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[ "Does adjunct teaching help a PhD application?", "I burned out while pursing a PhD in mathematics but have a masters, and am currently pursuing a masters in philosophy with the hope that it may show continued interest in academia before I re-apply to competitive PhD programs in either mathematics or philosophy (of math or logic etc.) I'm currently teaching calculus 3 and a basic math course as an adjunct, and it looks like this will be my schedule next semester as well. Where I am currently teaching (a private four year university) it looks like I may be teaching a basic philosophy course next semester as well. \n\n[Side note: I've taken my time away from the math phd to get a high GRE and math subject GRE score; what I'm most afraid of is my \"burn out\" in the math program and distancing myself from that. This is, in part, why I pursued the philosophy program.]\n\nI certainly don't think it can hurt, but what do graduate committees think of teaching experience? Is it advisable to get a letter of recommendation from the chair of the department you teach at when applying to a PhD program (in addition to my other letters from people I was a student of)?\n\nThis question is targeted to anyone, but especially those in mathematics, philosophy, and of course philosophy of science and philosophy mathematics folks." ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "mathematics", "teaching", "recommendation-letter", "philosophy" ]

[ "How to deal with a team colleague submiting a bad article?", "My friend and I have been researching on a topic since when we were doing our master degrees. We were preparing to submit the next chapter of the research to a publication (we already have an article published on the matter), when the coordinating teacher decided to introduce another individual, one of his phD students, into the team, probably to get a higher count of published articles.\n\nNow, this guy never worked on the project, and he didn't really know what it was about. Worse, the coordinating teacher asked him to write the article for us (so as not to give him an article for free), and boy he screwed it up.\n\nHe made really bad English mistakes, he didn't format the document properly, he left things in our native language and he forgot to delete some of the template text from the document.\n\nThe worst part is that he never sent the \"final form\" of the article to either me or my friend. As a result, all of these mistakes came down on our heads when the reviewers declined the \"paper\", rightfully so. He even \"forgot\" to put me as an author in this research, but my friend caught word of this and forced him to put me in there too. This could have easily escalated to legal trouble in my country, since this is intellectual theft. \n\nI sent to them both (coordinating teacher and new guy) an email in which I said that this problem could have been easily avoided should the new guy had actually played as a team player and send the paper for peer review to the rest of the team. Was I wrong in doing so?\n\nEDIT: I am more concerned about the fact that the teacher forced this guy into the team so he can get \"free\" research points without actually doing any research. As this guy is backed by the teacher, by calling up on his mistake may worsen the relationship between me and that teacher.\n\nSo the question can be rephrased to a more general one: how to deal with such a situation when the responsible for the failure is someone backed up by the teacher, but who has no actual contribution to the research?" ]

[ "publications", "collaboration", "interpersonal-issues" ]

[ "How to reconcile desire to succeed in academia/willingness to prioritize research with ethical concerns about fair work practices?", "I'm not 100% sure how to phrase my question, but I've been grappling with this for sometime and thought maybe the responses would provide me some insight.\nI'm currently at PhD student soon to be on the market for postdocs with the goal of staying in academia. My dilemma is this: I am reasonably content spending a large amount of time/mental energy on research. However, I worry that this contributes to a culture of overwork and reinforces academia as a "ivory tower" inaccessible to those without the privilege of being able place such an emphasis on research.\nTo expand: Much of my life is spent directly or indirectly on research. I don't really subscribe to the idea of having to work "X hours a week" and regularly take day or week long breaks from my research when I'm not feeling like I'm making progress. I also regularly see a therapist and try to take care of my mental health as well as possible. However, even with this in mind, my desire to manage my mental health seems to be rooted in the desire to be more productive. When inspiration does strike, I'm happy to stop whatever I'm doing and follow up on the idea for as long as I'm captivated. Thus, even though I'm not always "doing" research, in the back of my mind I'm usually thinking of something related to research.\nSo far this seems to have worked reasonably well for me and feels sustainable long term.\nHowever, one effect is that I spend more time on research than I'm paid for (honestly this is probably true of any PhD student). What I worry about is that my willingness to research in this way helps to reinforce a lot troublesome aspects of academia. In particular, I wonder about what the effect on the work-life balance of my fellow PhD students, both in the sense that it normalizes what may be an unhealthy work-life balance for many people and in also the sense that there are many people, for whatever reason, who cannot do this even if they wanted.\nUnpaid internships/adjunct faculty positions are perhaps a similar and more self-contained example of a similar dilemma- they may be individually beneficial, but certainly reinforce societal barriers and limit who is able to succeed." ]

[ "graduate-school", "ethics", "career-path", "academic-life" ]

[ "Convert research into business", "As part of my research I am using data was provided by hospitals to my research. The data is for medical reports, but no patient information has been identified at all. No patient privacy has been affected at all.\n\nMy aim is to make a business project from my research, which will be an artificial intelligence predictive model using that data for training purposes. (I did not declare this as it is just an idea at the moment.)\n\nCan I build a product coming from my research and sell it? Will this have an ethics issue?" ]

[ "research-process", "data", "conflict-of-interest" ]

[ "Why does art history exist as a distinct discipline separate from the discipline of history?", "Art history is an established academic discipline and you can do degrees at all levels in it. \n\nWhy is this the case? \n\nWhy isn't it considered a sub-discipline of history? It seems to stand separately as its own subject.\n\nWhy don't you get a BA in Music History, for example? I am sure people study music history, but its much less well known as a discipline than art history." ]

[ "academic-history" ]

[ "Why scientific articles do not include year/date?", "I noticed that (most?) articles do not include the date of publishing/writing.\n\nFor example see this paper (on researchgate.net).\n\nIf I click for a citation on that page, I see there the year listed as \"2018\". But in the article itself, there is no indication when it was written.\n\nWhy is that? Or did I miss something?\n\nPS: To clarify, I am not asking about the duration of the work, but the information when the work was done (realizing that a single point in time can not be picked). For example if there is a paper about \"Method for better battery capacity\", then it is a substantial information whether it was written or published in 1899, 1989 or 2018." ]

[ "publications" ]

[ "Do you place endnotes (in vancouver reference style) after colons or before?", "I have some references I would like to tie to all the dot points I've written after my colon and hence I thought it would be a good idea to put the relevant references after the colon, in endnote form. Here is an extract from the text I am putting together that illustrates what I mean:\n\nThese acute attacks are typically triggered in genetically susceptible individuals by at least one of the following:2-4\n• Stress\n• Medications (especially sulfa-containing antibiotics, barbiturates, synthetic oestrogens, certain antiepileptic drugs and a few others. See http://www.drugs-porphyria.org/ for details regarding safe and unsafe drugs)\n• Dietary changes (high protein diets, low-carbohydrate diets and fasts are especially notable for causing acute attacks)\n• Endocrine factors (fluctuations in the levels of the different hormones present in the body; usually the sex hormones such as oestrogens and androgens [e.g. testosterone, dihydrotestosterone]. Acute attacks are often triggered by the hormonal changes that occur in the different stages of development, e.g. puberty, menopause, etc.)" ]

[ "citations" ]

[ "Developing a digital literacy course", "I am developing a digital literacy course in Persian. Do you know where can I find a similar course or quality content in English?" ]

[ "course-design" ]

[ "Age restrictions for teaching in united states", "I am asking this question in a general sense (in the majority sense) and is not particular to any institute or topic.\nIs there any upper age limit to join as an assistant professor in the US?\nIf a person completes her post-doc by the age of n, with no prior teaching experience. Is she eligible for assistant-professorship for 60 >= n >= 35?" ]

[ "united-states", "age" ]

[ "Should I ask for a Letter of Rec from a Newer or Older Colleague?", "I want to apply for a program where I will be doing research in a particular area for roughly 6 months. This is an area of research I'm very deeply interested in, but I don't have any experience yet. The program asks for a letter of recommendation and I'm a little torn who to ask to write this letter for me. I'm currently a visiting assistant professor at a college and I have a colleague in my department who knows about my interest, but he's honestly someone who isn't super familiar with my work. He's offered to write a letter with the caveat that this would be a relatively weak (albeit positive) letter. On the other hand, I'm considering asking my thesis adviser to write a letter for me. My concern however is that this would like like I'm relying too much on my grad school experience to get me into this program (it's been almost 2 years since I finished my PhD). Unfortunately neither one will be able to speak that much to my experience in the intended area of research (since I have none). Are there merits to relying on a newer colleague at this juncture, or is it safer to rely on someone more familiar with my work?" ]

[ "recommendation-letter" ]

[ "Is it necessary to discuss the reason of the algorithm choice in my paper?", "In my paper, I used a specific ML algorithm for modeling and I wonder if it necessary to discuss the reason why I chose this algorithm instead of the others?" ]

[ "writing", "machine-learning" ]

[ "Can you exclude issue numbers in references based on APA 6th edition?", "I'm currently working on my thesis (communication science), and I'm wondering about the issue number in the reference list. \n\nA teacher told me that I don't need to include the issue number. But I can't find anything about it, so I wondered if somebody here knows about it. \n\nThe current mark-up that I'm using now is as follows (I mainly cite scientific journals):\nLastname1, Initials., & Lastname2, Initials. (Year). Title. Journal name, volume number (issue number), page-page. DOI / Link \n\nCan I exclude the issue number or is imperative to include it?" ]

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

[ "Unintentional Plagiarism in my Masters Thesis", "About four months ago I graduated from a reputable university and received great feedback from the committee who judged my masters defense as well as my thesis. Prior to my defense, I was asked to prepare my paper — not my thesis — within 5 weeks of graduating. There were a few problems regarding the quality and quantity of the data and figuring out the appropriate analysis took considerable time. During this period I wrote and rewrote all the sections that are essential to a paper, keeping in mind that these exact sections would form my thesis as well. A colleague also edited my introduction, at times embellishing my sentences that went beyond what the cited authors stated. The time crunch resulted in lower quality work. \n\nOnce the paper was “approved” I was given the green light to work on my thesis, at just two weeks prior to graduating. All I had to do was copy and paste my paper into my thesis document, but I wanted to improve my literature review and make sure all the sections flowed well. In the end, even my thesis document did not turn out to be at the quality I hoped for. It was well received, but I believe that it is highly unlikely my supervisor even looked at my thesis, much less even read the first few pages.\n\nI just re-read my thesis and upon scrutinizing it I have found that I have unintentionally plagiarized from other authors in different areas, including the literature review, methods and materials, and one line in the introduction, all which was likely due to negligence and carelessness (can I call it that given the time I had?) of finishing on time. I didn’t outright copy, but sentence structure and wording are strikingly similar.\n\nMy friends (many who are in academia), family, and therapist (psychologist) have all advised that I use this as a learning experience for the future, as the university nor my supervisor would be willing to give me a second chance as such rarely is offered for something of this magnitude.\n\nAt this point I’m looking for any sound advice... What do I do? How do I move past this? I worry about my future :(" ]

[ "graduate-school", "thesis", "masters", "ethics", "plagiarism" ]

[ "How to make programming lectures more effective and stimulating?", "I've been assigned the position of Teaching Assistant for the programming part of my university courses in Bayesian Inference, at the MS level. I previously taught a course, a few months ago, in Computational statistics. My experience doing this, with no previous teaching experience, has been not so great because of generally poor student's performance, probably due to a lack of familiarity with the programming language used (R). \n\nI am preparing slides lecture by lecture, with embedded code that I run and comment upon on-the-go. Occasionally I propose exercises but execution is often sketchy and I find many people cannot use the basic constructs of the language with enough fluency to create code that runs \"on the spot\". Given that I have a program to cover and I would not know what else to propose to the students other than exercising more and studying the syntax of the language -- I am, myself, in most regards self-taught about this, meaning that my programming abilities have little to do with the coursework I did during my studies -- do you have any advice on how to make my lectures more effective and stimulating?" ]

[ "teaching", "teaching-assistant", "programming", "lecture-teaching-method" ]

[ "What proportion of course material mastery should we consider is \"passing?\"", "What proportion of course material mastery should we consider is \"passing?\"\n\nIn the US a typical grading rubric is\nA = 90%-100% \nB = 80%-89%\nC = 70%-79%\nD = 60%-69%\nF = below 59%\n\nAs a professor I often curve the numerical range of grades in my course, and depending on the class, the raw score for a passing grade might end up being even lower than 50%. My question is, at what point does this stop? \n\nA professor could decide that mastery of only 15% of the course material is \"passing\" because a curve can make 15% into any number. If the professor writes and grades the test he or she could also just decide to only teach and test over 15% of the actual syllabus. In each case students are happy, administrators are happy, etc. because of the \"nice grade distribution.\" But it seems a bit disingenuous to say that a student who learned only 15% of the course material actually passed.\n\nI've heard that accreditation boards have various requirements for a university to maintain its accreditation. For instance, students have to pass enough courses or their major. But is there any accountability for the students to actually learn a minimum amount of material? It seems that everyone in a university could agree that the only requirement to pass a class and graduate is that the student pays tuition. Obviously this is would be big disservice to society. But what incentives do professors have (other than moral ones) not just teach less, and pass more students?" ]

[ "teaching", "grading", "accreditation" ]

[ "What if my focus of undergraduate research does not match what I want to study in the graduate program?", "Good morning/afternoon/evening and good night\n\nI am a psych major-undergraduate senior and have actively engaged in being part of and/or conducting research for past 2 years.\n\nMy past undergraduate projects are, in a good way, \"interdisciplinary\": developmental psychology, cultural psychology (immigrant's cultural identity development) quantitative (machine learning approaches in big data analytics) psychology, cognitive psychology (priming studies), educational psychology (academic performance), health psychology (drug addition)etc.\n\nThis may also means that I am just very-all-over-the-place, indecisive, impulsive, ADHD, and so forth.\n\nI look forward to applying to graduate programs for cognitive psychology or developmental psychology (and if I can pursue developmental clinical psychology later on the way).\n\nHowever, as you can see, my undergraduate research experience lacks \"any kind of\" focus in neither discipline.\n\nI am concerned whether this counts as minus.\nI just enjoy doing research & running analyses, but perhaps I should have been certain with what kind of research I wanted to be part of in past years.\n\nThank you as always,\nI appreciate any comments!" ]

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

[ "What should I be doing now to get a good recommendation letter as a graduate student?", "I am currently doing a Master's degree in applied mathematics. I am worried though about after I complete my degree and I apply to another graduate school for an applied mathematics PhD program. While I have a good relationship with my supervisor an expect to get a good recommendation letter, most graduate schools and research award applications require three. \n\nMy question is what should I be doing now to ensure that I can easily get good recommendation letters when I graduate?\n\nRight now I spend most of my time doing research which by it's nature in my field is a solo activity in collaboration with my supervisor. The rest of my time is being a teaching assistant, and doing a few extra circulars. I want to start working on getting good recommendations while I still have time before I graduate.\n\nMore Personal Notes \n\n\nI am in my first year, started September 2017.\nThings I do outside of research and being a teaching assistant include being part of my school's graduate society, and mentoring undergraduate students in the department." ]

[ "graduate-school", "mathematics", "recommendation-letter" ]

[ "If a reviewer makes significant contributions to improving a paper, may he/she suggest becoming a coauthor?", "I was asked by the editor of a mathematical journal to review a submission by an author (unknown to me) which heavily relies upon some of my earlier work. I do not have much experience with writing peer reviews, but I have a good grasp of the topic of the submission.\n\nThe new results in the submission build heavily on earlier results in my published work; they are interesting and, in my opinion, worth publishing. However, while reading the mathematical proofs, I couldn't shake the feeling that they were overly complicated. Indeed, after thinking about it some more, I found that the proofs can be dramatically shortened by using insights that the author may not have had. For instance, one proof would go from roughly three pages to around half a page. For another proof, it seems that it can be reduced to a more standard situation, again drastically shortening it.\n\nMy work-in-progress report on the paper now 1) sketches the shortened proof for the first situation, 2) describes the needed insight to reduce the proof in the second situation to the more standard situation. At this point, the suggested changes seem to amount to a significant contribution to the paper since they touch not just minor parts of the paper, but the bulk of it.\n\nAt this point, I wonder what the best way to proceed is. Should I just submit the report with these suggestions? Or may it be appropriate in this situation to suggest to the editor that, if the original author is interested, he may contact me so that we can co-author a revised paper together? Or would that be considered unethical?\n\nI do not want to overstep my bounds as a reviewer, but on the other hand I don't know how common it is for reviewers to contribute significant improvements to a paper anonymously." ]

[ "peer-review", "authorship" ]

[ "Academic Misconduct with alternate exam? Minimizing damage?", "An individual I know is in an interesting situation and I was just wondering what you guys thought about it.\n\nThis individual had an exam conflict and emailed the instructor to arrange an alternate exam time to get rid of this conflict. Meanwhile the rest of the class would be taking the exam for this course at a later time that day.\n\nAfter the alternate exam was finished, this individual answered questions and provided specific topics regarding the exam by his peers who would be taking that course exam later that day. \n\nNow this individual received an email from the instructor accusing him of leaking information and reported it to the academic misconduct board.\n\nNow I was just wondering if this is truly a form of academic misconduct. \n\nJust a few notes to add:\n\n\nI have fellow peers who have done the exact same thing and not face a single threat of being reported to the academic board. \nIs it not the instructor's responsibility to prepare a different version of the exam for both the individual and rest of the class?\nFurthermore, is it not also the university's and/or the instructor's responsibility to highlight the confidentiality of an alternate exam and notify the possible consequences? In all the rules and regulations, there are no clear cut rules for alternate exams or any offences that can take place. \nDoes this just come down to miscommunication and failure to provide reasonable notice?\nFrom the rumours going around, the evidence gathered is a screenshot of a facebook conversation, is this even enough evidence? \nAnd if so, would it not be a breach of privacy?\nAnother update: The individual did not know that it was going to be the same exam.\n\n\nThanks again and I would love to hear your thoughts about this.\n\nUPDATE:\n\nAs a user pointed out, the second part to this question is how can this individual minimize the damage and not face severe academic misconduct?" ]

[ "exams", "cheating", "canada" ]

[ "Is a low undergrad GPA a career killer?", "I graduated with a 6.4/10 GPA from a Non-IIT University in India - BE in CS in 2019. I pretty much messed up during my early 2 years of UG while taking part in non-academics such as workshops and research. Only later I have realized that it was too late to improve and now I am facing the consequences of neglecting good grades. I wasn't a lazy student, I worked 16 hours a day learning something new for research, solving math and leetcoding because I couldn't stand the classroom environment.\nI hate blaming the University but they were rather a scam ridden cash cow run by unprofessional people and did not encourage any sort of research activities or any funding for it. Luckily, my time in research did not require much funding yet I have managed to publish 12 papers during my 5 years (9 during undergrad) at well reputed domestic and international conferences - IEEE, Springer, etc, 3 winning awards. I frankly enjoyed the lab work and research part of my UG because it gave me complete freedom to explore my skills and work, yet it's frustrating how marks is always given the first preference. I have graduated with most publications compared to anyone who have studied in my University. I feel really cheated as I was told publications were preferred over GPA.\nI was an aspiring MS and PhD candidate for Natural Language Processing. And now I'm seeing that I have been rejected by ASU and I'm pretty sure it was because of my GPA, which probably never made it to the AdCom. This is my first post on stack exchange and I really want to know whether my career has hit a dead end here. I'm feeling tired and frustrated, thinking about a career change since a second chance elsewhere to prove my worth would at least take me beyond a bachelors degree." ]

[ "publications", "phd", "career-path", "university", "gpa" ]

[ "How to apply to a prestigious American university as an international student?", "I am planning to do a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in the US, more specifically California, and recently started looking into potential Universities that offer a good physics programme. A number of questions came up.\n\n\nI understand that an American Ph.D. program is very different from a European one in that it usually takes around 5 years to complete and involves coursework. If a master's degree was already obtained, do American universities allow for a more European style Ph.D. completed in around 3 years? Does a Ph.D. necessarily involve paying the university's tuition fees?\nPh.D. students in Europe are employed by their university, receive a monthly salary and don't pay tuition. Does this model exist in the US, i.e. is there any way to avoid paying tuition fees as a Ph.D. student?\n\n\nI appreciate any helpful advice including to questions I did not ask but maybe should have." ]

[ "phd", "graduate-admissions", "physics", "international-students" ]

[ "I feel that my professor didn't notice a mistake I made on an assignment. Should I have informed the professor of my mistake?", "This morning, I took my third math quiz of the semester. On the last question, I had solved the presented problem but had not written out the answer according to the directions before time was called, so I simply circled the answer that I did have.\n\nLater this afternoon, I got a notice on my phone that my grade on the quiz had been posted. As it turns out, I got 100% exactly. So, I sent a message to the professor pointing out my mistake. \n\nShould I have done that?" ]

[ "grades" ]

[ "How to know whether my submission to a mathematics journal is significant enough?", "I have received the following referee comment:\n\n\n This paper is well-written and the results appear to be correct. But I don't think the research is significant enough to warrant publication in ....(math journal name). Perhaps it would fit better with ......(another math journal name)?\n\n\nHow could I know that my article is significant enough?" ]

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

[ "Importance of grades when applying to Master's degree program?", "I am planning on applying to a Master's degree program (in Canada, if it matters) and I've noticed that there seems to be quite a few grade cut-offs for applications. I've read elsewhere that these are not set in stone, however, how important are they compared to other criteria such as references and research?\n\nIn my opinion, which I have no proof for, it seems almost absurd to put an emphasis on grades without knowing a class average or having a detailed knowledge of the course when examining a grade. However, this is my personal biased opinion, so I would like to see the rationale behind the opposite view. One argument I have heard is that school build up a database of GPAs from a certain school and classes (from the comments to this question), so I can see how this might be considered mildly accurate.\n\nThis is similar to this question, consequently if the response is similar, I will not be surprised. I'm applying to a researched focused engineering program, but a developed answer with respect to multiple faculties and multiple types of programs would be ideal." ]

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

[ "Do I need to reason why I use a particular technology in my research proposal?", "I have started doing a research related to NoSQL databases for the master's degree and I have submitted the research proposal.\nProposal evaluation results have been released and the examiner has added some comments.\nMy question is about one of his comment.\nIn my research I have mentioned that I am going to use Yahoo! Cloud Serving Benchmark (YCSB) for the evaluation process of the research. The examiner asks me to justify the appropriateness of use of YCSB for the performance assessment.\nWhat does this mean? Does that mean I need to reason all the tools or technologies I have chosen to assist the research process?\nThe real reason for choosing YCSB is because it has been used in many recent past researches related to NoSQL databases and also there seems to have limited standard available bench marks in the field." ]

[ "research-proposal", "tools", "technology" ]

[ "Listing Awards on CV as a Group?", "I work in a field where a group of about 20 people all have a different role on a project. When a project wins an award in this field, they typically do not list people individually. How can I put awards like this on my CV?" ]

[ "cv", "awards" ]

[ "University advocates for students facing academic misconduct charges", "I sit on my department's academic misconduct committee. When students are suspected of academic misconduct they are invited to a meeting with the academic misconduct committee. The university polices are pretty clear that students not only can, but should, have an advocate attend the meeting. The policy also states that the advocate cannot be a lawyer providing legal representation, but can be a friend/family member who happens to be a lawyer. The university student services provides an advocates if students request it. At our last meeting we had a case of suspect collusion by two students. Both students had been assigned the same university advocate.\n\nThese collusion type meetings tend to be messy and involve bringing one student in and hearing that side of the story, sending that student out and bringing the other student in and hearing the other side of the story, and then often iterating a number of times. We attempt to keep the students isolated so they do not hear each other's side of the story. In the case of the same advocate representing both students there is obviously a confidentiality issue.\n\nBased on the evidence we had it was clear student A had copied/worked with student B and produced a \"joint work product\" and turned it as her own. This expressly prohibited and constitutes academic misconduct. We did not have evidence that student B had knowingly colluded with student A and therefore were going to let student B off.\n\nWe called student B and the advocate in for a final meeting and began explaining to the student that they had not done anything wrong and no penalty would be applied, when the advocate proverbially threw student B under the bus and said that student B had colluded with student A. The end result was that both student A and student B were penalized. It is not clear if we applied a lighter penalty to student A because of admission of wrong doing by student B. I walked away from the incident feeling dirty.\n\nWe have not referred the case to the central university committee because of \"procedural irregularities\" because the central committee is consistently harsher than us and we are confident the central committee would have penalized both students (even without the admission of student B) harsher than we did. Should that matter or should we just report it to the central committee? \n\nThis incident has raised a number of related questions for me. Should the advocate be reported? Do we need to convince the university to change its advocacy policies for claims of joint work? Is there a fundamental conflict of interest of the university advocate and should students be encouraged to get their own independent advocate?" ]

[ "ethics", "conflict-of-interest" ]

[ "Why do formal research papers keep statements that should be interpreted informally?", "In several domains, I came across many popular research papers that do contain statements that should be interpreted informally. If someone interprets them formally, it leads to a totally wrong perception.\nThe issue is that the authors use the formal terms in-order to make the statements that has to be interpreted informally. The statements I am referring are not the plain English statements, which can be equivocal in nature.\nFor example, consider the following answer from other stack site\n\nYou're right! The generative model f is not the same as the\nprobability density (p.d.f.) function pdata. The kind of phrases\nyou've referred to are to be interpreted informally. You learn f with\nthe hope that sampling a latent vector z from some known distribution\n(from which it is easy to sample), results in f(z) that has the\nprobability density function pdata. However, merely learning f does\nnot give you the power to estimate what pdata(x) is for some image x.\nLearning f only gives you the power to sample according to pdata(⋅)\n(if you've learned an accurate such f).\n\nI interpreted in wrong way and tried to understand for much time and I end up in asking that question (on other site). I came across many such formal phrases from research papers.\nIn general, there will be no explicit remainders or hints or guidelines or suggestions to know which statements to be interpreted formally and which statements has to be interpreted informally in a formal context.\nWhat is the primary reason behind encouraging such phrases either by journals or authors?" ]

[ "journals", "writing", "reading" ]

[ "In-class, allowing students to address professor informally ('tutoyer' / 'tutear')", "Supposing that Dr. A is teaching an undergraduate-level course, what would be the pros and cons for Dr. A to allow students to address himself in an \"informal\" manner? \n\nBy \"informal\" here I mean using what is employed in a number of languages for informal conversation. For example, this would be tutoyer in French or tutear in Spanish. (Hence, the question does not apply for an English-speaking classroom, but does apply for a French or Spanish-speaking one).\n\nEDIT (clarification, thanks j91): In Spanish, French, German and other languages, the second person singular has two versions: \"Tú\", \"Tu\" and \"Du\" are the informal versions in Spanish, French and German, respectively, and \"Usted\", \"vous\" and \"Sie\" are the formal ones in the same order. \"Tutear\" is the act of using systematicaly the informal version and, in theory, should be avoided when speaking to a person in a position of authority." ]

[ "teaching", "interpersonal-issues" ]

[ "How much does it hurt admissions if I don't take an essential class until after I apply to schools?", "I've asked a related question about dealing with two courses that I need that are scheduled at the same time. I'm not sure if I'll be able to get it resolved yet, and so it's been on my mind. \n\nOne of the courses I need to take is very important for my desired field of graduate study (as in, it's important for the specific field of research), and it's possible that I won't be able to take it until spring of my last year, which means it wouldn't be on my transcript when I apply for graduate schools. Will this hurt my application if I say I want to do work in this field while not having taken the necessary course yet? For reference, I've got plenty of research experience, I should have great letters of recommendation, and potentially a 4.0 GPA, and I will have taken many upper-level courses in my major, so while my application may be strong in those areas, I'm wondering how detrimental not taking this course early on will be (particularly when applying to top 15 schools). Of course, I will have taken the course by the time I graduate, but perhaps that wouldn't mean much to admissions committees (who wouldn't know my grade in the course).\n\nFor further reference, my interest is in antenna engineering, and the course I'm referring to is a standard engineering electromagnetics course. Also, if it makes a difference, I plan on applying to masters programs, and so if there are differences between what is looked for in masters vs PhD admissions, please keep that in mind." ]

[ "graduate-admissions" ]

[ "The rationale behind academic and industry salary difference", "This question is not about PhD students, but about professionals with PhD degrees. To narrow down the scope even further, let my subject be a computer science PhD seeking a job in Europe. (I'd include the USA as well, but I'm afraid the dynamics are not the same. However, feel free to include relevant comparisons and data in the answers when needed.)\n\nThe salary of such a professional, if they stayed in academia, will be probably lower than if they chose to get a job in industry.\n\nWhat is the economic incentive behind the university policy to not have higher, more competitive salaries when compared to industry?\n\nI know that state institutions are (at least partially) on the government budget, so they arguably have little say in the matter. However, private institutions are significantly more independent in their organization. Basically, isn't it in the institutions' best interest to have the \"best pick\" of PhD graduates, instead of competing against the lure of a higher pay?" ]

[ "industry", "salary" ]

[ "Should I mention PhD in the header of my industrial résumé to catch the recruiters' attention?", "I've recently left academia and am looking for a job in industry, mostly in R&D, in the areas of machine learning, computer vision, data science etc. Should I mention in the header \"John Doe, PhD\" instead of just \"John Doe\" to catch immediate attention of recruiters?" ]

[ "cv", "industry" ]

[ "Very Short Papers in Mathematical Journals", "Are there mathematical journals like American Mathematical Monthly that publish very short papers like mathbits?\n\nMathbits are generally a proof of an old theorem or results." ]

[ "journals" ]

[ "How do I ask for a reference letter from a professor I do not want to work with?", "I'm a fourth year undergraduate student planning on applying to grad programs this fall. I will mainly be applying to PhD and research thesis master programs in machine learning and computer architecture. They would fall under the computer science or electrical/computer engineering departments.\n\nI did part time research under a professor this school year. It was something I initiated/approached him about, asking for something interesting I could work on. We eventually co-authored a paper together and successfully published it.\n\nBecause of this being a positive experience, I plan on asking this professor for a reference letter for grad school.\n\nHe was an incredible supervisor, and I really enjoyed the work, however I don't see myself spending my life working in his field, so I'm not particularly interested in going to grad school for it.\n\nHe's obviously not a kid and I highly doubt he'll take it personally, so I'm not worried about him being insulted. However, as I mentioned before, I approached him at the beginning of the year saying his work looked interesting. Additionally, he was happy with my work so he decided to pay me for it. My main concern is that he will be annoyed that I made him invest so much time and money in me only for me to then claim I'm not really interested in his work. I did find the work interesting, but not interesting enough to spend years working in it. His field is signal processing algorithms, so fairly different from the machine learning and computer architecture programs I'll be applying to." ]

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

[ "Appropriate way to discuss genetic conditions in a large lecture?", "I want to cover the topic of achondroplasia, the most common form of dwarfism, in a large introductory biology lecture. How can I discuss it in an appropriately sensitive way, one that respects people who have the condition or are close to people with the condition? I'm used to lecturing about sensitive but biologically relevant topics like race, incest, and \"extra-pair copulation\" [mating outside of a socially monogamous pair, which would be adultery in a human context], but these are topics that are applicable to a broad audience. In this case I'm more worried about offending or annoying particular individuals. (I may be feeling particularly sensitive about this because I've had a little person in a couple of my other classes in the last few terms.)\n\n\nthe talk page for the Wikipedia article mentions that what to call achondroplasia [\"a medical condition, disorder, disease, disability, or none of the above\"] is controversial; \"condition\" feels most neutral to me.\nthe online FAQ for the Little People of America doesn't say much more than\n\n\n Such terms as dwarf, little person, LP, and person of short stature are all acceptable, but most people would rather be referred to by their name than by a label.\n\n\n(this is in a section explaining that \"midget\" is considered offensive).\n\n\nFor what it's worth, I'm going to be discussing the rate of mutation in the gene responsible for the condition; the strength of natural selection against the condition; and how we can calculate the expected frequency of the condition in the population from this information. This does raise some potentially problematic topics (such as the lower probability of survival and reproduction). In the past when I've covered this topic, I have mentioned Peter Dinklage, a little person who has been both professionally (Emmy-award-winning) and reproductively (he has a child) successful.\n\nThe reason it's worth discussing achondroplasia in class is that it's a surprising example of a deleterious, autosomal dominant genetic condition that's maintained by pure mutation-selection balance (i.e., we don't know of any counterbalancing selective advantages that would have caused it to stay in the population).\n\nAny suggestions?" ]

[ "etiquette", "students", "disability", "lecture-teaching-method" ]

[ "Likelihood of an undergrad publishing from home", "I am interested to know what the likelihood is that an undergraduate would be able to publish an academic paper (particularly in a STEM field) from home. For the sake of argument, assume they are an advanced student, and work independently of any supervisor.\n\n\nIs this something that is frequently done?\nWould this look any better or worse on a CV than doing it under a supervisor?\nIs this something that is likely to happen, in a reasonable time frame, if the student stayed committed?" ]

[ "undergraduate", "research-undergraduate", "independent-researcher" ]

[ "Sorting Data in Tables", "Am I allowed to sort data in tables?\n\nSay in my notebook, I recorded the following:\n\nDistance (cm) Time (s)\n± 0.01 cm ± 0.02 s\n\n100.00 10.00\n 0.00 0.00\n 10.00 1.00\n 50.00 5.00\n 25.00 2.50\n\n\nCan I sort the data (for a formal report) into the following?\n\nDistance (cm) Time (s)\n± 0.01 cm ± 0.02 s\n\n 0.00 0.00\n 10.00 1.00\n 25.00 2.50\n 50.00 5.00\n100.00 10.00\n\n\nI haven't modified the data, but only the order in which they were taken, therefore, I think I am allowed." ]

[ "data" ]

[ "Rejecting an offer of admission", "I'm interested in applying to pharmacy school and programs for a PhD in chemistry. The PhD programs only admit less than 10 people a year and it's more likely that I won't get in to one of these compared to pharmacy school. The issue is that the pharmacy programs provide admissions offers earlier than when the PhD interviews start. \n\nIs it acceptable to accept an admission from the pharmacy school and then later reject that offer in favor of an offer from a PhD program? I feel bad for potentially taking up one of the spots in a pharmacy program if I won't be going there." ]

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

[ "Is preparing for a lawsuit a valid reason to defer an exam?", "An employer owes me wages and I have not been able to get them to comply without escalating matters. As a result, I have been preparing to take them to court, but I have an exam for my masters that I have not been able to focus on at all due to the substantial stress and uncertainty caused by dealing with this employer. \n\nDoes a UK university accept defering an exam due to legal matters as a vaild reason for deferrement especially when the missing payment comes at a time when it is really needed?" ]

[ "graduate-school", "masters", "united-kingdom", "exams", "deferral" ]

[ "My paper's content is slightly changed from the abstract I have submitted to a conference, can I edit the accepted abstract on my poster?", "I'm fairly early on in my PhD research. A few months ago I submitted an abstract to a conference, which was accepted. The conference is coming up soon, and my research has taken a slight turn away from my accepted abstract (still same field, collaborators, etc...--just asking slightly different questions and taking a slightly different approach).\n\nMy question is, am I obligated to put the program-accepted abstract on my poster? If I am, should I try to tie my poster content as closely to that accepted abstract as possible? Or can I present poster content that would've been more appropriate for a different abstract? \n\nOr can I use a different abstract on my poster, and thus tie the content more closely to what my current research path is?\n\nWhat about keeping the original abstract in its entirely, but appending it?\n\nEDIT: I'm in the field of astrobiology (probably most similar to the fields of geology or astronomy if I had to relate it to a more conventional field)" ]

[ "etiquette", "abstract", "poster" ]

[ "Citing a math theorem with errors", "I apologize if this has already been asked; I can't find this exact question.\n\nSuppose author X writes a paper, and in this paper, they prove a result that is a very small part of their paper. However, the result has a mistake. Based on personal judgement, it appears the mistake is an innocent mistake that does not disrupt the intellectual flow of the paper. i.e. it is very reasonable to believe the author X had the ability themselves to get the proof right. In fact, it may have been simply a typo. Nonetheless, it is unarguably incorrect.\n\nAuthor Y comes along and builds other results off of the (corrected) ideas by author X. Author Y wants to (for good reason) cite author X, as their results would not have been obtained without author X.\n\nWhat is the correct way to do this in a paper? The way I see it, there are 2 possible actions for author Y:\n\n1) Pretend like author X didn't make a mistake at all and give them full authority on their theorem.\n2) Say something like ... \"the results are based off the ideas by author X\" but don't give as much of a \"these are author X's results\" flavor. Author Y then after mentioning author X, proves the theorem themselves.\n\nAction 2) seems to be the most reasonable in the sense that it is intellectual honest and doesn't shame author X for no reason. However, is it considered plagiarism to be somewhat vague about what author X did?\n\nThank you.\n\nEDIT: I realize another option is to allow author X to correct their mistake and then do action 1. But with how slowly paper publishing occurs, this seems unjustly detrimental to author Y so I don't consider it a real option." ]

[ "research-process", "citations", "mathematics" ]

[ "How to indicate deleted text in manuscript when using highlighted text as opposed to tracked changes", "I have the chance to submit a revised manuscript to a journal, and they have specifically asked to highlight the changes using highlighted text, as opposed to tracked changes. I am using Microsoft word.\n\nI have always used tracked changes, so I am not sure of the normal procedure when using highlighted text to mark changes, specifically when deleting text. If there is a sentence to be deleted, how do you indicate this using highlighted text, as there is no text remaining. Should I just delete and then reference the line at which this happened in the response to editors and reviewers? Or should I highlight the 'space' where the line used to be?\n\nMany thanks" ]

[ "publications", "peer-review" ]

[ "What does \"This question is left for future research\" imply?", "In computer science, and probably other disciplines as well, it is common to end every paper with a \"future research\" section. I always wondered what is the utility of this section. In particular:\n\nA. How common is it, that a question from a \"future research\" section is actually researched by the same research group?\n\nB. How common is it, that a question from a \"future research\" section inspires future research by other research groups?\n\nBoth these questions can be studied quantitatively, even semi-automatically, by comparing the contents of \"future research\" sections to the titles and abstracts of papers published in a later date. Has such a research been done?" ]

[ "research-process", "publications" ]

[ "Is a postdoc-interview presentation a norm?", "I have been invited for a postdoc interview. After reading some questions and answers, I noted that sometimes the applicant is required to give a presentation/talk. In my invitation, nothing is mentioned about a presentation or talk during the interview. Now I am not sure: should I prepare a presentation because it is the norm? \n\n(Of course I have some presentations from my previous talks/conferences. I just have to review it and do some changes.)\n\nEdit: after a short email, they replied that presentation is not needed" ]

[ "postdocs", "interview" ]

[ "Long Interview for Visiting Assistant Professorship", "I'm having my second interview for a VAP position so I'm looking to see what the Deans might ask and what I might ask them. The position is in photojournalism and I'm teaching my first class at present at another university, while still working in the field. What questions do Deans focus on and want to hear from the candidate about. I know each field is different, just trying to get a general feel. Thanks!" ]

[ "professors", "job", "interview" ]

[ "Is it appropriate to ask for a $220k piece of equipment on an ESI R01 application to the NIH?", "I'm an early stage investigator (ESI) working on an NIH-R01 application where I am proposing a good amount of experiments that necessitate this piece of equipment that costs $220,000. This piece of equipment exists on my campus, but it's located a couple of miles away from my lab, which requires me or someone from my lab to carry cells by car or on public transit. Since the equipment is used to measure cellular metabolic function, I've always been wary about carrying my cells all the way there. Anyhow, I'd like to buy this piece of equipment in my first year of the R01. \nThe good thing is that adding the $220k to my year 1 budget doesn't exceed the $500k limit/year. \nNow I'm wondering if it's appropriate to request such an expensive piece of equipment as an early stage investigator. I am thinking that the reviewers may comment on the fact that I already collected a significant amount of prelim data in collaboration with another lab... so why not continue to do so? Why the need to purchase the equipment?\nDo you think such request could tank a grant application?\nThanks for your input!" ]

[ "funding", "early-career", "nih" ]

[ "Research partner switching authorship before publishing to Arxiv?", "We’re currently publishing a preview of a paper we’ve just gotten accepted to a conference and of the five of us, one member started an Arxiv submission application first. This means that the rest of us were not able to submit an application in lieu of his, even though he did not have the final version of the paper. In submitting the work to Arxiv, he actually switched the originally alphabetical authorship so that his name went first.\n\nHow can you force someone to remove their submission? We keep texting him, but he is ignoring us, and if this continues, this falsely authored version will be what is published and out there, but different from the legitimate version of the paper." ]

[ "publications", "paper-submission", "authorship", "collaboration", "arxiv" ]

[ "Possibly, quick acceptance for publication", "Two days ago, a physics journal received my manuscript and today they informed me that the editor and reviewer accepted my manuscript for publication. this is the first time for me publishing a manuscript, but two days, isn't that quick?\nand they told me that I will pay around 700 Euros for the first installment.\nI really need your advice here, I am afraid of getting screwed." ]

[ "publications", "disreputable-publishers" ]

[ "Is there any real demonstrated benefit to the Dutch break out of the academic year?", "Dutch universities have an arguably peculiar academic calendar: each semester breaks down in two blocks (actually 3, but only 2 are teaching blocks) so 4 blocks in total. Each full course is block-long (around 32-36 hours per block, usually 7 teaching weeks with 4-6 hours per week) which might seems short and \"rushed\". Each such course is 4-6 ECTS.\n\nWhen I am talking with some other Dutch colleagues, they are not exactly able to justify this but they claim that \"is about quality, not quantity\". Sure, but how can you teach, for example, Calculus in 34 hours total including tutorials etc.? (I am using the example of calculus because they try to fit in such a course single and multi-variate calculus, series, differential equations etc.). \n\nAnyway, I am wondering if there exists any particular study or report that argues that is more beneficial to have more blocks with fewer hours per block/course than the traditional break-out of the academic calendar. \n\nI am not sure if other countries have similar systems, Netherlands is the only one I know so it might be country-specific." ]

[ "teaching", "netherlands", "curriculum" ]

[ "Can one give a conference talk on a topic already published in a journal?", "Let's say I wrote a paper and got it accepted in a journal. Can I then give a talk on that paper at a conference? What are the relevant factors here?" ]

[ "journals", "conference" ]

[ "How should I deal with critical comment that may affect on my research path?", "A few days ago I posted a question on specific paper on RG. Another researcher says this is insulated paper that really shocked me because it is central to my research.\n\nAfter I saw this comment I contact this person to get more explanation that may guide me but he didn't respond.\n\nThe paper name is \"Multimodal Registration of Remotely Sensed Images Based on Jeffrey’s Divergence, 2016\" and my interest is multimodal image registration, below you will find a screenshot for the discussion.\n\n\nI post this question to get some advice from senior researchers that may pass through a situation.\n\nUpdate: How can Q1 journal accept to publish insulated work?\n\nThanks" ]

[ "computer-science", "editors", "research-topic" ]

[ "How to find the money for an Open Access publication fee, if you're a postdoc and you don't have any funds?", "Last year I finished my PhD in Europe and now I'm a postdoc in North America. I work on computer science.\n\nAn year ago I wrote a paper with my former Europen supervisor and a former colleague, and submitted it to a conference. My former supervisor presented the work at the conference.\n\nNow we just discovered that the steering committee selected our paper for a post-conference supplement in a Open Access BMC journal. We're very happy for this selection (they chose 5 papers out of 52) but there's a problem: we don't have funding to pay the ~2,000 euros publication fee for the journal.\n\nMy former supervisor has no funding at the moment; my former colleague is still a PhD student and he's broke; myself I'm a postdoc with no research funding and I'm not going to ask to my current supervisor to pay (because I don't think it's fair and anyway he'd refuse).\n\nWhat should I do?\n\nThat journal publication would be very important for my career, and quite useful for our scientific community. This supplement is a very unique occasion." ]

[ "publications", "journals", "conference", "funding", "open-access" ]

[ "Can a grad student take undergrad classes?", "Maybe a dumb question, but for example: say I'm doing a PhD in Theoretical Physics (I'm not) but I need to have taken certain undergrad math courses to understand the material, which I never took in undergrad. Do grad students ever end up in undergrad classes for this reason, or do they just learn the material themselves out of books?" ]

[ "graduate-school" ]

[ "Is it okay to include a simplified and easy version of a result already proved?", "I am preparing to write an article. For that, I got an easier proof of the already published result. My result is very simple to prove. Is it ethical to include this result in my\narticle after citing the other author's work that we are improving their result?\nKindly help. Thanks a lot." ]

[ "publications", "ethics" ]

[ "Is a IEEE student member counted as a member in a submission to a transaction?", "I am going to submit a paper to a IEEE transaction. I am a student member of IEEE. In the auther line of the paper, do I append \"IEEE, Member\", \"IEEE, Student Member\" or nothing after my name?" ]

[ "publications", "journals", "terminology", "ieee" ]

[ "Are there any examples for an ArXiv publication nurturing or preventing plagiarism?", "First of all, this is about plagiarism in the sense of stealing ideas. Copy-and-paste plagiarism is included but not likely to happen in the cases relevant for this question.\n\nConsidering the publication of a paper prior to peer-reviewed publication on the ArXiv (or another preprint server), there are usually two main positions considering a possible theft of the idea (or somebody coming up with the same idea):\n\n\nIf somebody manages to publish your idea in a peer-reviewed journal before you do, you can prove that you came up with the idea first or at least independently if you have published your paper on the ArXiv. Therefore it is a good idea to publish papers on the ArXiv before they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.\nIf you publish your paper on ArXiv before it is published in a peer-reviewed journal, others may steal your work and publish it peer-reviewed before you do and thus take the scientific credit. It’s difficult to attack those people since the ArXiv is not peer-reviewed. Somebody could make a living of plagiarising ArXiv papers. Therefore it is a bad idea to publish papers on the ArXiv before they have been published in a peer-reviewed journal.\n\n\nAre there any example cases (or even studies) supporting either of these statements? Such examples would include, but are not limited to:\n\n\nHas a peer-reviewed journal ever withdrawn a paper because it plagiarised an ArXiv paper?\nAre there well-known cases of “unpunished” plagiarism of ArXiv papers? \nHas anybody ever successfully resolved a priority dispute with a publication on ArXiv?\nHas anybody ever accused somebody of plagiarising an ArXiv article (with the fact that the plagiarised article was published on ArXiv affecting the outcome).\n\n\nNote that it is really examples and not a theoretical analysis of the statements, I am looking for. (Neither of the two positions fully reflect my opinion and some of the soft premises¹ are debatable. However, debating about these viewpoints on a theoretical basis or attacking some of the premises is usually futile.)\n\n\n\n\n¹ e.g., that scientific credit is only decided by peer-reviewed publication" ]

[ "plagiarism", "arxiv", "preprint" ]

[ "Is it a good idea to mention previous rejection and subsequent improvement in motivation letter?", "I am applying to a Master's degree in Finland. Last year I applied to the same programme and unfortunately I was not accepted.\n\nWhile I am writing my motivation letter I wonder if it would be a good idea to mention that I was not accepted last year but now I have improved as a professional during last year, so I can tell that I am a better prospect now." ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "masters", "statement-of-purpose", "rejection" ]

[ "use of \"carrier\" for affected individuals", "I'm the process of paper drafting and stumbled upon the question, what's the appropriate name for individuals, who are affected by a disease, which is likely due to a mutation.\n\nI was using the term \"carriers\" until now (like in: group one constists out of mutational carriers, group two is a control group).\n\nNow I've read that the word \"carrier\" is just short for hereditary carrier (Wikipedia: has inherited a recessive allele for a genetic trait or mutation but does not display that trait)\n\nSo how do I refer to patients that are affected by the mutation. I've thought about \"patients\", but the control group consists out of patients, too.\n\nIs there a correct word for this?" ]

[ "medicine" ]

[ "Should a statement of purpose for a PhD application be single or double spaced?", "I'm applying to several math PhD programs for the next fall term, and they all require a statement of purpose of 1-2 pages. However, none of them seem to give concrete spacing requirements. My statement is too long to fit under double spacing, but meets the requirement under single spacing. I've looked up this question but I've gotten mixed messages." ]

[ "graduate-admissions", "mathematics", "statement-of-purpose", "formatting" ]

[ "Combine multiple major fellowships?", "I have received both the NSF and another major fellowship (non-federal). Both stipends cover more than my departmental funding; do I get the sum of the stipends?" ]

[ "funding", "nsf" ]

[ "In a paper, how would you name a part that describes the big picture before the technical details", "I have been struggling with finding the right title for a section in a scientific paper (in computer science but I think it can apply to many other fields). I know it's not the first time I encounter this problem, so I guess it's worth asking the question.\n\nFor now the outline of the paper resembles something like this:\n\n\nIntroduction: where I describe the problem and the outline of the paper\nBackground/Related work: where I describe what the state-of-the art is in the field\nBig picture: where I describe where we want to go and how we will go there from a high level standpoint (more detailed than the intro, but less detailed than what follows)\n[... Implementation ... Technical Details ... Application ... etc]: the body of the article\nConclusion\n\n\nI'm struggling with the title of the third part Big picture. I want a title that conveys the idea of a high level description of what will follow so that the reader does not get lost in the technical details and keep in mind what the general plan is. Things I had in mind so far: big picture description, methodology, strategy, overview, plan of attack, ... However, none of these section title conveys exactly what I want.\n\n\n\nIs there a common practice for the title of such a section of a paper? \n\nWhat could be a good fit?" ]

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

[ "What does it mean to be \"former PhD student\"?", "I saw the term \"former Ph.D. student\" in some article -- does it suggests someone accepted in a PhD program but did not get his/her PhD degree eventually?" ]

[ "phd" ]

[ "Is there a reference managing software that shows/extracts content of highlights?", "I'm mostly using Mendeley, but after reading lots of ebooks with the Kindle app, I've noticed that I really like the feature that shows me the content of all highlights and the ability to jump to the relevant section.\nIs there any software for reference/paper organization, reading and note taking like Mendeley which has this feature?\n\nAs an example, for those who don't know this feature from e.g. Kindle, if the text above was part of a paper and the bold part was my highlight, I want to have a list that shows:\n\n\nI really like the feature that shows me the content of all highlights\nthe ability to jump to the relevant section\n\n\nand clicking on one of them should bring me to the respective section of the paper.\n\nAny pointer much appreciated!" ]

[ "publications", "software" ]

[ "Finish previous work during current position", "I will soon change of lab, moving from a PhD student position to post-doc position. During the last months of my contract as a PhD student, I tried to finish everything I started but I still have a few projects in progress. These projects include collaborative paper with other groups, so I am not the only one involved.\n\nI was wondering what was the general agreement when changing position with unfinished project. I see three main possibilities here:\n\n\nAt the beginning of the new contract, I spend all my time finishing the previous project so I do not have to worry about them for too long (but I do not start right away to work for my new boss)\nI spend one day per week (for instance) working for the past project and the rest for the current one\nI do not work at all on the previous project during office hours, but rather after work and during the week-end (which I would prefer not to do)\n\n\nI have to precise that my future boss is not involved in the project I would need to finish. I also plan to ask him the question directly when I start the new position, but I thought a little background about what is commonly done could be beneficial before starting this discussion.\n\nNB: this question is different from this one since it does not concern the ownership of the research, but rather on how to spend the time in the lab." ]

[ "ethics" ]

[ "Is a business card necessary for a graduate student?", "I know some PhD students have their own business cards, but I don't know if it is a standard practice for PhD students to have their own business cards. I think a business card can be useful for networking in conference or collaborating with some industrial partners. So, is are business cards necessary for a PhD student or other graduate students attending conferences? \n\nPS: in case it is field-specific, I would like to know the different practices in different fields" ]

[ "etiquette", "networking" ]

[ "Is it better to present a bad paper at a conference or cancel?", "I'm a PhD student who recently had an abstract accepted for a conference. It was based on a survey that was scheduled to take place before the conference, but external issues caused the survey to be delayed. I don't have the data I thought I would. I've tried to rework a paper that is more theory-based and introduces some descriptive data from another data set, but it's not a strong paper. Should I cancel late notice or just suck it up? It would be my first conference." ]

[ "phd", "conference" ]

[ "Difference between tenure-track/tenured positions in universities and research scientist positions in national labs", "I am trying to evaluate pros and cons for working at universities as tenure-track (and eventually, hopefully, tenured) and research scientist at national labs. I realize that not much is discussed on what it means by working at national labs (except a few specific questions such as Are faculty positions more competitive than government research lab positions?), unlike working at universities. I wish to start by asking about job security, salary (US universities usually pay 9-monthly and expect profs to cover the remaining 3 months from the prof's grants. Is there any such thing at national labs), any other things? Working with research students (all the way to completion of their degrees, as opposed to as your interns for a few months) is of course rewarding at universities. But probably too much teaching and administrative work may be negatives at universities too - any comparison with national lab jobs?\n\nI know that this may be slightly broader question, and a bit subjective too, but I believe answers from different perspectives would help researchers like me who are at critical juncture at their career and need to decide one way or another.\n\nEdit-1: I also came to know that some research labs in the US may have different classifications. e.g., is National Renewable Energy Laboratory same as NASA etc.?\n\nEdit-2: How about 'redundancies'? Can these labs use 'lack of budget' or some other (non-disciplinary) excuse to remove the permanent staff?" ]

[ "career-path", "job", "tenure-track", "early-career", "government-institutes" ]

[ "Why is it called an \"abstract\" if it is 10 pages long?", "A conference I have submitted to asks for an \"extended abstract\" of up to 10 pages, which amounts to pretty much a full paper. Why is it then called \"abstract\"?\n\nThe conference is in the crossing between computer science, biology, and mathematics, so it may be following any of their traditions." ]

[ "conference" ]

[ "What makes you keep on reading articles in your non-English native language, while the same information might be published in English?", "As a future French PhD student (in Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning) that legally HAS TO write his thesis in French, I am a bit concerned about the fact that less people would be able to read it and it got me thinking: why do you keep reading articles in your native language, when some ideas you find might also be published in English?\n\n\nTo those who are not English native speakers, do you read articles in your native language?\nIf so, what is it that you find in these articles compared to English-written ones? Are you just looking for useful information for your own research or are you motivated by something else?\nHow would you cite these articles in your own English-written paper?\n\n\nI understand that using one's own native language can be justified for some fields such as social sciences, but here I am asking about \"exact\" and computer sciences." ]

[ "publications", "language", "reading" ]

[ "Helping TA's creativity when writing exercise sheets", "Teaching assistants (TAs) often have the task to compile exercise sheets for the students and need to come up with new problems for such sheets.\n\nLet's assume that in the lecture, two methods for a certain use case were presented, and a TA is supposed to write a problem that should make the students use the second method. The first one should be cumbersome to use, so that the students can figure out themselves that the second method is the one to use in this case. Also, the problem should be somewhat motivated by an arbitrary problem from practice, so that solving the exercise sheet problem also teaches the students that the second method has its use in practice.\n\nNow some TAs will be naturally good at such tasks, and others do not know where to start, despite knowing all of the relevant scientific results. How to teach TAs the creative skills to performing such tasks?\n\n\n\nNote: This is a follow-up question to an earlier question on a related topic, which went without answer ideas. This new question may be of more universal interest, and I suspect that if good answers can be given, they are the same in both cases anyway." ]

[ "teaching-assistant" ]

[ "Authorship dispute after author was removed without their knowledge", "My supervisor, two other students (C and G) and I were invited to write a paper for a journal. The paper was about a project in which we were all involved.\n\n(C) though, never engaged into any writing activity, even after multiple messages from us. When I asked (C) if he still wanted to be an author, clearly expecting either no answer or an honest \"no\", (C) replied saying he knew he didn't do much for the paper, but volunteering to proof read and review the final draft. I sent the document to him but we never heard back. \n\nIt was decided that (C) didn't do enough to be granted authorship and we submitted without him, but due to a misunderstanding no-one notified him that he had been removed.\n\nBecause of this, (C) is now accusing us of having plagiarized his work and of scientific misconduct and fraud, and requests that the article is retracted.\n\n(G) and I still agree that (C) should not have been granted authorship and can produce all the evidence we have to show that (C) didn't contribute to anything substantial in the paper and is not worth authorship (emails, previous publications, etc). (C) continues to threaten to report us to the university for fraud (it is not clear if he plans to report the supervisor as well).\n\nI am confident of my good standing but at the same time I am afraid this dispute could spiral out of control.\n\nWhat could I do to defend myself in case (C) reports us? Should I get in touch with the editors and explain the situation?" ]

[ "ethics", "authorship", "research-misconduct" ]

[ "Applying to work at an acquaintence's school", "Background: I'm a mathematics student in the US who plans to finish my PhD this year, and I'm currently applying for jobs at small liberal arts colleges throughout the country. I already have some acquaintances throughout the math world, either from grad school, REUs, conferences, etc, and some of these people are at schools to which I'm applying. They would definitely remember me, but I would be surprised if they knew/remembered anything about my work.\n\nThere seems to be relative agreement that knowing someone at a school to which one is applying for a job is a good thing, but I have a few questions related to that situation.\n\n\nHow do you go about telling such an acquaintance that I am planning to or have already applied? Is it acceptable for me to simply drop them an email? Is there anything specific I should tell them?\nMost schools list a designated contact person within the department. Would it then be inappropriate for me to ask my acquaintance questions about the school or position?\nOne of these acquaintances works at a school that is far from the region I would like to end up living someday, and I believe that they are aware of this. How will this impact my chances at that school? Would it still be beneficial to make them aware of my application?\n\n\nI am aware that a similar question already exists, but I was hoping to get more general information than what was discussed there. Any advice or insight is most appreciated." ]

[ "etiquette", "application", "job-search", "faculty-application" ]

[ "Can I upload other peoples old tech reports to ResearchGate?", "I have a bunch of old tech reports I copied when a grad student written by other people. I want to throw them out but would rather scan them into ResearchGate first. For example, INRIA tech reports on various unification methods. Is this OK or should only an author of a report scan it in? I'm not claiming it as my own, I would tag it to the authors. I just think they are a shame to throw away completely." ]

[ "computer-science", "backup-archiving" ]

[ "How might a PhD-holding physicist submit independent research after leaving academia, without appearing to be a crackpot?", "There is a no dearth of crackpottery in the world of amateur physics research, nor in the world of independent research done by PhD-holding physicists. If I want to continue physics research in my own time after graduating and moving on to industry, what would be the best way to share my research with the physics community?" ]

[ "physics" ]

[ "Any recourse for testing on material not mentioned in the class syllabus?", "In one particular university class, many people stopped attending after about half the semester was over as the professor was \"confusing\" as many people phrased it and opted to instead study from the textbook. The course syllabus outlines the chapters in the textbook that would be subject to testing.\nThe class does not have an attendance policy. It is not recorded, though powerpoints are posted, and you would not get a rundown of what occurred in class in case of absence since the textbook and powerpoints are available.\n\nNear the end of the course, a new topic not found in the lecture slides or textbook was brought up for approximately 10 minutes(each lecture is 1.5hours). I was not in attendance that day. The topic was not mentioned in the syllabus, no online announcement was made that an extra topic was added.\n\nThis topic was then put on the final exam as a question of its own. Later, on group pages, students who attended class mentioned that the topic was not explained well at the time, but the professor did say \"at least you'll have an advantage on the final over the absent students\". Many people sent e-mails to the prof and none have heard back yet.\n\nIs there any recourse now in terms of marks or having the question removed in your opinion? Furthermore, could you provide on brief response as to whether you think the prof was justified in doing this?" ]

[ "ethics", "university", "exams", "grading", "syllabus" ]

[ "Should I thank thesis committee before defense?", "I want to email a copy of my thesis to the thesis committee, should I thank them that they are serving on my thesis/dissertation committee? and how should I thank them?\n(it is before my defense))" ]

[ "defense", "thesis-committee" ]

[ "Ways to spend gap year/semester before applying to mathematics PhD", "I was just reading in the answers to some other questions (here and here) that it's not necessarily disadvantageous (and it may even be advantageous) to take a year or semester off after finishing my bachelor's degree before applying to math PhD programs, but I'm not really sure what to do during that year. If the below section is too long, the TL;DR version is: What are my options?\n\nI honestly hadn't looked into any other options since I was planning on going straight to math PhD programs after I earn my Bachelor's degree in May of 2016, but this fall while I was dealing with some personal issues I ended up dropping one of the two graduate math classes I was enrolled in and I missed the September GRE math subject test (as well as the deadline for the October subject test).\n\nWhile I'm planning this spring to take the GRE math subject test (for real this time) and enroll in another one or two graduate math classes, it's looking like I might have a better chance at PhD program admissions if I wait to apply for admission in the Spring or Fall of 2017, rather than the Fall of 2016. I might apply to a couple of PhD programs for Fall 2016 admission, but I don't want to spend a lot of money on application fees when my application isn't as strong as it could be.\n\nIf I do end up taking a semester or a full year off, I want to figure out something productive to do so that the time won't be wasted. I came up with a few options: applying to PhD programs abroad that don't require the GRE (I speak English and Russian, so Canada, England, and Russia), applying to less competitive US PhD programs, or working a full- or part-time job (teaching? computer science?) and using that money to pay for simultaneously taking one or two graduate math classes.\n\nHowever, I'm not sure if it's kosher to apply for a PhD program if I only plan on staying for a semester or a year. On the other hand, I don't know how feasible it is to both work and take graduate math classes, so I'm pretty uncertain about what to do. Does anyone have advice about the options I have?" ]

[ "phd", "graduate-admissions", "mathematics", "time-off" ]

[ "What are the differences between these kinds of articles: original, review, letter, and short communication?", "I am interested in knowing, what are the differences between Original Paper, Review Paper, Letter and Short/ Rapid/ Brief Communication paper?\n\nThanks to everyone for reading and taking the time for the great responses." ]

[ "publications", "terminology", "review-articles" ]

[ "A long gap between BSc and MSc when applying for PhD", "My BSc was in physics and graduated with GPA 2.46/4.00 about 12 years ago. I am 33 years old now and I have got an admission to a master program in mathematics in Armenia (as an international student). The department didn't care about that my BSc that was in another field, that my GPA is very low and there is a 12-year gap between my BSc and MSc. [my low GPA is mainly due to not being present in the classes and also missing some midterm exams and quizzes; my grades are normally either near 4.0 (when attending was not mandatory with one exam assessment) or between 1.0-2.0 (for otherwise) and rarely between 2.1-3.7.] \n\nMy story is that I loved physics since childhood and even used to study university books when I was in highschool. However suddenly everything changed when I 16 when my father died so I had to take the responsibility to support my family. Nonetheless at the same time tried and tried to keep my dream of becoming a great physicist alongside of spending lots of time working to support my family (we don't get any money from the government in my country); and that extreme desire for becoming a ('the') great physicist when the circumstances were the worst caused me a severe mental break down and being hospitalized too (it was about 5 years ago)..\n\nAfterwards I couldn't think about physics anymore because it was making me sick. It took me a few years my mind to be repaired (=being recovered) and I started studying mathematics instead but this time I had a much better financial circumstances and I could finished by self-learning all BSc and MSc books that I would need to know them in my studies in MSc. \n\nAfter finishing my MSc I want to continue my studies in top universities esp. in Canada. I have a strong belief that I will have a high GPA and good research results in my MSc; however my low GPA in BSc and a huge gap between BSc and MSc and also being my BSc in physics irrelevant to mathematics that I want to study in PhD makes things less hopeful when I want to apply for PhD especially if I desire to get an admission with scholarship. \n\nIf I write about my strong enthusiasm for science then I have to say my period of mental breakdown too and if I don't say about my enthusiasm they should probably consider someone who has started and finished young with better and relevant BSc.. I am sure that some universities in Canada ask for BSc transcripts as well as MSc when applying for PhD. \n\nPlease help me what should I do when there is much less hope even if I can show a dramatic results in MSc. Thanks!" ]

[ "phd", "mathematics" ]

[ "What tools do you use to manage writing co-authored papers?", "What tools do you use to manage co-authored papers? This is similar to questions active 4 years ago and 5 years ago. I assume tech has changed since then.\n\nCo-authored projects I have been on have used Dropbox to share files or shared files through many emails. This does not seem particularly efficient.\n\nUpdate: In my field, almost everyone uses MS Word.\n\nI use Trello for solo-authored work. It has the option of inviting collaborators but I have not tried it. I am also interested in reproducible workflow and have some of my code on Github. I am exploring the Open Science framework, too, but have not used it to manage an entire co-authored project." ]

[ "publications", "writing", "collaboration", "tools", "workflow" ]

[ "Reference letter from third world country", "I hold a 5 years \"specialist degree\" from a university in Belarus and I'm going to apply to a Ph. D. program in engineering in US. I have several problems regarding my reference letters.\n\nThe professor who was my Engineering Project adviser and who taught several important courses in my group for two years can give me strong a reference because my project was the best in the department. However: \n\n\nHe doesn't know English. \nHe is currently retired.\nProfessors in Belarus seldom have personal e-mail addressed and neither does he.\nHe doesn't have publications in English. \n\n\nAny ideas how to solve these problems? Translate the reference, put it into an envelope and then ask the professor to sign envelope as required? Will the reference be even opened and taken into account?" ]

[ "recommendation-letter" ]

[ "Citation Style (CSL) with angular quotation marks?", "I'm writing a chapter to go in a book produced in South America, and they want us to use angular quotation marks. Two example formats I have look like:\n\nKlaveren, Alberto van. «Doscientos años de la política exterior de Chile: de Hobbes a Grocio». Artaza, Mario y César Ross (eds.), La política exterior de Chile, 1990-2009. Del aislamiento a la integración global, USACH-RIL editores, 2012, pp. 51-69.\n\nWitker, Iván. «La anarquía latinoamericana desde una perspectiva neorrealista», en Estudios Avanzados 12, diciembre 2009, pp. 23-41.\n\n\nI tried using the CSL Search By Example page, but nothing with angle-quotes appeared in the search results. Furthermore all the examples found put the year in the wrong place (they put it near the beginning and I need it near the end).\nCan anyone suggest an appropriate CSL format and where to find it, or else how can I modify a "similar" CSL file to meet my requirements? (I still find the Visual Editor super-confusing.) Thanks.\n(Writing in Google Docs, with citations managed by Zotero and its Google Docs connector.)" ]

[ "citation-style", "reference-managers" ]

[ "What percentage of PhD theses are rejected nowadays?", "What percentage of PhD theses (e.g., physics ones) are rejected nowadays? And why?" ]

[ "phd", "thesis", "science" ]

[ "Decision time on a postdoc offer while applying for other positions", "I have recently applied for several postdoctoral positions as well as a lecturing position. A week ago I had an interview for one of the postdoctoral positions and I should know the outcome of this interview by the end of next week. During the interview I was asked if I was applying for other positions, to which I said yes and briefly described what these were.\n\nThe project is a very interesting one but I also want to consider the other positions I applied for (especially the lecturing one) if I were to be the preferred candidate. However, I will have to wait until the end of February or so to hear about these other positions. \n\nSo, if I was chosen for this postdoc I was interviewed for, I was wondering how long it is acceptable/customary to make them wait until I give them a final response. \n\nI'm sure they would be ok with a couple of weeks, 1. because moving overseas can be a bit of a change from a personal perspective and 2. because considering other potentially interesting opportunities makes sense at this stage in my career, but I was wondering if making them wait for a month or so was too long.That being said, I heard about people making an employer wait four months or so but I would find it rather impolite. \n\nThanks for your input!" ]

[ "application", "postdocs" ]

[ "Access to Community Colleges in US", "I'm a teacher in a Vocational Education school in Spain. In our Vocational Education system, we have two different levels:\n\n\nVocational High School (post compulsory secondary school)\nCommunity College (this is considered Higher Education)\n\n\nIt's hard for me to establish equivalence with the US System, but I guess you might have similar levels.\n\nIn Spain, students with a Vocational High School diploma can't enroll directly in Community College, they need to sit a test first (a sort of SAT test, but not so hard as SAT).\n\nI would like to know how it goes in the US. Is there also some kind of test for entering a Community College if you come from Vocational High School? In that case, could you tell me how this test is called, please?" ]

[ "teaching", "united-states", "exams" ]

[ "Costs for colored figures in Chemistry - A European Journal", "I am planning to submit a Chemistry - A European Journal \"full paper\" article. However, it contains many colored figures. The FAQ does not really answer the question if colored figures will lead to additional costs. Also, I have no idea of what costs to expect, i.e. 20 Euro, 1500 Euro? How is the situation in other journals?" ]

[ "publications", "chemistry" ]

[ "Years ago, a professor agreed to write a LOR, but never sent it. Therefore, I'm not accepted in any school. What can I do?", "Years ago, a professor agreed to write me a recommendation letter. So I applied to many grad schools indicating him as one of my referees. However, I didn't find out until later that he didn't write the letter. Thus, none of my applications were completed, and there were also substantial financial losses due to application fees. I was poor, so it was a big loss for me. \n\nWhat can I do in this case? Could I find any justice anywhere? I just felt hopeless when a tenured professor does something unethical (not criminal conduct); there is nothing a student can do. \n\n[added the following on June 24, 2014]\n\nHe recently became a faculty at the university where I am a student (He was at a different university before). I want to forget about what happened, but the damage was too much for me to ignore. And I feel anger whenever I think about what happened.\n\nOne remedy would be he takes me on as a PhD student, or provides funding so another professor can supervise me. However, my application was rejected.\n\nI raised my concerns with the dean of faculty of graduate studies, and will meet one of the assistant deans soon. How should I approach this with him/her?" ]

[ "professors", "recommendation-letter", "students" ]

[ "NSF Guidelines on Postdoc Salary for Grants Hosted by an Institution/PI", "I'm looking for guidelines the NSF may have on minimum salary paid to a postdoc under grants to an institution/PI. These are grants that, for example, I would write which then get awarded to me/my host institution, not the family of NSF-funded postdoc grants. I have not been successful in finding these guidelines, if they exist, but lack of evidence is not evidence of lacking.\n\nWhat I did find is that NIH and NSF issued a joint statement to comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act of 2016. NIH says that PDs should be paid a minimum of $50,004 in 2019 (https://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-19-036.html). But this is not the same as NSF saying the same.\n\nIn case you're wondering, no, I'm not trying to see how little I can pay my postdocs. Rather, I want to use NSF as a benchmark so I can march to my HR department and get my postdocs paid what they're worth. (As an institution grants we get are from NSF or similar sources, much less so than NIH, which they could more easily dismiss as \"Oh, of course it's high. That's for biomed\".)" ]

[ "postdocs", "salary", "nsf" ]

[ "Is it more difficult to publish a paper that demands reviewers with knowledge from many different areas of mathematics?", "I have got an article the making, and presented it to my PhD advisor one month ago. The article emerged from my master thesis at a different university.\n\nA week ago, he told me the draft is good, albeit difficult to understand, but he remarked that it contained too many new ideas to be published at once. The problem is that no journal will be able to find a reviewer. Furthermore, I am just some unknown PhD student to them, so there won't be a \"rubber-stamp\" for me.\n\nThe draft contributes to an active mathematical research area which leads previously unrelated topics together - in particular, very different mathematical communities. My draft contributes by another bridge between communities. I am convinced that people will find the result noteworthy and interesting, but I also agree that the combination demands (basic) knowledge from many different mathematical areas.\n\nIt is a disturbing but possibly realistic perspective that researchers keep the same old soup at low temperature on the cooker. But isn't that too pessimistic? There are so many mini results published, why should I cut down on at least trying?\n\nAre the concerns of my advisor well-founded in practices of the mathematical community?" ]

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

[ "Should a letter of recommendation be customised for each university when applying for a masters program?", "I've just graduated in Brazil and I plan to apply in some different Master courses in US. I plan to apply to different universities and I did not want to ask my professors to write many different letters. \n\nShould the letter of recommendation be specific to the university I am applying to or can I use a generic letter for all applications?" ]

[ "recommendation-letter" ]

[ "In what ways can a PHD student who asks me to do some of her work give me due credit for my work?", "A PHD (in Computational Biology) student asked me to do some programming for a software application she is developing as a part of her work for her PHD. To be more clear, she is not asking for any help in the design part, but rather in the implementation.\n\nThe PHD student I am talking about was my teacher in my undergrad. She taught me a software related course in my undergrad, and was generally a very nice teacher. She taught well, and she was polite, cooperative and kind. \n\nShe called me yesterday and told me that she is doing her PHD. The mobile application she wants to develop is only a small part of her work. She asked me to help her with it. There are two kinds of help that she mentioned:\n\n\nShe wants me to guide her on how to go about learning mobile application development. I am fine with that. \nShe said that she is very busy and if her schedule gets tighter, she will like me to complete the application. The application has not been started yet, and she told me about already being very busy, which tells me that she wants me to write a considerable amount of code for the application. \n\n\nFrom my web search, I found out that doing this is permissible, if the work of the external person is acknowledged. \n\nSo, if she does want to acknowledge and give me due credit if I do some work (that is if I actually write some code for her application), in what ways can she do that?" ]

[ "phd", "acknowledgement" ]

[ "How long decision in process normally takes?", "I have submitted a manuscript to a journal on September after few days the status changed to under review and after 5 months the it changed to all required reviews are completed and immediately to decision in process. It has been 3 weeks that the paper status stuck at decision in process. How long this stage normally takes ? is it too early to ask the editor (?) about the status of my paper?" ]

[ "publications" ]

[ "What happens to surplus referee reports?", "As far as I understand, it is commonplace for editors to invite M reviewers when N < M would suffice. After N reports arrive, they take a decision and inform the authors. What happens to the N+1st, N+2nd, ... referee reports that arrive after the decision has been taken?\n\nAs a referee, I have only been told “thanks, we won’t need your report anymore” a very small number of times, and as an author I’ve never been told “look, there’s one more report for you”. So I wonder what happens in practice.\n\nEDIT: I have in mind journals, not conferences. A conference is more driven by deadlines, probably." ]

[ "peer-review", "editors", "journal-workflow" ]

[ "Is it okay to publish my thesis when it was done 2 yrs ago?", "Is it okay to publish my thesis when it was done 2 yrs ago?\n\nI defended my master's thesis in February 2016 but the data gathering was done in October 2015 and the final revision was submitted to my university in March 2016. \n\nI thought of submitting my thesis for journal publication. Do you think they would still accept it when it's been done 2 yrs ago? I had been very busy after graduation and I never had the chance to submit my research paper for publication. \n\nHope for your enlightenment\n\nFollow-up:\n\nThank you for taking time in answering my query. My field of study is in Psychology. It's a causal, experimental research. After I defended my thesis, I got the highest grade in my final defense. I was told by my adviser to submit my paper for journal publication and present it on the upcoming convention (that year) but I had been extremely busy because I focused on the licensure exam that time. It's not totally an original study because I adopted the intervention from the US. My study was to try it in the Philippine setting but there were some modification on the approach to suit with the respondents. I'm concerned about the originality, if you send your paper for publication, does it really have to be fully original especially the intervention? I really want to have it published so I can teach this intervention to others (to my community) especially to financially incapable families who can't afford to pay for a behavioral therapist or psychologist. Since the intervention is a cost-effective approach." ]

[ "publications", "thesis" ]

[ "Applying for both assistant and associate professor position at the same university", "I'm an established, normal, non-stellar postdoc in computer science, several years after my PhD defense, and am going now for higher-rank academic positions. A particular university in the US offers both assistant and associate professor positions in my subfield. These are two different positions, but the announcements are copy-and-pasted with small adaptations. I would like to apply for both, since I wish to maximize my chances at a small additional cost (about an hour of adapting the cover letter and submitting).\n\n\nIs it normal to apply for two positions simultaneously? \nIs there anything particular to be paid attention to in the application documents (cover letter, research statement, teaching statement, reference list, publication list)?\nWhat are the typical pitfalls of job seekers in such a case?" ]

[ "job-search", "tenure-track", "assistant-professor", "associate-professor" ]

[ "Biosketch for New Researchers", "How do you describe your Research Support (part D of NIH's biosketch) if you've never been a named member of a grant? For junior researchers, NIH provides helpful guidance here on parts A (personal statement) and C (contribution to science). Certain applicants can skip the Research Support section (high school students, applicants for predoctoral or postdoctoral fellowships, applicants for dissertation grants), but what if you're none of those? I don't want to leave it entirely blank, but I don't want to mislead reviewers." ]

[ "funding", "nih" ]

[ "A problem with reference letters for faculty position", "I have applied for a faculty position through mathjobs.org. I talked with my references and informed them about my application one month ago, then by using mathjobs I sent them request emails for uploading their letters. One of letters has not been uploaded yet and a few days remain to the deadline of uploading letter. What can I do in this point? Can I send an email to professor and ask him again? Is it possible emails from mathjobs.org go to spam folder? Need to say, the website of mathjob.org has an option which shows the delivery status of request emails, and it shows that the request email from Mathjob to my reference has been delivered." ]

[ "mathematics", "recommendation-letter", "faculty-application" ]

[ "Why might professors in an online masters program give fewer assignments and less feedback than those in an in-person program?", "When I was a graduate business student some 20 years ago in a major state university in south central US, my general impression was that almost all professors, with very few exception, were spending lots of time with the students' learning, in that they were behaving the same way as if they were teaching undergraduate students.\n\nNow I am taking a second master degree in math with another state university, but this time around I am taking it online. My general impression here is the exact opposite of my past experience. Almost all teachers are spending less time with teaching, meaning that they passed out only class notes, rarely (if at all) gave assignments, and much less returned them with feedback.\n\nFor your info, my school is a non flag-ship school in the state university system, almost all students are HS math teachers whose only goal is getting master degree in math for job purpose, and I suspect lots of them do not even have enough math prerequisite. I am also a HS teacher but I think I am the only one who have middle name in math. I am not venting here but here is my question:\n\n\n Is there any hardship or predicament on the professors' side that the public are not aware of, that cause them to behave the way they did?\n\n\nThank you for your time and effort." ]

[ "teaching", "online-learning", "online-degree" ]

[ "How has academic research on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) improved MOOCs?", "It seems that the number of more academic papers on Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) surpasses the number of MOOCs. Is there any indication that academic research on MOOCs has actually improved MOOCs? And if so, in what way?" ]

[ "teaching", "mooc" ]

[ "PhD with Master's but without Bachelors", "I left University early (during the final year) and was only awarded an associates degree (one level below a full bachelors) in Computer Science.\n\nI've been an IT professional for a few years now (development and consulting) and I'm looking to fix my broken educational record.\n\nAt this point, I could enter a bachelors programme in the final year and upgrade my associates degree to a full bachelors OR I can go straight into a Master's degree. Several Universities have offered me entry to their part time Master's degree in computing off the back of my associates degree and work experience.\n\nI'm at a loss as to what I should do?\n\nI've always wanted to do a PhD in software engineering project methods or maybe something more comp sci based but I fear that a masters without a bachelors won't be good enough to be accepted anywhere.\n\nWhat do you think?\n\nThanks" ]

[ "phd", "masters" ]