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[ "How do I regain my momentum in research after a long period of slacking off?", "I'm two and a half years into my PhD program. Recently, I finally worked up the courage to admit it — I've been slacking off for over a year and it's my fault. Now I'm determined to be productive in research again but realized that I forgot how to.\n\nIt was sweet in the beginning. I got a paper accepted at a top conference after my first semester, which was quite something for a first-year. I was enthusiastic about research back then, devouring papers in and outside my field and conceiving of new research projects even in my dreams. \n\nSadly, things changed quickly. At the beginning of my second semester, I took over a project left by a visiting scholar in my lab. That project was complicated and beyond my expertise. I poured hours and hours into it but barely got any useable data. Meanwhile, my own projects began to go nowhere. My advisor didn't offer any concrete help (e.g., giving advice on how to improve my experiment equipment or design, pointing me to people who might be able to help, etc.) but just asked me to keep going. After a streak of failed experiments, I felt disillusioned and started to spend less and less time on research. I spent what must have been 40 hours a week on my hobbies and social activities. I feel ashamed to admit it but even when I was in my office, I wasn't thinking about research — most of the time, I was just randomly browsing the Internet and waiting to go home. I only worked hard before major deadlines and managed to get some papers/posters accepted at major conferences. These achievements, however, paled by comparison in front of those of my cohort. My advisor noticed and mentioned several times that my research is going slowly. \n\nThis semester, I came to the realization that I've squandered half of my PhD career and decided not to continue on the path of self-destruction. I want to make the most of what I have left but feel disoriented about where to begin and what to prioritize. For instance, should I first catch up on basic research skills that I lack or come up with new ideas? Speaking of the latter, what are some good practices I can follow in order to regularly come up with research ideas? — I used to be good at this but have now lost touch with what good (or at least feasible) ideas look like. How mature should an idea be before it's a good time to talk to others about it? Should I ever share my concerns with people in my program? — They may look down upon me and I'm not sure what good it does, but it feels so painful to keep pretending that I'm right on track.\n\nAny suggestions would be much appreciated!!" ]

[ "phd", "research-process", "career-path", "productivity", "motivation" ]

[ "Lengths of review process of mathematical journals", "Do you have any file containing the information of peer-review process lengths of mathematical journals?If yes, It will be very helpful for me.\nThanks for your helps." ]

[ "publications", "journals", "peer-review" ]

[ "Specialise now or broaden knowledge?", "I am currently an undergraduate student in mathematics coming to the end of a 4-year Bachelor degree. I have strong credentials (good marks, plus research and teaching experience) and have been doing research with one of the leading Professors in my area since the second year of my undergraduate degree. I have a couple of publications with this Professor as well and most would say I have a very strong foundation to do good research in this particular area of study during my Masters, PhD and beyond.\nI have been keen on learning/studying another area of mathematics for a while now that has connections with my current area of study, though, would require me to change to a different area of research. I'm considering changing to this other topic of research for my Master's degree, both because I'm interested in doing research in this particular area, and also it would be good to broaden my knowledge at this stage of my career. Though, my current supervisor and mentors seem to have high expectations for me to continue here, and they have relatively large research group set up at my current institution that provides me a lot of undivided support.\nWould it be silly for me to change universities and research areas when I already have a good setup now, or is this stage of my career a good time to move, learn and try different things before a PhD? I feel it would be better to stay in my current area as I have a good foundation here and am quite knowledgable of current research, though, I don't know many people who specialised in their research area from 2 years into their Bachelors degree. Is it a risk making this change seeing as I would have to get up to speed in the other area of research, or am I overthinking things?\nN.B. Master's degree are mostly research based in my home country, minimal coursework is completed." ]

[ "mathematics", "masters", "career-path", "early-career", "changing-fields" ]

[ "PhD transfer during first year", "This year I was accepted into two PhD programs (USC and WashU). I had a very specific research interest, and the USC program used to be my first choice, because there were so many professors in the program who worked on this topic. But later I found that the PhD training in WashU was slightly better. So I ended up to WashU.\nNow my question is, if the program at WashU is not as good as I expected, is it possible for me to transfer to USC after/during my first year of rotation?\n(At the time of my decision, I had conversations with the deputy director of both programs, and they knew I had a tough choice between the two)" ]

[ "phd", "graduate-admissions", "graduate-school", "biology", "transfer-student" ]

[ "Which is considered more valuable for faculty job applications, teaching experience or participation in conferences?", "As a PhD student from top university, I have the opportunity of having a minor called \"teaching minor\". For me, I am personally mostly interested in mathematical application into material science while I am very interested in getting tenured faculty positions. \n\nActually, I am more interested in going to a lot of conference and trying to advertise or publicize the result of my research and I am worried that committed teaching during the teaching minor program would render me less experience in conference or slows down my research progress.... \n\nAny suggestion on my situation? Shall I pursue the teaching minor, or minor in mathematics as it is my research and personal interest? Or shall I do exhaust myself trying to do both?" ]

[ "career-path", "teaching", "conference", "tenure-track", "faculty-application" ]

[ "Is it ethical for the postdoc to be listed as a co-author and the corresponding author on all group publications?", "Is it the usual practice in your discipline for the postdoc in the group to be placed as co-author as well as a corresponding author on all publications that are written by the PhD students in the group? \n\nFor some publications, the postdoc provides input and advice, and for others none whatsoever. The reasoning behind this practice is that the postdoc needs publications for his academic career. However, the PhD students that do 95% of the work in some cases, are the only ones able to answer scientific questions. As a consequence, emails are prepared for the postdoc by the PhD students, and sent out under the name of the postdoc.\n\nIs this a standard practice in your field of research?" ]

[ "ethics", "authorship" ]

[ "The Importance Of Final Year Results In US PhD admissions", "How important are final year ( more especially final semester ) results in PhD admissions?\n\nI am on MEng course in the UK where final year results are usually released mid to late July, and I intend on applying to US universities, now when reading on the application procedures at many universities I noticed that the application deadline for a lot of US engineering PhD programs seems to be from late November to late January, with admission decisions usually being made around April.So I am curious to know how important final year/semester results are in a PhD application." ]

[ "phd", "graduate-admissions", "engineering" ]

[ "Long distance collaboration with a professor – wrote manuscript, getting ignored. What to do next?", "This summer I was involved in a long distance collaboration with a researcher at an institution for clinical research. I was essentially CC'd to this person via an old colleague who currently works with this professor as a faculty member when the professor I collaborated with apparently expressed to my colleague that they needed more manpower to finish writing a manuscript given their busy schedule.\n\nAnyways, this researcher had me conduct a literature review for a series of rare, clinically related human disorders to serve as the base of a case report for a series of patients who presented at this institution for a clinical trial, as well as some basic statistical analyses. I essentially typed what would be the base of this paper. This institution is a top 20 NIH funded institution and my old colleague is very trustworthy, so I was very ecstatic to work on this project during the summer. This researcher even speculated on specific journals we should target for publication. The researcher and I had good interactions via e-mail and after I was finished with \"baking the cake\" so to speak with the review, the researcher praised my work and said all that they had to do was pull up the patient demographics and specific presentations of the patients to input. I do not have access to that sensitive information as I am not affiliated with that institution, so I was dependent upon them for that.\n\nThe researcher did not reply for what was around a month, so I sent an update e-mail kindly inquiring on the status of the project, thanking the researcher for allowing me to work with them, saying I learned a lot conducting the literature review, etc.\n\nIgnored for another month. At this point I am frustrated because at the time I did all this work in about 3 days with very, very little sleep knowing I had personal familial commitments to attend to and I would be away from a computer for an extended period of time (around a week or two) and I thought this researcher was adamant about needing the \"manpower\" as per my old colleague.\n\nWhat do I do now? I'm assuming there's nothing much I can do. I live pretty far from this institution so it's not like I can drive up there for a meeting. Moreover, to walk in unannounced sounds very vulgar. I can't tattletale to my old colleague because why would I drag him into something he isn't a part of? I wanted to get this project to completion because I am looking to apply to this same exact institution for a fellowship later on in my career and am looking at this specific department. Moreover, I was genuinely passionate about the project and felt like authorship in that field would boost my morale. I also thought developing rapport with faculty would help my prospective academic career. I tried looking at my e-mails and even had friends look through my e-mails to see if I had inadvertently wrote something that could be interpreted aggressive, rude, or accidentally offensive (like calling them Mr./Ms. instead of Dr.) but I found nothing." ]

[ "publications", "research-process", "ethics", "professors", "collaboration" ]

[ "What does a reviewer do - is a reviewer the referee?", "This question is regarding math journals but I assume should apply to journals in other disciplines as well. Some journals ask you to choose a reviewer from their list (or sometimes they ask you to suggest your reviewer of choice) as you are about to submit your manuscript. My question is what exactly this reviewer does to the manuscript? Does (s)he looks at it and decides whether to send it to a referee? or (s)he is indeed the referee?" ]

[ "publications", "peer-review" ]

[ "Is it possible to change email on published paper?", "My paper was published two weeks ago. I have just noticed that I have provided the wrong email. Is it possible to change the email after the paper was published?" ]

[ "publications", "errors-erratum" ]

[ "Academic Progression via Promotion vs via Recruitment", "I'm currently a postdoc at School A at a certain university in Australia. On another campus of the same university, there's a vacant assistant professor position at Shcool B. I was intending to apply for this position, but the HR is telling me that I cannot and that my application should go through the academic promotion procedures. \n\nIs this fair under the equal opportunity principles? I checked the policies available online in this regard but didn't find any explicit interpretation of cases like mine. Why should be disadvantaged just because I'm already employed by the university?\n\nEdit: The academic promotion round takes place once a year in March. So I'll be missing out on this opportunity if I wait till next year." ]

[ "career-path", "promotion" ]

[ "Is there a way I can find out why I didn't get a certain academic position?", "I'm applying for postdoctoral positions and when I get rejection letters there is no reason given. Is there any way I can tell if there are \"red flags\" in my application that are getting it shot down? My adviser has reassured me that there is nothing wrong with my application but after so many rejections I am not so sure...If there really is a simple reason, I would like to know so that I can remedy my application." ]

[ "job-search" ]

[ "Should I mention my undocumented status in faculty applications?", "I am looking to apply to several junior faculty positions this Fall and Winter. Many positions allow you to submit an optional diversity statement where I had intended to discuss my undocumented legal immigrant status. I have DACA so I am eligible to work in the USA without visa sponsorship but this is contingent on continued DACA renewals, which used to be 2-year fixed terms but has since been reduced to annual renewals.\nUndocumented immigrants in the academic field are extremely sparse, far below the national averages for bachelor's, master's, and PhD attainment, and as you might expect, almost non-existent among professors. This seems like a good point in terms of advancing diversity but at the same time, my concerns are whether universities would even bother to look at someone like me whose employment status is not guaranteed in the long run, especially under the current US administration.\nFrom a faculty search committee standpoint, would someone who is undocumented/DACA-mented be a red flag?" ]

[ "united-states", "faculty-application", "legal-issues", "diversity", "daca" ]

[ "How to Get Over Feelings of Being a Failure in Engineering/Academia", "It's my first time posting here, and I have a relatively personal issue that I would like to discuss. I studied electrical engineering in college and was accepted to the integrated BS/MS program at my alma mater later in my senior year. However, due to immense stress over my OCD symptoms(obsessive thoughts) and long-term burn-out, I dropped out of that program after a year without a master's degree.\nI spent another year trying to reset and reboot myself (doing part-time jobs, volunteering, reading, spending time with family), and am now a second year master's student in biostatistics under public health (was attracted to public health due to my mental health struggles). I can say that I am in a much better place now than the dark times and I am also working as an engineering intern at a medical device company which gives me a sense of purpose.\nHowever, even after two years, I still haven't fully dropped my baggage of being a "failure" and not good enough. My best friend in college is working on her PhD in engineering and I used to expect myself to do a PhD in engineering as well. Even though now I have a clearer sense of what I truly want, somehow unconsciously I still think there could have been a better version of me -- someone who's stronger and more determined to get through whatever grinds/difficulties and go all the way up to a PhD. Intellectually I know that I might already have or will gain those qualities through my career, but emotionally I still think I somehow have failed and incurred enormous sunk cost and am much less of the best version of me.\nThank you for reading this far and hopefully someone can give me some much-needed advice. Hugs to you if you have been in similar situations." ]

[ "career-path" ]

[ "Doing upper division pre-requisites for a second master's degree - need advice", "I have a BA and an MA in biological anthropology/bioarchaeology (as well as all my PhD coursework done, go me). I left that field and academia in general several years ago and ended up landing a job as a web dev/computer programmer, which is a skill set I learned in high school and never once studied formally in college or grad school.\n\nI'm really in love with my current field however, and would like to get a degree in comp sci. After looking around, it seems a lot of local departments don't admit students at the undergraduate level who already have bachelor's degrees, so my option is to go in at the graduate level.\n\nBiggest problem is my first two degrees don't do much for me in terms of satisfying prereqs for admission into an engineering MS program. I had to take lots of stats, for example, but no calc or discrete math. Additionally, I need to knock out a whole bunch of comp sci courses, many of which are either upper division or not available at community colleges.\n\nHas anyone out there done this before? If so, how did you get the upper div or otherwise difficult-to-find-outside-of-a-major-university prereqs?\n\nThanks!" ]

[ "application", "masters", "computer-science", "engineering" ]

[ "Etiquette for sending another email after the first one went unreplied", "I applied for study abroad program and so far, now it has been a week after the expected decision date. Whether I get admitted or not also affects my class schedule for Fall semester which will start in the coming week, so I need to get the decision by this Friday. I sent an email to study abroad office, which is the only contact information available, on Monday to ask for an update but did not get any reply. So, my question is: If I choose to send another email, how to make it sound not rude (since my first email was sent just two days ago)?" ]

[ "etiquette", "email" ]

[ "Student asking too many questions without trying themself", "I work at a bootcamp where I teach programming. I have a student in my class who would ask 1 question every minute. This student would ask about every single thing like where to add this code and how I should do X and Y without even trying. \n\nHow do you deal with a student who asks 100's of questions a day?" ]

[ "students" ]

[ "Teaching for the first time: is reaching out to each student acceptable?", "I work as a programmer as a full time job. Since I'm an experienced programmer and have some teaching aptitude, I've been asked to give a 40-hour course in C# programming to a computer science group of 70 students.\n\nI've given two lessons so far (4 hours total), mixing lecture and practice sessions. I think I'm doing just fine but I'd like to reduce the number of students I'll lose along the way.\nI thought I would make each student more engaged if I established a conversation with them, even if that might prove to be time consuming. I already have an ongoing conversation with (roughly) a fourth of them, since they reached out to me to ask questions and be advised on practical matters. Plus, they did the excercises I assigned to them.\n\nHow should I act with the rest of the students? Today I thought I would be sending a message to each of them (we're in a Slack team) just to check if they've understood the lessons and be helpful in giving advice in case they were stumped by simple matters they might be too shy/afraid to report.\nOn the other hand, I understand they are adults and that I should not babysit them. What would you do?\n\nThank you in advance." ]

[ "teaching", "students" ]

[ "How to write a statement of research interest for postdoc positions that already have a defineed research direction", "I'm currently applying for a postdoc position in a particular lab. The lab has several postdoc positions available at this time, those postdocs will work on different aspects of a larger research project.The application need to include statement of research interest, CV, references and recommendation letters in one document, and also clearly state which position (which aspect of the research) I apply for.\n\nI feel I'm a good fit for two of the positions. However, I don't know how to write a statement of research interest that is suitable for both positions, although those two aspects of the research are connected. From all the examples I saw for research statement, future research is a big part of it. With the research direction and aspects are clearly defined for the positions, what should I write in the section of future research?" ]

[ "postdocs", "research-statement" ]

[ "Is it justifiable to closely mimic the structure/organisation of another thesis for your own thesis", "I am currently in the process of writing my masters thesis. During my research I found this another thesis and I really like the way it is organised and structured. \n\nBy structure, I mean the heading titles, the organisation of results and their order etc, for one chapter only. Although the topic of both thesis are similar but I will be presenting my own original data and results in the thesis. \n\nWould it be ok for me to closely copy the structure of another thesis or could that be seen as plagiarism?" ]

[ "thesis", "plagiarism" ]

[ "Does a ResearchGate profile count as a \"personal website\" for green OA purposes?", "According to SHERPA/RoMEO, many journals permit post-review preprints to be uploaded immediately to an author's \"personal website\", but apply an embargo period to \"open access repositories\" (example).\n\nResearchGate claim that individuals' profile pages on their site count as \"personal websites\" for these purposes, and thus that it is OK to upload to ResearchGate immediately. Is this true?\n\nCaveats:\n\n\nThe fully correct answer to this is probably \"we don't know until/unless a publisher sues and there is case law\". But I'm interested in any pronouncements or arguments that have been made on the topic.\nThere are a lot of questions about ResearchGate and about sharing preprints on this site. I don't think that this is a duplicate of any of them... To clarify, following the close votes - I am asking specifically for the journal policies explained above, whether I can take the specific action described - not vaguely \"is it OK to put published articles on RG\"." ]

[ "website", "open-access", "social-media", "repository" ]

[ "Is it possible to find out which author got the most citations in a specific scientific discipline?", "I'm currently trying to find out which authors get the most citations in specific fields, like \n\nAstrophysics\n\nCondensed Matter\n\nHigh Energy Physics - Experiment\n\n...\n\n(These are all arXiv categories) \n\nEspecially great would be to do such a search for specific year. Is any paper search engine capable of this?" ]

[ "publications", "citations", "arxiv", "bibliometrics", "literature-search" ]

[ "Correct typo in paper title?", "One of my published papers has a typo in the title. I have found errors of various kinds in my other papers (who hasn't) and never cared to make corrections, but I often refer people to this particular paper and the fact that there is a typo in the title feels somewhat akward to me. Should I ask the publisher to change it? I think they might update their database and the paper webpage on their site, but I doubt they would change the pdf and they will obviously not change the printed version. Hence there would be some discrepancy.\n\nUpdate: my request was denied." ]

[ "publishers", "online-publication", "errors-erratum" ]

[ "Effect of multiple unsatisfactory grades in graduate school", "I am faced with an Unsatisfactory (U) grade for research in my PhD program and my understanding from fellow students is that it is a rule or convention that two unsatisfactory grades means that I will be expelled and I cannot apply to any other graduate school for five years.\nWhen researching this online I could not corroborate that this is a rule or convention. I am struggling to find out what the exact effect is. Does anyone know exactly what the impact of two unsatisfactory grades is in PhD?\nHow will a single "U" affect my academic standing in my PhD program and academic career in general if I apply to another program?\nHow will a second "U" affect my academic standing in my PhD program and academic career in general if I apply to another program?\nDoes anyone have experience in applying to another PhD program with an unsatisfactory grade, two unsatisfactory grades, dismissals, or anything of the sort?\nAlso, is there anything different if I am an international student at a U.S. university?" ]

[ "phd" ]

[ "My MA thesis has flaws. How do I present it during PhD application?", "I completed my MA in 2014 (humanities, third world country) but due to very bad (almost non-existent) supervision and other reasons my thesis is subpar in some areas (e.g., research design, data analysis). However, during the past 7 years I have not only been working in my field, but I have also managed to make up for this by publishing a couple of world class peer-reviewed articles, have a couple of articles under review in flagship journals, and a book chapter with a quality publisher to be released soon. Now, I am applying for a PhD and they want my MA thesis among other documents. It does not reflect my "current" research abilities at all so I think it is not a fair way to assess me now after all this time, effort, and achievement.\nIn any case, how can I confront this situation? I was thinking about adding a cover letter to my thesis which indicates upfront that this thesis is not my best work and may have flaws and then proceeding to more precisely refer to these flaws and how they can be rectified.\nIs this a good strategy? Do you have any other suggestions?" ]

[ "phd", "graduate-admissions", "thesis", "masters", "application" ]

[ "How to choose a recommender during graduate school applications?", "I am applying for a Ph.D. in Mathematics in U.S. universities from India. The application process requires me to register people who can comment on my capability for research and recommend me for the graduate school. I have heard that since most applicants for (pure) mathematics Ph.D.s generally do not have publications to show, the recommendations are crucial in the selection process. Hence, I have three questions about selecting my recommenders wisely.\n\n1) Do you feel that recommendations coming from a Professor carries more weightage than the ones coming from an Assistant Professor? My question is that, does the seniority of my recommender add any extra weight or credibility to the recommendation?\n\n2) If a senior Professor gives me 'above average'(or 'good') recommendation while another Assistant Professor ( just two years on the job, not very famous but a very active and well cited researcher) gives me 'excellent' recommendation - which one do you think will support my application better?\n\n3) Which recommendation should I prefer - from a person with whom I worked on a project for around a month, or , from someone who has taught me two courses over two semesters?" ]

[ "phd", "graduate-admissions", "recommendation-letter" ]

[ "How to cite a book that has appeared in multiple versions/editions over the years?", "I would like to cite a book that has first appeared in 1976 and has since seen three editions.\n\nBook on Google Scholar\n\nI need to cite the book in a paper I am writing that will (hopefully) be published by Springer. What version do I cite or do I cite the first but indicate I used the third edition?\n\nIt seems there are multiple choices but I can't find a concrete answer in Springer's guidelines nor can I answer this to my satisfaction with my prior experience." ]

[ "citations", "books" ]

[ "Applying and interviewing for a faculty position without intent of accepting position", "Is it ever a good idea to apply (and interview) to a faculty position at an institute if you know for certain (or with very high probability) that you are not going to accept a position there.\n\nPossible advantages are:\n\n\nNetworking and letting people hear about your work.\nPractice for later interviews.\nLeverage: If a top institute offers you a position, that could be used to improve negotiating position with other institutes that you are interested in.\n\n\nIs this something which is frowned upon? On one hand, I am guessing that departments wouldn't want to waste their time and money on a candidate that will not accept a position. But on the other hand it might be acceptable if the faculty are interested in hearing/talking with the candidate anyway.\n\nIf this is acceptable (or if it is not but someone still recommends it from the candidate's perspective), should the candidate give the impression that they are enthusiastic about the institution? (of course I realize the interests of the candidate might be different than those of the institution)" ]

[ "faculty-application" ]

[ "My work was published and my name was nowhere to be found: how should I handle this?", "I worked as a contract researcher with a university-affiliated institute. I ended up doing qualitative analysis and extensive writing for an academic paper. My former supervisor has basically edited and published my work under his name. The papers are different but only in the way that an interim and final draft are different - the structure is the same and some sentences were either paraphrased or identical.\n\nThe analysis and final recommendations are also identical, he did not supplement my analysis with his own. Although, the analysis process was a collaborative process, I was the one who did the VAST majority of the writing with him chiming in occasionally about what he did/did not like. The basic distribution of labour was: he conceived of the project, did the interviews, made comments on drafts, performed the final edit and responded to peer review questions. I performed the analysis, performed the literature review and wrote the bulk of the paper. \n\nTo boot, I feel like this was a punitive action because at various points after the end of my contract he tried to get me to do various forms of free labour for him which I did not do because it was a substantial amount of work and I was busy working another job. Also, I feel that I should be reimbursed for my time because, quite frankly, I need to pay my rent. I feel that by not including my name on this paper, I am being punished for not being at his beck and call. \n\nI feel that this is extremely unethical, verging on just plain wrong. I am wondering what I can do as this is a research institute setting (not a formal university setting but affiliated) and I was on contract. \n\nWhat options do I have?" ]

[ "research-process", "plagiarism" ]

[ "Can I payoff student-loan debts working as a professor after getting a Ph.D. in mathematics?", "I have been recently accepted into graduate school for my PhD in Mathematics. I feel very prepared and excited. However, my route is somewhat untraditional as I am \"going back.\" That is, I am walking away from a well paying job. (I should mention that I am unmarried with no children.) I still have a lot of debt from undergrad. And, I am about to accumulate more (although an assistantship will help defray some costs). Obtaining my PhD and teaching at a college is my dream. As such, I am taking the plunge-no matter the cost. Working with the assumption that I will be about $100,000 in debt when I graduate, is it feasible to \"live\" even if I secure a tenure-track position? For instance, can one \"request\" to teach intersession and summer sessions for extra income (as a professor)?" ]

[ "phd", "graduate-school", "career-path" ]

[ "I am in fourth year and didn't get to know any of my professors really well. Is it too late to ask for letters of recommendation for graduate school?", "I am a fourth-year student who graduates in May and I only realised mid last year that I was interested in graduate school. Unfortunately due to my shyness, I didn't get to know most of my professors very well. This is exacerbated by the fact that all my classes are online which makes it even more difficult to connect with professors. I also cannot find any research opportunities related to the field I am interested in on the university career website.\nIs it too late for me to get recommendation letters from professors?" ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "recommendation-letter" ]

[ "Is it legal to audio or video tape professors while they are lecturing?", "Is it legal to audio or video tape professors while they are lecturing?\n\nWhy or why not?" ]

[ "lecturer" ]

[ "Do journals need to save all publication-relevant communications", "The journals I am talking about are those accepted by Scopus etc, Elsevier journals for example. \n\nFrom my personal morals, I consider it my right as an author after a submission to a journal to have full access to:\n\n\nall my submitted documents during the review process\nall reviewers' comments made, expect the confidential ones between editor and reviewer \nall additional editors comments\nobviously during review but also afterwards, no matter whether the final result is an \"accepted\" or \"rejected\" paper\n\n\nNow do such mandatory guidelines exist from the Scopus or CrossRef side? If not, are there publishers guaranteeing this? Email communications can be lost for various reasons like switching the university. This is somehow the case with me and I really would like to get access to comments from two years ago." ]

[ "journals", "journal-workflow" ]

[ "Doing masters in Political Economy", "Is it possible to use part of my thesis proposal to help me write another essay on a different assignment ? Or does this amount to \"self-plagiarism\"? Essentially in the other assignment I want to use parts of my proposal to answer the question, it is in a similar context but takes the material in a different direction. The proposal is not in anyway published and as far as I am aware of I would be the owner of the copyright in both instances. I understand that there might be an issue of claiming credit twice but I can't see why I can't use some previous material I have written before to support a different argument." ]

[ "self-plagiarism" ]

[ "How should I state a 'PhD dropout' in my CV?", "I was a final year PhD student (into the last quarter of year 4) in cancer research (passed my qualifying 2 yrs back) but was let go thereafter due to 'unsatisfactory progress' as my data is not sufficient for a PhD thesis. I have to admit here that I've gradually lost my enthusiasm in the project and kinda burnt up after year 3. I've completed all required modules with a decent GPA (4/5). My supervisor was lenient enough to recommend me to graduate with a MSc instead but am facing some 'cross-deparmental red tape' at the moment to say the least (no news of my MSc transfer after 2.5mths of appeal). I'm in the midst of preparing my CV for future job hunt but decided I should just state my current qualification as a 'BSc'. How should I address this 'failure/ 4-yr gap' in my CV? \nI have no intention of applying for any academic research jobs but felt it's best that I stay in a relevant field (bio/pharma?). Any advise given would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!" ]

[ "phd", "cv" ]

[ "How will several Cs and one F affect my chances of gettting into a PhD program?", "I'm a junior chemical engineering major who is interested in getting a PhD in chemical engineering. However, my grades in nearly all of my chemical engineering courses have been about a C and I've also made a D in one of my chemical engineering courses. I've made Cs in one of intro chemical engineering courses focusing on mass and energy balances as well as statics,quantitative methods, and physical chemistry. I've made a D and have to retake my Properties of Materials class. Ive made As and Bs in Im planning on retaking some of these classes to improve my grades but I'm still worried about how these grades will be precieved by a graduate admissions committee in the long run. How badly do these grades affect my chances to get into a PhD program? Do I have a chance at this point? What should someone in my situation do going forward to become a more competitive applicant for graduate school?" ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "engineering" ]

[ "3 Year Master's Full Time?", "How strange is it to want to spend three years on a Master's degree to take an extra six courses? A lot of programs have different curriculum for introductory PhD students vs introductory Master's. I want to be able to take some of those PhD classes, and I want to have spare room for exciting electives both within my Master's and outside it in associated fields.\n\nWhen is this not possible, and does spending an extra year in a Master's program sound bad? I'd simply end up spending all my time self-studying the extra material after a two year degree anyway.\n\nEdit: I don't know how I'd feel applying for a PhD then dropping to a Master's in a couple years to have a separate core sequence. I don't want to waste anyone's time.\n\nEdit: I'm not enrolled yet. Funding would hopefully be a combination of resident tuition and a TAship/RAship." ]

[ "masters", "united-states" ]

[ "Am I being exploited by my supervisor?", "It has been 4.5 years since I joined as a PhD student. \n\n\nMy supervisor asks me to draft almost all of his important emails. He will begin by briefing me the issue, and ask me to draft the email in a document and sent to him. He would ask me to do this even when I am busy doing experiments. Many times I have to leave the experiment in the middle to draft his emails.\nHe has asked me to correct PhD thesis of three of my seniors. I was asked to correct the thesis for language and technical content. These assignments put me months behind my planned schedule. I guess correcting a thesis for one of the senior would have given me a learning opportunity on how to write a good thesis, editing, formatting, etc. Three theses are, in my opinion, too much. I don't know why he never assigns such works to other students in the research group. \nOne day he shared some experimental results of another PhD student (who is a junior to me) and asked me to perform statistical analysis on the results and draft a research manuscript. It took me days to complete the analysis and write the manuscript from the scratch. When it was finally ready for submission, I requested him to keep the author sequence as: my junior (first author), me (second author), supervisor (third author). On hearing this he became extremely furious (he keeps himself as the second author in all the research papers), and indirectly warned me that he won't be taking interest in supervising my research. Fearing that my work progress could go haywire, I apologized profusely and I had to literally 'beg' him to forgive me. I made the request for the author sequence because I have seen that professors usually keep the names of students earlier in the author sequence before their own.\nI have been devoting 1.5 hours every weekday (Mon to Fri) to tutor his daughter in high-school Mathematics. That takes a precious amount of my time which I'd have instead spent on my research. I politely expressed that this work takes a lot of my time, but he still asked me to continue. I had no choice but to continue. \n\n\nWhat I would like to ask here is am I being exploited/abused, or is this what a PhD student is 'normally' expected to do? How is the PhD student and supervisor relationship ideally supposed to be? Since the PhD degree is extremely important for my career, I have been doing everything he has asked. But I don't really want to be a supervisor like him in the future when I will be supervising students working with me. Please share some advice. \n\nUpdate: The region is South-East Asia." ]

[ "phd", "advisor", "ethics", "supervision", "abuse" ]

[ "Multiple submission of same work for different audiences", "I have research work that has been conducted and is at the stage where it is worth disseminating to the research community. It is somewhat cross-discipline in nature, and involves some technical contributions and is also of interest to a set of end users who are completely non-technical.\n\nThe problem is that, having attempted previous submissions, it has become painfully clear that neither community seems to appreciate quite the same issues as the other. Thus, a single paper aimed at addressing all the issues from both perspectives ends up being perhaps lacklustre, and apparently unappealing from both sides. This is partly due to constraints on paper length, which prevent adequate detail for all aspects of the paper, and also the fact that fundamentally large portions of the paper end up being targeted towards an audience that is not present for the given journal.\n\nTherefore, I was wondering if I could adopt the approach whereby a high-level paper is written targeting the end users of the development and submitted to an appropriate journal, and a second paper which covers the technical aspects in detail without trying to cover the aspects necessary for the end-user audience. Considering that both papers will present the same results, is this an acceptable approach to publication?" ]

[ "publications", "journals", "multidisciplinary" ]

[ "Is it acceptable for a referee to reject a paper for superficial reasons?", "I recently got a short referee’s report on a paper I submitted.\nThey made superficial remarks concerning notation and writing style, and then admitted that they did not even read the main result.\nIs this acceptable for a referee? \n\nThe editor took their recommendation and rejected the paper." ]

[ "publications", "peer-review" ]

[ "academic job offers during Coronavirus", "I signed a contract for an academic faculty position in the US in February. Now with the pandemic affecting universities, do you think it is possible that they rescind the offer? Is it appropriate to reach out to the dean or someone else and ask how the situation is developing in light of hiring freezes at some universities in the US?" ]

[ "job", "covid-19" ]

[ "Is doing a PhD just for the university requirement is a good idea?", "I have an MSc degree and I work at university as a lecturer. However, the university has a policy where you should do your PhD within a given time frame. The problem is that I'm not interested in any area yet, nor am I interested in doing the work associated with a PhD.\n\nShould I just go with it because the university forces me to do it, or should I just quit from the university and look for another job? \n\nWhat do you think? Can I succeed if I start doing my PhD while i feel that I'm forced to do it?" ]

[ "phd", "job", "university" ]

[ "How can I identify research opportunities I am qualified for, and position myself as a competitive candidate, in a different field from my degree?", "I currently have a BSc. in Environmental Science and would like to go back for a biology focused PhD in the next few years. I keep seeing the recommendation that having a good research fit will be important to potentially being admitted. \n\nMy question is, how do I go about getting research experience in biology when my degree is in something unrelated?\n\nAnswers to the question on How to gain research experience after master program? suggest various possible research opportunities. I've looked at jobs and volunteer opportunities like those, but I'm not sure I'm qualified for them. Even when I find a job that says ‘no experience necessary’, they are still asking for a biology degree. Presumably anyone with one would have had some experience in a biology lab, whereas most of my lab experience is in geology labs.\n\nI don't understand why they would take someone without a relevant degree or experience (even if it's in-class experience) over interns, under/grad students, various types of volunteers with relevant degrees. Without understanding that, I'm not sure how to approach people about these potential opportunities.\n\nHow can I identify research opportunities I am qualified for, and position myself as a competitive candidate for these positions, when I don't have a relevant degree or experience in the field?" ]

[ "research-process", "graduate-admissions", "job", "biology" ]

[ "How should I email my graduate advisor if I did not hear anything?", "I am a graduate student at a University and I am working on academic project under my advisor's guidance. I had emailed two weeks back about my project update (which helps him grade my project hours for the semester as Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory) and the reply was \"Lets talk next week. If you don't hear from me, please call/email me\". \nI messaged again after a week to see whether its a convenient time to give a call, but I did not get any reply.\n\nI waited for quite a time and its been two weeks now. I was also working on couple of other projects and was quite hesitant to message again. I also thought it is vacation as the semester ended. Now, I am unsure how to write an email.\n\nHowever, I was given a Satisfactory without any discussion or checking my project, which is still good, as I really made some progress on the project.\n\nCan anyone help me by giving a suggestion on how to handle this situation?\n\nEdit: I have also taken one of my advisor's courses and he is pretty cool. I have never seen him getting angry for anything. Its just that I am confused and blaming my hesitant nature now." ]

[ "graduate-school", "projects" ]

[ "Should I cite or credit images I found online for a conference presentation?", "I am going to do a conference presentation on so-called Smart Cities\n\nAs you can imagine, the concept of a Smart City is best conveyed using pictures (it is worth a thousand words).\n\nI found a picture which I think can capture this concept\n\n\n\nThere are others like it,\n\n\n\nSince I didn't create them, therefore technically I think I should credit these images, but it is a lot of extraneously and unnecessary information for the audience. \n\nI also see that many people do not credit images when they are presenting, and I would wager a guess that most of those images are not generated by themselves. \n\nShould I attempt to credit or cite this image?" ]

[ "conference", "presentation", "slides" ]

[ "Should I stay an extra semester to complete a second minor?", "I am currently an undergraduate physics student in the fall semester of my junior year. Until recently, I thought I would have to stay an extra semester to complete my undergraduate physics degree, but after looking over my scheduling possibilities for the next three semesters, I've realized I will be able to graduate on time (spring semester of my senior year).\n\nMy dilemma arises from the fact that I am also trying to meet the requirements for two minors (one in computer science and one in math). The two possibilities I see are as follows:\n\n\nIf I choose to graduate on time, my curriculum for the next three semesters will consist of 9 physics courses, 2 computer science courses, and 1 general education. I would finish with my bachelor's in physics and a minor in computer science.\nIf I choose to stay an extra semester, I will be able to complete the requirements for both a computer science minor and a math minor, and I will be able to spread out my physics classes a little more. Additionally, I may be able to take one or two extra elective classes in either math or physics.\n\n\nMy plan is to go to graduate school after my bachelor's , so given my circumstance, is it worth it to stay that extra semester just for the minor in math? Will the additional time to graduate or the extra credential make any difference when it comes to physics graduate school admissions?" ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "physics" ]

[ "What is the equivalent of French Travaux Diriges (TD) in Anglo-Saxon Universities ? and who leads them?", "I made my predoctoral and doctoral studies in France. Even after a few postdoctoral years in Anglo-Saxon like Universities, I am still lost for some mapping between the French system and the non-French system, hence my question. (As a matter of fact, the French system may look from outside even more complicated if not obscure because the higher education splits between the Grandes Ecoles system and the University system. Whatever.)\n\nIn particular, I am wondering if a Lecturer in Math and/or Physics can lead TD like sessions in an Anglo-Saxon University ? I am looking for a position outside, not to say far away from, France." ]

[ "mathematics", "teaching", "university", "physics", "lecturer" ]

[ "What is the time and topic etiquette for a first meeting with a professor to discuss research?", "I am meeting with a biology professor to discuss opportunities for an undergraduate research assistantship. I initiated the contact by introducing myself via email and sending him my CV and general areas of interest. He agreed to meet with me to discuss research opportunities, but I am wondering what is the expected length of a meeting like this? Also, are there any materials (e.g. printed copy of my CV) that I should bring? Should I come prepared with questions about his research (which would require hours and hours of critical reading, because while his work seems interesting to me, it's also very difficult to fully understand) or simply honestly tell him that I'm not as knowledgeable about his work as I would like to be but it sounds very interesting to me and I want to be involved? Lastly, is casual clothing appropriate?\n\nAny answers are appreciated. Thank you." ]

[ "etiquette", "research-undergraduate", "interview" ]

[ "How to merge mendeley contiguous citations in body text?", "I am writing a paper by using Mendeley and I want to cite many paper at the end of a sentence such as [1-5]. But when I have inserted the citations contiguosly, it seems like [1],[2],[3],[4],[5]. How do I change the appearance of citations from plural to single square bracket?" ]

[ "citations", "citation-style" ]

[ "Alternatives to IMRaD for journal papers", "IMRaD (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) seems to be the standard structure of scholarly journal papers.\nAre there also alternative standardized paper formats that are known to obtain widespread acceptance among scholarly journals?\n(Not counting minor IMRaD-modifications, such as the addition of a "concluding" section after the usual IMRAD-structure.)\nThe background to my question is the following: I teach academic writing to students from a variety of disciplines, mostly from chemistry, computer science, physics, engineering, but also social scientists and even a few from the humanities. It is quite a mix. I use IMRaD, and while most students quickly embrace that structure, some students express their concern that IMRaD is not apt to their purposes; usually, by the end of the semester, they do acknowledge, however, that IMRaD eventually helped them. I am nevertheless wondering whether I can accomodate to such students in the future by allowing them to use a paper structure other than IMRaD, but the format should still be one that finds conventional use in the system of science." ]

[ "publications", "journals", "writing", "writing-style" ]

[ "How to properly include research papers that are still not published in a curriculum vitae?", "I'm currently working on two research papers that I will send in a month to a peer-review journal, but I need to write my CV right now to apply for a job.\nIn my CV there are currently three sections:\n\nRefereed Journal Articles\nRefereed Conference Papers\nOther scientific publication [where I've included some non-refereed publications]\n\nIn your opinion, what is the best title for a section about the two papers I'm currently working on, which are going to be submitted to peer-review journals soon, but are currently in progress?" ]

[ "publications", "cv", "research-undergraduate" ]

[ "Methodology Question: How to deal with others having written about similar topic?", "Basically, I am wondering how one is to deal with other scholars that have written about a similar topic or have covered similar/the same phenomenon (my field are the social sciences/humanities). What I will obviously do at the beginning of a chapter is to discuss the literature that has previously covered the events I wish to write about and explain how I will discuss/interpret these events differently in the article/chapter. But I am wondering whether in the unfolding of my argument that follows, I have to cite these works again for every minor point that others might have made about this topic? \n\nI guess it is difficult to give an example of such minor points, but if I discuss the same phenomenon or historical events that others have covered before, I am bound to make certain minor obvious points that others have made before, even though my overall argument/interpretation is different. The same goes for such minor obvious points that are made in the literature that is only distantly related (thus not necessarily appearing in my literature review).\n\nThe Turabian says the following:\n\n\n \"7.9.3 Usually Cite a Source for Ideas Not Your Own. This rule is more\n complicated than it seems, because most of our own ideas are based on\n or derived from identifiable sources somewhere in history. Readers\n don't expect you to findevery distant source for every familiar idea,\n but they do expect you to cite the source for an idea when (1) the\n idea is associated with a specific person and (2) it's new enough not\n to be part of a field's common knowledge.\"\n\n\nHowever, there is of course a large grey area to this. I would not say that the minor points I mean are in any way tied to a specific person, but whether that would mean I do not have to provide a footnote every time there is even a slight parallel point that I make. I understand that I could still simply always provide a footnote in such cases, but in practice that looks rather silly and it does not seem to be the case that other scholars in my field provide such citations for such minor points.\n\nThanks for your help." ]

[ "citations", "writing", "citation-style" ]

[ "Should I focus on my grades or on finishing my degree on time?", "I am doing an 5-year Integrated Master's degree (3-year Bachelor + 2-year Master) on Physics in Europe. Aiming for a thesis in Quantum Computation/Information. I am currently on the 4th year and have a \"good\" overall grade (84%). \n\nHowever, due to health issues, I failed to perform well on my 6th semester (the last of the Bachelor), almost failing half of the courses. I got 50%-60% on 4 of them.\n\n\n So I am faced with a dilemma:\n \n \n Should I focus on finishing my degree on time, potentially having to either manage doing a thesis and improving some grades at the same time, or settle for those low grades and just move on?\n \n \n OR\n \n \n Should I focus on improving my grades and achieving the ones I know I am capable of, potentially getting to ~88%, with the\n disadvantage of having to delay/prolong my thesis to a 11th semester?\n \n\n\nThis might be a very close call and depend on a lot of factors, but I am interested in knowing, in general, which option gives me the highest chance of success in continuing my academic career with a PhD.\n\nNot sure if a Postdoc would follow after, but I eventually want to go for a top-tier job in industry, either related or not to research (like IBM's or Google's Quantum Lab, or some other not focusing on research)." ]

[ "phd", "masters", "job-search", "grades", "degree" ]

[ "Listing authors who cite me", "While looking for good independent recommenders I found myself in need of a tool that can automatically compose a list of names that have cited my papers. Yes there are many ways to find out which "papers" cite a given paper, but if you have multiple papers and citations, extracting author names from citation list becomes challenging and time consuming very quickly. Is there a tool to do that? If not this sounds very useful and it may make sense to build such a tool, if you find it useful too.\n(I guess you don't often need to find independent recommenders from strangers, but there are a couple of use cases at least, such as green card applications, job applications, etc.)" ]

[ "citations" ]

[ "Can I ask to be assigned to another project, if the ones I'm on seem unsuccessful?", "I'm doing my MSc. in Computational Mathematics in Central Europe. Right after finishing my Bachelor's degree I began to work in our National Supercomputing Center, a research institute that is associated with the university where I'm studying. It is considered quite a prestigious position in my country. Because of this offer I quit my job in the industry.\n\nAt first, I was enthusiastic about the research topic and after several months I was assigned to the second project (completely different from the first one).\n\nThis job began to consume almost all my time, so I gave up all my free-time activities and devoted myself just to this research. Because of the amount of work here I got into some serious problems with school projects and exams, but, so far, I managed to pass them.\n\nIn the first project my job is the implementation of some direct solvers, but some time ago we found out, that the technology used in the implementation is not suitable to our problem at all, so this solver will be useful just in some special cases, or possibly, it'll be unusable at all.\n\nThe second project appeared well - we managed to write some papers and tried to publish them. This week I found out that all of them were rejected.\n\nNow I feel terribly disappointed and inferior to the others. All my colleagues have some publications, because, their other projects are usually successful. I'm working on two projects, where both of them are now just a waste of time for me, because I'm not going to have even one publication from them.\n\nNormally I would try to discuss this with our team leader, but, to be honest, I'm scared to do that. He's not very sympathetic to the fact I'm still studying nor to the fact I'm there just for part-time job, so I shouldn't be working this much. I'm afraid he'll simply tell me, that in my position I should be glad to be working there at all, or something like that.\n\nI'm not asking about some \"improvement\" of my personal feelings, as in How should I deal with discouragement as a graduate student? - I'd rather like to know, if it's a common situation and if I can ask to be assigned to another research topic (I have no prior experience with research, so I don't know if it's considered impolite etc.)." ]

[ "etiquette", "workplace" ]

[ "Asking professors to advise me during a self study after graduation in exchange for programming work", "I plan to study a topic which is at the intersection of several fields. I am not aware of a graduate degree in this topic, so I will self-study it after graduating. I will receive my undergraduate degree in the Spring for math and computer sciences.\n\nMy goals for the self-study are to either publish, or to make enough progress that if I joined a team my work could solve problems.\n\nI would like to enter into an advising/consulting relationship with one or more professors in the related fields. In exchange, I would offer programming consulting or work. Is this type of relationship common, and is there a better way to frame it? What else can I offer professors in exchange for research guidance?" ]

[ "advisor", "independent-researcher" ]

[ "What is the difference between a taught and research MSc and a research MPhil degree?", "I'm in my senior year of Bsc Civil Engineering, in which I've started applying towards my grad studies in the U.K.\n\nIn searching for the courses I've seen an MSc of Engineering Science by Research (2 years long) and MPhil of Engineering (1 year long). The first is a kind of taught and research degree while the second is only a research degree.\n\nWhat are the differences between these kinds of degrees, academically? Which of them is a more prestigious degree?" ]

[ "masters", "degree" ]

[ "Leave out the last chapter as it anyway should be addressed in second edition?", "I am an amateur (not affiliated with an academy) mathematician.\n\nI have written a research monograph (see my site).\n\nThe current status of the book is that it is well written and is reasonably checked for errors. However there are serious errors in the last chapter. I may remove the last chapter and try to publish the rest of the book without it.\n\nI sent my book (not yet including the last chapter) to several publishers. They all say either that my book is too original and rough for book form and should be published as articles first, or that my research is unmotivated. (I disagree and consider my work fully motivated.)\n\nAnd now my book is in consideration of a publisher. After I sent my book to the aforementioned (last) publisher, I realized that before writing second volume of my book I need first create second edition of the first volume (which is in consideration now). I had two ideas how to rewrite it when it was already in publisher's review.\n\nI doubt what to do with the last chapter (which as I've said above is currently erroneous). The simplest thing is just to remove it now, because it anyway should be rewritten in the second edition (and the rewrite is rather massive).\n\nShould I for now remove the last chapter and leave this work to the stage when I will write the second edition of the first volume?\n\nOr maybe should I stop any publishing attempts until I finish writing the second edition? (I'm afraid that if I happen to die, my work may be lost unpublished.)" ]

[ "publications", "mathematics", "books" ]

[ "Meeting PhD advisor during first year (coursework year)", "I'm starting my Ph.D. this year. My first 2 years will only be coursework. So, I won't be able to do any serious independent research. My research will only be in the context of what's required for the specific courses, so nothing too serious.\nI am aware that I should meet with my advisor regularly, but what should I talk about? Usually, graduate students will talk about their results, advancement of their thesis, etc. Should I be talking about my courses and such?\nThanks!" ]

[ "phd", "graduate-school", "advisor", "lab-meeting" ]

[ "My Prof Does Not Know My Thesis Field Well", "I am doing my MSc thesis research and it is becoming apparant to me that my supervisor does not have that much domain knowledge in the field that I am in. She has some idea but by no means is she even close to an expert in the field - I say this because I am reading papers in my field (Operations Research) and her papers are not published in OR journals. \n\nI am curious if others have had this experience and had to essentially lonewolf their MSc thesis? It's unfortunate because I would like to have conversations with her about the field, but she doesn't know enough to talk fluidly." ]

[ "masters" ]

[ "Blown up deadline and I choose a large bite to chew", "For my master's thesis at a Greek University, I proposed to my supervisor to do end-to-end encryption of multiparty situations. I chose my topic because I had a plan for a post-master project and thought I can do bibliographic research through my master thesis. I presented this long-term project to my supervisor in an earlier semester essay.\n\nOn mid-term, my supervisor told me that bibliographic research was not enough. I suggested implementing an existing end-to-end group key agreement in javascript (having on my back of my head as a possible software stack t my project) and I laid down a timeframe. \n\nI did manage to make a program but even though I tried my best to implement it I could not find a solution. Also due to time limitations and lack of any help (including from my supervisor), I found it too hard to approach it in a timely manner because I have to put together the pieces for the final thesis text as well.\n\nBut instead, I did manage to have an initial overlay architecture and requirements for my own long-term project by doing the literature review.\n\nSo I thought: \"I can be honest and tell whatever happened about what I did manage to understand through the literature review, what gaps I found, lay down the initial architecture for my long-term project and present to the thesis examiners at the thesis examination what I did and why I failed and show them that I tried hard to achieve that.\"\n\nIs this sufficient to get a master's degree, or will my attempt at honesty hurt me?" ]

[ "thesis", "masters" ]

[ "PhD manuscript with grammatical errors and informal phrases", "I have made a very good contribution in my PhD and just graduated two years ago from a top university with honors.\n\nToday, I revised my PhD manuscript and surprisingly found several grammatical errors, informal sentences that I don't feel comfortable with now, and honestly also found two technical errors (they are correct in my published papers but not in my PhD manuscript). I am really disappointed, and feel like \"I don't deserve to be graduated from a top university\" with a PhD manuscript that contains a lot of grammatical errors and several informal things.\n\nWhen I wrote the manuscript, I was happy with the informal things I added, but today I feel really sad by having them in my manuscript since I think they decrease the reputation of my work. \n\nAlthough that after my defense the committee gave me one month for the minor corrections, but I don't think I have really benefited well from this opportunity. Is this normal? Any suggestions?" ]

[ "phd", "thesis", "errors-erratum", "thesis-committee" ]

[ "Is there a way to improve my grade after graduation?", "I graduated around 3 years ago with a degree, from a Russell Group university, in Mathematics. I had some mental health issues in my final term which essentially bombed my grade. Since I had no previously reported issues with anxiety, my extenuating circumstances were denied, (despite me having a panic attack in the middle of an exam and going to A&E since I thought I had some sort of food poisoning.)\n\nLuckily, I was on track for a high 2:2/ low 2:1 so I did still pass my degree overall and obviously this was around 3 years ago and I have been doing well in my career etc. so this isn’t about how to find a job with this grade. \n\nI don’t like having this grade and I know I can do better and I was just wondering: does anyone knows a way that I can increase my grade (post graduation)?\n\nI’m working full time and don’t want to go back to university full time, but I’m open to taking night classes/extra courses. I wouldn’t mind taking something more related to the work I’m doing now rather than mathematics, but most of the courses I’d be interested in are closely related to my original degree. (e.g. coding, cyber security, finance) \n\nLiving and working in London\n\n\n\nTo update anyone who is reading this in the future and was feeling the same as me - pretty bummed about my grade. I have received a job offer recently for an incredible position. The position usually would require a 2:2 or higher, but due to my 3+ years of experience in industry they offered the job (not just as basic pay but with an experience and skills bonus). To everyone who answered, thank-you! - You were all right and it's not something I need." ]

[ "mathematics", "united-kingdom", "grades" ]

[ "What percentage of phds in math actually get a tenure track academic job?", "I'm interested in knowing what percentage of math phds actually succeed in landing a tenure track academic job?\n\nAlso, does a phd from AMS Group 1 guarantees you an academic job in top universities? If not what other factors come in to role to play?" ]

[ "graduate-school", "mathematics", "tenure-track" ]

[ "How can I post my own version of a published SPIE paper on arXiv?", "SPIE policy for web posting of papers states the following:\n\nSPIE grants to authors (and their employers) of papers, posters, and presentation recordings published in SPIE Proceedings or SPIE Journals on the SPIE Digital Library (hereinafter "publications") the right to post an author-prepared version or an official version (preferred version) of the publication on an internal or external server controlled exclusively by the author/employer, provided that (a) such posting is noncommercial in nature and the publication is made available to users without charge; (b) an appropriate copyright notice and citation appear with the publication; and (c) a link to SPIE's official online version of the publication is provided using the item's DOI.\nThis authorization does not extend to third-party web sites not owned and maintained by the author/employer such as ResearchGate, Academia.edu, YouTube, etc.\nSPIE content published under a Creative Commons CC-BY license is exempt from the above requirements.\n\nEmphasis in the above text is mine.\nSo if I understand correctly, once the paper is accepted in SPIE (journal or proceedings) for publication, then I cannot post it on arXiv (since the arXiv server is neither exclusively controlled by me/my employer). I am talking about my own version, not the published one.\nI tried to submit my own version on arXiv and they understandably rejected it saying that they cannot accept anything that has a journal copyright. So is there a way around it for me to submit my article to arXiv?\nIf not, I think I can surely post it on my own website, right? I will post the copyright and the DOI in that version." ]

[ "publications", "copyright", "arxiv", "publishers" ]

[ "What kind of PhD proposals should I read?", "I am finishing up my master's in mathematical finance and am hoping to pursue a PhD in stochastic analysis.\n\nI was given a sample PhD proposal from an education office that helps people apply for universities in the UK and some other countries (some of those countries require specifically a PhD proposal so you can tell that the US is not one of them). I was told I should look at PhD proposals outside of my field and thus was given something in Chemistry.\n\nRelevant links at this point:\n\n\nNo. 5 here: With a background in mathematical finance and desire to apply for a mathematics PhD in another field, do I need a second master's?\nHow do mathematicians conduct research?\n\n\nAs mathematicians do not really collect data or conduct experiments for their research, I think I should countersuggest something in theoretical physics, theoretical computer science or something of the sort. Do you think that's okay? What would you suggest?" ]

[ "phd", "graduate-admissions", "graduate-school", "mathematics", "changing-fields" ]

[ "Is it normal for collaborator to rerun experiments himself?", "So I'm a few months into my PhD. It's built on top of previous work that has not been published. My supervisors, collaborators, and myself are working on to get this published. Now here's where things get a bit weird for me.\n\nI found some problem with the previous work. Discussed the problem with my supervisors and have fixed them. For the publication, I'll need to redo the experiment.\n\nSo far I'm not getting a satisfactory result as it's tricky to get right. Not gonna go into why, it's just tricky.\nMy collaborator has been impatient with the result I'm getting. So now he has decided to rerun the experiment himself and double checking that he's getting the result I'm getting. Turns out it's quite similar. So now he's trying his own idea he has only briefly disclosed to me and one of my supervisor. When asked indirectly why he's doing this, he said he's just trying to understand the experiment better.\n\nI found this disturbing. Why are you repeating my experiment yourself only to come and tell me you found exactly the same problem and result?\n\nWhat's everyone take on this? I would like others opinions first before I discuss the issue with my supervisors." ]

[ "publications", "phd", "collaboration", "research-process" ]

[ "Do private religious institutions ever consider hiring someone clearly not affiliated with said religion for a faculty position?", "I am wondering if private religious universities consider hiring faculty members who are clearly not affiliated with said religion. For example, someone who is clearly Muslim applying to a Jesuit university for a tenure track position. Is it a waste of time for the very obviously Muslim candidate in this example to submit an application?" ]

[ "united-states", "tenure-track", "religious-issues" ]

[ "I'm applying to get a Masters with Transfer and Transient undergraduate semesters during undergrad", "After graduating high school, I went to a private out-of-state University for one semester, and it wasn't a good fit (it was a very strict religious institution), and so after the first semester, I became a transient student at a local community college, where I took courses for three semesters.\n\nAfter getting the required hours I needed to transfer, I enrolled into the flagship University in my state, and graduated from there after three more years with two bachelors degrees- one BA in a modern language, one in BBA in International Business.\n\nDuring one summer semester, I enrolled in a joint program between the flagship University I was attending, and the University to which I am now applying, for a foreign language program. \n\nThere's no academic dishonesty or anything to hide from those earlier schools, but I wasn't sure what is relevant or necessary to include as a part of my academic history.\n\nThe application I'm using offers the following guidance: \"List each institution after secondary school, Including [University Name], that you have attended or are currently attending.\"\n\nAdditionally, there is no description, or note field where I could offer further explanation.\n\nSo, with that as background, here are my questions:\n\n1) Generally, should transfer students put their old institutions on their history, even if they seem to be irrelevant (courses transferred, and graduation from the new University)?\n\n2) Should I put the first religious University as one semester, or three semesters, or not at all? (Technically, I took classes there only one semester, but I was technically enrolled for three.) \n\n3) How should I represent the community college where I was a transient student?\nOr, since all credits transferred, do I need to list this institution at all?\n\n4) How should I represent the joint foreign language program I attended between the University I graduated from for both degrees, and the school to which I am now applying? There was no degree for the program, but did offer course credit.\n\nAny and all thought or feedback is appreciated." ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "transfer-student" ]

[ "Would my paper get rejected if the related work section takes up too many pages, and what would the optimal maximum length for this section be?", "I have recently submitted my paper to the journal of IEEE Access. They wanted me to only expand the related work section, so I have additionally included dozens of papers, most of which were suggested by them, into this section and will resubmit the paper in the following weeks. However, that section takes up three and a half pages now.\n\nWould my paper get rejected because the related work section takes up too much space? Or, at least would it make a bad impression on reviewers and, if accepted and published, on prospective readers? If you suggest that I shorten this section, what would be the optimal maximum length for the literature survey section for a prestigious journal? \n\nI ask this, because the related work section of most of the papers I've come across in this journal takes up one page at most in general. As I said, when the reviewers asked me to include all the papers they recommended, the related work section had to be much longer.\n\nFYI, this journal has a specific policy such that you can resubmit your paper only once after the original submission. That is, if they reject your paper one more time, no more resubmissions will be allowed under the name of revision." ]

[ "paper-submission", "ieee", "literature" ]

[ "Is it a good practice to put the initial work and improved version (both published) in PhD thesis?", "Suppose for my PhD thesis, I solve problems like the following:\n\n1) At the begining I solve one problem\n\n2) Later, before any one improve the results, I myself improve it.\n\nSuppose both of the papaers get published. Will it still be considered as two different problems in thesis or just a single one ? Should one avoid to do such practice and try to put the best results only in thesis.\n\nPS: By improving I mean earlier I solve some problem under some stronger assumption and later I weaken it." ]

[ "phd", "thesis" ]

[ "How do I explain my failed career decision to a potential postdoctoral/academic manager/employer, when I'm almost seven years past my PhD?", "First a bit of chronological background:\nPhD in pure math (2 publications, 1 preprint), 1 year of postdoc in pure math (unproductive) 2 years of postdoc in computational medical imaging (1 publication each, and one of these postdocs were in application of differential geometry and machine learning for medical imaging), 1 year of postdoc in computer vision (unproductive, as I was partially spending my time to move to industry - I accept the blame here, mostly as a data scientist or machine learning researcher), 2 years of failed industry experience (4 jobs, all permanent, all let go within the first 4-5 months in the respective trial periods). So in essence, 4 years of postdoc, partially productive and 2 years of failed industry experience after PhD.\nWhat's going on now:\nI've a strong realization that the traditional industrial positions are not from me, and I'm planning to go back to academia, as well as on my way to obtain my freelance status, so I'd be able to consult on the side. But since I worked 2 years in industry immediate prior, I feel I need to get a long (at least a year and a half) project to get back to the full research mode, find a line of projects and use that to get a permanent position. These projects wouldn't be in pure math, but rather in theoretical machine learning, statistics or applications of differential geometry/topology to solve data analysis problem.\nImmediate next - a potential answer to a question I might be facing during my next hiring:\nI'll be having a few interviews, and I'm sure some postdoctoral advisors would ask me why I'm not looking for a permanent position, since I'm already 6 years past my PhD. My honest answer would be: "Initially I thought that the academia wasn't for me, that the stakes of getting a permanent position are pretty low, and even then, I thought it wasn't rewarding enough, me being based in Europe and not planning to move. So I wanted to move to industry but in R&D and I thought I'd be doing almost fundamental research; but I was wrong - the industry mindset and environment I found to be very different than the academic one, and hence I'm realizing my mistake only now, and trace my way back into academia."\nMy question(s):\nBut if I do give that honest answer as I wrote above, will it hurt my chance to get into postdoc positions that I'd want to get into? I don't want to paint a wrong image of myself to my future academic employers, but I fear that if I tell them that I moved into industry as I thought I wasn't good enough for academia and it was not rewarding enough, then my potential academic employers might think that I'm coming back to academia as a second choice and not out of passion. But the thing is that I had to go through a two year period of self-realization, and yes I did make a career mistake, which I'm planning to rectify. So how do I convey this truth in a manner that doesn't make me look like I wanted to run away from fundamental research (in fact I didn't, I planned to do it, but outside the scope of academia, which did fail and seemed almost non-existent) and work against me in an academic hiring process?\nIf you want more details about the reasons for being let go:\nThey're mentioned as comments to the answer by @jerlich." ]

[ "postdocs", "career-path", "academic-life", "industry" ]

[ "What are some typical questions one might be asked in a Computer Science PhD Viva?", "I know that you are likely to suggest \"Ask your supervisor. He/She will know best.\". \n\nWhile that is obviously true, I would like to know from your personal experience either as the PhD candidate or as the examiner: What should I expect in my viva?\n\nFor example:\n\n\nShould I expect to be asked about the history of my topic? \nAbout the research cited in my thesis (i.e references - will they ask me about them? I have over 100...)?\nAbout methods used?\nAbout justifications for my conclusions?\netc\n\n\nWhat should one expect, in general, to be asked? I am PhD student in the UK." ]

[ "phd", "thesis", "united-kingdom", "defense", "answering-questions" ]

[ "Is it unethical to add same environmental data such as temperature and salinity in two different papers?", "I have collected sea water samples from a location to study the microbes. The study is basically divided into 2; one is considering the total community and another one is specific to a particular groups. If I write 2 papers considering these two matters, can I use the same physico-chemical properties?" ]

[ "journals", "peer-review" ]

[ "How do I communicate effectively and work in an interdisciplinary research team?", "Forgive the MS paint. \n\nBut as someone who often straddles two different domains of research and knowledge, how does one translate the jargon that is commonly found in one field and effectively communicate it to someone in another without coming off as a jerk?\n\nNote: the intent was to use generally understood words within the field to communicate, not to come off as a jerk.\n\nThe example where my attempts to communicate between members of two different worlds and I received an earful was when I was tasked to develop a website with an existing member of a team who had extensive experience with the dept. but not with the technical details of developing a website.\n\nWords like scrum, development cycles, production and development, were foreign to the individual. When I utilized them, I was called well... less than polite words.\n\nAfter conferring with trusted confidants, I regrouped and re-approached the topic and design specifications while giving plenty of time to explain concepts that I perceived (through verbal, facial and vocal cues) that the individual did not understand. This resulted in a far better working relationship and the project was completed on time.\n\nNow that I reexamine the subject, I can foresee that as a graduate student, inter-disciplinary collaboration with people from widely different academic backgrounds would be necessary, with differing depths of knowledge of necessary skills to complete a given research objective.\n\nIt is one thing to take the time to explain, which I don't mind if the person is willing to listen and learn. But at what point do I decide that the cost/benefit of additional units of effort expended results in diminishing returns? To put it more bluntly \"you should know this already, I don't have the time to explain it to you\"." ]

[ "research-process", "graduate-school", "collaboration", "communication", "colleagues" ]

[ "Stating surprise about another researcher in my talk", "I will be giving a talk in a research seminar in mathematics in a couple of weeks. During this talk, I'm planning to present one particular result of mine which shows that a certain method introduced by another researcher several years ago is quite limited. This limiting result is really simple and I cannot believe that this researcher did not notice when writing their paper. \n\nWhen presenting this work to my colleagues at my own department I expressed my surprise during the presentation quite bluntly. \n\nI cannot go into much detail but given the structure of the paper in question I cannot imagine that they were not aware of this fact at the moment of writing the paper. To me it rather seems that they omitted this limiting result to make their paper seem better.\n\nHow should I behave at the research seminar at a university I'm only visiting where I don't know the faculty that well? Can I also express my surprise there or would this be considered bad etiquette? Not sure if relevant, but some of the people there might know the researcher in question better than they know me.\n\nEdit to address some comments/answers: First of all, thanks for all the helpful answers, they really give me a new point of view. Secondly, I wanted to mention that it was not my intention to criticise another researcher in public. I was (and am still) honestly surprised about both my result and the other researcher. I learned from the answers that others could misinterpret my intentions and will therefore only mention facts. Thanks for that!" ]

[ "etiquette", "presentation" ]

[ "When does one go for an invited paper?", "I have little understanding about invited papers, but as far as I know, I think these are non-peer-reviewed papers presented at a conference.\n\n\nNow why and when does one go for an invited paper? Is it only to advertise one's work? Is there any other merit in this? \nAlso, are normal papers and invited papers the same as far as cost is concerned?" ]

[ "publications", "conference" ]

[ "What exactly does one do in a PhD?", "I am a first year undergraduate student pursuing a B.S. in Chemistry (I'm very much interested in Biology too), and I am new to this world of Academia. It would be very helpful if someone could answer my questions.\n\nWhat exactly does one do in a PhD? I know that in the first year, you take a lot of advanced courses on your specific field of study, and then you decide on a topic and start researching. But when do you stop? I see that there is no definite time limit for completing a PhD. It can be anywhere from two years to... is there an upper limit? Do you complete a PhD when you have discovered something new and published a paper on it?\n\nI realise a lot of what I'm saying might be my own ideas of what happens. Please feel free to correct me." ]

[ "phd", "graduate-school" ]

[ "Computer Science Publications: conference vs journal on application form", "I'm a UK post-doc working in Computer Science -- specifically, Computer Vision and Robotics. For the next stage in my career, I'm aiming to apply for some very competitive post-doctoral research fellowships. Reading through the application guidelines, they list the metrics which are used to judge each candidate's ability.\n\nNow, two of these metrics are related to publications. The first of these, is called \"Number of peer-reviewed papers (not including conference papers)\". The second of these is called \"Number of papers presented at conferences\". My understanding of the reason for this, is that in most academic fields, conferences papers are often not peer-reviewed, sometimes exist only as an abstract in written form, and are generally considered to be inferior to journal papers.\n\nHowever, in my field of Computer Vision and Robotics, conference papers are in fact the dominant medium for publication. Typically, a conference publication consists of an 8-page paper, which is thoroughly peer reviewed by a number of reviewers, together with a rebuttal stage. The acceptance rates for these papers range from around 20% to around 40%. My peers and I always publish our work as a conference paper first, and then sometimes combine a couple of conferences papers into a journal paper. However, these journal papers are almost always just an extension of a conference paper, and usually act as an archive rather than the release of your latest research.\n\nTherefore, in my field, conference papers are far more common than journal papers, and often have lower acceptance rates than journals. For example, I only have one journal paper, but I have eight first-authored conference papers, and this would be considered a good CV.\n\nSo, my question is, how should I fill out the application form for this fellowship? If I abide by the strict wording, then it will appear as if I only have one \"serious\" publication. However, if I put all my publications in the first section (number of peer-reviewed papers), then this will technically be incorrect, because most of them are conference papers. The fellowship I am applying for covers all areas of engineering, and I do not want my application to appear weaker than it actually is.\n\nThanks!" ]

[ "publications", "journals", "conference", "application", "postdocs" ]

[ "Dealing with a huge block of similar definitions between two papers", "I want to write a private research paper, which aims to have an academic level. I'm not yet a participant of academia, that's why the paper is \"private\", in case you wondered. Anyways, since I have chosen an authors suggestions for further research as main topic, I'm going to use their definitions. So not same text, but same math symbols. (a bit more formal, though) Nevertheless, there is very much to define and it feels just wrong to \"copy\", even thought you can't really define it in another reasonable way.\nHow do you deal with somewhat equal introductions? Should I care if I use almost all predefined terms of another paper? Should I write the possibly huge boilerplate or just reference the paper X?\n\nOverall it's just one question: What's the proper way of writing a following paper?" ]

[ "ethics", "plagiarism" ]

[ "PhD application form, 1-2 word \"relationship to you\" for an instructor", "I'm working on my PhD applications right now, and I'm on the section where I have to fill in information about recommendation providers.\nI have put a Professor that taught one of my related course as a recommendation provider, however I'm not sure what I should put under \"relationship to you\". Any suggestion? (there's not a lot of space, I can only put in one or two words)" ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "graduate-school" ]

[ "Is it acceptable to write a report for one university mentioning unpublished research done in another?", "Last year I got in touch with a professor by email. I was somewhat familiar with their topic, and very enthusiastic about working with them. I had a very positive exchange with them and did a call, after which they were willing to offer me a research internship. Their university is in the US, the field is computer science, and I am an undergrad studying outside the US. \n\nThe internship went well as far as I could tell. At the end, they offered to write me a recommendation letter (without me bringing it up), and we agreed to keep working remotely after I returned home. We had a very interesting discussion going on, even after the official internship ended, which got to the point where they asked me about my intentions for graduate school. By that time I was also finishing up the results of the work I did, in preparation for publishing it at a conference, which we had talked about when I was still in the US. It was to be my first publication.\n\nBack at my university, I was asked to write a report of the work I did, because it was counted as the mandatory internship experience required to complete my undergraduate degree. I knew beforehand that I was to write a report, but took it as administrative overhead which nobody takes very seriously, and did not mention it to my internship supervisor until after the internship was over.\n\nI sent them an email before writing the report, saying that I couldn't write anything very convincing about the work I did without at least mentioning some of the ideas we had discussed. I asked them about the level of detail they would be comfortable with me including in the report, given that we intended to publish. I also mentioned that the report would be used by my department (which is Electrical Engineering) only for evaluation purposes, and that it would not be read by anyone working in a field remotely close to the one we had worked on during the internship.\n\nAfter that email, I did not hear back from my internship supervisor at all. Many months have passed now. I even sent them the results of the internship work, and multiple reminder emails.\n\nWas it wrong to fail to mention that I had to write an evaluation report earlier? Or was it just unacceptable to write a report at all about unpublished research? Might they have felt that my email was not written in good faith and that I was trying to share their ideas with my department, which in reality hadn't the slightest idea of the topic I was working on?" ]

[ "publications", "research-undergraduate", "internship" ]

[ "How to list my name in publications, given that I am referred to by my middle name?", "I prefer to be referred to by my middle name. How should I list my name on publications?\n\nI'm not sure if this is correct, but in the past I have written: First initial. Middle name Last name." ]

[ "publications", "personal-name" ]

[ "How important is one's first publication in affecting prospects, assuming others are to follow?", "With respect to a first publication, how would the following factors affect prospects (in academia, as well as in research-based industry)?\n\n\nWhether or not the publication is in a top-tier journal. Of course, I realize that the better a journal, the better. What I mean to say is, given that I have some work now (such as, for example, observing certain trends when a simulation is run on a high performance computing cluster, and explaining any anomalies that arise) which may be publishable in a non-top tier journal, and some other work (which works towards providing improvements to a recent paper) which has a chance of faring better than a non-top tier journal, but which will take more time to get ready (say, 6 months more?), is it worth waiting for the completion of better paper (i.e., the paper which may get into a better journal)?\nLike in 1, given a choice between publishing as a non-primary author now, versus publishing as a primary author later, should I wait to publish as a primary author later, and only then submit the journal in which I am not to be a primary author (assuming, of course, that the primary author has no issues with waiting).\nWould it matter if one's first paper is in a journal or a conference? I have heard that it is better to send a paper in for a conference before a journal (especially for a first paper), since conferences tend to give much quicker replies. Am I correct?\nDoes the content of a first paper matter? Whether it is a review-based paper, a paper suggesting improvements to an already existing paper, or a paper submitting a reasonably novel idea? Assuming of course, that other methods or ideas would eventually be published, should I, say, wait to propose something more, umm... novelish first?\n\n\nLong story short, how much would my first publication (in terms of parameters such as reputation of journal, how much it goes towards improving knowledge in the field, whether or not I hold primary authorship and so on) affect my prospects (whether in the industry, or in the academia).\n\nNOTE 1: If it matters, this question is with specific reference to Computer Science (a little more to the applied side than to the theoretical side). Also, I am an undergraduate.\nNOTE 2: By a journal of less repute/non-top tier journal, I do not mean to say a disreputable journal, such as a predatory one, merely a journal with lower impact factors, higher rates of acceptance, et. al." ]

[ "publications", "research-undergraduate" ]

[ "Can a degree be revoked for minor misconduct?", "I was wondering how possible it would be that, after graduating, the university would investigate a minor misconduct during college. By minor I mean, if found guilty the worst punishment would be / have been a semester suspension. \n\nIf you had already graduated, what are the possibilities that the punishment would include revoking your degree?" ]

[ "university", "degree", "policy" ]

[ "How to deal with advisor writing a thesis chapter for you?", "How would you respond if an advisor writes a chapter of your thesis for you and asks you to rewrite what they wrote? Something seems wrong but I can't pinpoint it. It seems like a grey area. What are the potential plagiarism implications if I do this? And how can a student rewrite it any better than what someone with so much experience has written?\nWhat would be an ethical and courteous way to respond? If there are any other sources or places you think I might be able to find more information or help from about this, I would like to hear that too." ]

[ "thesis", "advisor", "ethics", "etiquette", "undergraduate" ]

[ "Is it helpful to tell a university that I have admission and scholarship from another university?", "I have got an admission letter with full scholarship (i.e. covering tuition fees, living expenses, etc.) from a top university X (ranking under 50) but I want to take care of my grandmother who is not from my birth-country so I want to continue my Master program at that country B; which I don't have its citizenship; so I will be a foreign student and the number of full scholarships (even partial ones for covering tuition fees) at country B are very limited for international students. Also, the university Y at country B has ranking between 2000-2500. \n\nMy question is : Is it rude to telling (and emailing) them my admission letter that I have from university X to university Y? And will it be helpful to enhance chance of getting scholarship or quite the reverse? \n\nThanks!" ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "mathematics", "masters" ]

[ "What to do: PI lied to me and is keeping my grant!", "I've written 14 grants for my principal investigator (PI), from conception to writing the entire thing, which has resulted in over $10 million in funding for my PI. \n\nI refused to write any more grants for him; however, he threatend to fire me if I didn't. I was fine with that, at which point my boss told me that if I wrote the 14th grant and we got it, I could take it with me. \n\nWell, I did and we did get it. \nNow he's refusing to give it to me, threatened to fire a technician/friend of mine, and has insisted that we got the grant because of his name (not the idea/grant itself). He knew his name was there from the beginning — how can he argue that at this time? This grant would have been submitted as a K99 for myself, but instead I had written another, independent grant thinking I'd have two shots to get a grant. I didn't get the K99, but the other grant should be mine.\n\nThis is/was my key to obtaining a faculty position. I also have previously filed an initial patent form indicating that the idea was conceived and developed by me. I'm on the grant as co-investigator (my boss said I cannot be listed as a Co-PI since I work in his lab) but no budget has been given in my name. \n\nWhat should I do?" ]

[ "ethics", "funding", "postdocs" ]

[ "how could I mention sequence of figures in a research paper?", "I want to say that: \n\nFigure 1, 2, 3 and 4 illustrate ....\n\nhow could I mention them?\n is the above sentence correct?\n or I should say figure 1 to figure 4" ]

[ "research-process", "writing", "graphics", "cross-referencing" ]

[ "Standard protocol for withdrawing published paper that has wrong (or erroneous) data (published without wrong intentions)", "Suppose a research group publishes an article after thorough data analysis, statistics based on repeatability and reproducibility of experimental data. Now I consider three cases: \n\na). Published article had erroneous uncertainties associated with measured data\n\nb). Published article had erroneous measured data notwithstanding repeated experiments \n\nc). Published article had wrong interpretation of measured data \n\nNow, in such cases, what is the standard protocol for withdrawal of published paper, and whether it is really necessary? If the same research group publishes another article giving more accurate experimental data with revised uncertainties with more reliable and logical interpretation, does this in any way puts a question mark on the credibility of the research group? \n\nWhat according to the strictest ethical rules of publishing should be done in order to accept mistake and provide justification on why the earlier interpretation was wrong and what makes the research group change its view on the same experimental data (in this case, revised data)?" ]

[ "publications" ]

[ "Does a high score in Math subject GRE helps in applying to a Finance PhD program?", "Does a high score in Math subject GRE helps in applying to a Econ PhD program?\n\nSay you got to the 90th percentile, so in a sense that shows your math is better than 90% of the math majors. In an Econ PhD program where math is heavily involved, I suppose this would make a difference?\n\n(a side question to this, how can you highlight a good score in math subject GRE when normal applicants only takes the General GRE?)" ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "gre" ]

[ "Should I offer to come to campus if given a phone interview?", "I applied to a faculty position at a university (a small state school) near my hometown and I just received an email invitation for a Skype interview later this week. Coincidentally, I am visiting my parents' house this week, which is about a 20 minute drive from the institution offering the interview. \n\nWould it be weird if I mentioned that I am nearby and/or offered to come in and meet some of the members of the department in person while I'm here? \n\nI didn't mention anywhere in my application that I grew up nearby nor did I indicate that I have family here. I did all of my studies out-of-state and I'm currently living on the other side of the country. However, I am excited about the opportunity to move back \"home\"!" ]

[ "interview", "visiting" ]

[ "How to best address authorship issues with PI?", "I am a postdoc working with the same supervisor who supervised my PhD thesis. During my PhD time, it was tacitly assumed that my work is his work too. It went as far as me doing the entire planning and execution of a paper and writing the first draft, while he later looked over the draft and made suggestions on what to expand and what to change. None of the suggestions were fleshed out. Yet we are the only two authors on this paper and he wrote in the author contributions footnote that he and I both conceived of the study, I did the experiments, and both wrote the paper.\nSince the paper used some of his data as well as experiments funded by a grant given to him, I obviously cannot publish anything on my own.\nHowever, now, in my postdoc function at the same institution, I find myself in a situation where a PhD student and I are doing a lot of work for a paper and there are two professors involved. My advisor and another professor.\nThe current paper grew out of another study for which I did all the experiments and coding with a lot of input from the other professor (not my advisor), while the advisor wrote the first draft. My advisor ended up as the first author, even though only the initial idea of working on the topic was his, but he barely contributed to the design of the study, nor does he understand the statistics used or the experimental design.\nIn this follow-up paper it is, once more, tacitly understood that my advisor will be first author and the other professor the senior author. The work, meanwhile, is done by the PhD student and me with some input and supervision from the other professor.\nIs it possible to somehow broach this inequality in my/our position without destroying one's future?\nAdditionally, I'm getting more and more messages that sound like I'll be part of more papers where I'm clearly the only person doing all the work. Is it normal to have the lab leader as a senior author even though he doesn't contribute any work, nor any meaningful feedback (simply because the methods are not accessible to him)?\nAnd also I've been getting signals that sound like if I publish my own work, not using the data gathered at work, I'd still have to run it by my PI, and possibly have him as a co-author. This last part is particularly disturbing. Has anyone ever been in a similar situation? How do you discuss these things?" ]

[ "authorship" ]

[ "Is it fair to give zeros to students who missed early assignments because they added the class late?", "Last semester, I was teaching a class where\nthere is a small assignment (~2% of the total course assessment)\nthat students need to submit every week.\nUnfortunately, some of the students joined the class late,\ndue to add/drop forms that needed to be signed manually,\nor for other unknown reasons.\n\nIs it fair to give zeros to students who missed early assignments\nbecause they added the class late?\nThere were a few students who may have missed 3 or 4 weeks of assignments.\n\nResponse to comment\n\nQ: Were the students not able to physically be present?\nWere the students not able to predict that they would take your class?\n\nThey were physically able to be present.\nSome students may not have been able to predict\nthat they were able to take my class.\nFor example, one student had to add the class after the add date deadline,\nbecause he was admitted late to the university.\n\nEdit\n\nAfter thinking things through,\nI checked that the last date for adding the course is the Monday of week 2,\nand the first weekly assignment is also assigned and due in week 2.\nI found in the data that there were several students\nwho did not attend in week 1,\nbut all of these students attended and submitted\nthe weekly assignment in week 2.\n\nConsequently, all of the students in the course\nwere registered by week 2,\nand would have been able to submit all the weekly assignments.\nThus any students who did not submit a weekly assignment\ndeserve to get zero for that assignment,\nunless they have a reason to be excused." ]

[ "grading" ]

[ "What kind of help can I request from a terminally ill professor?", "I am a student in Mathematics. There is a field I'm interested in (possibly enough to make it my main research area) which is not studied in my city. I've read a lecture notes on this topic a few months ago and sent the author a list of typos/inaccuracies I'd found. He responded in a positive way. When I was looking him up I found out he is terminally ill which, besides being extremely tragic, prevented me from asking for his guidance. \n\nSince then I brought him up in a conversation a few times and people told me that it is very important for someone with terminal illness to know they are appreciated. I am thinking about requesting some help with my study of the field from him. However, I believe, the author was a great professor and mathematician so he probably has a lot still going on and I shouldn't bother him. Thus, my first question is: is it okay to ask him for help in this situation?.\n\nIf the answer is yes, what should I ask of him?. For example, would it be appropriate to inquire if he knows a colleague who could potentially become my adviser? Or perhaps I can ask about current research? I already used the opportunity to ask for some literature in the first letter. \n\nTo state it more clearly, is there a favour/question I can ask that is\n\n\nAppropriate for the level of contact we had;\nEasy for him to do and hopefully would make him feel appreciated;\nWould be helpful for my own studies/career?\n\n\nThe last (and least) issue: in his email he thanked me for the list of typos and said that because of illness it would take him some time to implement the changes. It's been two months and the text is still in the first version. Should I offer assistance with this?" ]

[ "mathematics", "email", "social-skills" ]

[ "Terse definition of many symbols", "I'm writing an academic paper in the CS field. I'd like to define five symbols as tersely as possible.\n\nCan I say this as the following using 'let' and semi colons? Like:\n\n\n Let $a$ be xxxx; $b$ be xxxxxx; $c$ be xxxxx; $d$ be xxxxx; $e$ be xxxxxx.\n\n\nIf answer is no, I would appreciate if you suggest a suitable and short alternative for an academic paper." ]

[ "writing", "writing-style" ]

[ "Is it possible to download paper from academia.edu without being registered there?", "Based answers to Is Academia.edu useful? it seems that there are some legitimate reason why many people would prefer not to have academia.edu account. \n\nOn the other hand, it might happen that you see a paper there which is interesting for you and which might be difficult to obtain in a different way.\n\nI have noticed that when I find some paper on academia.edu using Google Scholar, I will also have a direct link to download. To give one random example, when searching for ultrafilter site:academia.edu you can see that I get direct download link to this paper. (The link contains the string \"expires\", so it is probably only temporary.) On the other hand, when I try to find the same paper on academia.edu and try to download it, I am asked to login/sign up.\n\nIs there some way to get the url for download from academia.edu website without being logged in? (This could be useful if neither Google Scholar nor some other searches give me a direct download link to the article.)\n\nEDIT: To clarify (since I received an answer copying parts of the above paper). When I made this post, I was able to download it via the direct download link I have mentioned above. And this particular paper is also available on another website. So this is not a request for a paper. (Requesting papers would clearly be an incorrect use of academia.SE.) It is a question whether the annoying restriction to be registered before downloading something from academia.edu can be somehow bypassed. I have simply chosen a random paper as an illustration." ]

[ "publications", "social-media" ]

[ "For faculty positions: Cover letter vs. a letter of application", "In the announcement of a tenure-track faculty opening in computer science in USA, I see a request for\n\n\n a letter of application explaining your interest in ⟨university⟩ and in this position\n\n\nOther documents (CV, research & teaching statements, scholarly work, references) are also requested, cover letter not being among them. The application goes to a small, mostly liberal-art university.\n\nHow many pages are typically expected for the letter of application? Is a cover letter expected in addition?\n\nI have read What are the differences between a cover letter and an application letter?, which, however, speaks about a PhD position. I have also read the links provided there, but, they are targeted more towards the non-academic job market." ]

[ "application", "job-search", "faculty-application", "application-cover-letter" ]

[ "How do I turn down postdoc offer for an industry job?", "So I am in a bit of an unusual situation. I will be graduating this summer and I have been in touch with a professor for a couple of months about postdoc positions in his research group. He encouraged me to write proposals for fellowships to fund my postdoc stint with him. Since these fellowships were very competitive and I stood a low chance of getting them, he promised me a year of funding if none of the fellowships came through. Unfortunately, none of them came through. We talked about the situation last week and he suggested that I join his group and write grant proposals during the first year to fund my second year. Now that seems like a very bad idea to me because I am also supposed to publish papers and plan for what comes after my postdoc. It's also problematic because I am an international student in the USA and I would go out of legal visa status pretty fast if things go bad and I become unemployed after my first year. \n\nI haven't expressed any of these concerns to the professor yet [my fault, I was too shy]. However, I have been applying to industry jobs on the side and was recently made an exciting job offer. I have about a week to sign their papers which I intend to do. My question is, how do I communicate all of this to the professor? He is a very nice guy, seems super helpful and is a big name in the field but going the postdoc route seems risky and stressful at this point." ]

[ "job-search", "postdocs", "industry" ]

[ "Is it the number or quality of internships that is more important for Graduate School admission into Computer Science?", "I'm an undergraduate in Computer Science who's has just completed his 2nd year. However I could not get an internship for the summer leaving me extremely tense about the future since there would be only one summer left (i.e., the summer of 2015 since I graduate in 2016).\n\nI intend to apply to graduate schools in North America and Europe after my UG. However since I will have only one internship under my belt (assuming I bag one in summer 2015) will it put a damper on my prospects? Or is it the place of and quality of work done in my internship (coupled with good recommendation letters—which I doubt I will get) that would be far better than the number of internships under my belt?\n\nI'm in the process of building a portfolio of real-life projects to demonstrate my skills and capabilities. I am also contributing code to open-source organisations in the next two months à la Google Summer of Code (however without the formal recognition) on a totally voluntary basis. Will that help in overcoming lack of an internship between my second and third year? What else can I do that can help me build a better application for graduate school?" ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "graduate-school", "internship" ]