Asking for data as a student - ease the pain

There are similar questions on this site for students requiring source code, such as What action to take when questions regarding a published paper are ignored by its author?. In your case you need data but as you have already seen yourself, sharing data is hardly a volunteer action.

Sharing data is a form of collaboration and collaboration needs equal (or almost equal parties). You benefit from taking the data but how does the other party benefit? You will probably say that the other side will increase his citations but how you guarantee that you will actually get something published if you are just a graduate student at his beginning? When your professor contacts them, two things are guaranteed: a) The confidentiality of the data b) The fair use of the data, including citation. When you contact them, none of these two conditions apply.

Second, many times graduate students just collect data without a clear understanding of what to do with it. It is easier to send a dozen emails to request all sorts of data than actually getting job done on the ones you have. You said it yourself:

  ...tons of interesting data is now freely accessible over the web

So, why do you need extra data, when there are already many available datasets for you to use? Have you already published something with the freely available data? Have you even compiled a similar dataset? Would you actually share your dataset if you had one? If the answer to most of these questions is NO, then these are the things you must focus on and not waiting to get another dataset for the sake of it.

Also since collaboration requires equal partnership, you will see that these things get easier when you have established yourself, even as a junior researcher. If you have some good publications (using the freely available datasets or the ones that your professor got for you), then when you request additional data (on a polite email introducing yourself and leading to your homepage and google scholar profile), you will not get ignored, because the dataset holder will know two things: a) That you know your craft and his dataset will be used in a fair way (citation included) b) That you may collaborate in the future, so saying NO to you is not beneficial to him. Until then, I do not think there is anything much you can do than using your professor. But since this has already happened more than once (and there are many freely available datasets), I doubt you really need all these datasets you are collecting.


How long are "brief statements of research and teaching interests"?

Coming from pure math at a research institution, typical lengths are 1-2 pages for teaching statements and 4-6 pages for research statements.  However, some people go overboard (e.g., including loads of teaching evaluations) or write long research statements (8+ pages) targeted at experts.  I would interpret "brief" to mean: don't do this.  Moreover, if the school is not much of a research school, I would recommend the research statement being closer to 2-3 pages.

Incidentally, I don't think having page lengths written into the job ads is a good thing.  This isn't a high school assignment.  You are free to say how much you want to, in what format you want to.  Some 2-page statements take longer to read than 4-pages ones, depending on how they're written (bullet points, figures, references,  etc).


Reviewer changed their mind after positive earlier feedback

The last time this happened to me, it was because one of the two original reviewers was unable to review the revision, but journal policy mandated two accept recommendations before acceptance. So the editor invited a third reviewer, who recommended rejection. I do think it's pretty unfair to the authors when this happens. After all, if the paper is not suitable for the journal, the journal ought to desk reject immediately and save everyone's time.
I suggest writing to the editor and asking them if they're sure of their decision. After all, they did say minor revisions in the first decision. If they say they're sure there's nothing you can do but submit elsewhere, but there's a chance they'll agree they have been unfair.


How to screen out candidates for faculty jobs who don't know the subject

Presumably your interview is doing a good job screening out the individuals who you feel "don't know the subject" and you are trying to screen them out prior to the interview. I think a reasonable screening tool could be a a phone interview. You should probably conduct between 10-15 phone interviews to find the 6 candidates you want to interview.

While I say "phone interview", it is most often now a "Skype" interview. These interviews could be as short as 30 minutes and should be no longer than 1 hour scheduled back-to-back such that they all get completed in two long days. The phone interviews I know about have had 3-6 people (presumably the majority of the committee) present, but I think depending on department politics that you could reduce it to a smaller group (maybe even just the committee chair).

While you could simply focus the phone interview on the questions that cause candidates the most trouble during on campus interviews, given 1/2 your candidates have difficulties recalling key concepts of "random" classes, you may want to help them out a little. If you require that applicants submit a sample syllabus for freshman physics and another for an upper level elective, then the phone interview should focus on the teaching statement and sample syllabus.

During the phone interview you should also mention some of the other key classes of you department that they might teach on. If a candidate is truly clueless, this will not matter, but good candidates will realize that they need to brush up on those classes for the on campus interview.

In summary, an inability to talk about a syllabus the candidate has written would be your screening tool and the hints during the phone interview will help you minimize throwing out potentially good candidates.


What is the advantage of doing an integrated Masters course over a Bachelors and then Masters? (UK.)

An integrated masters such as an MPhys is an enhanced undergraduate degree where the final year will include level 7 courses and a substantial project. It will typically be accredited and meet the academic requirements for registration for chartered status (CPhys in this case).

An MSc is a postgraduate degree also with a substantial project and level 7 courses. It will often be more specialised in nature than an undergraduate degree and may or may not be accredited such that it will add the necessary academic requirements for chartered status if the student also has completed an accredited BSc.

In the UK there will typically be a difference in fees between the two cases and there is currently (although this may change or may even have changed already - you should check) a difference in funding available. Government backed student loans have only been available for undergraduate degrees.

For engineers in industry I do think that generally the integrated Masters is looked at more highly but of course it  depends on the institution. If you goal is to get chartered status then I would advise the integrated Masters rather than a separate MSc provided you are staying in the UK. If you go abroad the separate postgraduate MSc is understood better and so probably easier to have accepted.


How much time should I spend to prepare to teach a class?

Question: What is a reasonable amount of time to spend preparing to teach a class?

That question cannot be answered in general. Many factors go into what is a "reasonable" amount of time to prepare.

As commenters have argued, the first time you teach a class necessarily takes significantly longer as bootstrapping the teaching material can be the most time-consuming aspect of teaching. 15 hours per week for a new 3-hour course seems on the long side to me as well, but if the preparation for the lab is time-consuming it's probably not excessive. Labs in general vary widely in terms of their time commitment, based on the nature of the lab and availability of TAs.

What I have found is that it pays to be pragmatic: when I am teaching a class for the first time, I generally avoid time-consuming experiments and I do not provide much material outside of lecture slides, book (chapters), and papers (that is, I do not prepare custom readers or much else that needs to be created from scratch aside from lecture slides). I also try to go for a lab model that is considerate of my own workload in the first year (i.e., I'd rather try to have a project that students can work on more freely rather than something that requires constant hand-holding, if possible). In the following years, I will step-by-step create additional material or change the labs. This also has the advantage that by then I know better what additional material students actually need.

  I feel like I'm spending too much time and energy preparing for classes and this is hurting my research productivity.

Well, I would lie if I said that teaching a course ever did not impact my research productivity. It is a fairly seizable chunk of additional work and mental load, after all. In general, this should be built into your tenure- or promotion requirements, as it is true for pretty much every university faculty member (i.e., when your, for instance, tenure requirements are drawn up, people don't plan for you working full-time on your research). Also, try to figure out whether this is a one-time happening (for instance because the course is new) or whether you will always spend 1/3 of your work time on teaching going forward.

If you feel your current teaching load will prevent you from reaching your next career stage, you should either attempt to reduce the time you commit (e.g., be more pragmatic about how you design the course or how much you prepare for lectures) or talk to your department manager about whether it's possible to reduce your teaching load (e.g., give you more TAs next time, etc.). I feel making a data-driven case ("this is how many hours I spent on task A, B, C, because of reasons X and Y, how can I improve this for next year?") works best here, especially if your teaching load does not look extraordinary on paper.


What do you call a paper that summarizes a set of mathematical formulas?

My comment turned into answer: you could call it an "expository paper", especially if it contains some more descriptive details on how/where to use/apply these formulas.

At least in my field (mathematics) such papers are not unheard of. These are often published in journals more aimed towards such papers with a broader audience, for example the American Mathematical Monthly or Expositiones Mathematicae. These papers can be of great value as a clear and easy reference to results in a particular field; on the other hand, they may not quite be considered research papers.


What are the biggest differences transitioning from undergrad to grad school?

This may be closed as "primarily opinion based" (especially the second part), but I'll take a whack at it.

  What is the biggest thing to overcome/accomplish during your first semester [as] a graduate student?

Your first 1-2 years is likely taking classes. So, the biggest thing is passing those classes. This should be achievable (though a lot of work), so I'll list also two secondary goals: making friends, and finding an advisor (though this may be a bit early to line up an advisor; every university has a different process).

  Looking back, what is something you wish you would have done differently?

Stayed in my office more. I tended to work on my own at home; while I learned a lot, grad school would have been more fun if I had made more friends and done some of the work collaboratively.


Can I trust a paper that hides implementation details?

As a researcher, I'm generally very keen on including as many implementation details as possible. However:

There is rarely the room available in a paper to describe every detail of an implementation.
Describing every detail of an implementation in prose often takes substantially more work than writing the program in the first place. The meaning of code (which is written in a formal language) is generally unambiguous; the meaning of prose (which is written in natural language) can often be ambiguous. Resolving the ambiguities in the prose takes time, effort and care -- it's often harder than writing the code.
Researchers are generally both very busy, and under a lot of pressure from above to produce quick results and move onto new projects. Resisting this pressure to bring existing work to a tidy conclusion is a good thing, but there are limits to how long you can spend doing this, and sadly the reward structure in academia provides little incentive to do it.

There is a reasonable case to be made that implementation is not valued in academia to the extent that it should be. However, even if it were appropriately valued, and even if there were no page limits for papers, there would still be an opportunity cost for individual researchers when it came to producing copious documentation describing the implementation details of their code. Human lifetimes are finite: the time spent describing every detail of old code could alternatively be spent coming up with and implementing new ideas. Some old code is so useful and valuable that it's worth spending a lot of time describing, but that's certainly not true in all cases. A lot of code (particularly hacked-together research code) just isn't that valuable in the long run: time spent describing it could be better spent on something else.

To directly answer your questions, then:

Yes, it's ethical to not describe every detail of your implementation -- most of the time, you can't, and of the times when you can, a decent proportion of the time it's not the best use of your time. Having said that, I'm of the school of thought that says you should at least make a reasonable effort to write good, clearly-documented code, to publish it on the web for all time (e.g. on GitHub) and to at least describe how the method works in a way that will enable someone reading the code to know what's going on.
If things in the code aren't in the original manuscript, start by reading and running the code to see if you can figure out what's going on. If it's not clear from that, do some reading around to see if other sources can give you any hints. If all else fails, and it's crucial that you understand the details, email the authors. If they ignore you, give up on their method and use something else.
The code can disappear from the author's page for a variety of reasons -- maybe they stopped paying for hosting, for example. If you need the code in that situation, email them. As mentioned above, good practice involves putting your code in a public repository so that it will hang around, but it's not unethical if you don't (just unhelpful).


Advice for first time mathematics TA during the COVID-19 pandemic

Talk to the lecturer in charge of the course.
The lecturer (or professor, if that’s what your university calls them – different countries use different titles to refer to the equivalent positions) is your boss; if there’s something you’re uncertain of regarding how to teach their class, they should be your first port of call unless it’s utterly trivial.
So, ask them about how they would prefer you to handle things like office hours or grading; it’ll be important for all the tutors to be on the same page for those sorts of things anyway, so that students who were in one tutorial aren’t unfairly advantaged over students in others. Similarly, they should be familiar with what material will be covered in the honors vs non-honors versions of the class/unit/course/whatever your university calls it.


Are PhD students allowed to use funding for a custom office setup?

As the comments already say, this is to a large extent dependent on the terms of the grant. Most grants have a lump sum (the "overhead") which they directly pay to the university to cover office supply, equipment, etc., so that they actual grant cannot be used for these items. However, there are certainly grants that are more flexible in their terms.

Generally, your best bet when it comes to productivity-increasing office supply would be your advisor. (S)he will usually have a hardware budget that he may use for things like a dual-screen setup for students or a fancy keyboard, and (s)he has a strong interest in you being productive. One should also keep in mind that even objectively overpriced single items of equipment (e.g., those vastly overpriced Apple mice) are just a small dot in the lab hardware budget, so many advisors really are quite happy to dole out for them if they think it will make the student more happy (even if they are personally not seeing the point at all).

One specific comments regarding the dual-monitor setup: most labs have an abundance of abandoned screens from previous lab members sitting in some equipment storage. If you don't insist on getting a new screen, nobody will take issue when you ask to get one of the old screen as a secondary display.


Do teaching evaluations lead to lower standards in class?

Jacob and Levitt have an article in the quarterly journal of economics that looks at teachers cheating in public schools due to compensation based on their class performance. They find that teachers will do things to help their students get higher grades if it effects their compensation.

Rotten Apples: An Investigation of the Prevalence and Predictors of Teacher Cheating. Quarterly Journal of Economics. 2003

An article by Nelson and Lynch look at the relationship between grade inflation and teaching evaluations suggesting professors buy better teacher evaluations with grades.

Grade Inflation, Real Income, Simultaneity, and Teaching Evaluations. The Journal of Economic Education. 1984.


How can I find out the commission rates for agents recruiting international students to the UK?

Make a Freedom of Information Act request.  Anyone can do this.  If you are concerned about possible charges, state that you would like to be given an estimate of any charges that would be incurred prior to them doing the work (photocopying, etc.).


How to ask a professor to introduce other professors to me when he mentions that he has no funding?

Don't ask the professor for contacts to other professors where you could apply - there's a risk that he will perceive it as annoying, and in principle it is work that you could easily do on your own.

Instead, you could add something like the following to your response:

  Please feel free to forward my documents to any colleagues who could be interested in working with me.

This will put the professor more in a mindset of helping some colleagues to find a (hopefully) good student, which he might be more willing to consider instead of helping a random applicant to find another job opportunity.


What should I focus on when asking for conference travel support?

Its better to be honest and upfront. If not for ethical reasons, then for logical reasons that networks collide and you don't want to be found guilty of a few hundreds/thousands of dollars - which in the long run would be not much.

I was in a similar situation. I sent something similar to what you wrote and the folks replied back and gave me the funding from my new location. The other way to do this would be showing your affiliation as that of the "/". This is a technical fix - since that should get you the benefits of both locations. I prefer this because I am honest about where the work was done, and where I am today.

Hope this helps!


Does the bad (broad) master's thesis title have significant impact on graduate admissions?

I'm not sure that having a broad title is likely to be particularly problematic. A title is just a title, and those reading your application are more likely to be interest in your ability to think critically and conduct research. Figuring out a title is a very small part of research.

If you are concerned that reading your title alone may not convey aspects of the content which are relevant for your application, then you may want to consider including a sentence or two in your CV which briefly describes what the thesis was about. This is not unlike listing duties responsible for under a job, or courses taken under a degree programme (both of which people occasionally do in a CV).

Alternatively, if you are required to include a cover letter or supporting statement then this might be the ideal opportunity to describe what your thesis contains rather than just what it was called.


Is it better to have just two good letters of recommendation, or two good letters and one bad letter, if three are expected?

Is it better to have 2 good letters or recommendation or 2 good and 1 bad letter?

Definitely, it's better to have two good letters.  A bad letter is a very, very bad thing.

They're not counting -- they're reading for understanding.


Payment for publication after graduation

Who should pay for the publication? In most cases, the money comes from the research project, or main research institution, i.e. in most cases the funds should be appropriated by the team leader or research supervisor. This typically means that the senior author is responsible for paying the article publishing fee.

If the research project was a collaborative effort with no specific funding, another option is indeed to ask all collaborating institutions (not individuals) to share the cost. This would include all institutions, not individuals, and probably only staff members — grad students or post-docs typically do not have their own independent funding.

This should have been clarified before the paper was submitted to publication. This is the best practice whenever submitting a paper to a journal that requires paiement (e.g., gold open access venue), to avoid surprises and disappointment from all collaborators.

In no case should you use you own personal money to pay for this publication! This is a professional cost, and it should be paid from institutional funds.


Proper resignation date based on relocation date for spouse

I'll need to deal with the inevitable peer negativity and rumor mill that'll spring up.

You must work in a really bitchy department if you get peer negativity and rumors just for wanting to pursue an alternative career path.  In a well-functioning department, we wish departing staff all the best, and thank them for their service.  In any case,  whether or not you work in a department that is actually that bad, I can't imagine it will be any better if you leave more suddenly, with less notice of your departure.  The longer you leave it, the less time people will have to fill your duties, and the more inconvenience to them.  I'm sure your department head and close colleagues would appreciate as much notice as possible of your departure, and if you want this to remain confidential until you have some "official notice" of leaving, you can always ask them to delay telling the rest of your department.

Academics leave university departments all the time, and in this kind of circumstance, I would not expect any negativity to be directed towards the person leaving, particularly if they have given a substantial amount of notice.  If your notice of departure genuinely causes peer negativity and adverse rumours, that would reflect badly on the department, and it would just confirm what a good decision it is for you to leave.  If you are sure about leaving, my advice would be to give as much notice as possible --- i.e., let your department head know ASAP.


Is there any online server to upload recommendation letters and share the link with the universities

In mathematics there is, and it is used by most research-oriented departments for hiring: MathJobs. Hiring departments pay (i.e., not candidates) and candidates indeed cannot view the recommendation letters.

It is extremely efficient, and in my opinion this system deserves to be more widely imitated. Note however that this is used at the option of the hiring department, and not the job candidate. So in particular you can't use this system, except for positions advertised via this site.

In your situation you might be able to use Interfolio, but I'd check with prospective employers (or your advisor) before using this.


The goal of research is to advance the state of human knowledge.  The goal of development is to create a new capability that did not previously exist.

Sometimes, these goals are separate.  For example, one might acquire knowledge by studying outcomes from a medical intervention without needing to develop anything new.  Likewise, one may do development that provides new capabilities but doesn't particularly add to the state of human knowledge (e.g., making phone app versions of existing software or web sites).

Often, however, as in the case of your own research, the goals are inextricably intertwined: the capability comes from the synthesis of recent developments in knowledge, and will in turn produce new knowledge ("Yes, this is better positioned for adoption").  If you're doing it right, there will tend to be a lot of feedback between the two sides in the process, and thus the idea of does research come "before" or "after" development doesn't make much sense.

Rather, when you are putting together research proposals, I would suggest that you focus on the following questions:

What will be possible when you have finished the project, which is not possible now?
How will you be able to measure that you have succeeded?

The first is the development aspect, the second the research aspect (which is inextricably tied to the development).


Does a long period in an MSc program look bad on a CV?

The gap year isn't a big deal, but taking so much longer than normal to graduate does look bad.  You should try to address it in your statement of purpose.

Of course, after you get a PhD nobody will notice or care how long it took to get your MSc.


What is the most effective and efficient method of searching multiple journals for multiple keywords?

In case the journals are indexed by PubMed ( biomedical literature) and you're not afraid to do a bit of programming, you might want to explore the tools proposed here. You can even download the full Medline database (see here) and search through it locally, in case that's more convenient.


Should an editor ask his own graduate (PhD) students to review papers in his journal?

I think jakebeal's answer is too restrictive. When I was a senior graduate student, and my PhD supervisor was a journal editor, he would occasionally ask me to do a review for his journal where it was clearly related to my work. It was clear that by this time in my graduate program that he considered me an independent researcher and thus eligible to review for his journal. His ethics and judgement on such matters were beyond question.

Just as she does when she accepts an article for publication, an editor has to make a judgement call when soliciting reviewers. Some graduate students are clearly capable of making independent evaluations of the work of others and can do so without compromising the peer review process. We wouldn't give PhDs to students if they weren't ready for that responsibility (among other things), and most graduate students are ready for it well before they actually finish writing and do their defense. All such students are eligible in my mind to do peer review.

Edited to add: It's been awhile, but I'm pretty sure I was asked to do my first journal article peer review not by my PhD supervisor, but by the first journal I submitted an article to as first author (while I was a student). I don't think my full credentials were known to the editor of that journal, but even if they were, the editor clearly thought the first author of an article was a sufficient peer to ask me to do reviewing for their journal. It's very common in my experience to be immediately asked to do a review by a journal editor upon submission of an article.


What systems are most effective for monitoring student attendance?

My institution does not monitor student attendance. That is my job. However, we have adopted Blackboard as our Course-Management System of choice across campus, and the student roster in Blackboard is updated every day by the Registrar's Office. We additionally have access to up-to-date course rosters through our implementation of the PeopleSoft productivity software. Presumably, the Registrar's office at your institution keeps up-to-date rosters and should be willing to share them with instructors. Otherwise, what's the point of having them?

There are two methods I use to enforce / verify attendance in a large lecture course, and both require comparison of my data with the roster in Blackboard or PeopleSoft. I could write a short program to sort through both files for matches, but I would rather do it manually to help me remember students' names.

Quizzes - I give short (and simple) quizzes randomly, but at least once a week. Fully half of the points on the quizzes are for showing up and putting your name on the quiz. For this reason, quizzes cannot be made up for any reason, but I will drop three or four of the lowest quiz grades. Since the quizzes aren't hard and the quiz average counts for at least 10% of their final grade, students want to be there for the quiz. I like this method because it allows me to do random point assessments of different topics and to start associating student names with performance. The grading is not unbearable, since i write quizzes that are simple enough to be graded at a rate of 10 seconds per student.
Clickers - If you use clickers, make each student buy their own clicker (About $40 US these days). At the beginning of class, they have to register their clicker with your software, which records the clicker's ID number. If you have a list matching clicker IDs to student names, then you take attendance every day automatically. It is easy to cheat this system, since a student can also bring their friend's clicker and sign-in for their friend also.

If you want to ensure attendance, I would use JeffE's approach:

  Isn't the most effective way to ensure attendance is to make the lectures compelling and useful?


How to encourage a math teacher to present material in a more accessible way?

The ideal would be if students in the class could support each other.  In the example you described, after student A asks about the application of a power series, and the teacher makes the unpleasant face, it could be helpful if student B said, "I'm wondering about that too."

Consider that the teacher might make a face because he's embarrassed that he didn't explain things more clearly.  Who knows!

You may want to let the department leader know how things are going, and request that s/he sit in on the class, to form a direct opinion.

Consider also that sometimes people with poor social skills excel in their field, and display an astonishing ability to alienate or offend people.

In short, don't take it as a measure of your own abilities.  Just let it wash off like water off a duck's back.  Make sure you ask one or more questions each week.  By asking questions, you'll get more comfortable asking questions, and the teacher will get more used to people asking questions.

If you don't understand something, do check what your textbook has to say; but also, you may ask, for example:

I'm not clear about (topic).
Could you explain where such-and-so comes from, in a different way?  OR: Is there a way of looking at this that would help it feel less abstract? etc.


What to do when expecting a negative recommendation letter?

A bad review from your present advisor will probably hurt you significantly. However, I think you will do more damage if you try to discredit your advisor's reference ahead of time: you risk sounding like a poor employee, particularly if your advisor is respected in your field.

Instead, I would prepare evidence to counter a possible negative recommendation. If you expect your advisor may critique your productivity, emphasize work you have completed in your interview. Unfortunately, if you have failed to publish your work in your current position, that may be difficult to prove, and the responsibility for that is not only on your advisor but on you as well.

If you anticipate critiques of your work ethic, how well you play with others, etc, and your other reference has not yet submitted a letter, you could ask them to specifically highlight those qualities. If they already submitted a letter, hopefully they already addressed these issues.

I would be careful about how you describe your relationship with your current advisor in the interview: keep the high ground, and don't make judgments of value. If you produced one good publication where your current advisor expected two, don't say "Bob had ridiculous expectations for my productivity" - instead, try something closer to "I worked on two projects with Bob - we were able to publish project 1 after ___ months but ran into setbacks on project 2."


Organizing committee of conference announced publication of papers, but one year later, this hasn't happened. What to do?

An email to the conference or program chair would certainly be appropriate. You don't need any format for it. Just say you are wondering if the book is still in progress and when it might be expected.
As Solar Mike implies in a comment, the coronavirus might have disrupted this, like many other things. But it can also take a while to produce a physical book, especially for conference proceedings when not done by the association itself. The publisher has higher priorities, most likely.
I know of one conference where the papers from one annual meeting are only available at the next. The publisher is a university press.


Do US Universities commonly offer admission without funding?

Tough to predict how it will be handled with certainty. You could list the scholarship but then say in your SoP something along these lines: "I've earned in fact (a prestigious?) scholarship from my home government which would allow me to... however it comes with a requirement  that... which frankly I'd prefer not to commit to. Thus I would much rather be admitted with financial support from the university, in which case I would turn down the government scholarship."

For highly ranked research universities, I'd say it is not common for Ph.D. students to be self-funded. That said, if they can grab a strong student who is self-funded, what's not to like? :)


Where can I publish the proceedings articles of a small conference?

We ended up publishing the proceedings through ResearchGate, using this procedure:

The authors send their submissions to the proceedings editor for approval.
The authors upload their approved submissions to ResearchGate, following a guide provided by the editor to ensure that the metainformation is consistently registered.
The editor uploads a proceedings index to ResearchGate, which gives an overview of and links to the proceedings submissions.

This ResearchGate procedure has some advantages:

Fairly straightforward, both for editor and authors
Good searchability: The proceedings submissions are automatically indexed by Google Scholar
Good visibility: ResearchGate helps by suggesting the proceedings submissions to other relevant researchers

It also has some disadvantages:

Unlike the arXiv procedure, the individual proceedings submissions do not link back to the index.
The authors are required to register ResearchGate account and do the work of uploading their own submissions. (Unlike arXiv, ResearchGate never allows uploading by third parties such as a proceedings editor.)

All in all, this approach was quite successful and we are fairly happy with it. I imagine we will use it again next year. Of course, however, this is not the only possible approach, and I would still be interested in other suggestions!


There are many different takes. “Accepting” a job offer is pretty much that: if you tell the person who offered you (your HR contact, the hiring committee, any person of authority in the hiring process) that you accept their offer, that you take the job.

Does it mean there's not turning back? Of course not! The question then becomes: how binding is that agreement? And again, there are answers on many different levels: legal, moral, diplomatic…

Legal: as always, better ask a lawyer, union representative or knowledgeable and trusted friend. Everything depends on the local law, the type of offer made, what you said and/or wrote, etc. It may sound logical that nothing's set in stone until you have signed a contract, but that may not always be the case. Some institutions might, for example, require you to write and sign a binding letter of engagement before the contract is drafted (which, as you said, can take time). In some jurisdiction, the simple fact of showing up for work on the first day of the contract is a binding, implicit contract following the terms of your offer. (Though I would say it should be obvious to all that actually coming to work is pretty binding.)
Moral: that's the most variable of all. Turning down an offer you had accepted orally, because you now have a better offer from some other place, is not wrong in itself. The important thing is: being of good faith, and being diligent to inform them that you have changed your mind. If it turns out that you have accepted the offer, knowing all the while you would end up turning it down, that would be unexcusable.
Diplomatic: people understand the position you're in, as they have most probably been through it themselves some year back. So, they will be sympathetic, as long as they feel you are of good faith, diligent and show acceptable contrition (not sure that's the right term for what I'm trying to describe… let's say you look/sound apologetic enough). Otherwise, well, you risk make enemies and that may not be the best thing to do early in your career.

The fact is: the game is played by both sides. Hiring committees don't dismiss all other candidates immediately when they offer you a position, and they know that Stuff Happens. In a competitive environment such as academia, they surely have a plan B (and probably C and D).

Finally: if that's a tenured or tenure-track position, you'll probably stay very long (life?) there. It's an important choice, and thus you shouldn't find yourself bound by promises made too fast, or you may come to regret it.


How should I break-up with a second author?

Has he offered a timeline when he might be able to do his part? Have you had any communication regarding this? If not, you should reach out in advance and offer your timeline, giving him a reasonable timeframe to complete his work.

If you've had such communication before, and he hasn't been able to stick to agreed upon dates, I think you should talk to your advisor and explain the situation. Then, you could write a very polite email to him, including your advisor and any other stakeholders, explaining that you need to submit this work soon. At this point you could ask him if he still has time and would be able to complete his section, say within one month. Mention that you understand he is busy and has multiple priorities to juggle, and that if there isn't time, you'd just like to concentrate on your part and submit it. If, at a later stage, you both have time, you'll be willing to work together if he'd like to submit the theoretical section separately, with him as the first author.

I think this will sound pretty reasonable and you'll be able to publish without antagonizing or destroying working relationships with anyone.


How can I obtain the necessary quantitative knowledge for admission to a masters in business analytics?

It really depends what kind of analytics masters program you're looking at.

For quantitative finance, you'll need a solid background of probability theory. It'll also be essential that you know the basics: i.e., calculus (single and multivariable), linear algebra and a decent amount of measure theory.

Good luck!


How to approach a research group for potential PhD advisorship

Time to get started reading!  Look at the group members' bios and descriptions of research interests, and pick a few that intrigue you.  Then write to one, wait a couple days, write to another, and so on.


Is doing research alone and publishing solo frowned upon by colleagues and superiors in engineering sciences?

I think there is no universal answer. There are fields of pure mathematics where single author papers are quite frequent (the majority?) while there are other areas of the sciences (e.g., the biomedical field) that are so broad that nobody has the requisite knowledge and time to do everything themselves.

So it depends on the field you're in. But beyond that, every field has single-author papers, and a single paper isn't going to make others put you in a box: it is, after all, just a single paper. People will turn out to be surprised if you have been in a field (any field!) for ten years, written 30 papers, and 25 of those are single-authored. For a single paper, there really is no rule to go by: If you have a good idea that you've entirely developed yourself, go write it up and get it published!


'Introduction to Subject X' & Guide books : How do they influence the academic reputation?

How do these affect your academic reputation? Or are they primarily making them money? I don't quite understand, because many of these books are really quite basic and expository in nature.

This question seems to be based on a false premise, namely that the two primary reasons for writing a book are developing a scholarly reputation or making money.

One common reason to write an introductory text is dissatisfaction with the available options.  If you write your own textbook, it will be a perfect fit for how you feel the course should be taught, and you can address any deficiencies you see in competing books.  If nobody else seems likely to write the book you have in mind, then writing it yourself may be preferable to repeatedly using books you dislike.

More generally, many books are written as a service to the community.  Depending on how cynical you are, this could be viewed as noble (taking on a poorly paid and not particularly well respected job for the benefit of the world's students) or self-important (believing that you have unique and valuable insights on topics that hundreds of teachers with equal or greater experience have thoroughly addressed).


Mathematics Ph.D program foreign language requirement

While it may be true that, if one had to pick a single language in which to read mathematics, English would currently be the best choice, ... it is certainly not the case (as many people do claim) that these days there's an English version of anything worthwhile. True, it is possible to "get by" reading only English, but there are little problems now and then.

In particular, for mathematics, perhaps unlike computer science, things don't really become "wrong" or obsolete (although they certainly can become less stylish), and until about WWII the cutting-edge writing in mathematics was mostly in French and German. (Depending on the epoch, Russians often wrote in French or German, as did Japanese in those times. English was not the lingua franca... :)

So, for people in mathematics of roughly my age, it was necessary to have some reading knowledge of French and German to be professionally competent in those years. And many of the classics of those times have not been supplanted by English-language versions, and are still relevant at least as subtle background to contemporary work.

Also, though I don't make a hobby of tracking this, it is my impression that many French mathematicians in number theory and automorphic forms and representation theory certainly do write in French, and at a level and substance that is not at all automagically transferred to English-language writing. And many pieces in Seminaire Bourbaki, a wonderful resource, continue to be in French.


While I'm sure its possible I haven't been able to find any examples of funding an entire PhD. However, there are quite a few examples of people crowd funding smaller individual research projects. I think there are two main reasons for this cost and accessibility.

Cost

It is really quite expensive to fund an entire PhD. If we look at the costs of a PhD (in the UK) we get.

University fees: ~£4000 per year (~£15000 for non-EU students)
Living expenses/stipend: ~£12000 per year
Conferences/equipment/other stuff: ~£2-3000 per year +
approx £20000 per year for 3-4 years = ~£60000 (>$100,000)

Compare this to the average successful crowdfunding amount of $7000 and you'll see why it'll be hard to raise that sort of money and would require a very strong marketing campaign. Which brings us nicely onto

Accessibility

One of the things a successful crowd funding project needs is a good sales pitch. You need to have a very clear goal that will excite lots of people to fund you. Not many PhD projects I know could possibly fall into this category.

For conventional crowd funding you also need to give something back to supporters to make it worth their while. While I suspect this would be less true for crowd funded research there are many people who might like to support you but cannot/will not without the prospect of some tangible return.

What seems to be more common is to fund smaller individual projects for ~$10-20000. For example http://blog.gogetfunding.com/crowdfunding-statistics-and-trends-infographic/ although there are some bigger and smaller examples in this article http://www.onlinephdprograms.com/dollars-for-doctors-a-guide-to-crowdfunding-academic-research/


Your time is yours to control. If someone just wants to meet to learn about your field, it's polite etiquette to give them a brief meeting and let them learn... it is a learning environment, after all. It sounds like your situation has progressed well beyond that. I would simply tell the student that due to your own time constraints you cannot continue meeting with him. Consider redirecting him to the department chair/administrators, where he can ask about the process for joining a lab.

For what it's worth, if it's really beyond academic interest and he's just a stalker, that changes things a bit. Definitely work with whatever resources  your university makes available to figure out how to deal with a stalker.


This question looks a little bit opinion based, so it may actually be forbidden to ask it here, but I try my best..

I would advise you to really think again about your assumption "'I'd win' for sure". I don't know your situation, but I cannot believe it's so sure due to many reasons:

Often, if it is too late, new courses can not be added even if there was some mistake before. This is due to many reasons: room booking systems, maximal amount of hours professors want/are allowed to teach, administrative reasons, reasons related to budget etc.
Why should a new course be added if only you want to take it? If others want to take it too, why did it not have been added?
The statement "I'll be an unhappy student" comes across a whining even if it's true and is probably not convincing.
This chair seems to have a lot of influence and, if you are correct, acts in bad spirit against you. How do you know she/he will not continue to tell their version of the story to the Vice President? Normally, the voice of a student will not be heard in academia.
The whole issue sounds to irrelevant for a Vice President to take on.

From your story, I do understand that you are in a small college (this chair knows you so well that they even act against you) and the chair would be willing to act against you and your sister. From this viewpoint, I would advise you against doing something.

Sadly, in my experience, professors often get away with bad behaviour and students are often not considered. (This may be different in other places.)

Try to get happy with the other courses and study your subject on your own. Good luck!


Is it a FERPA violation for instructor to display grades in public computer file system?

FERPA prohibits public posting of grades together with students' names or social security numbers (including last 4 digits of SSN).  (This prohibition includes, but is not limited to, posting grades where other students in the class can see one another's grades.)

(FERPA's treatment of student IDs depends on whether they are treated as personally identifiable information - in which case student IDs can not be disclosed in a way that allows student IDs to be matched to individual students - or whether they are treated as electronic identifiers, in which case they can be disclosed as "directory information" but may not be used to post grades. See this document for further details.)

In general, FERPA allows schools to put educational records in the "cloud", but places certain restrictions on how these records must be protected. Some "enterprise" or "education" versions of cloud services are FERPA-compliant (or can be made FERPA-compliant through special arrangement with the provider), and can be used to store educational records. A few "consumer"-grade cloud services are also FERPA compliant. Personal Dropbox accounts (not including Dropbox Business) are not, and should not be used to store FERPA-protected records, even as private Dropbox files that require authentication to view. See e.g. guidelines at UC Davis, University of Michigan, University of Oregon, University of Utah.


Having done this, I'd advise:

Take it really seriously. In places where candidates are judged equally on teaching and research, the model lesson could really make the difference. Strong researchers may neglect it, relying on their publication/citation record.
Make sure you prepare for the expected audience (in my case, 1st year students), not the actual audience (academics).
Feel free to use techniques you would use in a classroom, but then use "time jumps" to indicate that the activity has taken place. The problem with this is that if you have follow up questions, there may be no answers and the lecture may fall flat.
Don't forget "learning objectives" and "lecture structure" up front, and other guidelines for students throughout (though you probably can only show one such thing).
Practice more than you would practice for an actual lecture.
No corny jokes. If you cannot tell whether a joke is corny, then assume it is. In fact, beware of jokes. Relying on natural humour is probably better.


Are there universities/institutions which offers free (or almost) recognized degrees through online coursework?

As someone who has delivered both free and paid-for online university courses over the past ten years, with a reasonable grasp of the market in the English-speaking world, I'm fairly sure the answer is no.

At the moment the free short courses have a very different business model to a full degree offering - they either (i) rely on huge volumes with (optional) payment for certification or (ii) are essentially marketing tools, working as "tasters" for the real deal. It's hard to see how to run a full degree (with the necessary staffing, accreditation etc) for free. You might wait a long time to find one!

Alternatively, travel to Europe where real on-ground courses are cheap in many countries even for non-Europeans. If you enrol this year in Finland, the Finnish government is happy to cover your fees, but act quick, as fees come in in 2017!


Teaching Citation: Are there any Journals which Fully Apply APA, MLA or Chicago Citation Rules

I believe all the journals published by the APA request strict adherence to the APA style manual. Similiary, PMLA, one of the two journals published by the MLA, asks for submissions in MLA style. University of Chicago Press publishes a lot of journals, but the first one I found asks for submissions in Chicago Style.

My experience with APA journals is that they allow for fair amount of flexibility in the submission format. I doubt any journal will reject submissions that use italics instead of bold or a comma instead of a period. They will likely fix these issues during copy editing,

As for the comments on the questions that just use Endnote or BibTeX/Biblatex to handle it, the problem is that most of these style guides are not designed to be programmatically implemented. It took a lot of work to get biblatex to fully implement APA 6 and there is no BibTeX version that is fully compatible.


My paper is in R&R but I have concerns about the data quality. What should I do?

Talk to your co-author(s) openly about your concerns and ask for clarifications.
If such a direct confrontation seems uncomfortable to you, ask them to make the data openly available for anyone to replicate, e.g. at Zenodo, by referring to your university's internal regulations (I am sure there are guidelines about research transparency at your university). This should pressure them to ensure that the data are sound.
In addition, insist on making each co-author's contribution transparent in the form of CRediT (Contributor Roles Taxonomy). With this taxonomy, it will be public that you were not the one who handled the dataset, in case doubts should arise.


How to learn how to pronounce and remember names of Chinese students?

First of all, I would like to sincerely thank you for your consideration on behalf of all Chinese (I am a Chinese myself).
Now, to answer your questions. One of the best ways to pronounce the individual Chinese names correctly is to ask them - those Chinese students. They would be glad to tell you.
In its nature, Chinese is hard for English speaking people to pronounce. This site is not the right place to discuss the details. There is a better Stack Exchange site.
There are many Chinese dialects. Mandarin Chinese is the most common one. I just did a search, this site seems to be a good place to use. I tried some of the audio sound clips and they sound fine.
Again, asking them is the best way. My Chinese last name is Hu. The correct pronunciation is like "who". Many non-Chinese speaking people pronounce it wrong. I already got used to it but I am always happy to tell them the right way when they ask me. So, thank you again for asking.
Your second question is how to recall Chinese names. This is even harder for a non-Chinese speaking person. My suggestion is to ask individuals what names they go by. If they have English names, would they prefer you call their English names?! I believe most of them would say yes. If they insist on you calling them by their Chinese names, I am afraid the only way is to ask their names every time you meet them. I am not sure they would like it but if that's what they want, that's the way they get.


Getting accepted to a funded PhD in the UK with low MSc grades

Short Answer: Yes you can, however it might take longer time to find a place.

Longer Answer

In the UK, as long as you find a supervisor that is fine with you being at his/her research group, the university does not interrupt the flow of the supervisor get you as a PhD student.

Tricky Parts: Now you need to find a supervisor that find you suitable, please consider the following:

What are your strongest abilities? If you failed in a subject about software architecture for example, finding a supervisor in this area is waste of time; as you can not demonstrate that you will be a good candidate for that. See in what subjects you got a good mark, or even excellent mark; go and talk to the corresponding supervisor. See if he/she knows someone so you can apply for a place.

Supervisor First Then Funding: Based on your question, I'm assuming you are a European national. In this case, there is more likely for you to get a some European-based funding compare to Asian students for example. So, first focus on finding a supervisor, and then talk to him/her about funding; I'm sure seasoned professor, knows how to help you to apply for a funding.

Possibilities In Smaller Towns: You could also try to find a good university in smaller towns, where the price of living is much less than big cities. Also, because the demand is lower compare to big cities, they might have a funding for you.


How to tell a hiring committee that my family lives in the city

"I am particularly excited about this position for both personal and professional reasons. Most of my family lives in [city] and I would be thrilled to live there."

That'll do.

And this may indeed matter - from being on recruitment committees in several places that have trouble getting people to move there, signs of interest in the area are helpful.


Filling in gaps in lecturer's instruction

Remember that this is a postgraduate degree. The lecturers aren't there to serve it to you on a plate. You are a grown-up now, you're doing a higher degree. That means you should be expecting to do most of the work for yourselves, and to think for yourselves.

As there's an online course discussion forum, that seems like the perfect place to work with other students to fill out the richer tapestry of knowledge that the lecture was on; post something there about useful key terms to find relevant literature, along the lines of the following:

  I found these papers (give linked DOI or other robust form of link) on the Dunning-Kruger effect. My search terms to find them were: "cognitive bias", "self-assessment". I looked in these databases / used these search engines.

Fill in gaps. Don't try to look smarter than the lecturer. It's not at all likeable, and you're only risking looking foolish later.

So if the lecturer talked about solving a particular problem by applying X, and you've found examples of people doing it by applying Y, say just that. If you can link to a paper that compares X and Y, even better.

Please do bear in mind that the presence or absence of expressions of uncertainty ("I think that ...", "I don't believe that") do indeed often mark the difference between expertise and weak knowledge. But in the opposite way round to the direction you might think. Presence of expressions of uncertainty often indicate deeper knowledge and expertise. The person who says to fellow academics "I am sure that ...", "I know for a fact that ...", "No one in the world tries to tackle it this way ..." is often, in doing so, flagging up their own lack of expertise.

And yes, all lecturers are mortal, and not every statement they make will be accurate. And that's alright. A degree is an exercise in learning to think, at least as much as in acquiring knowledge. Develop your critical thinking on all materials provided to you, whether they are written, spoken or however they're delivered.


Working in industry before pursuing a PhD in a different field

This answer may be valid only in the US.
The industry experience certainly won't be a plus, but as a minus it would probably be minimal. Can't predict precisely since every admissions committee is different and is composed of individuals.
But changing fields after a BS is pretty common here as is going back for a doctorate from the "working world".
But, it will be essential, I think, that  you maintain contact with your current professors over that span so that they don't forget you and the (obviously) wonderful things you did as a student. You will still want good letters of recommendation from academics to pursue a doctorate. I think the supervisor of any physics research would be especially valuable to keep as a contact.
You could also, perhaps, take a graduate course or two as a "non-matriculated" student, which is permitted in some places. Or even some undergraduate physics courses that might be missing from your background.
But generally, look to what you will need to present in an application and work to assure that such things will still be available and valid.
And, the shorter the delay, the better.


How important is AACSB accreditation for further study after an MBA?

The best way to find out how important AACSB accreditation is is to ask some PhD in Business Administration programs. I doubt it is a hard and fast rule since most PhD programs do not need to maintain professional accreditation. I would be more worried about DBA programs since they may need to maintain AACSB accreditation.


Finding area of research and people that offer PhD's in this area

If you read random papers on arXiv without having research experience or knowing how to choose, your chance to find something that awakens your interest is very little. Normally, this problem is solved by doing some research during your Master's program. You say that there are very few research opportunities for students at your university, so become active and try to get one of those few. Depending on your study program, there might also be the possibility to do a research internship for credit at a company or research center.

Even if you do not manage to find one, there should (hopefully) be a Master's Thesis at the end of the program. That should include enough research.

At Master's level, you will do research under a supervisor that will point you to literature and guide you on how to find more. You will get a feeling of whether you actually like research, and whether you want to spend 3-5 years doing it as a doctoral candidate. You should also hopefully get a feeling of which topics you like to work on.

I am actually quite surprised at the comments from your professors: I have never heard anything along the lines of "you just kinda slip into a PhD program", and this does not look like the kind of advice a senior academic should be giving to a student. They are probably right when they say that planning two years ahead is too early, especially if you have no experience with research.


How to request to be co-corresponding author

While I don't really understand the value of this to you, not being in your immediate culture, the solution is clear as it is in most similar situations.

If you want something, just ask for it. Give her your reasons why it is important to you and why you need this at this time. If you ask it as a favor and not as a demand you might be more likely to prevail.

You may not be successful, but nothing you do can guarantee success. Asking keeps it collegial and preserves your relationship for the future.

Yes, you contributed, but so did she, I assume. In most places corresponding author is just a task, not an honor.

I'll suggest that whatever happens in the handling of a single publication it is unlikely to have much of an effect on your career. Working for long-term relationships is, to me, much more important than any check mark on a box or minor point on a CV.


Is it common for people in academia to experience prolonged lack of sleep and how to deal with it?

There are three basic approaches to handling this:

Paul Erdos' approach.  Pros: it worked for Erdos, after a fashion.  Cons: you are not Erdos.
Crack, maybe have a psychotic episode, and leave academia.  Pros: it's the easiest course, and the one you're on now.  Cons: everything else about it.
Recognize that your career is not a sprint, but a marathon, and start triaging less important work in favor of sleep.  Working sleep-deprived is exactly as smart as working drunk, so you are already cutting your productivity, just in an uncontrolled manner.  Pros: Survival, possibly having a career.  Cons: you will have to say "no" to people.

The truth is, in academia there is an endless amount of work that you could be doing: you will never be done.  The only choice you get to make is whether you will choose the things that you do not do, or whether you will make self-destructive choices that mean those choices get made for you arbitrarily by the fracture points of your body and mind.


How to cite where names are not of [firstName lastName] form, in particular patronymic?

Interesting question. The best thing would certainly be to consult the journal's style manual or, if this does not yield an answer (as is likely), to ask the editor. Their response is conclusive. Having said that, the issue seems to be very complex. There are no hard and fast rules. I quote from the "Referencing Manual For IAIS students" (Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exter):

  Some names are made up of fifteen or even twenty words, and it can be
  baffling at first glance to determine how to put the various elements
  in the right order. […] Any one of these elements can become the 'urf'
  (customary name).

  […]

  Once you have established the ‘urf, it is customary to follow this by
  the author’s given name (ism) and the name of his father (nasab)
  joined by the word ibn (son of – also written bin) or bint (daughter
  of) in the case of a woman.

  […]

  Surnames are a relatively recent phenomenon across the Islamic world
  and modern Arabic names only came into existence towards the end of
  the 19th century. It is now accepted practice, particularly in the
  West, to treat the final element of a person’s name as a surname and
  the first as a forename, so it is now correct to cite Taha Ḥusayn as
  Ḥusayn, Taha, although you will find Taha Husayn in older books and
  catalogues. The Western obsession with the surname can lead to some
  strange coinages, for example Saddam Hussein’s full name is Ṣaddām
  ibn Ḥusayn al-Tikrītī, yet it is now standard to cite him by his
  father’s given name (Ḥusayn) as a surname. (Most second forenames
  indicate the father’s name, which is why names such as Aḥmad can be
  found as the second element in women’s forenames). Similarly, the form
  of given name `Abd (slave/servant of), followed by one of the
  ninety-nine names of God, should never be split from the element which
  follows it, although most Westerners still cite Jamāl ‘Abd al-Nāṣir
  (wrongly) as Nasser.

The referencing manual suggests to use the following established bibliographic resources to find the 'urf (customary name):

the bibliography of a scholarly book (however, different sources will quote the same Arabic name in different ways)
the Exeter University Library catalogue, which uses the best-known name in the Library of Congress transliteration
the Encyclopaedia of Islam
the Library of Congress Authority List

In all of these cases, problems with transliteration may render it difficult to look up the proper name.

The University of Malaya's APA Formatting and Style Guide is another useful resource.


What procedures should I follow if my preprint is stolen and published in a journal?

I believe the first thing you need to do is to contact and email the editor in chief of that journal and give him/her a link to your arxiv paper.

He/She a long with the editorial board have to retract the article (hopefully, with a big red X stating that the authors have plagiarised citing your arxiv work).


PhD applications: ethics of not informing other universities after accepting an offer

I think you should withdraw your applications from B and C.

By keeping your application active, not only are you wasting the committee's time, you are potentially hurting other students.  Most graduate programs can only accept a certain number of students per year, but there may be many more applicants who would still be well qualified and able to succeed.  If the committee accepts your application, that means they are denying admission to someone else who might be equally deserving.  If you withdraw now, you open that space for someone else.


I don't think there's anything too unseemly going on here, unless the cited paper that also lists the other papers does not actually produce the results that follow "Recent studies show." In that case, there's a problem.

Otherwise, however, you do have to give some deference to the fact that there are only so many papers out there on a given topic.


Should I call my adviser by her first name?

Excuse me, do you prefer me to call you Dr Smith or Ellen?

A polite question will solve all your doubts.


Are UK faculty salaries in computer science low compared to salaries in United States?

You are trying to compare a US salary to a UK salary using the current exchange rate. I do not think this is particularly relevant. Even if you are willing to ignore differences between the UK and US in terms of work/life balance, teaching load, and job security, you probably want to compare the quality of life that a salary buys you and not what would happen if you converted it to USD. The starting salary for a CS lecturer/assistant professor, when converted to USD, is much lower for a UK academic than a US academic, but there are differences between the value of a US and UK salary.

While you say the UK tax rate is higher, that is a huge over simplification. Two random online tax calculators I used gave a US income tax of 24% on an 80,000 USD salary and a UK income tax of 25% on a 42,000 GBP salary. This ignores US state (and possibly city) income tax. The UK VAT of 20% is much higher than typical US sales taxes, but not everything is subject to VAT/sales tax. Even if you can accurately calculate an average total tax liability, you still need to account for purchasing power.

I have work in both the US and UK in comparable cites (not NYC/London) and tend to think that the value of my UK salary is a little lower than value of my US salary. It is worth noting that UK salaries are much more consistent across fields. This means that I make the same as a CS lecturer in the UK, but that in the US I would probably be making 10% less than a CS assistant professor. My guess is that for CS there is a substantial, maybe 15%, hit in quality of life that an academic salary buys.

In the US your starting salary is often your salary until you get tenure/promotion while in the UK you get a larger salary every year. There is a performance based pay raise, that essentially everyone gets, which is generally about 2.5%. This means the gap between the US and UK values gets smaller every year and after 6 years, when one is preparing to be promoted, the gap is pretty small. Further, UK salaries also have a cost of living adjustment. For the past few years this has been about 0.5-2% and less than the inflation, but it wouldn't surprise me if the union negotiates a big salary bump, maybe 10%, in the next few years. This would really close the gap.

It is also worth noting that a US assistant professor is not directly equivalent to a UK lecturer. I think a US assistant professor is often a few years ahead in terms of productivity and experience.


No, you will have to take the classes.  There will always be exceptions but one reason for this is that most Math/Physics PhD programs have a qualifying exam.  If you are not familiar with this, it is an exam that everyone takes after the first (sometimes second) year when everyone has finished the required classes.  It is used to measure whether or not the student has the theoretical foundation to then move onto research.  Failing the qualifier may mean being forced out, though you can usually at least get a MS if this happens.


Corresponding author published article without sending final proof to all authors, corrigendum

Many journals will still deal with the corresponding author for an erratum, and may not publish the erratum without trying to reach the corresponding author.  Plus, it is not a good idea to bypass collaborators and publish errata without the knowledge of all the authors as this could lead to inaccuracies in CVs.

The "easiest" way to deal with situations like this is to include in the follow up article a statement (where appropriate) of the type "where we take the opportunity to correct a misprint in Ref.1" or something along that line.

Also, if the article has been uploaded on a preprint server (such as arXiv) where updates are allowed, you can upload an updated corrected version.


My PhD defense is next week. I feel that I have not done enough work to justify my time spent on the thesis. What can I do about this?

With hindsight most PhD theses could have been done a lot quicker, but we typically don't start with hindsight. Moreover, you are supposed to learn while doing your PhD thesis. So again, someone with the experience learned from doing a PhD might have avoided some of the futile work (but see my first point), but that is not a fair comparison. So the first thing you need to ask yourself is: are you fair towards yourself.


How To List Other Academics' Conference Papers Discussing My Artwork?

Looking at some example guidelines on fine arts resumes, it seems that one's "publications" or "bibliography" is handled quite differently than in the STEM world, being a collection of things written about you rather than things that you have written.

As such, the particular venue of publication should not matter: a conference article about your work goes in the same general section as an art review.  Now, if you've got a lot of these, you might choose to organize into subsections to make it easier to see the most significant publications, but that's a refinement rather than a high-level guideline.


Journal rejects my conference-to-journal extension, saying it's copied from previous publication. What should I do?

So you wrote in the cover letter that the work is an extended version of a conference paper that accompanied a poster presentation.

Apparently, this information got missing somewhere. Also this information should actually be in the paper, as Maarten van Wesel already wrote, as the later reader should be also be made aware of this.

So, judging from your post, the only thing that you did wrong was not to note this in the paper itself (please add a comment to this post if this assumption is wrong). What then went wrong in the journal's workflow is that the paper was rejected due to copying rather than asking you to add such a note in the paper. A possible explanation is that checking for plagiarism is done by the publisher's office beforehand, and they actually never saw (or read) the cover letter.

I think that it is fair to write a letter to the editor, mentioning that (1) you already wrote in the cover letter that you submitted extended work, and (2) you are of course happy to add a note that this is an extended work of [Previous work].

On a related note, there may be a small copyright problem. You may have already given an exclusive licence to distribute your work to one publisher with your earlier paper. If you now copy a good part of that work, the new publisher may see this as problematic. While many publishing agreements nowadays explicitly allow reuse of the work in extended versions, not all of them do, so the new publisher's office may suspect that this is not the case for your earlier paper. Coincidentally, many extended versions of papers are actually completely rewritten, which circumvents this problem altogether. Whether an extended version should be a full rewrite is yet another discussion, which we probably don't want to pursue in this thread.


Is there any disadvantage to having PhD from a non-main campus?

The quality of the department has much more influence on the degree than the "famousness" of the campus—whether it is a "main" campus or a "branch" campus.

For instance, in my field, Chemical Engineering, the University of California has two departments that are widely acknowledged to be top ten: Berkeley and Santa Barbara. A degree from either of these schools would be recognized as essentially equal; degrees from campuses like Davis or Los Angeles would be slightly less well received, but still be considered good.

So, to some extent, it's more the issue of the resources available at a given department, and its reputation within the community as a whole, that makes the difference. The campus as a whole is a distant second. (As a similar example, the University of Minnesota is recognized as a top-five program in my field; nobody would rank UMN as top five nationwide overall.)


Is application to graduate school asking for period of study, or period from beginning study to graduation date?

The form might phrase it this way to allow for differences in national education systems. Not all PhD programmes work on a cohort system where people start and finish at the same time. For example, I did my PhD in the UK and my revisions to the thesis were accepted in December 2011, so I was allowed to carry the title effective December 22; but there are only two graduation ceremonies each year and so I graduated in February 2012.

In answer to your specific question: Where data entry allows comments, I would go for Study start to Study end and manually ad a graduation date. For fixed fields, I would probably go with the date on your certificate as this would cause the least confusion.


Name of the explanatory chapter in a cumulative dissertation

Some places, such as Heidelberg, simply call it a "Summary". Others indicate that the Summary must place the papers in their "Scientific Context". I would favor the latter. But a specific university might provide specific guidance on this, as might an advisor.


There's no law that says you can't ask but it's pretty unlikely they'll agree to write the letter and, even if they did, it's unlikely it would help you.


Publish at the Open University as an undergraduate

At the risk of sounding obvious let me share some advice that will not be specific to OU.

First, wherever you are, you can do research on your own, although it's usually a tough call while being at the undergraduate level.

A somewhat more realistic option could be locating and contacting the academics in your field at a university reasonably close to your location (so that you can at some point contact them in person) and get them interested in supervising your research jointly with the OU people or on their own.

The problem with the second option is how to get the people at your local university interested in working with you but perhaps you could get some letters of recommendation from your teachers at OU to help your cause.


Is it possible to become a researcher in Artificial intelligence through a statistics phd?

Nobody cares what species of PhD you have.
If you publish research in machine learning venues, you are a machine learning researcher.
In particular, if you publish good research in good machine learning venues, you are a good machine learning researcher.

Just at my own university, I can think of machine learning researchers with PhDs in computer science, statistics, applied mathematics, pure mathematics, computer engineering, electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, astronomy, linguistics, library science, operations research, aeronautics, and economics.  I'm sure I've missed a few.  They all do different types of machine learning, but whatever.

The correct question to ask is Will a statistics PhD from [department] working with [advisor] support my ambition to work in machine learning?  And the answer to that question depends on [department] and [advisor].


Is it appropriate to submit co-authored paper when asked for a writing sample when applying for an academic job?

The relative value of co-authored versus solo authored articles varies from field to field, so you should really ask your advisor or some other trusted expert from within your field.

With that said, there is nothing in principle that should rule out submission of coauthored articles as writing samples. Obviously, articles where it is clear that you had a large contribution - e.g. articles where you are first author - are preferred. By submitting such an article in a job application package, you are tacitly implying that you took primary responsibility for the writing of the article (or possibly co-primary responsibility).

Here are some more concrete examples:

A solo-authored paper. Yes.
A first-authored paper with your advisor as second author. Yes.
A first-authored paper with several co-authors on a project of your devising and implementation. Probably.
A second-authored paper with another graduate student, the authors are in alphabetical order. Maybe, but it's not ideal.
A conference paper where you are 3rd out of 6 authors. Not appropriate.


Check whether an article has any correction or been retracted

Retraction Watch has recently announced a collaboration with  The Center For Open Science (COS) to create a free, comprehensive database of retractions.

  Together, COS and CSI will develop the technical infrastructure needed to support existing and new Retraction Watch content on the OSF. Further, COS will enhance discoverability and brand awareness by integrating this content into the SHARE Notify (http://osf.io/share) system, a searchable database of over 3 million research-related events, and by associating Retraction Watch content with related article DOIs when possible. With the technical support of COS, CSI can focus on delivering new content and developing new audiences that can make more informed decisions based on accurate research outputs.

It sounds like this database would allow you to search for articles by DOI and get retraction-related events.

(The database appears to already track retractions from PubMed Central; presumably Retraction Watch would be added as another data source.)

Update (2018-11-06 by shamisen): Retraction Watch launched its database: http://retractiondatabase.org/RetractionSearch.aspx


Were International Students discouraged from applying to the US this year?

Here're a couple of studies on this issue: One, Two.

There was a small decline - about 1-5% - in both applications and enrollment. This comes after years of growth. Whether the decline is because of the US's political climate though remains unanswered. Possibly - but it could also be a statistical blip.

For comparison, we also have record numbers of international applicants to UK universities in spite of Brexit.


Applying to my first reference and using him as referee

If I understand correctly, Mr A. moved to another institution and you want to apply to a position at that institution under the same Mr A.

Your best course of action would be to contact Mr A. directly and tell him that you would love to apply for that position and ask him whether it is ok for you to include him as a reference. This would then of course be just a formality, as Mr A wouldn't write a reference to himself, but it would serve to fill out the field and to implicitly constitute a recommendation.

This is important as to counter any eventual conflict of interest. If Mr A can't be your reference, perhaps he can point you to others (this part of your question is a bit confusing).

There are institutions where students apply directly to the professors, if that is applicable here, Mr A could be more inclined to accept you.


Is it always necessary to write an abstract on top of your research work?

This is usually specified in the guidelines of the journal, conference etc. you want to publish in. For a thesis, there will be university guidelines. I have never seen any guidelines that say that an abstract is only optional.
Ask yourself about the purpose of an abstract. A missing abstract will make it unnecessary difficult to grasp the contents of the work. So I see no proper reason to avoid writing one.


Talking about works under submission without breaching anonymity

The point of blinding authors is to prevent implicit biases from influencing the reviewers' judgements. It's practically impossible to blind properly; reviewers are probably able to deduce your identity if they want to. However, a good reviewer shouldn't want to: they should judge your work by its own merits. Thus, in my opinion you should be able to simply mention the other conferences.

(Also: the value of your work is in the work itself - where it is submitted doesn't add anything to that, it merely signals the value you think it has. Not really relevant to this question, but it might help to sharpen your thinking.)


Adding additional member to a funded project

However, as it is initially planned that there are only 3 people working in it, which means the funding only covers salary paid to 3, does it mean a new member has to work without being paid?

In good labs, PhD students are not supposed to work for free (although it may happen on occasion). Usually, people added to such a project fall into three categories:

They are funded by the faculty. For instance, the added person could be another professor, for which the faculty pays the salary. Additionally, and maybe more commonly, there are also PhD students which are not paid by external grants. For instance, in Austria / Germany, professors generally have a limited number of "assistants" (not to be confused with Assistant Professors), which are basically PhD students paid y the faculty to assist the professor in teaching, administration and research. Those can be assigned to projects freely. Another possibility of PhD students independent of grants are PhD student positions that a professor has negotiated as part of her/his startup package.
They are funded by another grant, but simply have free resources (time). Clearly, while there are projects that need more resources, there are also projects that are actually overstaffed. In such cases, students will often help out with troubled projects.
They are funded by "soft" money that is not bound to a concrete project. For instance, in my country, many large labs have significant funds saved up from the overheads of previous projects. Occasionally, a strong candidate wants to start a PhD, but no suitable grant is currently open. In that case, the professor will (at least temporarily) pay the student from this saved-up funds. Clearly, this candidate is then not bound to a specific project, and can join whatever project needs her/him most, or whatever project suits her/his interests most.

(I use the term "assigned" very freely above - in reality, students and postdocs are in most labs not so much assigned as asked whether they would be interested to help out in project XY and get a paper or two out of it)


When does coming up with an idea constitute sufficient contribution for authorship?

I will give an answer that applies to mathematics and maybe some other things. It isn't quite your second point, but close. Background first.

Newcomers to maths think of it as a bunch of facts. You learn some of those facts in early schooling but don't get a wider view. If you study maths at a higher level you think of it as proving theorems. Some facts and a bit of logic let you derive other facts. But if that is as far as you go, then you really aren't yet a mathematician. A mathematician is a person with enough insight into the workings of the thing that they can propose things that might be theorems if they could only be proven. But this isn't, to a mathematician, just making random statements. There has to be a reason why something is suspected to be true. Things that are likely to be true.

So, if the kid just randomly proposes a connection between bananas and leukemia, then it isn't worthy of authorship. But if a person with deep insight into the workings of the disease and the properties of bananas proposes it as a topic of study then, yes, they could/should certainly be a co-author of the study even if others do the actual proof of the concept.

It is the insight into the likely connection that has value.

Otherwise, you might just be sent off on a random quest without any hope of success.

However, in mathematics, if an advisor suggests a problem to a student, having the insight that the student hasn't yet developed, it is still pretty rare to demand co-authorship unless there is more of a collaboration in the development. But this is just the custom. Certainly it is worthy of acknowledgement, and maybe even co-authorship. It isn't even necessary in this case that the advisor have an outline of a proof, or even any deep insight into how to develop it. It is just insight into a problem worth pursuing.

But if it is, in mathematics, not an advisor-student relationship and one proposes an idea to another, I suspect that co-authorship would feel more natural, but probably with an acknowledgement section in the resulting paper that details the contributions. But in this case, also, it is more likely that the work would be developed cooperatively, so the authorship question would be obvious.

Other fields than mathematics have different views on authorship, of course, but it is, even there, a question of insight. Among an infinite number of roads, someone proposes one as worthy of following. If you follow that you owe them something for putting you on the path. How you acknowledge it is a matter of custom that varies from field to field.


Chicago Manual of Style chapter and section title capitalization

If your publisher has its own guidelines, follow them. Otherwise this is described rather clearly in the "Manuscript preparation, editing, and proofreading" chapter of the Chicago Manual of Style. Their definition of 'manuscript' includes both books and journal articles; and 'subhead' means title or heading of any subdivision of the text below the chapter level.

CMoS 16th ed., sec. 2.55 on Editing part titles and chapter or article titles.:

  Chicago recommends that all titles be in headline style unless a work is part of a series or journal that follows some other capitalization style (see 8.157).

CMoS 16th ed., sec. 2.56 on Editing subheads:

  Chicago recommends that all subheads be in headline style unless a work is part of a series or journal that follows some other capitalization style (see 8.157). But if an author has consistently used sentence style for subheads (see 8.156), that style should not be altered without consultation with the author and publisher, since it may be more appropriate in a particular work. Where subheads consist of full sentences, sentence-style capitalization is preferable.


What do you do when you find yourselves with an unreadable/inaccessible paper?

Search the web for it: open archives, search engine, authors webpages, whatever (you've probably done that already…)
Ask the contact author for a copy, which she'll usually be very happy to provide. I regularly get such requests from other researchers in my field, and it feels very good to know that people are actually interested in your work.
If the contact author doesn't respond, try the senior author, then other authors.
Try your local library. Look into their database, and also ask the librarian there if the document might be available through loan from other libraries. I've never had much success doing that, but you never know…
Ask a few colleagues at different institutions if they can get it for free (see this question). If you have friends at large/famous/well-funded US universities (Princeton, Harvard, …), they probably have a more comprehensive access than you.
If it's a really important paper, pay for it!

Whatever happens, make sure you make a copy for others in your lab/group, and archive it. When I started my PhD, there was a folder (the heavy paper type, not the computer type) labeled “important but hard to find papers” that the group had accumulated along the years. It was the most treasured object in the whole lab.


How to deal with non-cooperative team mate?

This attitude is very common in academia, as the academic environment is often highly competitive. That said, I've never seen someone do that within a team. I agree with seteropere that if this person is indeed on your team, you will likely have to raise this issue with your supervisor.

Still, there's likely a reason why he's unwilling to share, and if you can find the reason for that you may be able to convince him to be more of a team player. Is he worried that giving you access will hurt his publication chances? You can work with your supervisor to convince him that he will still get authorship even if the code is shared. Is he afraid you'll ruin the code? Suggest using some sort of versioning to keep track of changes. Is he just being a jerk about it? If so, then it just comes down to seteropere's answer, and you'll have to hope your boss has enough of a backbone to help you out.


How does PhD candidate salary compares between differen European countries, and the USA?

it depends on your contract.

In Germany you have a contract as TVL 13.

Fulltime netto: 2200-2400 Euro


Why don't all disciplines follow a double-blind review system?

In fields with a vibrant pre-print culture (e.g. Physics or Math), most papers are already publicly posted on the internet with the authors name attached before the paper is submitted and reviewed.  In that context, double-blind reviewing isn't even a sensible option.

Even without pre-prints the same is true of talks in some fields.  For many papers, many potential referees will have already seen a talk at a conference on the results in the paper.  This may be especially true of math where the process of writing up a paper in full detail is especially onerous, so it's common for people to be giving talks on topics while the paper is in preparation.


Why do UK universities often have Classics and History MA courses separated?

The simple reason is that the study of Classics has been part of the UK education system for much longer than general "history". Oxford and Cambridge were both founded in the 11th century, a time period where Latin was the language used in the church and legal system in England. For that reason alone, its study would have been essential.

As to why the study of Classics as separate to history has continued, I expect the reason is twofold. One is simply tradition, and the fact that Classics departments are probably older than history departments. The same applies to why Cambridge teaches "Natural Sciences" rather than having explicit physics and chemistry degrees: the university and the course predate modern thinking on the division of those subjects.

As for the second reason, my gut feeling as an English person is that it's also very tied up with social class (as is everything else in the UK). Classics, Greats and PPE (Politics, Philosophy and Economics) have long been the subjects of choice for wealthy, upper class men who are funnelled from private schools (i.e. those for which you have to pay a fee to attend, often exceeding £40,000 a year) to the upper echelons of government and business via Oxford and Cambridge. As long as these schools continue to teach the subjects, there will be a demand for classics courses in the UK's top universities.

The fact that these schools teach classics themselves is a hangover from 19th century attitudes to education, in which those subjects were considered an essential part of a boy's education. I can only speculate, but I think they were (and still are, by some) considered essential as they are a hallmark of wealth and social privilege, necessary currency for anyone wanting to get ahead in politics or business. Any schmuck can learn French or maths at school, but if you know Ancient Greek or Latin, that's a sign that you had an expensive education.

So, in summary, Classics departments in universities are a result of the age of the institutions coupled with the fact that these subjects were and still are taught in (private) schools as distinct subjects.


Working with applied math advisers as a pure math PhD student

Here's my suggested rule of thumb:

If the pure and applied mathematicians are within the same department, mention everyone whose work you would like to contribute to - i.e. anyone who does any theoretical PDE work.
If there are separate departments, most of the people you want to work with should have a "primary" appointment in the department you are applying to. For instance, taking a look at UW's applied math department, it looks like Randy LeVeque is a professor in Applied Math, but has an adjunct appointment in pure math. This probably means his primary appointment is in Applied Math, but he could still mentor students in pure mathematics. Just be aware that if all the people you want to work for have primary appointments in different departments, it might look like you want to work in a different field (e.g. Applied Math).


When it comes to picking my masters, I have three options:

  M.Sc (Science, thesis based)
  M.A.Sc (Applied Science, thesis based)*
  M.Eng ( Engineering, project based)

The letters in your masters degree do not matter. In other words, you'll never see an M.Sc. or an M.Eng. specifically asked for in an application call ... you'll only ever see "Masters". As such, your degree could be called an M.Xk.Cd. and nobody would really care. It's the topic and quality of your masters matters most!

If you want to work on quantum computing, then you should look for a good masters programme in either Computer Science, Electrical Engineering or a relevant field of Mathematics. These are typically M.Sc. or M.Eng. courses (again, not that the letters matter!).

A research masters is usually preferable, in that you may even get a publication or two which will help with PhD applications ... or you may continue in the masters programme and graduate into a PhD programme if you are happy with your supervisor.

On a side note, I would encourage you to be flexible in your interests. You quote "quantum computing" as an interest but it can often be unfeasible to get a PhD you like in a really specific area. I think at this stage it's important for you to decide what discipline you want to pursue (Comp. Sci., Maths, Physics, etc.). Having a sub-field in mind is great, but don't plan your future too rigidly around that.

  A fellow undergrad suggested I do a double-masters to compliment the double-degree, is this possible? Would it be useful to me at all?

Of course it would be useful. :)

But as to whether it would be worth your time, I would say absolutely not. See (1).

(1) Masters + 0.5 × PhD ≫ 2 × Masters