Publish as a book, then request a journal for peer review or reverse

No, journals want to publish new research, stuff that hasn't been shared before.


As an international applicant if I apply to a program stating that I want to get a job in US because of better opportunities and doing masters there would help me in achieving my goal would it be frowned upon by the admission committee?

No.  That's what professional master's degrees are for.


How to use Microsoft Word for formatting references according to ACM (and others) guidelines

At this link there is an interesting tutorial that explains how to use Microsoft Word for formatting references in any style.

Below I summarize the salient parts.

First of all, we need to download some additional formatting styles, and we can found some of them at this link. Here, we will find a .zip file containing several .xsl files, which represent the formatting styles used by MS Word.

What we need to do is to copy those .xsl (all of them or just the ones we want to use) in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\Bibliography\Style. Actually this directory can vary according to the MS Office version or the system architecture (32-bit or 64-bit). However if you look at the main Office directory, the Style directory should be easy to find.

Then you just need to close MS Word and reopen it. And you will find all this additional formatting styles available in the dropdown box, under the Reference tab.

EDIT: For some Office version (I had this issue with Microsoft Office 2013, installed on Windows 8.1), you will probably need to copy the citation style (.xsl files) in
C:\Users\<YourUserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Bibliography\Styles, as explained in this website.


how to show links in Bibliography for IOP Journals

Don't worry: the links will be appropriately formatted by the copy editor of IOP. The LaTeX class iopartis a very basic one which does not produce a result close to the final one.


How to find the state of the art algorithm for a specific problem

I generally go through review papers in the field and try to cite them as well if they have any sentence in the paper "claiming that the previous method is SOTA".
There are also benchmark sites.
Famous datasets even have their personal benchmarks linked to their sites.
You could use research gate or any other forum and ask a question there.
You could try a keyword search on google scholar and see if any paper claims to do so.

Regarding the difference in setting, generally the "well-acclaimed" SOTA papers don't have these issues. At least that's what I've noticed majorly in my field.
If that is the case, then I suggest making a small study within the paper covering all the results in the different settings. (Please do correct me if I'm wrong here).


Is it bizarre that a professor asks every student for a 3 inch by 5 inch photograph?

I would be interested to know why the professor wants these. I can suggest a completely innocent reason, even a reasonable one. But, I realize there are other possible interpretations. I wonder if you are brave enough to go and ask why.

But the innocent reason might be that the prof just needs a crutch to try to learn to match the names and faces of students to make interactions easier. A typical student only has a few professors so it is easy to remember names. But a professor might have tens or even hundreds of students. Some will try to remember the names and a picture can help.

To extend this, a professor might be thinking long term about students and might actually keep a file on each student, with notes about their accomplishments so that if the student asks for a LoR in the future there is something on record other than grades on which to base it. A picture in such a file could be a helpful reminder of who the student is, making such things easier.

I used to keep an index card for each of my students. No picture, though. But it served as a place to keep notes about that individual's needs and what I might need to do to serve them well. It also helped me keep track of who was asking and answering questions in class and who was more passive. Then, I could try to bring the passive ones more into the discussions.

Some professors, who teach large classes, assign specific seats to students and have a sheet of the names of the students, with pictures, in the same arrangement as the seats. Then if a hand goes up, the prof can address the student by name.

There are lots of possible positive reasons along with the ones you might be worried about. But you might want to ask. You could also, possibly, ask students who previously took classes from the prof. Or, you could go to the department office and express discomfort. You might learn the actual reason, and it might make the practice seem OK, or not.

The 2 points is immaterial (unless the max is 5). It is just a nudge. A bribe, perhaps.


Are law review publications helpful for gaining acceptance into a PhD program?

First, I don't agree much with aeismail's assessment that review articles “may carry less weight overall than a traditional research article”. A good review article is very hard to write, because this requires a very high level of understanding of the existing research and literature, as well as strategic thinking to discuss what will be of importance in times to come. To me, this is actually very much harder for a PhD student to have than publishing a “regular” research article. I think most committees would agree.

Now, how will the committee recognized a good review article? Ideally, by reading it and being impressed at the clarity and level of the discussion it displays. In the real world? Probably by the name and prestige of the journal it was published in.

So, my advice is: publish good stuff, in good venues. It matters more that you get to publish things, than what exactly you publish, as long as it is good! (Yeah, that sounds trivial, but you asked for it!)


Writing a new book on known methods/algorithms

Plagiarism is literally copying the text (or making only minor changes to pretend that you are not copying the text literally). Writing a book about something that is known is not plagiarism by itself, as long as you use your own words to explain the "standard methods".

If you do this, and if you do not copy figures and exercises (if there are any) it is not plagiarism. If you do need to copy a figure you usually need permission from the publisher (because of copyright, but that is a different issue than plagiarism).

So if your book has a different structure, is written in your own words, and cites the sources, it is probably not plagiarism. Your text simply needs to be clearly different from the original text(s).


Setting exercises and assignments when everything is on the web

Here's what I do (or at least try to do) in my algorithms classes:

Make homework useful.  The whole point of homework is to help the students master the course material.  Students learn by doing, not by passively reading or listening.  So I try to choose homework problems that exercise the insights and skills that I want the students to master.  (Among other things, this means keeping busywork to a minimum.)  If a student "writes" their homework solutions using Google and a stapler, they've robbed themselves of an opportunity to learn; all else being equal, that student will do worse on the exams.
Give homework relatively little weight in the final course grade, usually 30%, with the other 70% from exams.  I'd make the homework worth 0% if I thought the students would still do it.  See the previous point.
Tell the students that homework is useful.  Many students think of homework primarily as a vehicle for points, not as a tool for learning.  This is not entirely unreasonable—in some classes, homework is primarily a vehicle for points.   Better warn them early!
Include new questions in each homework assignment and exam.  Because I want to sleep occasionally, I regularly recycle homework problems from previous semesters, but if I recycle too much or too quickly, students don't learn the material as well.  (Whether they should learn the material as well is immaterial.)  Coming up with new useful problems is really hard, even if "new" just means "I haven't used it before".  I scour through a lot of textbooks and papers and web pages; if you teach algorithms, I have mined your web page for homework problems.  Still, I don't always succeed.  (On the other hand, failure sometimes suggests interesting research problems.)

Insist on ethical scholarship: proper citation of all sources, and no verbatim copying of anything.  Within those minimal constraints, students can use whatever source they want, and can collaborate with whoever they want, with no penalty.  In particular, students are welcome to use my official solutions from past semesters, if they can find them, as long as they cite them and don't just parrot them back to me.  Breaking this rule has harsher consequences than not doing the homework at all.
Homework presentations.  I used to ask students to present their homework solutions three times a semester, instead of submitting a writeup.  Here's the whiteboard, you have ten minutes per problem.  A single question like "But what about the empty string?" or "Why did you split the cases that way?" usually reveals students who didn't work out the solutions themselves.  Sadly, growing classes and shrinking TA budgets make this impossible now.
Remind the students that the course staff also uses Google.  (Remember, we're already scouring the web for new homework problems!)  And we have all the old textbooks, and their solution manuals.  And we read StackExchange.  And we have all the official homework solutions from past semesters, because, you know, we wrote them.  (I really wish I didn't have to say that last bit, but more than one student has submitted my own homework solutions, typos and all.)


Tenure-track application - Number of recommendation letters

I would not worry about submitting additional letters to places that ask for fewer.

I submitted the same number of letters of recommendation (four, I think) to all the places I applied to, regardless of how many they officially asked for.  A small number of institutions turned out to have policies that meant that they could not consider more than the number of letters that they had officially asked for in their ad.  After receiving my application, they would typically contact me and ask which letter I wanted them to throw out.  Following my discussions with the staff at a couple such institutions, I decided they were probably not places that I would want to work anyway.  They were more fixated on some administrative notion of fairness than on getting the best person for the job.  Perhaps some of those institutions just tossed my application without even contacting me; again, that doesn't sound like a place I would want to end up.

On the other hand, most institutions were happy to have additional informative letters.  Having served on hiring committees myself, I know that extra letters can provide useful additional information about a candidate, although I make a point not to be biased against applicants who submit only the minimum number of reference letters.


How to condense academic CV in one slide

I would treat it as a bullet point summary of your accomplishments:

PhD/dissertation
Notable experiences (e.g., teaching, internships, and professional positions, but not the typical TA/RA positions)
Awards
Summary of publications (e.g., "8 publications in venues such as A and B")

There are no standard rules for this. The goal is to convince them you are worthy of a job, so eliminate any noise and only provide the highlights. They can refer to your actual CV if they want more details.


How to cite a subsection of a book for IEEE

how should we cite a subsection of a book when a chapter is divided into multiple subsections, e.g. 2.1, 2.2, ...

Rather than citing the entire book, e.g., [1], you can cite a particular subsection, e.g., [§2.1, 1], [§2.2, 1], ..., meaning section 2.1, 2.1, ... of [1]. With Latex, you can use \cite[\S2.1]{X}.


PhD course grade impact on postdoc and fellowship applications?

In my field (math), nobody looks at your grades, so this will not make any difference.

A personal anecdote: I had a first-year grad course with a tough grader who gave me a B- in a core subject. This did not affect my trajectory in the least; I still passed my quals ahead of time, I wrote a thesis and graduated on time, and I'll be starting my post-doc in the fall.


How much can a Professor influence admittance of his/her PhD students? (UK)

To give a counterpoint to astronat's view, in Computer Science funding usually, but not always, comes (in one way or another) from a budget of the prospective advisor (e.g., her/his grants, startup package, etc.). So if (s)he really wants to work with you and funding is available (not all professors have funding to start with), you will likely be offered funding.  This is often formally independent of admission into the PhD school (i.e., a professor promising you funding does not formally guarantee admission), but in all places I am aware of the de facto rule is that candidates that professors wish to spend money on are also admitted as long as they fulfill the formal admission requirements.

Note that in many places in Europe the inverse is also true - candidates that no professor agrees to fund are often not admitted, independent of CV and letters.

So to answer your specific question:

  I was wondering how much influence a professor at a competitive university in the UK has in PhD admissions, when he/she really wants to work with somebody.

Assuming it's computer science, I would assume that the professor has a very large influence on admission.


Alternatives to Excel to store experimental data

This answer is assuming you are either interested in or already experienced in entry-level programming.

For the programming language Python, a data structure package called Pandas exists. To use it, you can utilize basic python syntax which is not that hard to learn.

There is also extensive documentation and online help on SE forums available. When coming from Excel, you might want to check out this tutorial.

Disclaimer: I have not used it to a great extent, since I did not have any applications for it, but a coworker of mine uses it on a regular basis, and has grown very fond of it despite not having any previous programming experience.


Applying for two Assistant Professor job posts on different subjects, but very related

Assuming both jobs are in the same department: Ask the contact person. (If that contact person won't be on the hiring committee, then get in contact with someone who is.)
Assuming both jobs are in different departments: (IMO) Departments are independent and two applications will not overlap at the department level. (They will, of course, overlap within the university.) I see no reason not to apply for both.
(Traditionally, this would have been easy: You'd write two applications, put them inside two envelopes, and put both envelopes inside a third along with an extra covering letter explaining that you're applying for both positions. You could even mention in both applications that you're applying for both positions. These days, with automated systems, this might not be possible. Depending on the system you're being forced to use, perhaps you can manage something along these lines.)


PhD to be advised by Mr. Enfant Terrible?

The best single predictor of your future is how your advisor's students have done in the past.  Of course, this is not entirely reliable, because you could turn out to be your advisor's most or least successful student, the job market changes over time, etc.  However, there's a good chance that you'll fall somewhere in the range of past students.

If the past students have been well accepted by the community and ended up with jobs you would like, then that's a good sign.  If not, then you should certainly be worried.

If you do work with this advisor, I'd recommend keeping this issue in mind and trying not to become too narrow.  Talk frequently with other faculty, do an internship at an industrial lab, try to collaborate with someone other than your advisor, etc.  This is a good approach anyway, even if your advisor isn't controversial, but it's especially important if you are trying to establish greater mainstream credibility than your advisor.  (You may have trouble pulling off the "out of the box thinker" approach to getting a job: even if you are as creative as your advisor, being his student can still make your creativity look derivative of his, so it's important to have another angle.)


Presenting in a remote conference via video-conferencing

I have never seen this done, and only heard of it being done to accommodate very famous people who have difficulties with travel (e.g., Stephen Hawking, Edward Snowden). So I suspect extremely uncommon and that no one will make a special effort to make this possible for you. However, it never hurts to ask; why don’t you email the conference organizers to ask them? Maybe you’ll get lucky and they are open-minded (or ecologically-minded - it’s worth stressing the savings in carbon emissions from the avoided travel) and happen to have the necessary equipment in the venue they are renting.

By the way, when you contact the organizers to ask about this, I also suggest apologizing for asking the question only after your paper was accepted. When you submit the paper to a conference you are implicitly promising to come and present the paper if it is accepted, so it would have been more responsible to ask the question before deciding to submit the paper, and to have a definite plan of what alternative arrangements you would have in place in case the answer was negative.


Why do US flagship state universities vary so much in quality?

Different states have very different political attitudes towards their flagship schools as well. This makes a difference with funding levels of course. It also makes a difference in terms of how money is to be used. A governor/executive, combined with a university president, that wants to grow a flagship institution can help earmark funds to attract top-notch researchers, link business activity and academic areas to grow in, and so on. It takes planning and vision as well as money, and that varies a lot from state to state.


Why don't I see publications criticising other publications?

Such criticisms are common in journals like Nature and PNAS. They're often not called "papers" -- PNAS calls them "Letters", Science calls them "Technical Comments", and Nature calls them "Brief Communications Arising" -- but they do get a significant degree of pre-publication scrutiny and often are peer reviewed. Some examples from the past few weeks:

Is “choline and geranate” an ionic liquid or deep eutectic solvent system? (PNAS)
Tagging the musical beat: Neural entrainment or event-related potentials? (PNAS)
Comment on “Predicting reaction performance in C–N cross-coupling using machine learning” (Science)
Comment on “The earliest modern humans outside Africa” (Science)
Assumptions for emergent constraints (Nature)
Emergent constraints on climate sensitivity (Nature)
Climate constraint reflects forced signal (Nature)

Other journals also have systems for responses, though most are not as organized about it.

So the premise is not quite right -- criticisms of high-profile papers are not unusual -- but it's true that the vast majority of papers don't get formal critiques like this -- even though the vast majority of papers probably do have something that could be criticized.

That's part of the reason. Very few papers are completely above reproach (except for my own, of course). If I was to send a critical letter about every issue I see in every paper I read, I'd spend my time doing nothing else, and the journals would be filled with my letters to the editor with no room for new articles.

And we're all adults here. It's expected that scientists read papers critically; that's part of our job. That means we all find things to criticize. Finding a problem in a published paper isn't a shocking, scandalous thing. It's like a toll collector breaking a $20 bill, a minor technical part of your job. It would be condescending of me to assume that I'm the only person who noticed the issues in question, and that it's up to me to save my colleagues from their stupidity and ignorance.

Finally, when I do respond to publications that need criticizing, I rarely phrase my responses that way. For example, several years ago I read an interesting paper in my field that, I thought, made a significant error in its assumptions. To show that, I repeated some of their experiments, adding in the missing controls, and then extended the work to show where the corrected observations led. I didn't publish as a criticism of the previous work (which was from researchers who I know and admire and who have done a lot of great stuff). I published it as a paper that can stand on its own, noting the previous work in passing but not making a big deal of the mistake. Hopefully, if I ever make a mistake (unlikely!) my colleagues will correct me in the same way. Science is hard, and it shouldn't be like a hockey goalie, where every time you make a mistake a buzzer goes off and thirty thousand people yell at you.


It is good if you can understand something completely and thoroughly. However, there comes a point where most of us must leave gaps and accept that the gaps will fill with extended experience and exposure, over time (technical term: "by osmosis"). Failure to accept that gaps need sometimes to be tolerated can lead to collapse of careers.

What you need to judge is how fast you are moving - if you do not trail back too much with respect to what's required in your duties, I would not worry too much. Good understanding is a worthy cause and will pay dividends later on. However, when you fall back or fail to address important aspects of your studies (or repeatedly fail, through perfectionism, to submit reports/works/papers on time), then you should consider ways to get a coarser, higher-level view of what you need to learn and start to leave gaps.

Hopefully these criteria will help you to judge at which level you may want to operate and to switch between levels when required.


Can the book "Turning Learning Right Side Up: Putting Education Back on Track" be understood without any prior reading?

Would almost everyone who got a high school diploma in Canada be able to understand that book.

We don't comment on specific books or specific individuals. But, there is an easy way to answer this yourself -- go to the Amazon page, click on "Look inside" and then "Surprise me!" Read a few random paragraphs and see if it makes sense.

  even if they never took any more education after that or read any books they didn't have to read in school?...I want to read that book because I might think of useful ideas for the world based on it

I don't mean to be condescending, but reading one book will not make you an authority who can develop "useful ideas for the world," even granted that you are smart and have some relevant life experience. There are education professors who have spent their lives thinking about how to improve the educational system, and even they rarely see their ideas accepted and implemented.


Declining an unreasonable request from a superior

Your reluctance is understandable.

Write to the editor and let him know that while his/her reputation would have standing with these authors, your own would not. It does no one any good if your letter to the authors is sent but ignored.

Offer to write a letter to them, but for the signature of the editor to be sent officially. The authors are much more likely to wait given a request from the editor. Include anything you think needs to be said, but from the editor's standpoint, not your own.

An alternative, perhaps nearly as good, is to start out your own letter as "I have been instructed by Dr X, editor, to write to you with the following request and instructions...."


What should I do about a bad TA as another TA for the same professor?

Write down everything that happened and when.
Tell your advisor about it.  It's their job to help you.
There's no excuse for sexist teaching.  It cannot be tolerated.  I suggest you limit your complaints to this main issue.  The other issues just complicate the situation unnecessarily.

It's unclear who supervises TAs in your situation, but your advisor should be able to figure that out.


Etiquette in applying for undergrad research

You could do it with the permission of both professors, I think, though the funding agencies might disagree with that. But don't do it without at least their agreement. If the professors are at the same institution, perhaps you could work out something that they both participate in. There might be issues with that, of course.

But asking them both might also give you better information about which would be easier to work with. If one seems cooperative and the other not, it might be an indicator.

In general, asking is always a good thing to do.


How to deal with guilt turning down non-tenure track faculty offer at current institution?

If they really wanted you (or anyone) enough, they would make the position more desirable (tenure, pay, etc.).  They do it for other positions.

Don't you worry yourself a bit.  Be pleasant on the outside, sure.  But realize this is a business situation.  You have competing offers.  Take the one that does more in terms of pay/etc.

Also, often to advance in life, you need to move around some.  That's nice that you have a cozy situation there and people that value you.  But move on and do it elsewhere.  It's not unusual for companies or organizations to pay more for someone external than someone internal.

In particular, it is completely normal for someone in your situation to move on (recent grad).  If anything hanging out at your school is more the oddity.  So nobody will care that you moved on. Will wish you the best.


Do all versions of an arXiv paper appear in Google Scholar?

Remember that the way the arxiv works, the default paper identifier goes to the most recent version that's been uploaded. So even if Google Scholar caches an older version, it's using the same URL. Now if you make changes like changing the title and/or material parts of the abstract, then it might take a while for the new title to percolate through the search indices.


How and why did the top journals become top journals?

All journals that have a high standing have the standing because of the support of the community. If the community loses interest, the journal will drop in the ranking. The top journals have therefore attracted authors for one reason or another. The editorial staff of journals try to maintain this status by making sure the work published there is of good quality and will be cited. It is thus not impossible for new journals to attain high status as long as authors provide the necessary papers. To this mix, we now also add the impact factor and other bibliometric factors. They matter now but have not been the driving factor for making the older journal what they are today.

I work with a more modest journal and I can definitely state that improving your impact factor is far more difficult than to drop in ranking. But, if your ranking becomes high enough (no specific number will be relevant since it varies between fields) a journal will be self-fuelling since many want to publish their material there and competition stiffens leading to a strong selection.

So the standing of Science and Nature, is part their long history, in part the hard work by the journal itself and in part the, now, need for authors to publish in as high ranking journals as possible since that is what forms the basis for most evaluations in academia.


Can I bring a spouse along for a conference?

Yes, it is perfectly normal and accepted, at least in all fields I have heard about. Many conferences also allow one to purchase extra tickets for the social program (conference dinner, excursions) for spouses and accompanying persons.

The only possible source of trouble is how to split the hotel bill, since you will (most likely) be sharing a room. Make sure to inquire in advance with the institution that pays for your trip, or at least ask a colleague what the norm is.


There are two aspects to your question, in my opinion: design and function.

Function. Many have criticized PowerPoint and bullet points and perhaps none so much as Edward Tufte in his essay booklet The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint: Pitching Out Corrupts Within. The defaults of PowerPoint and reliance on bullet points is interesting and "forces" users into a particular form of presentation where bullets are more reminders for the speaker than the audience. From this background an alternative is to use the so-called Assertion-Evidence Structure which takes a very different approach to building slides.

In the Assertion-Evidence Structure the heading of the slide is the main point of the slide, a take-home message. The slides use graphics extensively to support and high-light the main point. The structure has been shown to yield significant improvements in both audience understanding than normal bullet-point presentations. Se the linked example of the structure.

The Assertion-Evidence slides are not necessarily pretty but they do the job very well so that brings me to the second issue.

Design. When you look at designing slides it is probably easier to list the don'ts than the do's. In general, anything "fancy" easily becomes boring when overdone. Therefore simple is better. I would also add that subtle is better. Do not use strong colours and avoid backgrounds that can clash with the text, either structurally or in terms of colour, after all you want your message to shine.

So design anything with a principle to do as much as possible with as little as possible and you should be on a good road. I think referring back to Edward Tufte is useful also here.

So taken together, it is not clear what is a well designed presentation depending on whether you are looking at aesthetic impact or factual impact.


Emailing a potential PI about applying to a Master's program at their school

Yes, you should contact them.

In terms of the content, you have it half right. Do briefly discuss your interests and why you think you would be a good fit for this lab.  Then simply ask, are you taking graduate students for the next term?

However, I would say do not ask for advice in general.  That is a bit much and these PIs are busy and won't want to spend the time providing advice for a student they do not know. Keep your email as concise and clear as possible to ensure a response.

Finally, if a professor is a good match for your interests, you should email them even they do not have any openings currently listed on their website. Again, they are busy, they may not have updated their website recently. Or, they may have just received notice that they got a new grant. etc, and so on.  If they are a good match for your interests, it is worth emailing them.

Good luck.


Should I opt for physics as minor for better mathematical intuition?

There's a range of applications for mathematics around many disciplines. In the XX century, physics was definitely the biggest consumer of mathematics, from the photoelectric effect and the black body spectrum in the early century through nuclear bombs and space exploration of the second half. The XXI century looks to shape around biology and life sciences.

Physics leans heavily on PDE, real and complex analysis. Some areas may require abstract algebra, but they could turn out to be somewhat exotic (quantum Hall effect and other solid state physics stuff), and you would need to study physics for about 5 years to get to understand what it is if you are starting from ground zero. (School physics IS ground zero, in my books.) Until you know what Green's function is, there may be little point approaching physics for you.
Economics leans heavily on real analysis and optimization. There's some use of abstract algebra, although again to get to the areas where it is really needed (welfare economics, may be some very abstract macro), you need to get very deep into grad school in economics.
There's quantitative biology, in which separate fields may require way separate math tools: ecology uses some PDEs, while protein structure is computation that could be using abstract algebra, too, to describe the spatial structures (where it overlaps somewhat with material science).
Computer science is another big obvious consumer of mathematics, and abstract algebra is very immediately used in various codes. If you want to have an immediate gratification from having learned simple groups, you can go ahead and figure out how the PGP algorithm works.


How to cite a repeatedly used direct quote?

I'm sure I'm in a different field, but I would say no, you don't, because you're just reusing the quote to describe something you already recalled and cited.  However, that seems like a mouthful, so I would suggest creating some shorthand for it, such as "genealogical constructivism perspective" or GCIDC perspective.  (In any case, look at other papers in your field for ideas, both regarding my suggestion and your original question.)


There are two practical purposes to scholarly citations:

acknowledging scientific contribution of others, the borrowing of ideas (mainly) and content (sometimes, in the form of quotes)
helping people find relevant content if they want to read it
bookkeeping, for scientometric/bibliometric purposes

In your particular case, you cannot fulfill #2 and #3, because your friend's slides are not available for others to read, and even if they were, random documents on the internet are not really used for bibliometric purposes.

So, you want a solution that will achieve #1, i.e. make sure his contributions are recognized by people who will read your slides. To do so, you don't need to give your citation any specific format. I suggest you simply write, at the bottom of slides you borrowed from him:

  Slide courtesy of John Doe

or

  Slide modified from John Doe, with permission

In addition, you can thank him in your acknowledgements at the end of your talk.


How long should you wait after submitting a revise and resubmit before you should contact the journal?

The time for the second go-around is often the same as for the first go-around. So, if the journal allows reviewers 3 months for a review, you have to expect this much (at least) also for the review of the revision.


How will returning to your PhD advisor as a post-doc affect future career options in academia?

It really depends on what country you are working, and what are your final goals. Most European academic institutions do tend to hire for tenure people who got their PhD in the same institution. I personally believe it is indeed an insular, unwritten policy, that is detrimental for professional development, and impoverishes the institutions research. Contrarily, most USA institutions take for granted your willingness to explore beyond your comfort zone.
As far as it concerns you personally, you see where I am heading by the language I am using :)


My PhD work is too simple. I don't feel good about my work, my abilities and my future career

One reason that people like yourself see their own work as "simple" is just that they are the world's foremost expert in that narrow subfield. They (you) know it better than anyone and you've lived with it for a long time so you see how it fits together. This is related to Imposter Syndrome, of course.
Your dissertation and degree aren't the end of your career, but the beginning. You've crossed one "finish line", the degree, but that opens out into a world of opportunity. You aren't limited now to what you have done in the past but can start to move to adjacent areas if you wish. The degree process is a pretty narrow funnel, but, once through it, the opportunities open again.
Don't be discouraged. Leverage what you have into what you want.


What affiliation(s) to list in an oral presentation at a conference?

I don't see this as a big deal, either way. Of course, the conference may not have a way for you to do this comfortably and might object (doubtful, but possible). You might have some contractual need to list the university at which you did the work (more likely, so check). But it is even more unlikely that they would require "exclusive" mention in affiliation.

But I doubt that listing the smaller university is going to make any difference in whether you get hired there. It might make it easier for people to find you there over the long run, provided that  you do get hired, but harder if you don't.

Assuming that there are no obligations that force you to do things one way or another, I'd say is is just a coin-toss. Do it if it makes you feel good.


Maintaining Credibility with Data Obtained by Hand

There is probably little to do but be honest about how the data was obtained. If it holds up under review then you have no issues. The past is the past.

However, if you have a chance you can try to obtain a better data set under more controlled conditions. This might be the core of a follow-up publication, either validating or invalidating the earlier result.

You learn something from just about every study. But if you are honest, it is hard to complain.


In education, the students tend to be slightly "older" because they are required to have practical teaching experience in the classroom. One school I worked at required master level education students to have at least one year in the classroom. Another school I worked at required 3 years of teaching experience before acceptance into the PhD program. This automatically pushes the youngest Ed phds into at best the early thirties.

Brilliance is not enough in education you also need the wisdom of experience in order to guide the next generation of teachers who will be of mixed-ability. Your background and wide experience would be attractive to liberal arts colleges. EdD is usually a practitioner degree involving, as you can guess, practical skills for K12 teaching and leadership. PhD is much more theoretical in nature and preparatory for conducting research.


Optimal journal publications strategy (academic career)

the 'working paper' notion in economics appears unique to that area, so I can't comment on that. The problem with your phrasing though is that it ignores quality issues. Assuming therefore, that the 10 papers are fixed, and the only question is which of the three options to use, then the answer is probably (1).

For people who want to know about the work, either of (1) and (2) are fine, and (3) makes little sense (I also don't understand why that would be viewed as unethical). but even then, there's some low-quality non-zero positive information associated with publication in a journal the reader hasn't heard of.

For people who prefer to look at CVs to infer quality, then (1) is superior to (2) (again (3) doesn't make sense).

One way in which (2) is superior to (1) is if you're hoping that you get the benefit of the doubt for unpublished work that has no "quality signal" like the name of the venue it appears in. This is unlikely to happen unless you're in an area where it's common to have unpublished manuscripts circulating and valued.


Depends. At my university in Germany, you could choose yourself if you want to enroll or not. Some enrolled, e.g. for the cheap bus ticket and student lunches, other didn't. But there is no general rule for that, every university or even every institute might have its own regulations.


Are spelling issues part of the reviewer's job?

The simple answer is no. Unless the review instructions ask for such comments, it is not mandatory. When I do a review, I usually do some corrections if there are not too many of them. If the paper is littered with such errors I might make corrections for one or two manuscript pages and then state to both authors and editors that the papers needs substantial checking and correction beyond my capacity. I also sometimes just leave that comment without making example corrections.

One of the more problematic issues is the difference between native English speakers and this who have English as a second or third language. Clearly authors who are not native speakers, should receive more help than others. There are also services that do language corrections and each publisher typically can suggest such services. If there are native English speakers as co-authors, some responsibility should fall on them to correct the language, after all, they are credited, or perhaps discredited, by the paper as well. So my point is that some leniency has to be considered depending on the severity of the problem but the bottom line is no-one is forced to correct spelling and grammar.


I did a little research, and something like this may be possible.  A number of institutions offer combined bachelors/masters degree programs in criminology, criminal justice, and other related fields.  (For example, the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, part of CUNY in New York, has a such a program.)  I presume that these programs are largely intended for people, like yourself, who already have career experience in law enforcement and related fields.  Googling for "combined bachelors masters programs criminal justice" should turn up a few more similar programs.

It's hard to say whether a particular program like this would work for you.  For example, I don't know whether your funding sources would be satisfied with you being enrolled in a joint bachelors/masters program.  The John Jay program I linked to also has additional reqirements for transfer students, which might be problematic.

However, since many gradate programs in these fields cater specifically toward people who have already spent time working in law enforcement, many more places may have policies in place for addressing the needs of people like you.  If there are specific institutions that you are interested (local to you, for example), I would suggest contacting them (possibly in person) to see whether they have programs to help you.  You are probably going have to earn a bachelors degree on the way to your masters, but they may be able to classify you as a masters student for the full duration of your program.


Is it common for a university to buy a plane ticket directly?

You should definitely ask if they can buy it directly for you. I know my department has done this in the past with students who don't have the cash on hand to wait for a reimbursement.


Masters application with bad 1st year transcript

Schools do like to see that students have improved overtime so you do have that going for you. I would say the answer to your question depends on the type of program you want to get into. I can only speak from research university experience but I have seen people with not great GPAs (around 3.3) get into even PHD programs if they have enough research experience (i.e. posters, papers, lab manager experience, etc.)


Cite related work from same year as defense?

Of course, you should include anything that is relevant regardless of when you started your thesis.

I have even seen dissertations that cite work that is unpublished or still under review.


Why do academics tend to be reluctant to ask for help from other academics?

I have never been fully immune from this kind of behavior, though I've suffered less from it than others, a fact that most likely helped me land two really nice jobs. Let me survey a few reasons why I think it happens.

Note: I'm talking of mathematics, where "robustness" is not a thing, and talking to someone does not "contaminate" your thinking (unless you are really careless).

Bob and Charlie are too proud. They don't want to be seen asking possibly stupid questions in writing.
Charlie feels that he doesn't know enough to even pose a good question, and Bob doesn't care enough. (Students generally tend to have trouble gauging their level, and I have occasionally blundered into conversations I wasn't prepared for by asking a too-advanced question.)
Bob and Charlie have seen their questions ignored too often. (My personal experience is that the usefulness of emailing an author about a paper they wrote declines sharply with the age of the paper. If the paper is 15+ years old, they most likely don't remember anything and have the same perspective as any other reader.)
Bob and Charlie don't want anyone to know they are reading the paper, as they are worried of creating expectations. (This sometimes does happen -- in that an author takes a question as a stronger sign of interest than it was intended. Though it does not appear to be a big deal, but more of an awkward moment.)
Bob and Charlie are worried Alice will view their question as a personal attack or at least as a threat. (In my career of reporting errors, this has happened 1-2 times out of somewhere near 50. But this sort of risk aversion isn't exactly out of character for much of academia...)


Avoiding conferences: Potential effects on an academic career and mitigation strategies

The primary argument against your strategy arises when you go up for promotion: if senior people in your field can't really "tie" you to your work—in other words, if you're someone who has published some really good papers, but are otherwise "invisible" in the community, it will be hard to write the positive letters of reference needed for a successful tenure case.

However, that is not to say that the strategy of focusing on disseminating research is not important—indeed, the two strategies need to go hand-in-hand! So I would argue that networking will become more critical once you have independent work of your own to share.


My former prof switched university and now I can't ask him in person for a LOR - should I try to see him?

I don't think a visit is necessary (and I don't see where in the linked thread it says otherwise). Even if you were to visit him, you would contact him first to make an appointment, presumably by email.

Why not send a mail in which you both ask for a letter of recommendation and whether the prof would like to talk to you to refresh his memory (be it in person or on the phone)?


PhD at top department (path - MS (unfunded) to PhD) vs mediocre dept (path - funded PhD) , differences in experience?

Comparisons and recommendations of specific universities is off topic here as a "shopping question". I'll restrict this answer to the question of getting an MS first.

In the US (unlike many other places) getting an MS first isn't necessary and will probably lengthen your total program, especially if you switch programs after the MS. Also, not every MS program will be research focused, though some will. But some are just advanced coursework, even applied coursework if most graduates enter industry.

If you take the direct PhD path you will probably have an opportunity to get a sort of "freebie" MS along the way, perhaps by doing a small project and writing it up as an MS thesis.

The main requirements for a doctorate (US) are that you pass a set of comprehensive examinations and that you write an "acceptable" dissertation. There is normally advanced coursework, mostly to prepare for comps. But if you do an MS elsewhere, there is no guarantee that the courses there will give good preparation for comps at the doctoral institution. Maybe they do, maybe not.

If you can find a good advisor and a good and compatible research program that interests you, I would suggest the direct PhD path over any other. Whether your institution ranks 10 or 110 won't matter nearly as much to your overall career as what you do and what relationships you can develop while studying. And being a top student as the 210th ranked institution is probably better for your career than being a mid-level graduate of the 10th ranked one. At least in obtaining your first job. It is about what you do, not about what others have done to affect rankings. There are good advisors throughout academia. They aren't all at MIT and Berkeley.

But, there is also the question of the experience of the advisor. I neglected that in the first version here.

The one thing I'd worry about with an inexperienced advisor is where they are in their tenure process. If they are tenured it is not so much of a problem, nor should it be if they are a shoo in. But an advisor who is at risk of not getting tenure may prioritize their own work over helping you. I'd advise against that scenario.

But if they have a lot of ideas and like to share them, it should otherwise be fine. But look also at the other people in that group. Do they have an effective regular seminar for a few faculty in that field. That is a big plus, again if they share ideas.

I was once "stuck" with an untenured advisor who wasn't helpful.


Does it look good to have a paper without your PhD advisor as an author?

The comments here seem to cover the ground pretty well. Having publications of any sort is a plus. Having lots of collaborations is a big plus and well serve you well in your future work, not just in applications.

But in some fields it is more or less necessary to have your advisor, and maybe others, on publications that arise from your dissertation work. In other fields that would be unusual.

However, don't obsess over this issue. Do the best work you can and publish the work as best you can with appropriate authorship for the work and for the field. After you finish the degree and become more independent of your advisor, you will probably write sole author papers. But if you have the opportunity for a sole author publication as a student, don't pass it up.

But don't neglect the synergistic power of collaboration in what you do.


What are good resources to read up on funding policies, especially pertaining to biology in the United States?

There are a few blogs that I find highly informative regarding the politics, changes, and historical trends affecting science funding in the United States.

Drugmonkey often blogs about the NIH. Recent examples include:

NCI will ease that difficult transition to postdoc
Congress let the NIH drop the HIV/AIDS set-aside: Implications for NIDA?
RFAs do not narrow the NIH portfolio, quite the opposite.
NIH grant application changes are in the offing

Prof-like Substance blogs a fair bit about goings-on affecting the NSF, especially IOS and DEB divisions and also generally the BIO directorate, including historical trends and recent changes in proposal and funding procedures. Recent examples:

Your DEB panel summary will look a bit different this year
What you learn from reviewing a batch of proposals
My love/hate relationship with NSF preproposals
How do we make NSF science more sustainable?
Some depressing NSF DEB stats

There's also the blog of the NIH Office of Extramural Research, which is often very informative. I especially appreciate the posts that reveal data about internal workings and funding patterns of the NIH. Examples:

Understanding the Capacity of NIH’s Peer Review System
What are the Chances of Getting Funded?
Lab Size and Strategic Support of Science: Thoughts on Finding the Right Mix
Update on the Postdoctoral Benefit Survey

Science Insider reports on science policy. Examples include:

Decision to end monkey experiments based on finances, not animal rights, NIH says
NIH releases first agency-wide strategic plan in 2 decades
Budget agreement boosts U.S. science


Is it bad to withdraw a manuscript one day after it has been submitted?

I am a co-editor of an interdisciplinary journal (social sciences/humanities). I would rather an author withdraw and get the piece into shape than for us to either read it and have to desk reject, or to send to reviewers and they flag it. It's mildly embarrassing but like so many things in academia (and life), you will care more than they will care – it is trivial for me to return a paper to an author.
If the editorial management system allows you to withdraw the paper, even better.


How would I preface being on the president's list in the same way that someone can be a “winner” of an award, on a bullet list

I would typically term inclusion in such a list an "honor," as in "Awards and Honors."  If you want a verb, however, I would not use "honored" but simply "included", however, as in:

  Included on University President's List, Miskatonic University


Is participating in open peer reviewing good or bad for early career scientists?

My opinion:
I don't see your reasons either for and against as compelling. I suspect it's neither risky nor significantly advantageous.
You should take this on if you think it a good way to contribute to progress in your discipline. You might learn something too.


Former PI lists a non-contributor as first author on a manuscript for which I did all the work. Next steps?

Before you get upset, I think it would be important to learn more about the actual circumstances of the publication.  I say this because, based on your description of the situation in your post you haven't been acting like a first author.
You may indeed have done all of the initial work on which the manuscript was based, but based on what you have written, you don't seem to have been particularly involved in interpreting the results or writing them up (beyond the methods section).
The first author of a paper, in typical usage for the field, should be involved in every stage of the project and the production of the manuscript. From what you have written, it appears that you haven't been, and so you may not even be properly aware of what the other student may or may not have done for the project. Maybe your speculation is correct; maybe it is not. Ultimately, however, authorship order isn't really your call, because you have chosen not to lead work on the paper.
If you want to be first author on a paper, you need to involve yourself more deeply with the project, including the actual scientific interpretation of the results.
Now, if you are concerned that your former PI may be acting unethically, you can ask for a description of the work that the other student has done. Do this from a perspective of curiosity and surprise, rather than accusation.  Once their work has been described, if you disagree with your former PI's judgement, then voice your concerns. If your PI doesn't make a change after that, you can withdraw yourself from the paper --- you should not lend your name to something that you consider unethical.  But based on what you described, it's not really your paper, and in the end your choice is primarily about whether or not to be associated with it.


Suggesting Reviewers: How to find institutional affiliations

How do you know of these potential reviewers in the first place?

If you know them personally, then you probably also know which institution they're in. If you don't know them personally but have read their papers which are intimately related to yours, then you can look at the first page of their papers to see their affiliation. If you read of them from books, you can still look at the title pages which should list their affiliation.

If they don't have affiliations, then simply write "unaffiliated".


When do you switch a student membership to a non-student membership for a professional society

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) mentions this in the Qualifications for IEEE Membership:

Graduate Student members, upon graduation or upon reaching the total cumulative eight-year limit as a Graduate Student member (whichever occurs first), will be transferred automatically to member grade.

And the change of membership, i.e. Member Grade Elevation:

Student elevation is handled twice a year - in June and August. Once an IEEE Student member or Graduate Student member reaches his or her graduation date (based on information provided by the student), IEEE elevates them to the next grade of IEEE membership for which they qualify.
The first elevation is done in June (Student members or Graduate Student members with graduation dates between 1 January and 30 June).


My supervisor is putting my name on a paper I disagree with. What will happen if it is found to be wrong?

Usually nothing happens to the authors if the paper is wrong.

Circumstances vary based on the topic and the way the paper is wrong.  So you, having read the paper, know more about the risks than we do.


Journal published a paper, ignoring my objections as a referee

EDIT:  The question has been changed since this was written.

Your key misconception is that the editor needs reviewers' permission to publish a paper.  Actually, the decision to publish rests solely with the editor.

In this case, you disagree with the editor, but we do not have enough information to tell who is correct.  If you think the errors in the paper are important, then once the paper is published you may be able to submit a comment to the journal.  Do not do that before the paper is published, because for most journals you must maintain the confidentiality of peer review.


I've found that after you get a few decent papers, you'll soon get far more requests than you can possibly handle (e.g. over the last few years I've consistently received one every week or two).

Besides the obvious issues of whether you're competent AND interested in reading the paper AND are currently available, my calculus usually goes like this:

Is this a very high end journal? E.g. in my field that would be JAMA, NEJM, Science, etc. Accept the request. It's good to have input on some of the most influential papers in your field.
If not, is it a journal you've never reviewed for before? It's always good to be able to add to the list of journals on your CV. If I haven't, but I HAVE heard of the journal (e.g. I know it's not a predatory journal), I'll usually accept.
Is it an editor you have a history with/have a decent reviewer/editor relationship with? Accept the request. It's good to have arms-length senior academics who like you and are aware that you exist and know your expertise--e.g. for external non-collaborator letters when you're up for tenure.

If the answer to all three of those is "No", I'll usually decline and suggest another colleague.


Response to selection criteria regarding health and wellbeing

The existence of such a question implies to me that the university, or perhaps just the department, has made some commitment to advancing human health and wellbeing. Perhaps this is a shared goal of many (most?) of the existing faculty.

The question may or may not be one that will be decisive in choosing a candidate. But it seems to be asking whether your personal goals are in alignment with that shared goal.

Perhaps you have thought of this sort of thing in the past, and perhaps your natural inclination is to support it. But it is also possible that you've never considered it and think it is irrelevant. I doubt that anyone would be likely to actively oppose it, however.

But, I always suggest that you answer honestly. Even if your answer is just "I'll have to think about that for a while as the question hasn't come up before" it could be enough. Answering "Stupid, Stupid, STUPID." won't get you the job, I think. And if that is, in fact, your first thought, then you might not be a good fit with the others, even if you get the job.

I find the question thought provoking, if nothing else. In some fields, it is an important question also - medical fields, for example. In CS and mathematics it is a bit more speculative.

But even in AI, a commitment to "do no harm" is worth the effort it takes. Some machine learning algorithms have proven problematic in the recent past, having been trained on a too-narrow or even racist base.


When a journal is set up on ScholarOne, one piece of information they provide is an EO email address. When you filled out the form, ScholarOne sent the email to that address "on behalf of" you. There is no direct way for you to view this correspondence through the system. You could contact the EO office again, and ask for a copy to be forwarded to you. You could also reach out to ScholarOne support to see if they could get you a copy.
Disclaimer: I am an employee at ScholarOne, but the opinions and posts here are my own.


Advantages and Disadvantages of doing PhD from a new university?

Well, the first thing to think about is what sort of new university this is.  If it's UC Merced, then you might reasonably guess that it will eventually be as well known as the typical UC campus, and of course that's not the only new university intended to be very prestigious and successful (e.g., IIT Indore).  On the other hand, most new universities just don't come with this sort of commitment and backing.  If you don't have a powerful reason to think the university will be unusually successful, then you should assume it's headed for a not particularly distinguished future.  Furthermore, the initial years may involve growing pains that would not be present in a better established university, although these issues are not likely to be a big deal.

Now, this isn't a reason not to study there.  Most universities are by necessity not particularly distinguished, but that won't stop you from getting a decent education.  However, the key thing is to avoid getting caught up in a feeling of "Wow, a new university!  What a great opportunity to start from scratch and do everything right!  I'm sure we'll avoid all the mistakes that have held other schools back."  Helping to start something new really is exciting, and it can be a wonderful experience.  However, all new projects start with high hopes, while history shows that most never fully meet these expectations.

So the real question is how much these high hopes matter to you.  If the new university turned out to be a solid, respectable school but not highly ranked or especially successful, would you regret having gone there?  If not, then there's no problem.  (I'm assuming it's definitely a respectable option, and not for example an online diploma mill.)  If so, then you should think carefully and investigate whether their plans really look feasible.  For example, by looking at what sort of faculty have they managed to recruit so far.


How to steer a research fellowship back to the main initial focus rather than the supervisor's programming needs?

This fits in the standard mold, I think, of "How do I assert myself with my advisor?"

You wrote one assertive email.  At this point you can choose between a more strongly worded (but still polite, of course) email, and asserting yourself in person (preferably in a special appointment).

Personally I would choose the latter in most cases.

Asserting oneself works best in a stair-step escalation.  Each step up must be discernably stronger than the previous, but it's best to avoid going from zero to 60, to save face.

Keep the conversation as neutral in tone and as brief as possible.


PhD application: Writing summary of accomplishments

Accomplishments that most potential employees, guides, student application reviewers, etc are looking for are positions, rewards, recognitions, etc that indicate achievements and are demonstrative of work culture, personal capability of setting and achieving goals, intellectual level, skill development, attitude and knowledge, specialization, tenacity, continuity, etc.

The rough rule of thumb is that 'anything won in a competition is an accomplishment'.

Accomplishment is also attainment of certain position or degree or diploma or certification gained through some labour, study, test or recognition.

Hope this helps.


How do I appropriately use inline citations for multiple quoted paragraphs?

From what I've seen, the only situation in which you would use a single citation following multiple sentences is if it's obvious that you're quoting that source verbatim AND the quote is uninterrupted. If you're using your own terminology OR the quote is interrupted, you should cite each sentence separately.

This becomes obvious when considering the purpose of a citation. Citations are there to answer the question, "who said this?" If you're quoting someone verbatim, and it's obvious you're doing so, then you only need a single citation, as the reader will infer that it applies to the entire preceding quote.

On the other hand, if you have multiple claims throughout a paragraph, after each claim the reader will wonder, "what's his source for this?" In most cases, you will be using multiple sources, and you will have a mixture of references. However, even if you have a single source for lots of claims, the reader will still wonder after each claim what the source is. You should tell them the source of each and every claim separately.

The exception I've seen—and that my advisor requested I use in my writing—is in the instance of a single logical thought pattern being followed throughout a paragraph or set of paragraphs. If you're describing someone else's work, it can be justifiable to state, "the following is an overview of Bob (2007)", or something to that effect. From my experience, though, that usually only happens in review articles.


Approximate time frames for US postdoctoral application decision making and starting

Most postdoctoral positions in the US are made available by individual professors within their own research groups. Consequently, there is no standard timeline for postdoctoral applications, outside of special programs where positions are sponsored by entire departments or institutions.

In general, though, I think that positions are held open at least as long as is required by the guidelines of the individual institution where the postdoctoral associate will be housed (anywhere from two weeks to 60 days), although this may be extended if no suitable candidate is found in the initial advertisement process.

Moreover, the start date is usually somewhat flexible, but is also dependent on funding—usually people will want the postdoc to start as soon as is reasonably possible.

On the whole, however, if you're applying for an individual postdoc position, I would normally assume that you'd hear back from the postdoc advisor within a few weeks if there's any interest.


Who should approve changes in curriculum?

In the US, this is a classic example of shared governance. Typically there will be a well-defined bureaucratic process for proposing a new course. You write an outline and fill out a bunch of forms. Then the other faculty in your department review it. There will also be layers of approval by managers, but the managers are supposed to be reviewing the course for administrative stuff (e.g., maximum section size, which has fiscal implications), not for content (which is where faculty are the experts).

It's important, especially at a community college, to make a course that will be useful to students if they transfer to another school. E.g., I recently proposed a course, Relativity for Poets, at the community college where I teach, and we wanted to make sure that it would transfer to the state university systems so as to satisfy gen. ed. requirements. At community colleges, these concerns may make it essentially impossible to offer a new and innovative course if there is nothing like it in the state university system.

Assuming that a new course does go through all the approvals, it's still not guaranteed that the school will offer it. For example, they could decide that it's too expensive to offer, or there might not be enough demand.


How do I incorporate/emphasize my experiences teaching at an HBCU?

Usually, academic CVs aren't really the place to "sell" anything. Unlike professional CVs, academic ones are usually fairly comprehensive, but ultimately boring, listings of everything you did and achieved. Think of them as the phone book to your entire academic persona - it's a good place to check up on specific things a committee might be interested in (how many papers has this person published, and in which journals? how much money has he brought in? etc.), but not much more than that. That means that you would definitely add the information to your CV, but should probably not attempt to sell your experience through it.

The place(s) where you as a candidate would frame how you want to be perceived, and what of your activities you want to emphasize, are the cover letter, and your research and teaching statements. In that sense, you would want to emphasize your teaching experience in your teaching statement if, and only if, you think this is something central to your teaching philosophy, or if you think that this is going to be a big plus to the place you are applying to. If you really want to emphasize it you can also add one or two sentences to this end to the cover letter, but I would probably only go that far if the place you applied to is also an HBCU or has made clear that such experience is of particular interest to them (a standard blurb at the end of the job announcement does not count).


I think the simple answer here is that (a) it depends and (b) the entire application "package" is considered when admission decisions are made.

What I mean when I say that it "depends" is that it depends on where you are applying. If you are applying to a top math program then there will be many many individuals applying for admission. Of these, a subset will also likely have publications and will also likely have high GRE scores. I say "likely" because it's impossible to know the strength of the applicants in any given admissions cycle.

What I mean when I say "entire application package" is that, in some respects, you can make up for one lacking area by excelling in another; take this with a grain of salt however. You are applying for admission into a PhD program. The important question the admissions committee is trying to ask for each applicant is "Is this individual likely to succeed in doing research in this department?". Past publications speak to this much more directly than do GRE scores. Classroom performance is no longer the emphasizing factor -- it's all about the research!

As others pointed out, if you have a faculty letter of recommendation that supports your contribution to the publications you have that will be huge! If not, the admissions committee may certainly wonder what your role in these were, particularly if you are not the first author.

Additionally, top PhD programs may use GRE scores to "weed out" some initial applications. Nobody has time to go over the complete admissions package of 500+ applicants.

My advise: if you have time, spend another month or two doing some extra GRE prep and retake the test. It sounds like you have a strong application other than the one score. Spend your time only studying for the math portion. Some programs will let you "pick and choose" which scores of which test to submit (i.e., submit math from "test #2", submit vocab from "test #1", submit writing from "test #2"). At any rate, because you are applying to math departments, the math score is really what matters!

Hope this helps and good luck!

Edit and disclaimer: My background and experience is in applied math and computer science fields. As another poster pointed out this may be different for pure math department applications.


Double blind review: anonymise data source?

A dataset may not be publicly available, but there is no way for anybody but the owner to know who the owner may have chosen to privately share that dataset with.

As for the owner of the data: I would expect anybody who was closely involved enough to know who the data was shared with to have a conflict of interest and to therefore not be used as a reviewer.  Certainly, as an editor, if I saw a paper used a proprietary data-set from IBM, I would not invite a person from IBM to be a reviewer.

As such, I would judge there to be no need to blind the origin of a dataset.


Upcoming dismissal as supervisor no longer wants to supervise me - should I just withdraw?

Does your university have a mentoring system? I think you need to sit down with a mediator and the PI to try and work out a solution where you can continue either under the PI's guidance or someone else. If you do not have a mentor, then you should talk to another Professor who you think will be sympathetic and be able to guide you. Something is terribly wrong if you are being kicked out and it is a surprise. You need to set-up a meeting and negotiate a solution, a meeting with the department chair sounds a bit abrupt, unless they can help find a solution somehow.

I cannot give an answer as to whether you should withdraw. But if you were under the impression you can graduate this year, then withdrawing does not seem necessary. You will have wasted at least three years (presumably).


Does adding "All rights reserved" have no legal usefulness?

Currently, copyright is assumed to the authors unless explicitly declared otherwise, and no rights are granted unless explicitly declared.  Thus, de facto your work is "all rights reserved" even if you don't explicitly state it.

Please do make sure you explicitly state copyright information, however, including name and durable contact information!  The assumption of strong copyright protection even without explicit notification is actually a big problem for effective sharing of information both inside academia and outside, because people often reserve more rights than they intend to, and lack of good copyright information makes it difficult to correct this.

A number of organizations are building systems intending to simplify this type of interaction.  One of the most notable is Creative Commons, whose licenses your see all over Wikipedia.  Other similar ventures and consortia exist for software, electronic hardware, mechanical blueprints, DNA, etc., each of which has its own unique set of IP problems, often intensified by the interaction of copyright with patents and less well-known IP systems such as EU sui generis database rights.


How does one figure out which journals to submit a paper to?

A few steps can help. Check your reference list. Where have others writing on similar topics published? you will end up with a list of reasonable journals. The next step can go in one of two ways,, either you chose a high impact journal on the list and take a chance it will be published there or you try to assess where your paper would best fit. The first approach is high risk and if you get rejected you would take the comments and resubmit to a lower impact journal. Trying to figure out an optimal journal directly is not easy and requires experience and insight. You can, for example, ask peers what they think might be a suitable journal and why. Even if you end up with a few differing answers you will be in much better shape. To decide from the final selection might be a matter of flipping coins. You can also look at the editorial staff and see if there is someone among th editors that is very close to your topic. That can be very useful since it is likely that peson will handle your paper and treat it with insight.


What should I write when I send a CV by email?

You should

Say why you are sending the CV.
Thank them for considering your application (or doing whatever they're doing).
Keep the body of the email relatively brief.


Is it okay to mention family background in SOP?

Can you? Sure, it's not wildly inappropriate.

Do I recommend it? No! This is a 1-2 page document where you state what your purpose is (hence the name). It's not a time to talk about your childhood, why you were inspired to study math, or what your favorite type of helicopter is. It's where you talk about what you've done so far and what you want to do next.

You may have to talk about your personal situation -- usually to explain a bad semester, etc. And it's fine to state a few interesting details about yourself (especially if you have significant achievements outside of math, or a non-traditional background, etc.). But listing the professions of your family members is neither necessary nor interesting.


How to write the Graduate Coordinator regarding admission

You just write "Thank you very much for the offer.  I'm very interested, and will definitely contact you if I think of any questions.  At the moment, I'm waiting to hear back from some other institutions, but I will contact you as soon as I come to a final decision."  Graduate coordinators understand that you've applied other places, and there's a relatively low probability they are your first choice.  They've also probably sent out dozens of these offers; they're not that emotionally invested in any particular one.  Honestly, they would probably appreciate knowing where else you are considering for informational reasons.

I hope you've informed all the places you're no longer considering that you've withdrawn your application and that you've contacted places you want to hear from to find out the situation.  There's no need to commit yourself to a timeline (what if you find out you are high on the waiting list somewhere else).


Referee made a mistake but recommended acceptance, what to do?

I would probably mention it, but not make a big deal out of it.  The referee here was lazy (by not reading carefully), the editor was lazy (by not looking at the main result of the paper), so my plan would be to be lazy too.  I'd write an email back with the final revisions and mention casually in the text of the email "just to correct the record the referee wrote animals, but they must have meant dogs which is what's actually in the paper."  Odds are the editor won't read your email carefully and won't even notice your comment, but you'll feel better.

Peer review is such a random crapshoot anyway, and you obviously thought this journal was appropriate, so there's very little actual harm here.  You can be sure that at some point the same thing will happen in the opposite direction and you'll have a paper unfairly rejected by a referee who didn't bother to read the main result and the editor almost certainly won't do anything to correct the error.


Submit an extended version of a computer science conference paper to a non-CS journal

I think it would be a better strategy to submit the extended version to a CS journal and a different approach of the problem with a different point of view (not just 10% extension) to the non-CS journal.

For the reader of the non-CS journal having a non-CS way of expressing the problem/solution would be more beneficial. For the reader that sees both submissions there will not be a feeling of simply trying to get more publications with the same paper (not meaning to be rude or anything!).


Can I copy parts of a glossary verbatim in my thesis?

The license makes it pretty clear that this is allowed. However, you should probably also, in the footnote, give the license as well as the link. Then a reader needn't follow the link to know that it is licensed.

You might even make it more clear that you are quoting from the original.


How to deal with constant pressure given by advisor

Every PhD student suffers mental trauma. You say your advisor "scolds" and "taunts" you. I think of scolding and taunting as personal attacks, and hence unacceptable. That said, your English makes me unsure if he is attacking you or your work. Attacking someones work is a common occurrence in academia. We tend to get one sentence notifications about our successes and pages and pages of feedback about our failures. Even the best researchers fail more often then they succeed. The key thing to remember is that, in general, it is not personal. You need to identify if your advisor is attacking you or your work.

You say your advisor "is not impressed with my good academic record and my hard work". Successful academics tend not to be impressed by academic records and hard work since it is par for the course. This doesn't mean they do not respect you. The best way to find out what your advisor thinks about you is to ask. Ask what you are doing well and what you can work on. Also say that you are feeling unsure of yourself and looking for reassurance. Some advisors will give you reassurance and a shoulder to cry on, others will simply tell you that you are not failing. Not failing is another word for a major success.


How to answer “Why is graduate study important at this time in your life?”, when the reasons are very personal?

You should probably keep your academic interests as the main point. If you write that you are applying to recover from a tragedy in your life, it might not be clear whether you are actually interested in that specific program (or are you just looking for something to do) or whether you might change your mind later.

Also, someone could suspect whether you could tolerate additional stress right now.

Anyway, if you have been out of work or study for a long time due to the tragedy, it is probably best to briefly mention it.


What does a reviewer do - is a reviewer the referee?

In this context reviewer and referee are basically synonymous. In mathematics I think referee is more common, but I think in some other fields reviewer is used more often. In mathematics, "reviewer" also can mean someone who writes a review of a published paper, such as on MathSciNet, but in the context of journal submissions this usage is not relevant.

In my experience though I have never seen a list of reviewers from which you can select though, only to choose the editor that handles your submission. But perhaps some journals do offer this possibility.


I have been a part of Canadian graduate student societies in the past, and I am not familiar with the culture/formalities of forming societies in Britain. I have been the Vice President (and acting President) of a 600 member society (pretty small) so most of my knowledge comes from personal experience.

Forming a society is actually quite straightforward, though a very involved process (it will not be easy). It's quite similar to starting a business. Essentially a Society is just a collection of like-minded individuals. Anyone in a free society can form a Society whenever they want, and have as few or as many members as they want, as long as they abide by their country's laws of course!

Zeroth Step: Maybe join the existing Society?

But before I get to the answer about how to found a society, have you considered running for Executive positions in the British Mycological Society? They would already be set up with resources, members, bylaws, etc. so it would probably be easier to join them and take up a leadership position to guide the society in the preferred direction than to create a brand-new society. Just a thought.

First Step: Learn about Societies

The first thing that you will want to do is take a quick look at Robert's Rules of Order, especially Section 68-70 in the Fourth Ed. You can find the fourth edition online in the link that I provided. If you want the latest edition (11th) you will have to buy it. I highly recommend this book and it has served me well in my society experience. The 11th edition has a tonne of info about how to found a society, how to write bylaws, how to track finances, how to hold elections and (most famously) how to hold meetings. The fourth edition doesn't have as much info about forming a society but it is still quite useful (and free!). It is written from a somewhat American perspective but I should think it mostly carries over.

You'll want to familiarize yourself with how similar societies are operated, what their constitutions/bylaws look like, etc. This shouldn't be too hard: you can probably check out the existing British Mycological Society.

Second Step: Find your supporters

Robert's Rules of Order Revised, 4th Ed., XII 70(a)

The second thing you will want to do (and maybe this is obvious) is find some like-minded individuals. At least ten would be a good starting point, depending on the size of your field (how many mycologists are there in Britain anyway?). If you already have a lot of connections in your field, take some time to meet with them individually and discuss with them why you think the British Mycological Society isn't working properly and what your vision would be for your own Society. Once you feel like you have a reasonable number of supporters, you should call a meeting with all of them together. They purpose of the meeting should be to come up with a shared vision of what the new society will be called and what its purpose should be.

You should also be discussing whether or not the Society will be feasible. Is there really a place for it next to the existing British Mycological Society? Will there be adequate interest from others in your field to make this a worthwhile endeavor?

Be careful about putting out some kind of public notice, lest you find yourself with the newly-formed society being taken over by strangers with different ideas from yourself.

Once you feel like everyone is on the same page and is actually committed to the idea of forming a society, you should move on to step two. If you can't get ten people excited about forming this society, then it probably won't last very long.

Third Step: Write your Charter/Bylaws/Constitution

Robert's Rules of Order Revised, 4th Ed., XII 67

Essentially you want to write a document that lays out the founding principles of your society, called a "Constitution" or a "Charter" or "Bylaws" (I prefer Bylaws myself). You'll see a lot of different preferences for what to call this document based on culture (here in Canada you will often hear the entire document being referred to as "the Bylaws"). At a minimum this should include:

Name and object of the society. (What the name of your society and what is its most fundamental purpose?)
Qualification of members. (Who is allowed to be a member of the Society? How can people become members? This would be a good place to include a non-discrimination clause. Are there member dues/membership fees? If not, where will you get your operating budget?)
[Executive] Officers and their election. (Who will run the operations of the Society? What will the positions be called, i.e. President, VP, Secretary, Treasurer?)
Meetings of the society. (How often are meetings held? When and where are they held? Who can call a meeting?)
How to amend the constitution. (Who is allowed to change the document and under what circumstances?)

You may want to form a small committee (3 to 5 people) to draft the bylaws because it can be hard to coordinate 10 people or more all writing the same document. Once you have a document that the committee is happy with you should call another meeting and present the draft to your supporters. At this meeting your supporters should have the opportunity to discuss the bylaws and amend them if necessary. Finally you should put the acceptance of the bylaws to a vote. If the vote passes then congratulations, you've just formed a new Society! If you can't collectively agree on a set of Bylaws, then your Society will not last long.

Fourth Step: Elect your Officers

Robert's Rules of Order Revised, 4th Ed., X 58-62

Your society will need Executive Officers to handle the day-to-day organization and operation of the Society. The titles and roles of these offices should be laid out in your Bylaws. You will usually need a President, Treasurer and Secretary at a minimum. If no one is willing to volunteer for these positions, your Society will not last long.

Fifth Step: Promote and grow

At this point you have the skeleton of the Society, maybe some of the internal organs (are you the heart or the brain?). You need flesh out your society with more members if you want to make any kind of impact. Start advertising the fact that there is a new Society in town. Maybe get some posters on campuses across Britain. Try contacting the biology department secretaries of local universities and ask them if they could pass along invitations to the students and faculty. Make some profiles on social networking sites. Put together some small events, like a networking social in a public place (so you don't need to pay rental fees). As you add more members you can start taking on projects like branding.

Keep in mind this will be slow going. You likely will have to work for at least a decade, if not more, before your society really starts to gain real influence in your field. It will be tough to get new members, especially if you have membership dues, because people might be worried that it is some kind of scam. This is why you need a dedicated group of founding members who can stick with the Society for the long run.

Sixth Step (Optional): Get yourself officially recognized by a larger organization

This is not necessary but can be helpful. For student societies, you often want to get your society ratified underneath your student union at whatever university you belong to (become a member society). This is often helpful because the union will have resources to help protect and promote your society. By "protect" I mean that they will usually insure your events so that you aren't personally liable if someone is injured at an event, etc. as long as you abide by their bylaws. I am not familiar with any similar arrangements for non-student societies.


Staying in same lab for a while after finishing PhD?

The original intent of the post-doc, in addition to giving a young PhD time to establish a solid publication record, was to learn and develop a new skill, technique, or research area. A few decades ago, it was not uncommon for newly minted PhDs to go straight into a TT position; today, its quite rare, making the post-doc almost assumed, and many do elect to stay in the same environment.

In my opinion, for someone who aspires to an academic career, the best post-doc is completed elsewhere: it extends one's education beyond their PhD studies into a new (but probably related) domain, builds on their research toolbox, and introduces one to a new way of thinking (avoiding so-called 'intellectual inbreeding').

However, there's nothing inherently wrong with doing a post-doc in the same lab, except that it usually doesn't offer a whole lot of opportunity to learn something new. I can think of several individuals who landed a great TT position after a post-doc in the same lab. But do consider that doing a post-doc somewhere else might make you more marketable in the long run.


How to cite multiple papers published in different years by the same authors in APA style?

These are the examples given in the sixth edition of the APA manual. They are separated only by a comma.

Training materials are available (Department of Veterans Affairs, 2001, 2003)
Past research (Gogel, 1990, 2006, in press)


Where can I learn more about the differences between areas of chemistry at graduate level?

If you are in the EU, most graduate schools typically prefer you to have a Masters degree before applying for a PhD, it is apparently not so necessary in the US. The Masters is however, important for several reasons:

You can see if chemical research is what you really want to do, as most undergraduate programmes have no or very limited opportunity for original research, largely being focussed on equipping you with a set of techniques and skills to enable you to carry out chemical research. I have many friends who were 'all chemistry'd out' after their Masters, and left the field completely (Of my cohort over half are no longer in a chemical field).
You can try out a field of chemistry in a research environment, either one you have come across during your undergraduate e.g. spectroscopy of small molecules, and enjoyed, or one that only really gets introduced at undergraduate level, if at all e.g. supramolecular chemistry.
You can try out a supervisor you are considering working under for a PhD, without the commitment of 3+ years on the line.
It demonstrates to a potential supervisor that you are capable of conducting original research to a good standard. Agreeing to take someone on with no prior demonstration of research aptitude is not something many supervisors would do!

PhD programmes can also vary a lot: Some are longer and have a first 'introduction' year, where they train you in the specific skills you need to complete the programme. This first, often taught year is very similar to the 4th year of an integrated Bachelor + Masters course. Some are just straight research from the start, with an evaluation at the end of the first year, the failure of which prevents you from continuing, and you leave with an M.res or similar. I could go on...

To more directly answer your question, the best way to find out about the differences in day-to-day activity between the different areas of chemistry at PhD level is to try and talk to some current PhD students.

If you have completely free reign and no particular interest, I would suggest you aim to talk to students in most of these categories:

Physical lots of maths, often boils down to applied physics, in my opinion the least 'chemical' of these options. Can also overlap with analytical in areas like atmospheric chemistry or kinetics.
Analytical (physical chemistry typically focussing on spectroscopic exploration)
often overlaps with computational (modelling the behaviour of chemicals on surfaces e.g. catalysts, or the behaviour of proteins and their binding sites, or small molecules as entirely simulated objects, to name a few)
Chemical informatics e.g. developing tools to help statistically analyse chemical behaviours for drug discovery, or to communicate chemical information electronically. Can be a good way into programming with a chemical slant.
Synthetic chemistry this comes in many flavours, organic and inorganic, but most are similar on a day to day basis (see below for exceptions)
Medicinal/natural product synthesis synthetic chemistry but typically much longer hours, often the most internally competitive/'macho' culture in the department
Materials chemistry this can cover a very wide range of specialisations and include engineering and physics too; very dependent on the particular programme. Nanoscience is sometimes lumped in here, sometimes in organic and sometimes in inorganic!

In broad strokes, more physical PhDs can require greater discipline, because you don't have the obvious 'put this reaction on/analyse this intermediate' type workflow and can spend weeks waiting for computations to run/repairs to a piece of analytical equipment etc. It is easier to remain emotionally uninvested in the outcome of an experiment, because you are typically trying to find an answer to a question, rather than produce a specific result. By contrast, synthetic PhDs can have moments of soul-crushing defeat when reactions repeatedly fail, frequently requiring a lot of mental fortitude to keep trying things to get a reaction to work/work out a way round it.

To summarise, doing a Masters first is a good idea, to ensure you want to go the PhD route and improve the strength of a PhD application. For picking a PhD (and to a lesser extent, a Masters) you really need to be able to narrow down your options by some/all of topic, supervisor, location and type of programme.

addition from comments: Here is a link to information provided by ACS for students looking to find out about graduate courses, should be a good starting point.


How to edit citation style in CSL? or What citation style is this?

I was able to find part of the answer
Out of Editor
Here are lines 81-96 or the original IEEE with URL csl file. I was unable to find out how to do it in the visual editor but I was digging around in the XML file itself and saw this:
  <macro name="author">
    <names variable="author">
      <name initialize-with=". " delimiter=", " and="text"/>
      <label form="short" prefix=", " text-case="capitalize-first"/>
      <substitute>
        <names variable="editor"/>
        <names variable="translator"/>
      </substitute>
    </names>
  </macro>
  <macro name="editor">
    <names variable="editor">
      <name initialize-with=". " delimiter=", " and="text"/>
      <label form="short" prefix=", " text-case="capitalize-first"/>
    </names>
  </macro>

removing the initialize-with=". " seems to have given me full names. After this it looks like the only aspects I would like to change is adding URL at the end. Workable for now but I would like to know how to edit the CSL file as it would be enormously helpful and faster than what I'm going to have to do with REGEX.
In Editor
Knowing what I was looking for and knowing the way programmers like to think I was able to find a similar setting in the visual editor

Bibliography > Layout > author (macro) > Names > Name
In the name section below is the "Initialize with" option.


What facts constitutes as citation-worthy

Generally speaking commonly known facts, such as things that appear in encyclopedias or even undergraduate text books don't need to be cited unless quoted.
But that doesn't mean "known" to everyone. If they are common knowledge among experts, for example, then no citation is needed.
If you quote or closely paraphrase something from a source, then you should cite that source.
But it is probably better to err on the side of over citation than under and citations can also sometimes help the reader, depending on the audience. A


What does one do if one receives a less prestigious offer while waiting for a decision on a more prestigious one?

Alice should tell scheme B something like "I have won competition A, which shows that I am very well qualified for B."

I do not see how winning A can be all that bad for Alice unless A requires her to commit to stay for some period.  In any case, I think she should remember how fortunate she is to have A.


How can full-time lecturers find the time to prepare for lectures?

Two points:

Preparing for a lower division course takes much less time than preparing than preparing for a graduate level course for several reasons.  First, you presumably have much better knowledge of the material in the lower level course.  Second, you tend to present material at a slower rate in a lower level course.  Third, you should be using more active learning strategies (having the students do work in class) in a lower level course.  I've found that although it takes an hour or two to prepare for an hour long class in one of my graduate courses, when I've needed to substitute in a lower division course (e.g. calculus) for an instructor who is out sick, I can typically prepare for the class in about a half hour.
it's much easier to teach a class if you have taught the course in previous semesters, and its particularly easy if you're teaching multiple sections of the same course in a semester.  So, an instructor with a four course teaching load might actually be teaching three sections of one course and one section of a second course.  This is described as "four sections, with two preps."