsible when properly motivated. Presenting a case study in front of their peers and professor is a strong incentive, and it can even get a bit competitive in a healthy way; someone showed up with a $3 laser pointer they bought on ebay, and suddenly everyone was getting one. The powerpoints got fancier and fancier as the semester went on. People really got into it.
For pass-fail I suppose you would simply make #1, #2, and #3 into requirements to pass the course. Why should someone pass if they didn't learn stuff? Anyway, this is just one data point and in a different field probably, but hopefully it might spark some ideas.
And I love Cailin's use of Twitter. Best use for that thing that I've heard of to date!
Maybe this could work for you. I once took a course where every lesson started with a brief quiz. We would get a very simple, very general question from the reading material, and use 5 minutes to answer it in writing, signing our names on the top of the paper before handing it in. It was made clear that this was not part of the grade, i.e. that the only purpose was to ensure we read the material. It worked well though, because nobody felt comfortable handing in an empty paper.
There are already a lot of answers and I feel a little silly about adding yet another one, but I think my view is very different. I would classify all the other answers as taking a carrot/stick approach to provide an extrinsic motivator. I would push for trying to use an intrinsic motivator. You need to demonstrate to the students that class is better and that they will get a lot more out of it if they read before hand. I would devote some time at the beginning of the next few classes for the students to either read the material or be lectured. You could either use a show of hands or an electronic "clicker" type quiz to decide when to move on. This will allow you to get to the "good" stuff, but obviously isn't sustainably. Stress throughout this initial period that the later portions of class would be better if they spent time before hand doing the reading. Further point out that less material will be covered if they don't do the reading before hand, or that you might have to switch to a less desirable teaching method (e.g., lectures or presentations).
I encountered a similar situation with some groups, but now only find the problem among the minority of students. When working with students who are not self-motivated, you must make them fear for their grade.
First, assigned students a short reading task to fit each assigned reading. One potential task might be a KWL. These are quite simple, but cannot really be completed if the students do not at least actually think about the topic.
Then, set the deadline to shortly before the class (or the night before), asking students to submit their short answers via E-mail. This lets you verify that they read the passage.
To deal with the pass-fail grading system, which I assume is for the total course grade and not for individual assignments, consider telling students that you will count how many times they miss these assignments, and if they miss 3, they have failed the course. Make sure the students see you keeping the record early on and let them see the tally for themselves.
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122081 | After PhD - Need advice
I completed my PhD about 2 years ago. During the PhD period I left lots of bad things that affected my life. I divorced, moved to another city, lost motivation because of some big political situations which were directly related with us in my country etc. After all those bad things I finished my dissertation and graduated. Now I'm working as an assistant professor in a university. Everything looks better than before, absolutely. But I want to move to another country. Some problems are still going on and this seems to be the only way to get rid of them.
I don't have too many publications. In fact, I have just my thesis and a paper which I wrote from my thesis to show my expertise. The other ones are generally related with different subjects, stemmed from the many courses I took during the PhD period.
I'm trying to find the best way for me to go abroad. I have 2 options. First one is postdoc. I'll find a project or fund and try to find a permanent job. The other one is long period graduate certificate programmes. I will take a year-long advanced certificate about my area, and after completing the university based course, I'll apply for academic or non-academic jobs. However, I'm unsure if taking an advanced certificate course as a PhD person is possible in the US, Canada, and Australia?
I'm not sure which one is the best option for me. I hope I can consult someone who has similar experience, as I really need to find the best option for me.
Thank you in advance.
With best.
There is another option for you, of course, which is a regular position in a non-research oriented institution. In the US, most undergraduate colleges require some research but with lower intensity than at research institutions. Teaching is highly valued and helping undergraduates get started in research, even if not publishable is also important.
There are, in fact, many fine such colleges and they do send students to graduate school as well as into industry. You might spend some of your effort in exploring such opportunities.
But, in general, institutions don't depend on narrow criteria in hiring. There are a lot of things that can influence a decision. Your current experience as an assistant professor can be a help if it is successful. Depending on your field and the level at which you enter employment, your past publication record may have more or less impact.
Dear Buffy. Thank you for your advice. I'll spend some times in exploring such opportunities and increase my research quality as well as number of publications. I think it completely effects the first impression in job application as less or not.
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31286 | Why are 31.8% of retracted papers not noted as retracted?
I read on STEEN, RG. Retractions in the scientific literature: is the incidence of research fraud increasing?. Journal Of Medical Ethics. England, 37, 4, 249-253, Apr. 2011. ISSN: 1473-4257. that:
Journals do not do a careful job of alerting the naïve reader to a
retraction notice (table 2). The most common way to alert readers
about a retraction is with a watermark on the pdf (41.1% of retracted
papers). A total of 149 papers were given such a watermark and noted
as retracted at the website as well. Among 305 watermarked papers,
48.9% were also retracted at the website; of 248 papers retracted at the website,
60.1% were also watermarked. However, 31.8% of retracted papers were not noted as retracted in any way at all so the naïve reader would not
be alerted to the fact that retraction had happened.
How comes 31.8% of retracted papers are not noted as retracted?
Those percentages add up to >>100%, even allowing that some options are overlapping??
@smci yes~~~~~~
The only reasonable answer I can think of is "laziness".
In particular, when journals existed only in print, the only thing a journal could do when it retracted an article was to print a notice in a new issue. There was no way to modify or recall issues that had already been sent to subscribers. Some journals may still have retraction policies from that era, which don't contemplate trying to actually do anything to the original article.
Note that the article you quote is almost four years old, so matters may have improved in the meantime.
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15993 | Postdoc salary. Fair offer?
I was just offered a postdoc at 34 000 USD a year.
I am wondering whether this is an ok offer. Can someone give me feedback on this?
Field? (requir...)
Natural science
If "hard" science, this is low, I think. Vanderbilt is in a funny spot: money in a poor area of the U.S., etc. so maybe those dollars will buy lots more than ... er, "other parts of the U.S.".
Don't want to be more specific but it requires long hours in lab...
Maybe it would be good to make this into a more general question, just to not set a precedent for everybody asking about their specific offers?
These are the times when I am really happy that I work in Europe. To answer the question: it may or may not be usual, but I would consider it at least a factor of 2 off from "fair".
@xLeitix: (being in Europe as well) I have to say that depending on where you are, I see at least a factor 2 between fair and fair (and maybe more in terms of what the usual wage can buy). Not to speak of another factor 2 between gross and net (and the funny factors in the tax depending on how exactly your contract is called).
@StasK: An offer may be fair or unfair regardless of whether it's the normal offer or not. So it's not a duplicate question. I have an answer I want to provide here, which could not be an answer on the supposed dupe question.
Biology or physics? My impression is that there is an immense difference in postdoctoral salaries between these two fields.
It sounds like it's on the low side for the sciences, but not unheard of. For comparison, NIH NRSA postdoc stipends start at about $39k for people with no previous postdoctoral experience and go up from there. Postdoc salaries can vary a lot by field, location, institution, etc.; if you have no other offers to compare with but want to know what's typical, I'd recommend searching online to find information that fits your background.
As Paul Garrett pointed out, you also need to consider the cost of living. According to CNN Money's cost of living calculator, $35k in Nashville is the equivalent of nearly $70k if you were living in Brooklyn. Of course these calculators are far from perfect, but they give you some indication of how prices and rents vary across the country. If you are going to live on $34k, Nashville is a good place to do it, and I would expect typical salaries there to be lower than in more expensive locations.
Ultimately, unless you believe there is discrimination or bias involved, I wouldn't worry too much about abstract notions of fairness, or even comparisons with other people in different circumstances. Instead, I would focus on three questions. What do you need to live happily in the short term? What are your long-term goals and prospects for achieving them? And what other options do you have, including not just similar postdoctoral offers but also career changes? Only you can weigh these considerations and decide whether a given offer is acceptable to you.
For what it's worth, most Ph.D. chemists that I've seen graduate and move to post-docs get around $40k. The amount depends on how much was budgeted in the grant proposal that is paying the post-doc salary and typically there isn't much wiggle room. Considering the dwindling grant resources, current hiring climate, and level of competition in this field, most are happy just to get a job.
On your question of fairness, did anyone else offer you another post-doc for more money? If not, I'd consider it fair.
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64440 | Is it true that PhD students need to work 10-12 hours a day every day to be productive?
I hear a lot of people brag or complain about how many hours they have to work for their PhD. Is this the norm? And if so is this really a wise choice to make? Do students really 'work' during this period of time (as would be expected in a corporate office), or do many also spend their time goofing around?
I've read that it's only possible to do 4 hours of deeply creative work everyday. Since energy often depletes over the day, I've personally found that outside of a small number of hours in a day, the rest of my time is spent doing mechanical tasks or straining myself in vain to think about a problem.
A "standardized"/objective measure of time spent on PhD work might be needed.
During course work, that's not unheard of (but not 7 days a week, 5 or 6 maybe). I would probably dismiss your friends' chatter as macho bravado though: wrong statements to this sort seem to give some people a kick, and a sense of tougher-than-you.
I've heard that if you can put in 5-6 productive hours a day, 5-6 days a week, for 5-6 years, you'll have enough for a PhD in most fields. The key is productive hours though, most people have a hard time getting 6 productive hours in an 8-hour work day.
Related: Is a PhD right for you if you hate doing research in your free time but love doing it as a job?
Related: Is it normal for an advisor to expect >80 hour workweeks from PhD students, and threaten them with dismissal?
I think you've hit the nail on the head with your second paragraph. If you can balance out your workload so that each day you are doing some tough creative tasks during the period when you work best, but also have some more mindless tasks that you can tackle at other times of the day, you can be productive for much longer than if you try to slog through one task all day.
But in my experience it is not the norm to work so many hours. Several people at my department (in the UK) have recently had successful PhDs (finished and gone on to Postdoc jobs) having worked normal 8x5 hour weeks most of the time.
I believe empirical evidence shows that you are usually more productive if you do not overwork yourself. Of course, towards an upcoming deadline, one may work a few extra hours a day to catch up, but regularly I believe this is highly discouraged.
I would like to add that results and research outcomes, as well as productivity, are by no means related to how long you work (of course provided you at least work some).
There are places where you are supposed to keep the chair warm for 10-12 hours on weekdays (and even 4-8 on weekends). No one said it actually helped with productivity, though.
Define work? Define productivity?
Possible duplicate: http://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8542/how-hard-do-early-career-academics-in-the-united-states-work-really/8543#8543
Looking busy is not the same thing as working. Looking idle is not the same thing as not working. I solve some of my toughest problems when I'm running, walking the dog, and playing games (when my mind is relaxed). If I found myself in an environment that demanded that I look busy for 12 hours a day, I would do my best to get out of it.
I personally worked on my research an enormous number of hours a day when I had the time, but that's because it was entertaining, not because it was necessary. Of course in pure math "research" mostly means getting lost in thought while scribbling, and who doesn't want to do that all day?
Not only you should work but seem to be doing work. On the other hand even the sub-conscious works while resting but mentally committed.
If you're working on the wrong thing, even 14 hour work days will still get you nowhere. Though perhaps you might get there faster.
Nobody either needs to or can work 10-12 hours a day to be productive. I saw a massive IT project with > 100 people on it get a year behind and then recover after some management measures, one of which was to ban overtime.
I'll ask my bro doing a phd...he's just finishing his daily morning game session on counterstrike after waking up at 10am and sleeping at 11pm lool
"I've read that it's only possible to do 4 hours of deeply creative work everyday." Could be, I suppose it varies, but my own experience involved a significant slug of time in simple roll-up-your-sleeves activities: identifying new research, tracking down leads, working with library staff, and so forth. And if you're in a field that requires wet-lab work, that's a whole different time sink.
The answer is no.
There are a lot of factors in play. With my work, a lot of it is creative so it is hard to say when I am working or not.
Do people expect students to work that many hours? Maybe, but it isn't healthy (and maybe not legal).
Do people really work the entire time they are at work? Probably not. Your productivity certainly goes down the longer you work. Whether people goof around or not isn't specific to Academia and can happen anywhere (I don't find goofing around to be a negative thing).
I too have read several studies about the limited number of hours that people have for mentally demanding tasks. In fact, I read a study about programmers that said they were lucky to get 1-2 hours of solid work done in a day. This info can help you organize your day so that you work on difficult tasks in the morning and then mechanical tasks in the afternoon. Also, studies have shown that taking breaks and going on walks can help improve your productivity.
There isn't a cookie cutter answer for everyone. It depends on yourself, the type of work, your advisor, and your coworkers.
I agree, it's hard to say when exactly I am working. I like this photo a lot: mathematician at work. Though I usually prefer to do my "work" (the creative part, anyway) during the night. When particularly productive/stubborn, I can stay up until late morning.
It is important to emphasize this can be very field-dependent. In some fields that are based on lab work, you may actually have to spend long hours doing technical non-creative work. However, this still does not mean you necessarily work the whole time - often there will be down-time while waiting for the experiment to run.
A good example of not working while being as work, is the fact that a large portion of people will be reading this while at work.
I don't agree with the programmer 1-2 hours of productivity. I work two jobs as a software developer and I am capable of being fully productive for about 4 hours after a full day of classes, and 6 hours if I don't have class the day that I'm programming. Perhaps I'm different from most, but I would find that only being truly productive for 1-2 hours per day would run all of my projects into the ground, and I would subsequently be fired. Then again, for a lot of people productive is subjective. I suppose that as long as you're getting results and meeting deadlines, then it doesn't matter!
The programmer being productive 1-2 hours a day is ridiculous. If you are only productive for that long, you are in the wrong field! I'm a software engineer. On a really terrible day that might hold true, on a great day I can be productive 12 hours, maybe 16 hours. Additionally, regarding the primary question when I was in grad school (in a different, scientific field), my days were that long, and they were very tough. They were very different kinds of hours though compared to my current work. There was more variety and socialization for sure working in a lab filled with students.
"I would say in any given week I do about 15 minutes of actual work" - Peter Gibbons
@BuvinJ: I should think the programmer is making progress on something his management demands for many more than 1-2 hours, but perhaps he doesn't consider debugging using customer data and writing a detailed explanation, why the bug is invalid, for the 17th customer who reported a bug after feeding incorrect data into the program to be "productive" use of his time.
Or answering questions from other developers, or answering the phone, or getting distracted by email popups, or any one of the hundreds of other things that eat into your day (like visiting stack exchange...oops).
Most people who brag about how many hours they work are inefficient. Because they are inefficient, they feel a need to point out how many hours they work - rather than pointing to the quality of work. Keep this in mind.
Some PhD programs will allow you to be more isolated from non-PhD related work than others. If you have to teach, for example, that might take a considerable portion of your week - preparation, class, grading, etc. This might cause you to have to work many more hours if you want to make progress on your dissertation than someone who does not have to teach.
If you are unlucky and have your "paid research" different than your dissertation research the same thing can happen - you have to split your time into different buckets. The quality of your advisor and their expectations thus has a big effect here, too.
How quickly you want to graduate can affect this too.
That being said, how you work affects how efficient you are.
Quality of your working hours
Sitting at a desk for 12 hours straight is most often bad.
Working 12 hours, taking 10 minute exercise breaks every hour? Much less bad.
How deliberately you work
Do you sit aimlessly without tasks?
Do you have a system to keep track of what you need to do?
Do you manage your energy (doing high energy tasks when you have energy, low energy when you don't) or do you just blindly do tasks?
Do you know when to call it quits -- or keep going?
If you have a high energy task you are doing great at, do you keep that momentum going?
Conversely if you feel burned out, do you just take a break? Or keep going anyways?
When do you work?
Some people rock 5am-7am. Some people rock 1am-3am. Some people are afternoon people (my prime time is about 4-6pm - I can accomplish insane amounts in this time compared to the rest of the day). Figure out when your times are.
Do you have distractions?
An hour with no distractions during writing might be better than 4 with continuous interruptions.
Read this article and apply it ruthlessly to your life. You are a maker, your advisor is probably a manager.
You will likely find that the better you work, the less you have to work. But simultaneously realize the more you could work (so if your goal is more X then it's great).
The how, when, and what for when we work dramatically affects our ability to work tons but also whether or not we have to.
The first line is not really true. Some people have to work huge hours because they have no choice. It's "work all the time, or you wont get your PhD" right up until the day before they get their certificate. To go through hell and then be labelled inefficient it the definition of adding insult to injury.
@J.J how many of those people brag about their hours? My experience is people who are forced to work many hours generally don't brag about it. If anything, they lament it.
Ah, true. I rescind my downvote :) (could you just edit the answer slightly so i can)
@J.J I added something I wanted to add anyways :)
I'll take the folks who brag about what they actually did than how many hours they worked.
My experiences suggest the answer is: possibly. Or perhaps more accurately sometimes.
A lot depends on the field you're in. I studied for a PhD in life science, where a lot of time at the lab bench was required. This is skilled work, but it's not "creative" nor does it involve much mental effort. So it's certainly possible to be productive at it for longer than four hour stretches.
In addition I often had to go in at the weekends to observe the results of my experiments. Cells don't grow to a useful 9-5 weekday schedule, unfortunately! I imagine other areas of science will impose similar time pressures.
I treated my PhD as though it were a job. Although I did work longer than 8 hours a day and I did work weekends when necessary, I viewed this as an annoying imposition and tried to minimize it. Other students and postdocs in the lab did longer hours and were more productive.
When it came time to write up my thesis, I discovred I simply did not have enough material to make it worthwhile. Ultimately I was forced to apply for a lesser research degree (an MPhil) and when it came to the crunch, I was not even able to obtain that with the evidence I'd gathered. Part of this is unquestionably down to lack of bench-hours.
I cannot speak about non-practical subjects, but even there I would imagine the amount of reading, learning and documentary research required would be significant, and would not involve creative mental effort. But my experience suggests that while ten hours a day, seven days a week is likely excessive, a successful research degree does involve time and effort well beyond that required for a regular highly-skilled job.
This attitude is unfortunately prevalent in many "lab" fields, in which students are often used as cheap technicians rather than getting a proper PhD education.
@jakebeal That may be so - I only have the experience of the one institution. But if that's the case here, how do you explain the lack of thesis material?
I don't know particulars of what you worked on and how and in what context. Things I have seen happen elsewhere, however, include: 1) "good thesis" equated with "publish in Nature, Science, or Cell" which is too high a bar, 2) students working only as directed, and on risky or long-term projects, rather than allowed to help scope and de-risk their own research program, 3) lack of lab techs and automation such that students are required to work very inefficiently (e.g., students shouldn't run the mouse colony), 4) "saving up" for big publications, leaving students in danger of scooping.
@jakebeal Interesting, thanks. I was never much good at lab politics to follow this sort of stuff. Sounds like I may have been a victim of a mixture of 2, 3 and my own laziness.
In addition to what @jakebeal said, I would certainly include lack of supervision. If your results don't look like they would help you achieve your goal, it is your supervisor's task to identify this early on, and steer you in a more productive direction. (Personally, I have yet to meet a supervisor who actually had the time to fulfill his tasks properly, but maybe it's just me and/or bad luck.)
Just to add to what is around:
Dr Hugh Kearns, famous speaker and researcher in "high performance psychology", has a very interesting course that is given to PhD students around the world, "The Seven Secrets of Highly Successful Research Student", with research that has been published in Nature.
I was lucky enough to have the chance to go to this workshop, and one of the secrets that all successful PhD student share is "Treat it like a job".
He mentioned (as conclusions of his research), that if you do a PhD and work (but really work, not procrastinate) 8h a day, 5 days a week, thats enough to have a successful PhD.
So the answer is no! Just, treat it like a job.
I would like to present how I think about my productivity as a PhD (note: it's Computer Science & Political Science). It might help getting an understanding about the hours and numbers.
My work is divided into "Thinking" and into "Doing".
"Doing" is the stuff that you can work on for 8 hours per day. Dull research assistant jobs involving filling out excel sheets, having to write the literature review, reading literature for taking notes and getting background, office hours, teaching and preparing teaching. Writing emails, applications, funding requests, finishing off papers, going to conferences. "Doing" is the stuff that I can plan and that usually has an end in sight.
"Thinking" is the hard work of which might not happen on a daily basis at all. It involves actually sketching out and developing my models and my hypothesis, reading difficult literature with challenging methods/theory that is crucial to my own work, thinking about how to convert theory into a computer program. "Thinking" is the stuff that happens when I read a completely unrelated book, when I am cooking, in the shower or on the train. I can plan to try, but I cannot plan to succeed. I cannot say "On Thursday I will have my theoretical argument". I can say "On Thursday I will work on my argument doing x and y. No promises".
It is the second category that makes it so difficult to break down a PhD into simple numbers. Sometimes it takes a day to make huge progress, other times (most of the time) you grind on a seemingly simple problem for weeks, even months.
I have a very relevant personal anecdote: about a year ago, I was working on a paper. I had been pondering for over two weeks about a particular area, and wasn't able to make any progress whatsoever. I was effectively spending hours looking at sheets of paper, scribbling nonsense just not to stare at blank sheets of paper.
Then I went to visit my parents, anxious to leave the work unfinished. We went to visit some relatives, and well, I got more than a bit tipsy. However, on the way back, I had a veritable flurry of the ideas. As you can probably guess, when I sobered up and considered it, it turned out, the ideas were not quite right. However, after a few weeks of polishing them (which was mostly doing at that point), the stuff I came up with during the one-hour car ride (thinking) turned into about a fourth of the entire paper.
I'd be careful with social comparison. While it can be helpful to see how other fare, the work time alone is a really bad measure for a couple of reasons:
often based on subjective impressions (not, e.g., time studies with automated measuring)
often no differentiation between "being there" and "actively working"
ignores discipline
ignores difficulty of topic
ignores state of the PhD thesis (usually there are ups and downs)
ignores time to think (incubation phase, time where you do something else)
claims are sometimes used for ... strategic reasons
ignores efficiency of the work ("Don't count the days, make the days count.")
some work is difficult to classify -- could be PhD work or not (e.g., teaching, doing stuff your adviser wants you to do that might or might not be relevant to your work)
some PhD students are exploited to do irrelevant work (costing them time to do their PhD thesis)
etc. pp.
In short, the PhD is not a prison sentence (although at times it might feel like it). Time doesn't cut it.
Instead, I would recommend to focus on what is needed to do a successful PhD (look at those PhDs that came before you, esp. those in the same department/with same adviser). Find out what people need to be successful in your discipline (likely: publications, publications, publications). Much more useful than time alone.
P.S.: Regarding creative work, yes, you need ideas, lots of them. But that's why you need time off work. And not all work is creative -- usually there is a lot of routine work involved.
It really should not be the norm. Like Austin already pointed out, there is no universal answer to that.
When I did my PhD (in computational chemistry), I also had a commitment to look after students as a teaching assistant. This was certainly my main work during the semester and not a lot of research could be done while simultaneously preparing the next day with the students, grading protocols, discussing related things with the supervisor.
When you are finally at the point where you can do the research for your PhD, you may as well do not consider it as work any more. There are plenty of ways, how you can boost your own productivity. If the environment is right, co-workers, supervisors, friends, equipment, then you should be able to find your way of getting the most out of it.
I personally prefer staying long at my workplace, while goofing around (primarily on the network). I like the quieter hours during the evening, where I can concentrate better. But that is certainly my own choice, so I might end up staying longer than 10 hours, but I would neither complain nor brag about it.
In any case, it should not be a requirement and it is certainly different for any individual.
Ideally, a PhD student should work 0 hours a day. If you do the work you love, you won't work a day in your life.
Of course, most people have to overcome tough obstacles in the beginning of their scientific careers, but it is what you make out of it. I personally enjoyed the hardships because I learned a lot from every difficult problem I had to solve. I spent almost every hour I was awake and sometimes even dreamed at night thinking about my research, but not because I wanted to get it over with or get a degree to show off or even start making real money quicker. I just wanted to know how things work, to know the truth.
But even though you might not feel like you are working, others will. Friends and family will get much less of you when you spend weeks in the lab or in front of computer.
I've seen peers for whom PhD program was a toil. Most of them dropped out. They didn't seem to be spending too much time working on it either. I guess the key is what everyone says: pick the right topic. If you do something you are passionate about, the time will fly and you will wish it would just freeze so you can keep working on what you do forever until you find what you are looking for.
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18123 | Dissertation proposal before admission: Is it possible?
It seems that most universities in Europe require an outline of the planned dissertation at the application stage. I think even choosing the title of a dissertation needs a lot of dialogue between the student and his supervisor. It also requires a thorough investigation on the state of art in the targeted area.
Is such proposal the definite proposal or it may totally be changed after the admission? Can you provide some tips for writing such proposal draft? How much time you think I should devote for such plan (at least)?
First, to answer your titular question:
Is it possible?
Likely yes. Otherwise, all PhD students at this university would fail, wouldn't they :) ? Let me go over the rest of your question one by one:
It seems that most universities in Europe require an outline of the planned dissertation at the application stage.
Most seems a bit extreme. I know that this is how it works in some universities, but it certainly did not work like that in all places I worked in.
I think even choosing the title of a dissertation needs a lot of dialogue between the student and his supervisor. It also requires a thorough investigation on the state of art in the targeted area.
Correct. At my current university, people hand in their proposals during their second year usually.
Is such proposal the definite proposal or it may totally be changed after the admission?
It is almost certainly not a very definite plan, but whether it can totally change I am not sure. For instance, I would assume if it changed so much that it started to fall out of the area of expertise of your advisor, I would imagine things would get tricky.
Can you provide some tips for writing such proposal draft? How much time you think I should devote for such plan (at least)?
Rsearch the state of the art in the field you are interested in. Take a few days minimum to browse over the keywords of the papers of the top conferences in the field. Find out which professor at your university publishes in these top conferences (if there is nobody, this university may be a bad match for your field of interest), and see what the typical keywords and style of his work are.
Think about ~3 coarse-grained research questions that you think are not answered yet by existing work. You probably already needed to define a research question for e.g., your master's thesis. Make sure that the scope is a bit broader now for a PhD - you don't want research questions that are basically answerable within one paper in a few months of work (Bad: "Q1: is it possible to apply algorithm A to problem B?"). On the other hand, you do not want to be too general either (Bad: "Q2: how can security be introduced in service-oriented systems?" - this one is a real-life example).
Is such proposal the definite proposal or it may totally be changed after the admission?
I had to do a similar task to get into PhD program here in Australia. It is mostly a formality and people's actual topic can vary widely. Actually it would be strange if you did not change your topic slightly. After 6 months - 1 year we are expected to give a seminar and a much more detailed proposal, this was the real one. Although again your topic can still change after that.
Can you provide some tips for writing such a proposal draft?
I would ask your supervisor for tips. Maybe they can provide you with a copy of one from a previous student. Usually the university provides a general outline of what you should discuss.
Another Australian here, and this accords with my experience. It would help further answers if you, OP, tell us what they're expecting in terms of a format for this thesis proposal. Mine was only about 2000 words I think, and was meant to demonstrate that I had a minimum interest/knowledge of the topic before undertaking a doctoral program. Mine changed dramatically over the following 4 years. No one will hold you to exactly what you wrote in your thesis proposal.
I once had to write a thesis proposal for admission to a UK university. It was explained to me that this is more of an entrance exam than an actual proposal. It is also used to gauge whether your interests lie somewhere in the vicinity of what is generally done at the department.
I don't know how other countries or universities work, but I can't imagine that anybody would hold you strictly to a proposal you wrote before becoming a graduate student. It's normal to expect that your research should be adapted along the way based on your findings, even for an experienced researcher.
The proposal I wrote (which was successful) had to be short, so I went with the following format:
Theory so and so implies that A is true
But this other theory suggests that the converse, B, would be true
These could be pitted against each other in an experiment involving so-and-so (details details details)
The time you need entirely depends on your knowledge of the field. It is good to invest quite some time in these things though, as they can really improve a lot the more you think about them. I'd say that it's best to try to finish it a good month before the deadline, and then take a look at it at biweekly intervals to make improvements.
At least at the European university where I work, we do not require such a proposal.
However, in general, the thesis proposal is a planning document, and therefore its contents are not considered binding. Especially given the nature of research, committing someone to a particular course of action before it even begins seems counterproductive.
The proposal should be allowed to evolve over time, and possibly be changed completely if found to be unworkable or unmanageable.
I had to write a proposal as part of the admission process in a university in Ireland for a MLitt in History. Here are some thoughts based on what you have asked and my experience.
I think even choosing the title of a dissertation needs a lot of dialogue between the student and his supervisor.
I had 2 meeting with my supervisor before the proposal was handed in. These meetings did not just entail discussion on the title, but they formed a part of it in so far as was this professor the best person in the department to supervise the masters. We had a working title quite early though.
Is such proposal the definite proposal or it may totally be changed after the admission?
I have found in my case that the title may be refined after admission. It has not being the case where we have made a major chance but rather refined the project as the research is completed while keeping it within the overall framework of the original idea.
Can you provide some tips for writing such proposal draft? How much time you think I should devote for such plan (at least)?
In my case the proposal did not have to be a long document. I think instructions were to keep it under 1,500 words. I used the following heading for my proposal.
What I'm going to research
Research Methodology
What has been researched about topic already
What will this thesis add to existing knowledge.
Finally I also put together a draft reading list of publications that I thought would form part of my research. This was not required but I felt it was a good exercise for myself and my supervisor appreciated a copy of it as well.
Thinking back I believe I had my proposal document completed in about 2-3 weeks(this includes drafting and amending).
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26025 | Will my accepted paper appear in conference proceeding without presentation?
Will generally accepted papers appear in conferences proceeding without presentation? In particular my paper is accepted for this conference. In the conference web site they pointed out: "Accepted and presented papers will be included in the IEEE CPS Proceedings." In its registration page they have told:
Please register your papers before 20 July 2014. It is strictly
enforced. If we do not receive your registration by that date, your
papers will be moved from the proceedings. Thank you very much.
Does this mean the registered papers definitively will be appeared in the proceeding? Unfortunately there is no contact info on the web site and they do not response emails. I could not attend the conference and I wonder should I pay regitration fee or not?
The paper submission site lists a contact email
@ff524 They don't responded to any of my emails and they do not provide any phone number. Do you think it's normal? Does the conference seems OK for you?
By "appear in proceedings" do you mean the proceedings that is distributed to attendees at the conference? or that is distributed on IEEEXplore?
@ff524 distributed on IEEEXplore
The IEEE policy on non-presented papers is as follows:
Authors are expected to attend the conference in person to present their papers and share their ideas.
To encourage attendance, IEEE recommends that conferences exclude or limit the distribution of any paper that was not presented at the conference. This policy is not mandatory and only applies to conference proceedings where IEEE is the copyright holder.
If authors are unable to attend the conference and present their papers, they should contact the program chair as soon as possible so that substitute arrangements can be made.
That is, it is at the conference organizer's discretion. Some IEEE conferences do pull a paper from the published proceedings if it isn't presented at the conference: for example, the IEEE Signal Processing Society has the policy that papers not presented will not be distributed on IEEEXplore.
The only way to be sure your paper will appear in the conference proceedings is to confirm with the conference organizer.
In general, at least for the better conferences in the computing and information science research area that I find myself working in, if your paper is accepted and at least one author has registered for the conference, then your paper will be included in the conference proceedings and available in the usual archives (ACMDL/IEEEXplore/DBLP etc.)
I have done this multiple times when I lived in different countries and could not afford to travel to a conference in a far flung location. Sometime ago, I wrote another (very related) answer which might be of further help to you.
However, this may vary for the particular conference that you have a paper in.
Added: (to incorporate Jeff's comment)
In some conferences, an author may not even register. A colleague or otherwise could present your paper for you. Of course, this needs the permission of the organizers.
... and at least one author has registered for the conference — In my experience, ensuring that someone presents the paper is sufficient, even if that someone is not an author. (I've presented papers for authors who couldn't travel to the conference, and who therefore did not register.)
@JeffE Agreed! In fact, I've had this happen to me as well. I didn't present but my paper was presented by another colleague from my department who could attend that conference.
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2937 | Can I publish parts of the Ph.D thesis as a paper in a journal?
I recently finished my PhD thesis which will be published as a book soon.
Now I'm wondering if it's possible or allowed to submit parts to a journal?
Normally the process would be the other way round I think: Submitting papers and "gluing" them together for the thesis. I've read the guidelines of some journals which state "that the work described has not been published before" or that "Papers must present scientific results that are essentially new".
Could you be a bit more specific as to what you mean by "published as a book"? Are you simply making a few bound copies, are you self-publishing or is this going to an academic publisher?
Oh sorry :) It is going to a publisher and can be ordered there.
See also this complementary question.
This question is probably field dependent. For example, in sociology in France it is usually not possible to publish in a journal something that has been made available on the web, (and books are the most important research outputs).
The field of the dissertation is Management Information Systems. But the content is a mixture of biometrics and machine learning.
As a general rule, you cannot publish anything as original research that has already been published. (You may be able to reprint it in other venues, but most research journals do not do this.)
Of course, the trick is what counts as "already published". Nowadays, many publishers (including all mathematics publishers, for example) do not count informal distribution on the internet as prior publication. It's common not to count extended abstracts from conference proceedings, although the journal may require some revisions or extensions. Nobody counts submitting a dissertation as prior publication, even if the university makes it available for download or purchase, and technical reports are generally in the same category.
On the other hand, publication as a "real book" definitely counts as prior publication and would rule out journals. Of course, this just brings up the question of what a "real book" is. Basically, if it's published by a serious academic publisher, with some nontrivial selection and editorial advice, then that counts as publication. On the other hand, if it's some random publisher printing copies of Ph.D. theses and selling them online, then you could make a strong case that it's not really published (and that this is not so different from ordering a dissertation copy).
However, I think you need to discuss this explicitly when submitting your paper. For example, you could add a sentence to your submission letter along the lines of "This work is based on my thesis from University X, which is available for sale by Y but has not been traditionally published". It's much better to deal with this upfront than to have someone later ask "Wait, why is someone selling copies of this work online?"
I think Dave Clarke and I fundamentally agree, but I felt it was worth expanding on the issues.
Thanks for the answer! Basically that's what came to my mind upfront. The publisher will be a well known one, but it'll be published as a dissertation. This means there will be no editorial advice except in layout questions. Selection is based on the grade. So to sum up, I'll check the contract with the publisher and also ask the potential journal(s) if submission is allowed under this constraints.
As a rule of thumb, I would say any publication with an ISBN/ISSN is an official publication, anything without that is nonofficial and OK for submitting to conference/journal.
In general, this is allowed, even encouraged.
The answer depends on what kind of book you are publishing. If it is the regular dissertation, then you can publish in journals. If it is a properly published book by Springer or equivalent, then I doubt that you can publish again.
Thanks for the quick response! What do you mean by regular dissertation? It'll be published as a book available on amazon, etc. in German. Why does this distinction matter in your opinion?
If it's published by a scientific publisher, then you (probably) cannot republish it as papers. If it is just published in the dissertation series, then you can. Check with the publisher.
@John: If you are dealing with a real publisher, you will sign a contract. Check the terms of your contract.
Ok, thanks for your responses so far! Yes indeed I'm currently waiting for the contract and I'll check it. I was wondering whether (given the contract with the publisher of the book permits it) a journal accepts content, which has been published in some altered form already. As the dissertation is in German, I'll have to rewrite the parts and translate them, so it won't be exactly the same.
Yeah, whether the journals approve is at least as big an issue as whether the dissertation publisher does.
I agree completely
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1682 | Releasing one version of a Scientific Paper under an Open License
I am going to release a Technical Report that will be archived and made available online by the university's library. An abridged version of the work was accepted by a peer-reviewed conference and will be published in the proceedings. For this to happen, I have to sign a copyright form, assigning to the publishing institution all rights under copyright.
My questions:
a) What is the best way to grant readers of the Technical Report the freedom to quote (unlimited length), distribute, and build upon the work? And point out that they have this freedom without asking for my permission?
b) Is a Creative-Commons License the way to go? If yes, in what form should include the lincense in the work?
c) Is there any conflict between the copyright form for the conference paper and releasing the Technical Report under an open license?
It's actually rather different from the arXiv. The IEEE copyright form already deals with electronic preprint servers like the arXiv (see #8 under "Author Online Use"), and seems to allow this (maybe only if you submit it to the arXiv before the IEEE?) provided you use the accepted version rather than the IEEE published version. By contrast, this question is asking about granting far more rights.
A Creative Commons License is a good way to achieve this. It doesn't really matter how you convey this information, as long as it's clear. (A footnote on the first page is fine, for example. Whatever you prefer.) The attribution license (CC BY) sounds like a good choice for what you're looking for.
However, this definitely conflicts with the copyright form. You can try asking the IEEE for permission, and there's some chance they will agree, but they tend to be picky about copyright. If you can't come to an agreement with them, then you will have to decide whether publishing in this conference is worth giving up copyright, and they will have to decide whether it is worth losing your paper over this issue. (If you have already signed the form, then there's nothing you can do except ask them.)
Do you think the conflict exist no matter how different the actual texts are? Technically, the TR is the original work, and the IEEE paper is the derivative work.
I'm not a lawyer, but I don't think this argument works. (It would be an enormous loophole in copyright law, if one could sign over copyright to something while secretly knowing that it was just a derivative work of a longer work and planning to release that longer work.) I think the right thing to do is to discuss it with the IEEE and try to come to some arrangement with them.
...or you could just break the law, like most other people (at least in CS).
I talked about this with more experienced colleages/coauthors, who said that there might be a legal conflict, but that it is common practice to self-publish a longer version of your conference paper. So maybe I should rephrase my question "is there a conflict" to "How likely am I to get into trouble". ;)
Not likely, but I'd be careful with CC licenses, because you are granting other people rights. If you just post the paper online, then the worst case scenario is that the IEEE makes you take it down, and I don't think they will do that (it would look bad). If you license other people to create derivative works, then they may end up someday being asked to take them down (perhaps via a DMCA takedown notice sent to their hosting company). Again, that's not likely, but I'd be really annoyed if I discovered that I had relied on a CC license that the author wasn't in a position to issue.
P.S. I think it's highly likely that the IEEE will allow posting a longer journal version of a conference paper (and I imagine that's what they mean when they say "Although authors are permitted to re-use all or portions of the Work in other works, ..."). I'd guess that the only issue would be the license.
Similarly, I'd also recommend the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY). A good guide explaining why this is best, written by the Open Access Scholarly Publishers Association (OASPA) exists here. This would fulfil all the criteria you ask for in a)
However, it does matter how you convey this licence. For example if you included just a CC BY 'badge' as an image in the PDF, it would be difficult for a web crawler or machine to detect that the manuscript is Open Access. Thus it's good to signpost the licence in a clear machine readable way
e.g.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported License.
(specifically including a URL link to full terms of the licence, and make sure you choose the unported license, rather than any of the country-specific variants)
With respect to c) the trick is (if it's not too late now) to upload your CC BY version as a preprint before you submit to the journal & their draconian terms & conditions. Journals can't stop you uploading your work before you've signed any agreements with them. Some journals don't 'like' this and will reject submissions that they know are openly available on the web prior to submission, but these journals represent a small-minded, old-fashioned minority in my experience. Even Elsevier allow preprints!
There's a huge difference between rejecting submissions because they are available on the web (which I believe is rare in most fields) and objecting to a CC BY license (which I believe is common). Releasing a paper under such a license before submission may substantially restrict how it can be published. That's not necessarily a problem - if you care enough about the ultimate form of open access, then you have no choice. However, there's a genuine trade-off here. For example, Elsevier allows preprints, but their published policies certainly do not allow CC BY, and they are far from alone.
@AnonymousMathematician CC-BY doesn't affect redistribution under different licenses; CC-BY-SA does. And the author still reserves the right to confer more permissive licenses to others. That's why even Elsevier doesn't restrict licenses on pre-prints, although they attempt to dictate the CC-BY-NC-ND for post-prints.
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2673 | Under what circumstances can one republish a conference paper/presentation?
For conferences that "peer review" and "publish" full papers, when, if ever, can you resubmit essentially unchanged versions for publication in a peer reviewed journal?
In my field, when conference papers appear as book chapters, people often "republish" them as journal articles.
I have just had a talk accepted at a conference which is now (decided post submission) planning on publishing the proceedings as a special issue of a journal. It appears the journal is complete crap with an extremely light peer review process in general, no impact factor, and essentially not indexed. I think this "article" will be worthless, but I am concerned that I will not be able to republish the results in a respectable journal.
The "special issue of a journal" designation sounds worrisome to me. Even if it is just the usual conference proceedings repackaged, I think you are right that it will cause problems for later publication. (Even if the second journal agrees not to count the first as a "real" journal publication, it may still appear to onlookers like you are publishing the same paper in two journals.)
You always have the option not to submit to the post-proceedings, or the associated special-issue in this case. If you are worried about crappiness of the venue which is effectively imposed on you, simply do not submit your work to the journal and inform the editors about the decision. After all, nobody can publish your paper without your consent, such as a formal copyright transfer in the case of "traditional" journals. Just save your good stuff for a better venue.
In math, FPSAC (Formal Power Series and Algebraic Combinatorics) accepts and referees "extended abstracts" for presentations. Presenters are selected based (in part) on the quality of these abstracts, and the abstracts appear in a special issue of DMTCS. The submission guidelines for FPSAC state
The authors will retain the right of publishing a full version of their work in another journal. Authors who do intend to publish a full version elsewhere should however make sure that their conference contribution is clearly an extended abstract of this full version.
Several conference centers publish proceedings of their workshops, for which presenters are asked to submit extended abstracts of their talks after the fact; for example, both AIM (the American Institute of Mathematics) and Oberwolfach (formally known as Mathematisches Forschungsinstitut Oberwolfach) do this. Again, the norm is that the abstract should be a summary of your presentation, with less detail than the published version.
I think that the main answer here is going to be "see if the conference organizers have made a statement, and check with some more senior people as to what the unwritten norms are".
This varies by field. In (most) fields that have journal-based publications and no tradition of selective refereed conferences, it might be quite hard to publish a paper in a journal after it has appeared in some proceedings, without substantial changes.
In computer science, in which conference publication is the norm, it is expected that journal papers have first appeared in conference proceedings. This is especially true if the full paper does not fit in the page-limit of the conference proceedings, and proofs or other material had to be left out of the first publication. Typically you have to make some small changes between the conference and the journal version (i.e. include full proofs, include a fuller discussion of related and subsequent work, etc), but in CS, the delta between conference and journal version can be relatively minor.
What happens if a CS conference publishes the page-limited papers in crappy journal?
It probably depends on the specifics. If it actually appears as a paper in a journal, that might be problematic. On the other hand, plenty of conferences publish their proceedings using journal publishers like Springer, and its fine. Hard to know more without knowing the specific situation.
In some fields of CS, the delta can be relatively minor. In theoretical computer science, the delta can be arbitrarily close to zero (although this is starting to change). Other subfields of CS impose a lower bound on the amount of truly unpublished content (typically 25%-33%) in any journal paper.
Related: The question about the delta on CStheory
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