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<issue_start>username_0: I am an American teaching in a US university, and I've noticed that many foreign students come with their own handwriting customs for writing English. In particular I've noticed that Indian students often write the letter 'x' so that it (to me, anyway, and probably to many Americans) resembles an 'n', and makes their work (very slightly) harder to read. (Another example: a Croatian friend of mine wrote his 'q' so that it looked like 'g' to me.)
Should I encourage them to write in an American way? I am especially interested in hearing from foreigners and whether they would have appreciated this. On the one hand I don't want to presume that my culture is superior to others; on the other, they have chosen to study in the US and I would like to help them communicate their ideas with as few obstacles as possible.
Does the answer depend on circumstances (e.g. whether the student is an undergraduate or graduate, whether the student has teaching responsibilities, and where the student aims to work after graduation)?<issue_comment>username_1: It is very hard for someone to change its handwriting. If a student is forced to write in an uncommon way he need to use a lot of cognitive energy to it and he will be much slower. In general there is no correct way of handwriting and different styles, e.g., cursive, sütterlin, kurrent.
I would talk to the class and declare that I can only grade answers readable to me. So every student should try to write as clear and unambiguously as possible.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In ordinary text, this might help a little but probably doesn't matter much, since there's plenty of redundancy to aid in understanding. However, it can make a big difference for equations.
If the students are in a math-intensive field, I would definitely point this out, but in a broader context. When I teach beginning American undergraduates in mathematics, I offer them handwriting advice for equations: make sure t doesn't look like +, z doesn't look like 2, the letter l doesn't look like the number 1, etc. Furthermore, mathematics students have to learn how to write all sorts of potentially unfamiliar symbols as they progress in their studies (aleph, Weierstrass P, fraktur letters for Lie theory, etc.). If you are working on a calculation on a whiteboard with someone, it's a real issue if they can't easily and reliably parse your equations, so just about every mathematician has put at least a little thought into this.
From this perspective, I wouldn't tell people "You're in America now and have to write like the Americans", but rather "Writing equations clearly is something everyone has to deal with. Here are some issues you may need to adapt to, some of which are generic and others of which are specific to your background."
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: As a freshman in college I was told to use period as a decimal separator instead of coma.
I can understand how that can be confusing - the professor teaching the class wrote 7s that looked like 1s, and .123 instead of 0.123. (This was another complaint of his - he said my 1s look like 7s).
Unless it's a trivial problem (some people simply have terrible handwriting) I would bring it up, chances are your students are confused too, especially if they are new to the US.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: As a TA, I should review undergraduate students’ works, containing reports and computer codes in order to find out whether plagiarism or cheating occurred or not. I tried to use online and offline plagiarism tools without success. Finally, I decided to ask them a couple of questions about their works.
I was wondering if anyone suggests a couple of questions which can help me to find out whether they did their project by themselves or borrowed from a “friend”. In addition, I would like to weight their knowledge. How can I do that?
UPDATE: The course is "computer programming".<issue_comment>username_1: Asking alot of questions can generally rack out the ones who did the projects themselves and ones who didn’t.
Questions can be just simple ones like “how did you this?” or you can ask further questions based on their replies, e.g., if they answer with “Using technique A”, you reply with, "Oh I see, how do you use technique A?” or “How does it work?”
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I don't know if you also give them quizzes, but if so, here is my way of handling this situation:
Suppose that I have asked students to take the derivative of a function f(x) = 5x^2+3x+4.
In quiz, I either ask the very same question or I slightly change the question such as
>
> Take the derivative of f(x) = 3x^2+4x+5.
>
>
>
If the student did his homework on his own, then he will surely solve the question with ease. If not, then he will either give the exact same answer or write an answer carelessly that will make cheating obvious.
The third option, if he both took the homework and answered the question correctly, then the homework has reached its course and taught something to the student. Since the student actually knows something, he deserves the credit.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: As the class you TA is a programming class, I'll suggest two options I've used - that have worked well for me (after Googling Stack Overflow and Github of course). Both these options start by asking conversational questions ("How are you doing? Are you enjoying class?") to help relax the student - when talking about the code in the next part hesitations and mistakes can be used as an indicator for a lack of knowledge but not if it is just nerves.
---
**Option 1**: *better for mid-level to advance classes*: Look at their coding before hand, make sure you have some notes on their coding style, preferred methods, and level of knowledge. Then select one of their programs and ask them to write out on paper/chalkboard/whiteboard some code that solves a similar problem. Let them know that you don't expect error-free code and that if they can't remember an exact method to just use something close (depending on the class pseudo-code may be acceptable). The point is that a person who has done the assignment should come up with something that follows the basic logic and coding style that was seen in their assignments - if it is way off you know they likely did not write it themselves - many times leading me to start option 2 with them.
**Option 2**: I would honestly use 2 or 3 assignments for this method. As it is easier to see if the progression makes sense this way (a person does not typically go from if/else to building generators and decision trees in the span of a class or two\*) and it gives more material to discuss.
Starting with one of the programs, I would then ask very open-ended questions about how the student came up with their solution. You want to avoid fact questions as your trying to see the knowledge and thought process not just a memorization of quiz answers. You can ask follow-up questions here but keep them limited and still open ("can you explain that more", "why did you use that particular method", "did you try anything else"). Your looking for a few things here:
* Someone who wrote the code for themselves should flow through the conversation naturally - without having to pause and think about their answers as often.
* The student should be able to explain each method. If it is a complex method they may get lost or make a few minor mistakes - but they should be able to explain all the concepts.
* The thought process they describe should make sense. This should include both the method used and the reasoning for using that method: "I decided on a for loop over the dictionary keys as that just seemed more elegant and easier to maintain then the massive if/elif/else statements".
I'm probably missing a few here, but the point is that your experience and knowledge will usually make it pretty obvious if someone actually wrote the code or not based on just how they explain it.
\* I had one student who did just this. Turns out he had been programming for a few years and was picking up the language at a much faster pace.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: On my 'quest' to understand how universities have changed over the past decade(s), I'm curious as to how teaching in lectures was done before the days of PowerPoint (which as an undergraduate is seemingly the only thing I see all day, but I am sure it was not used anywhere near as extensively a decade or two ago).
Needless to say I've still seen plenty of chalk use when calculations need to be done, but there is still not a lecture without PowerPoint.
Thoughts:
* Did they flip through the slides with a bit of narrative like they do today?
* The 'you don't need to take notes, slides are on online' mentality of today must have been different.
* I've gathered overhead projectors were the tool of the trade and handouts where more common.
* Most old lectures on YouTube (being taught by well known professors) never seem to use any PowerPoint. However, they seem to in general cover topics that deal more with theory and calculation than real examples and practical uses.
* Would the professor during a e.g. an engineering materials course (i.e. mostly content stuff) just go through slides on the overhead? The quality of what you can share seems pretty limited as opposed to full color images, or would they actually have more tools at their disposal?<issue_comment>username_1: We used the blackboard and paper hand-outs, as well as overhead slides and photo-type slides. I only started to use overhead slides around 1999 when there was a budget crunch and we had to reduce the number of handouts. But I don't need to point to color photos or things of that nature in my field, so the motivation for PPT is quite field-dependent.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I can go back to 1989, when I enrolled at the university (engineering). The first two years were mostly devoted to mathematics, physics, chemistry and circuit theory. No overheads were employed in those courses, just plain old blackboard. There was just a course on Fortran and Pascal where the professor probably employed overheads, but I skipped all the lectures so, well, I'm not sure about that.
Overheads really started to appear from the third year on, mainly for engineering courses about algorithms, digital circuits or solid state physics (alas, these were abysmal). Lecturers would deposit a printed copy of the handouts at a local photocopy shop, so that everyone could buy a copy. Certain courses had packs of around 1000 handouts, and frequently the handouts were not available till the end of the course. Luckily, most of the courses about analogue circuits, advanced electromagnetics and quantum physics were still delivered through the blackboard.
It is worth recalling that at the time "overhead transitions" were implemented by means of patches and adhesive tapes. When printed, these "effects" would leave black marks of various shapes on the handouts.
Overheads were typically in full colours when handwritten, but the handouts were of course black and white, and writings in lighter colours were barely readable. Program listings were instead printed with black and white printers: no syntax colouring at the time.
**Edit:** I've just found under a pile of papers one of those packs of handouts. Here is how one of the pages looked like (two overheads per page; the pack is dated 1987):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/7ZLfs.jpg)
The first overhead, on the left, is the text of an exercise ("Design a circuit with three inputs x,y,z [...]"), the overhead on the right is part of the solution. You might notice that on the upper right corner of the left overhead there are two page numbers: probably the overheads had been renumbered along the years.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I studied for my bachelor's degree in mathematics from 1967 to 1970. The main form of instruction was the lecturer writing on blackboards and the students desperately trying to take the proofs down in our notebooks.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: I remember some professors used transparency with an overhead projector. Sometimes the professor had enough transparencies photocopies for each student for free, sometimes we had to buy them.
An advice: you should always pay attention and take some notes, it's more important what have been discussed on class and not just what a ppt have
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Studying Engineering in late 70s early 80s.
All material or information you needed to understand concepts or methods were presented at the lectures on a blackboard. The Prof / lecturer would write it up on the board while explaining.
As students you were expected to take notes and decide for yourself what was important enough to record. On the very odd occasion there would be printed handouts with information in support of the lecture.
There were also tutorial sessions where students were given a series of problems to solve and older students were present as tutors to assist.
Only ever saw or used an overhead during the presentation of my thesis in final year.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: When I was an undergraduate between 1982 and 1985, there were two principal ways to show stuff during a lecture - blackboard and chalk, or acetate and marker pens on an overhead projector. The acetate could be individual sheets or on a roll.
Anything prepared in advance would be acetates, but the lecturer could doodle on them during the class.
Lecturers might hand out photocopied notes, but you were also expected to take notes yourself during the class.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: I studied Biology between 1979 and 1982. Therefore, by definition, no personal computers, no Microsoft Windows, no powerpoint,
The lecturers just wrote everything out longhand on blackboards or whiteboards depending on the size of group and would often back this up with slides on an overhead projector and sometimes with handouts.
We students then took notes, written longhand on paper because no personal computers, no Windows, no laptops....
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: <NAME> the professor of organic chemistry projected b/w slides in 1972-1973. I do not know how he made them but his slides were not crowded. The contained simple formulas of reagents, product and intermediate complexes.
He handed out the copies of hi slided after each lecture but I could buy a five volume book made of the only two weeks before the final exam on organic chemistry, in 1974.
<NAME>, former chemistry student of Eötvös University, Budapest, Hungary.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: The things I've seen in use:
* Blackboard
* Whiteboard
* Overhead projector (writing in real time)
* Overhead projector (prepared slides)
* Slide projector
* Paper board
* Professor just talking
* Talking and using objects (e.g. tennis balls) to demonstrate something
Course notes were sometimes available for purchase. Sometimes the course notes were similar to slides, sometimes they were like a book (except cheaper), sometimes like a book with exercises, sometimes the course used an actual book.
Blackboard was the most common in my personal experience. Quite a few professors never touched a projector even when it was available.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_10: Starting uni in the late 90s I saw the first data projectors appear in the big lecture theatres and they were rubbish. You couldn't have copied down an equation much more complex than E=mc² without sitting in the front row.
Almost all my lecturers used OHPs\*. The majority used pre-prepared handwritten slides and clearly reused them. Some wroe on the fly (OHP film on a roll attached to the projector) which I saw quite a bit of in school as well. A few used inkjet-printed, laser-printed or photocopied OHPs.
With the handwritten ones it was possible to edit them and to use them in a fill-in-the-blanks style as pens are avilable in both water-soluble and "permanent" alcohol-soluble versions. I took advantage of something similar by mirror-image printing my inkjet OHPs for presentations, then putting them on the OHP face down so I could mark up on the back and remove the markup -- something that's still hard to do with powerpoint unless you project onto a whiteboard.
Of course black/white boards were commonly used as well, but handwriting OHPs in the lecture can be clearer (it's easier to write nicely normal size).
Handouts were uncommon, and when they did appear, tended to appear *after* the material was shown -- sometimes photocopies of the slides on request, but you might need a reason. I still actually prefer not to have the slides printed in front of me in a lecture if I want to understand the material, I'd rather take notes of the important stuff.
\*Overhead projectors
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_11: >
> What did Universities use in lectures before they starting using PowerPoint?
>
>
>
* human voices
* real examples
* chalkboards
* dry erase boards
* overhead projectors
* paper/markers
* handouts
* etc.
>
> Did they flip through the slides with a bit of narrative like they do today?
>
>
>
I'm sure some did but Powerpoint has obviously made that a habit.
>
> The 'you don't need to take notes, slides are on online' mentality of today must have been different.
>
>
>
Yes, there was a time when we took notes. :)
Remember, PPT is more of a crutch than a useful way to make a presentation. People that use PPT to *enhance* their lecture can do good things. But most people just use PPT as a teleprompter. Which is just pointless. Just email it to everyone and save everyone the hassle of sitting through a boring hour of someone reading a PPT deck out loud.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_12: One thing I believe the other answers are missing is that we relied a lot more on the book. I studied Chemical Engineering from 2000-2007 (B.S. and Ph.D.) and only had two courses that used powerpoint slides (a seminar course and a biochem course). The rest used the blackboard/whiteboard, lectures, or overhead projectors with the occasional slide, usually for diagrams or pictures, but every once in a while, for text.
We had to write notes down based on what we would guess were the most important things, and/or what we thought we would have trouble remembering. Usually though, the result was that everyone would just try to copy down everything that went on the board, whether it ended up being important or not, and not much else. As you can imagine, that method didn't work out very well for people who were not skilled note-takers in classes where the instructor was not a skilled note-giver. So, we relied on the book. The book contained all the information we needed, for the most part, and the lecturer's role became to explain the more difficult concepts, or elaborate where the book was lacking. This also left less time for working through example problems in class, which meant sample problems in the book were even more important.
After graduation, I taught for a couple of years. I used power point slides in my classes (Chemistry) for two reasons - it let me focus on explaining things and solving problems on the blackboard rather than trying to sketch all the pictures myself, and it gave me a way to summarize the important points in a reusable format that the students could just download, which usually meant they didn't have to try to copy everything down, and could instead listen to what I was saying. I think it was effective, and my students seemed to agree - but the key was to make the slides mostly pictures, with key points to move the "story" along. Otherwise, students would "zone out" and think they didn't have to pay attention in class.
Powerpoint (or really any type of slides) have made it possible to teach more effectively, if they are used appropriately. This is mainly because you can use more effective graphics, and it reduces the amount of time you need to spend writing notes, which gives more time for example problems and in-class exercises. On the other hand, a bad lecturer with slides is still going to be less effective than a good lecturer without them. For example, I had one course where the instructor literally hand-copied text from the book onto overhead projector slides, and would just read it. Lectures were an almost complete waste of time. Doing that with powerpoint instead would be just as ineffective.
A side effect of this is that students are seeing less and less of a need to use the books for courses. When they believe that all the necessary material is available in slides online, they naturally want to take the easier route and skip reading the book. I had to work pretty hard in the classes I taught to get my students to think of the book as a primary resource.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_13: In the university I attended in the early 80's (before PowerPoint), professors also used 3 things in lecture I haven't seen mentioned already:
1. There was a department that produced (beautiful, color) slides to be shown with overhead projectors. Few professors used them, mostly for sciences, especially Biology. I forget the name of this department.
2. There was another department (Engineering Shop?) that made, among other things, equipment used to demonstrate the principles being discussed. Especially in Engineering and Physics, this was very helpful.
3. Larger auditoriums with high ceilings had a motorized system with 3 blackboards: when the professor filled one up, it was raised (out of reach) and a clean one brought in its place. That way, he could fill 3 blackboards, and we could still see them all.
Even in the early 80's, many classrooms had whiteboards.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_14: My experience from mathematics and philosophy programs in the early 1990's:
* Textbook
* Chalkboard
* Some paper handouts
* Some bound copies of papers
One math professor had an overhead projector with transparent material on rollers. He would write with wet-erase markers and then scroll the material once he had filled up the visible area.
No one ever used film slides or the like.
(P.S.: I currently teach at a large urban community college where the math department has actually blocked installation of whiteboard/overhead projectors in the classrooms we control, still holding onto chalkboards in those rooms. Personally I'm unique in switching over to digital overhead usage, and have a standing request to put my classes in rooms outside the usual math wing.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_15: I hadn't realized that Powerpoint was that prevalent, but I guess it might depend on where you are. Perhaps I am unusual, but as far as I can remember I have *never* used Powerpoint in a lecture. Sometimes it is useful to demo things on the computer, sometimes I use the old slide projector for pictures that would be difficult to draw, but usually I just write on the board.
So maybe I am a living fossil, useful for teaching today's kids how things were back then when we all lived in a shoebox on the motorway. Example video: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtXVe0pDILM>
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/8E4TA.gif)
And one from a bigger lecture hall, with multiple boards:
<https://youtu.be/i7Q3QhBVEpo?t=24m21s>
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: At ETH Zurich only undergraduate courses are held in German (graduate courses are in English). There both postdoctoral positions and assistant professorships require a certain teaching load. The job descriptions are fairly detailed, but the following point doesn't seem to be addressed:
>
> Does the postdoctoral positions (or assistant professorship positions)
> at ETH require knowledge of German to teach classes or carry out any other duty? Does English suffice?
>
>
>
---
The question can be generalized in the following way:
>
> Do European universities with English courses normally require professors to
> know the native language of the country?
>
>
>
---
(Clearly, I realize that a basic knowledge of the local language may be useful for daily life.)<issue_comment>username_1: The general rule is that you need to be willing to learn the language within a certain period of time, such as 2 years. (Short-term) postdoctoral positions with teaching responsibilities may be exceptions, depending on local custom (e.g. if undergraduates can be assumed to understand English).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: **For postdocs @ ETH:**
If this is not said specifically in the job text, you can safely assume that *no* knowledge of German will be required, although it may or may not count as a plus depending on the PI. There will almost certainly be no statement in your contract that you will need to learn German within a time frame, as postdocs are not "career" positions in the first place (and neither are they particularly teaching oriented, which is the only place where ETH potentially cares about you speaking German).
**For professors @ ETH:**
Unlike most other European universities, ETH is actually fairly international. I would be surprised if all of the faculty from around the world teaching there speaks German, although many that I know do (as you say, learning the local language is generally helpful if you stay in a foreign country for a longer period of time). German language skills will almost certainly not be required at time of appointment, but it *may* become part of your contract that you are obliged to be able to teach in German within a given number of years. This requirement may be negotiable, with the main concern from ETH's side being that this would limit what courses you will be able to teach. However, honestly, I would not worry about this too much at this stage.
**For other European universities:**
As usual, customs vary a lot across other European universities. For instance, I have seen announcements for German universities where *PhD students* were required to be able to speak German. That being said, the rules from above are good guesses in the absence of contradicting further information - don't worry about it for postdocs (unless the announcement specifically says that you need to speak the local language), and don't worry too much for faculty positions, but be prepared that you *may* be obliged to learn the local language.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm writing an article for a conference that has very strict style guidelines and I'm therefore very careful not to mess with the style. However, when using the style for the placement of author names, the 4 names (arranged in a 2x2 matrix) end up unaligned. It is not completely clear to me why - all of the names are of reasonable length. Should I try to edit the LaTeX style or how should I proceed?<issue_comment>username_1: I'd leave it alone unless the program committee complains.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: These kinds of issues are normally fixed later in the publishing process. If your paper is accepted you'll be asked to submit a final version of your paper in LaTeX. A professional type setter will process the paper through LaTeX and should fix it up minor issues like these. You should then be given a chance to review page proofs before final publication. If the problem is still present in the page proof then you should mark up the page proof to request that this be fixed.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm looking to do an extensive literature search.
I would like to start with about half a dozen or so survey papers in the field, and look at their bibliography. Then, I would like to go through each of *those* papers and look at *their* bibliography.
This can continue until I have, say, 500 - 1000 papers in a a relationship graph, after I've pruned papers that do not contain certain keywords or words in their title/abstract. Then, I can rank the papers based on their connectedness in the graph, weighted by the age of the publication.
Sounds great, but I can't see any easy way to accomplish this. I've looked at DBLP and crossref.org, but neither of these show the bibliography of the papers. Web of Science has an API to which I may be able to get access, but I don't think that will provide bibliography either.
Short of manual web scraping, is there any way to achieve this?
I can't scrape Google Scholar since it doesn't show the bibliography of papers, but Microsoft Academic Search does. MSAS does have an API, but you need to apply with information like Project URL to get access, which is not applicable in my case.<issue_comment>username_1: The name for the type of research related to your question is referred to as: Bibliometrics or Scientometrics.
That being said, the answer to your question is not simple since it depends on a few factors. You could be lucky and have a service such as this available that has a lot of the data available for you:
<http://www.scimagojr.com/journalsearch.php?q=22078&tip=sid&clean=0>
There is also a whole host of tools that can help you parse the files without using an API:
<https://www.mat.unical.it/ianni/wiki/ScholarHIndexCalculator>
<https://sites.google.com/site/hjamali/scientometric-portal>
In my case they did not provide all the information I required and ultimately I had to write a few tools of my own. The problem with this approach is that most papers are only available in PDF and requires PDF text extraction. Plenty of frameworks available to assist with that, but the structure of the document needs to be customised for each source of information since they are not all the same. Long story short, the following API's helped me a lot.
**A list of scholarly APIs that can assist:**
<http://libguides.mit.edu/apis>
**Text extraction for individual files:**
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/itextsharp/>
<https://pdfbox.apache.org/>
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Here are some APIs you may want to consider. I found the pybliometrics one to be very useful.
<https://github.com/pybliometrics-dev/pybliometrics>
<https://github.com/ElsevierDev/elsapy>
<https://github.com/OrganicIrradiation/scholarly>
This one may useful for the network you want to create.
<https://github.com/shauseth/article-networks>
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I caught a student plagiarizing on a programming assignment by copying someone else's code and replacing some variable/function names. I gave the student a zero, and shortly afterward he emailed me maintaining that he's innocent and I'm falsely accusing him of cheating.
What should I do?<issue_comment>username_1: Inform the student of the school's official procedure for appealing an accusation of plagiarism, and suggest he follow that procedure. (Also see: [How can I prove that I didn't plagiarize](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19495/how-can-i-prove-that-i-didnt-plagiarize/19496#19496).)
Policies and procedures are there exactly for situations like this one.
Generally if the student chooses to appeal, the procedures involve other parties (a dean, or a committee dedicated to such matters, for example) evaluating the student's side of things *and* your side of things (your reasons for believing that the student plagiarized) and then deciding on next steps according to school policies. ([Here's an example](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/20851/11365).) So if you think the student is likely to appeal, you can start to prepare your side of things - the "evidence" - in the meantime. (Personally, when in this situation I also like to let the department head know that this appeal might be coming.)
Note that you *don't* need to have caught the student on videotape, or anything like that. You'll tell the committee what you know, they'll make the decision as to whether it's enough evidence, and they'll make the decision as to whether the consequences you have imposed should stand. Deciding whether your evidence meets "standards of proof" for an appeal according to school policy is their job, not yours (they have much more experience than you in this matter.) Assuming you made your accusation in good faith, you don't need *more* evidence for an appeal than you did for the original accusation.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: It depends. Do you *suspect* that the student plagiarized or did you *catch* the student while doing so? Do you have *evidence*? If it is only based on a suspicion, I suggest you gather some incontrovertible evidence to support your claim before you bring the case further. If the student did plagiarize, it will not be so easy to win an appeal if you have proof to back up your claim.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The title of your question does not match its content, since they are each asking different things. The title asks:
>
> What to do about a student whom I suspect plagiarized but claims not
> to have?
>
>
>
If you suspect that a student plagiarized, you should investigate the matter further to see if you can come up with solid evidence. The student should be punished (with a failing grade and/or reporting to your university's student judicial affairs or equivalent unit) if, and only if, the evidence points to the student's guilt with a reasonably high degree of certainty.
Given that you already decided to give the student a zero grade for the assignment, and that suspicion alone does not merit such punishment, you should reverse the decision and grade the student's assignment as if he had done it himself. It may be appropriate to nonetheless tell the student that you have suspicions that he plagiarized the assignment, and give him a stern warning that from now on you'll be watching his every move and that he should not try to play any more such games.
On the other hand, the body of your question tells a different story:
>
> I caught a student plagiarizing on a programming assignment by copying
> someone else's code [...] What should I do?
>
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This is substantially different from what the title was asking. If you don't just *suspect* the student plagiarized but believe you "caught the student plagiarizing", i.e., you have what you consider to be solid evidence and are willing to defend your accusation in the event that the student challenges it, then you may consider your decision to have been an appropriate one. In that case, username_1's answer gives very good advice about how to proceed. However, I would strongly caution you that we humans are fallible beings, and in particular we have a distinct tendency to be overconfident of our own judgments. This overconfidence is known as the **illusion of validity** (described [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illusion_of_validity), and more in detail in [this](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/23/magazine/dont-blink-the-hazards-of-confidence.html?_r=0) wonderful article by <NAME>, the behavioral economist who coined the term).
I saw this effect with my own eyes in a plagiarism case I was involved with at my university, in which an instructor suspected two of his students had shared code because the plagiarism-detection software he used flagged their code as having a high similarity score. As an objective party who inspected the two students' code (and being more than knowledgeable enough about the programming aspects of the case), I was far from convinced that any of them had committed plagiarism, and after also interviewing the students I was close to 100% certain that they hadn't. Nonetheless, throughout this process the instructor who had accused them of plagiarism (a very smart and accomplished computer scientist) remained adamant, quite bizarrely in my opinion, that some misconduct must have occurred.
The bottom line is that your decision to punish the student should be based on more than just your own feeling of confidence that your suspicion is founded, since such feelings have been scientifically shown (by Kahneman, who won the Nobel prize for such work, and others) to be extremely inaccurate. If that means letting a potential cheater go unpunished, that may be annoying but it is still much better than punishing someone for an offense they did not commit.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I would call him in and go over the assignment. Have him explain the code and the decisions he made in coming up with the code. You should be able to get a pretty good feeling from that conversation whether this was actually his code or not.
Also, is it possible that someone cheated off of him instead of the other way around?
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I'm not going to address whether or not the student is actually guilty; I will only answer regarding the procedure, which is what I understand your question is really getting at. At my university, there is a very specific procedure for professors to follow when they suspect cheating. Two relevant steps in the procedure are:
* We need to prepare a formal case and submit it to the Dean's office. This 1) gives the student the ability to explain themselves, appeal, etc; 2) it shields professors somewhat from the emotional impact of sobbing/angry/denying/pleading/story-telling students; and 3) it protects students from unreasonable professors.
* We are not allowed to exact any penalty on the student. The Dean's office handles this. This has two main benefits: 1) penalties can be made uniform for similar offenses by different students; and 2) repeat offenders across different classes can be identified and penalized accordingly.
I don't know what is the case in your university, but I suspect that they have a precise procedure to follow as well. **Did you follow it?** If you did not follow the procedure precisely, then you are making a mess for yourself. I am not assuming that it is the same as my school's procedure, but regardless of your school's specific policy, I see a major problem in your description: **Students should at least have the right to explain themselves if they are accused of plagiarism** (even if it is just with the professor). Apparently, you went ahead and made the decision and penalized the student without even letting them explain themselves. This is not just to the student.
I know that plagiarism is a huge hassle to handle (trust me, I have much experience in this), but we have to be just to our students and follow the policy. Perhaps you have exacted such a penalty in the past and guilty students kept quiet, but such an approach doesn't protect innocent students in case you make a mistake. They should have the right to such protection, and you should not take it away from them.
**I recommend that you contact your department chair or dean's office to learn the formal procedure and then follow it.**
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: How many possible creative solutions exist to complete the assignment? As someone who's gone from a creative environment to a technical one, I see programming as a bit of world that goes between pure math to pure Art, and how you approach it academically really depends on the level of complexity you're trying to teach. As pointed out in the comments below, a long assignment requires so much consideration. If this is a thesis level piece that requires several pages of code, then yes, you have a case. If the assignment is short and the answer can be found in a textbook, you'll find a lot of your students will look at it, decide it is correct, and hand in some version of that code, and I think you'll be doing more of a disservice to the student by getting them expelled for that.
I have a personal case for learning by copying:
I was taught programming by a manager who fully believed in 'figuring out the solution for yourself' - his code was terrible. There was a lot of 'reinventing of the wheel' simply because he wouldn't look up common methods. After I got out from under his rock, I proceeded with the 'copy,adjust,test' method of learning, and picked up many things much faster. I found out later that what my former manager did happens often - and I've seen code get tossed because it was so full of unique methods for common tasks that it was unmanageable.
I realized that the way I learn is by reading and understanding the 'good' version of it. That's how most musicians and writers learn - we don't go to a textbook, we go to the stories and the music, and there's going to be a little 'copying' until they've been exposed to enough code to get really creative.
If you can see this happening with your assignments, you might want to make them a little broader or include a 'comments' requirement that will force them to explain how their code works.
P.S. teaching them to write comments in their code now will probably make the world run better in the long run.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: Well, this brings back something that I had long forgotten. When I was 8 years old, I was accused of 'copying' by another child and disciplined by the teacher. We both wrote about going to a circus in the snow. The fact was that there had been a circus and it snowed on one of the days. Clearly we had simply visited the same event. I was unable to convince the teacher of this and it rankled for a very long time.
If the code is messy and contains exactly the same errors in exactly the same places then maybe it was plagiarism. If however the code is optimal then it could simply be a case of convergent evolution.
I suggest caution.
P.S. How would you know which of the two was the plagiarist?
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: There are two sides to the question: how can you prove that plagiarism occurred, and how is plagiarism dealt with in your institution, including the amount of evidence required and the weight of the consequences for infringement. username_3 raises excellent points, in that you should always err on the side of caution.
I will only focus on finding statistical, objective evidence. If, from amongst N students, student A's code is overwhelmingly similar to student B's, and other similarities form a clear gaussian, then there is
* objective proof that the assignment was not so trivial as to only accept variants of A's answer.
* objective proof that, among all possible student pairs, A-B merits special interest
I have seen colleagues use [AC](http://tangow.ii.uam.es/ac/) to perform this kind of analysis. Other free programs exist (although they don't go so much for the visual aspect, at least last time I checked). It appears to perform tokenization prior to comparison, so that comments, spacing, and renamed identifiers are completely ignored.
Image, from the above site, with a histogram where bars on the left represent very similar submissions, and at the right very dissimilar submissions. You can see a bell-shape to the right of the current selection; the graph display is displaying all currently-selected edges. Clicking on them would open a code-comparison window.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: In my first college programming class (Pascal) after the midterm another student and I were called in to meet with the professor and the Dean. We were accused of plagiarism. The other student was a girl from a mid-eastern country, conservative, scarves, etc. She completely broke down crying. While she cried, I assured the professor that she and I had literally never even spoken to each other. He then showed me the programs that she and I had written. They were almost perfectly identical, even to variable names. My academic career on the line, I suggested that he give each of us another programming challenge, and see what happens; that perhaps we just have similar programming styles. He did so, and he watched me while the Dean watched her in a separate room. We both completed the task within a minute of each other (I know because we all showed up at the printer at the same time).
Again, our programs were almost entirely identical. I think all but one of our variables had the same name. She and I were two of the best programmers in the class, and apparently we just wrote programs very similarly. We actually ended up having the professor inform the rest of the department, so we wouldn't have the same problem in future classes.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_10: If these are programming students, they will succeed or fail *as a team* in their future careers.
Why not get them used to this mindset by borrowing a page from the military? I'm sure many will consider this too draconian, but it will be surprisingly effective if the entire class is penalized.
If you have objective and effective criteria to identify when plagiarism has occurred (a big hurdle, I know) I see no reason why you cannot give the entire class a zero on that assignment.
This will build camaraderie among the students as they will have a common enemy (you), will encourage collaboration and teamwork since they'll have to check each other's work (to ensure that it is not too similar) and teach them to watch out for each other and become self-policing. All of these are critical for their future success as a programmer.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_11: You should reverse the decision until you can prove that the student plagiarized.
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> The phrase is "innocent until proven guilty" for a reason.
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If you follow the current leading answer (by username_1) you have a good chance of simply bullying the student into accepting a 0. I met a lot of people through college that would rather take the hit than make a big issue of it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: I faced this problem once. I didn't begin by confronting the student, though; I began by taking the problem to my supervisor, who pointed out that it's not very feasible to *prove* cheating on this kind of assignment, no matter how certain the instructor may feel about it. He advised me to just focus on the exams. He arranged for a special room for the final exam, so the suspected student could be seated well away from anyone, in a very observable position. The suspect failed the final miserably. He had some other poor grades in the class (quizzes, midterm exam), so when the weighted average was computed, he ended up getting an F in the course. A low enough grade that he had to repeat the course (because he needed it for his major). The reason I know he repeated the course: I saw him from time to time through my office window the following summer; and he ran into me once and was very bitter about having to be on campus for summer school to repeat the course.
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<issue_start>username_0: The IMRaD format (Introduction, Method, Results and Discussion) seems to be the gold standard in publishable scholarly articles in certain fields. I am wondering if I could get my literature review published if I modified it to fit this format. It’s not a systematic review and uses a lot of grey literature (unpublished project reports and presentations, newspaper articles, working papers) as it is on a topic which has very little research.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> I am wondering if I could get my literature review published if I modified it to fit this format. It's not a systematic review and uses a lot of grey literature (unpublished project reports and presentations, newspaper articles, working papers) as it is on a topic which has very little research.
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Your question suggests that you have trouble getting your literature review published for some reason. While I cannot make a definite statement (I would need to know your work intimately), I am pretty certain that the lack of an IMRaD format is not the reason. I can only suggest that you consult the comments of whoever rejected your review so far or, if you did not try to publish it yet, seek the opinion of colleagues or similar.
Now, there is such a thing as a paper *about* scientific literature using the IMRaD (or a similar structure), namely a meta study. In this case, the way you select the literature would make your *methods* section and your *results* would be a certain statement about this literature, e.g., “In 95 % of all studies, homeopathy was found to be as effective as placebos”. While you could apply such an approach to grey literature as well, you state yourself that what you are doing is “not a systematic review”, so this way does not seem like an option for you.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: From what you've explained, I don't think you should concern yourself about the IMRaD format. If you want to know the right format to use to publish your review, then look at your target journal and examine the literature reviews that they have published. Pick the one that is closest to what you are doing, and then follow its general pattern. However, don't be too strict; let your article speak; feel free to vary the format of your model according to the unique characteristics of your model.
I strongly suggest, though, that before you complete the article, contact the editor-in-chief of the target journal with your idea or draft and make sure that it is acceptable. I do this for almost all articles before I submit, and the best news I can get is the editor telling me that they don't publish that kind of work, which saves me many months of wasted work.
Here are some possible caveats to this advice:
* You don't have a target journal: You need one! It is difficult to publish research with only a vague idea of where you want to publish it. You should have a definite target in mind and write for it. Even if your article is not accepted at your first target, you should modify it to fit your next target. Except for most high-quality target journals, articles are frequently rejected (sometimes without review) because the writer clearly didn't have the target in mind.
* Your target journal hasn't published any similar articles: Congratulations! You just saved your self many months of useless work by submitting to an inappropriate journal! Look for another target journal that has already published the kind of work that you are doing.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: **Introduction**
People sometimes wonder what they can or should write in the IMRaD format (Introduction, Method, Results, and Discussion). For example, should a literature review be written this way? In this answer, we will examine a toy model for this question, namely stackexchange answers, to produce evidence that although anything can be written in IMRaD format, it is not necessarily helpful.
**Method**
We prepared an answer on academia.stackexchange.com, wrote it up in the IMRaD format, and submitted it to the website.
**Results**
The answer appeared on the site, but the IMRaD format yielded no apparent benefits in organizing the answer and it looked eccentric.
**Discussion**
Stackexchange answers are not a perfect model for literature reviews, but they share one key similarity: they could be written in IMRaD format but usually are not. Our experiment suggests a mechanism to explain this observation. Genuine experimental results fit the "method, results, discussion" paradigm, but most other academic contributions do not. Unless you are carrying out a formal meta analysis for which you can document a precise method, I see no good reason to use the IMRaD format for a literature review (and it would be actively harmful if you had to distort your account to make it fit this organization).
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<issue_start>username_0: All MA students in my graduate program (social sciences) are required to take a course titled 'Thought and Theory'. Ostensibly, the course should serve as an in-depth introduction for students to the contemporary debates and prevailing theories and schools of thought in our discipline. (This is particularly important as there are many students in the program who are new to the discipline, and because the discipline is very broad-reaching.) Students should, at the end of the course, be able to situate their thinking in the overarching disciplinary conversation.
For the first time, this course is being taught not by a social theorist, but by a professor who's specialization is more technical. Instead of assigning foundational texts or the significant thinkers in our field, the professor downloaded the past 20 years worth of publications in one of the field's journals, ran a textual analysis of it, and calculated the articles that had the highest 'centrality score'. We are reading only those articles, most of which have been highly technical, not theoretical, and which offer only a very narrow view of what is going on the discipline.
The students are extremely upset, and feel like we are losing out on an important educational experience. The professor has been unwilling to budge from his pedagogical position, despite many students expressing their exasperation and confusion. He told one student that she was wrong for feeling exasperated and confused.
My question is -- how should we as a current cohort of students in the department address this? The professor himself has been unreceptive to criticism (criticism which has been very polite and often at least trying to be constructive). Do we write a joint email to the department chair? I have close working relationships with other professors in the department, but feel uncomfortable complaining to them about one of their colleagues. What is the etiquette and best course of action here?<issue_comment>username_1: You might have a good case if this course is manifestly not meeting the department's stated requirements or failing to cover the prerequisites for further courses. However, it's not clear from what you've written whether either of these is the case. The methodology for selecting the readings sounds unusual, but not obviously unreasonable, and seeing this sort of cross section of the field could be a really valuable experience. You complain that the readings are narrow and technical, rather than foundational or significant, and that might be true. On the other hand, the professor presumably feels this is a better use of time than the way the course used to be taught. The fact that the readings are less comfortable and harder to get a handle on could be seen as evidence that this version of the course is what the students need, even if it's not what they want.
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> The students are extremely upset, and feel like we are losing out on an important educational experience.
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This seems to be the crux of the matter: you wish you could have taken the previous version of the course instead. That's a perfectly legitimate desire, and it's worth making it clear to the department in some way (student evaluations, comments to faculty afterwards, etc.). However, that is not the sort of complaint that will lead to any short-term action. Faculty have considerable freedom in crafting courses, and departments are generally reluctant to intervene unless there are serious problems. It's not enough if you just don't enjoy a course or feel that a different course would have been more useful.
So I'd recommend setting aside the issue of regret over not getting to take the previous version. You can register your unhappiness about that later. In the meantime, it's worth formally complaining only if you have objective evidence of something wrong with this course in its own right, and not just in comparison with what could have been.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Many universities have a 'representative' elected for each class and subject. Those representatives have access to teaching committees and appropriate academic staff outside of the specific class. If you have such a person, he or she could seek input from all the students, then talk to the professor and also talk to the broader departmental staff about what the course is expected to teach. It may be that the concern is unfounded, and the representative can allay the concerns, or it may be that the concern is warranted and the teaching committee or similar body can correct the problem.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I might approach someone on the department's curriculum committee to ask (with an open mind) what role(s) this course is intended to fill within the larger curriculum. There's some chance it may not be what you think!
If you do learn, however, that yes, the instance you're taking is out of whack and not accomplishing the goals it's supposed to, this would be a respectful way to open that discussion with someone who is in a reasonable position to pursue the matter further.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: Frankly, I don't see how the course could be revamped for the fall semester. So in principle, you could wait until course eval time comes around to let the department know what's going on.
You could request that the original version of the course be re-offered in the spring semester.
You could use the syllabus of the previous version of the course to do a study group version of the course.
You could make an appointment to talk with the appropriate department administrator, and offer to your classmates the opportunity to go with you.
See if you can find a big discrepancy between the course description in the catalog, and the focus given by this instructor.
Of the points you mentioned, "The professor has admitted that he doesn't look at what the next weeks' readings are, and so hasn't been able to provide context" would be the type of point to focus on in the meeting.
---
Try to find *something* worthwhile doing in this guy's version for the remaining what -- six weeks of class?
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<issue_start>username_0: I was browsing through Academia SE and found [this question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/53880/what-should-i-do-after-advisor-got-upset-when-i-expressed-belief-in-evolution).
To save you from reading the whole thing, here is what confused me: the person who asked a question is in Master program at university, but the top answering person (with high reputation) asked them "By the way, do you mind my asking, why aren't you in a PhD program? In physics it seems a bit unusual to be in a Master's only program."
Maybe I got something wrong, but does this person mean that you could be in the Master AND in PhD program at the same time? How is it possible? I am going to apply to a Master program next year (in Europe: Finland, Switzerland, Russia, etc.) and all universities without exception require finished Master degree in order to apply for PhD program. I always thought that the process is the same worldwide, i.e. Bachelor -> Master -> PhD<issue_comment>username_1: In the US, in many fields, it's common to enter a PhD program with just a bachelor's (and typically, someone who does that can earn a masters along the way to a PhD.)
I did this myself - I am an electrical engineering PhD student with only a bachelor's degree.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It can depend on whether the masters is a research masters or a course work masters. In my field of psychology in Australia it is common to do a combined Masters/PhD where the masters involves coursework and placements required for registration as a psychologist and the PhD involves doing a large thesis.
More generally, it would occasionally make sense to combine some more ad hoc course work masters with a PhD. For example, you might do a course work masters in statistics in parallel with some quantitatively focused PhD. Doing such courses in combination might violate some university rules about additional study or it might require the student to do a PhD part-time while they are doing units in the course work masters.
If you are talking about research masters degrees, then it doesn't make sense to do both a masters and a PhD by research at the same time. The exact relation between these two degrees can vary a lot between institutions, but here are some possible scenarios:
* Students may be required to enrol in a masters and if they do good work, they may be allowed to upgrade to a PhD. This can be the case where the student failed to get adequate grades to get direct entry into a PhD.
* Students may be required to do a masters by research in order to do a PhD. In other cases, students may simply be required to have completed a previous research thesis. So for example if they haven't completed an honours thesis, then the masters thesis is an alternative way of satisfying this requirement.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: In addition to the other noted answers, sometimes it's possible to actually be in multiple graduate programs simultaneously if you obtain admission to one while in the other.
For example, I did not get into my Ph.D. program when I first applied, but did manage to get into the M.Eng. program, which had a separate and much easier application process. While in the M.Eng. program, I applied to the Ph.D. program again and was admitted. My second year of M.Eng. was thus also my first year of Ph.D. All of the human administrators dealt with this as fairly routine, but I had some difficulties with the computerized systems from time to time.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Since nobody mentioned it yet, **the situation in the UK is similar to that [of the US](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/57501/4249) - a Bachelor's degree is enough to get you into a PhD programme.**
The "classical" PhD here is a 3 year position, the students enrol into a Masters (by research) programme and turn in a *transfer request* after a year, entering the PhD programme proper. A newer format comes in the form of CDT ("Centre for Doctoral Training") positions, formally 4 years long, where the first year includes (fairly heavy) coursework and the rest focuses on research.
Still, a large portion of PhD students in the UK actually have their Masters when starting a PhD position. I attribute this to the fact that there is actually relatively low amounts of UK students vs. EU and international (non-EU) students, and they typically start applying for a PhD when it is common in their countries (having the UK as just one of the options for a PhD).
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<issue_start>username_0: Does anyone know examples where online courses (or other similar eLearning methods) are currently used effectively in the curriculum of a university?<issue_comment>username_1: Online master's programs are quite common in Library and Information {Science|Studies} schools/departments. Sometimes there is a (very limited) requirement for face-to-face attendance, e.g. an opening orientation bootcamp.
As far as I know, no online LIS program has lost accreditation merely for being online. Admittedly that's not the best way to measure effectiveness, but it's hard to know what is, exactly.
Some working professionals still maintain a hiring bias against students from online programs. To the best of my knowledge that has diminished over time (though not to zero), and in my experience most of their objections (when they can be bothered to articulate them) are either mistaken or specious.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There are several types of online learning. Some practical considerations you seem to be wondering about are meeting times, delivery methods, and best practices in online learning.
The time of meeting could be described as synchronous, asynchronous, or a combination of both. Synchronous refers to the practice of the students and instructor meeting online on specific days at specific times. Asynchronous means that the students and instructor do not have to "meet" or connect online on specific days and times. Most online courses are asynchronous.
The delivery methods of online course content is as varied as the universities, majors, and faculty involved. Nearly all of them will use an LMS, or Learning Management System, to deliver course content to students. Some of the most popular are Blackboard, Brightspace by D2L, and Canvas. The content itself may be text-based, video-based or audio based and may include interactive elements, whether simply utilizing the discussion and quiz tools in the LMS or more complex learning interactions such as simulations or gamification.
You can get started in finding some of the best practices for online instruction can be found by searching academic research using keywords such as: elearning, distance learning, online, best practices in online learning (or elearning, or distance learning), and postsecondary (higher ed) educational technology. Another research topic that might be of interest to you is instructional design models. Many of the best practices in online teaching and learning have much in common with F2F best practices. The delivery method is simply the means, not the end.
Additionally, there are universities offering bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in instructional technology, instructional design, or educational technology where one can make a study and subsequently, a career, in online learning. There are also many national and international organizations devoted to the continual improvement of distance/online learning/elearning in both K-12 and higher ed.
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a lab technician (microbiology & molecular biology) and biology student, and I am currently seeking for job in some institutes in the UK. After sending my CVs to the HR departments, I usually got some replies with acknowledgement, or pointing to the institute's vacancies webpage, etc.
Now I would like to be more proactive, and I feel like it would be good to visit some labs in person, meet the group leaders and other researchers, learn more about their research, and see how I could fit in these groups with my expertise. I expect this to be more efficient than sending CVs to the HR, as team leaders could know about me, and consider more seriously to hire me in their labs.
My questions are, is this kind of visit possible at all? How much I need to organise it, can it be kind of spontaneous? I know there are some other institutes elsewhere, where it is accepted, and they are happy if somebody just pops in to the lab to meet people and learn more about their work. Might this attitude be general? I am afraid they will find me intrusive. And how I should organise a visit, should I write to HR, or to the team leaders, or just drop in, say hello, telling that I can return later if the time is not appropriate?<issue_comment>username_1: Although many academics are not quite happy with the bureaucratic difficulties and delays caused by their HRs, HR departments exist not without a purpose. In the UK, the academic jobs should be advertised publicly and the appointment should be made on the base of merit according to pre-specified person criteria.
If Dr Who uses his personal relations, or secret charms to persuade a PI to hire them, the following chain of event happen:
1. The post is created and formally advertised
2. 100+ candidates submit their applications explaining how they fit the person specification criteria
3. Someone (an academic or HR or both) pre-screens applications and compose a short list
4. Candidates from the short list are invited to travel down to the University for an interview
5. Everyone is rejected, Dr Who is hired.
Before answering the "howto" question, please consider, if you think the whole process is fair to everyone involved, especially to other candidates?
Regarding your question, if a stranger enters my workplace "spontaneously", and demands my time and attention, I will probably feel uncomfortable. Some people may find this intrusive -- for the record, I am one of them. There are clear instructions on how to submit a job application, and "walk into the lab out of sudden" is rarely on this list.
However, it may be a good idea to introduce yourself politely to the potential PI. Usual rules apply here: it is better to send an email first, explaining your reasons and motivation clearly. If your potential PI is considering hiring new lab members, they will engage in discussion with you, invite you to visit them, and work out further steps to get you on board.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: By just sending CVs to places, you are essentially "[cold calling](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cold_calling)," and it's no surprise that you're getting little response. Most PIs get random poorly targeted job application spam every day, and your email will likely simply be discarded. Just showing up in person or asking if you can show up in person without going through the formal job application site is likely to perform little better.
Instead, I would recommend figuring out how to get introductions through professional networking opportunities. Some key things that you can do:
* Go to conferences and meet people in person there. It's entirely appropriate to mention that you are looking for jobs at a conference, and a good conversation at a conference can easily lead to just the type of invitation visit that you are interested in.
* Get introduced through a third party, such as the PI you work with or other researchers that you know, either at your institution or elsewhere.
* Do your homework technically, and approach with a *highly specific* connection that you suggest in advance would be appropriate to discuss. You are much more likely to be taken seriously if your email begins with something like: "I noticed your lab is doing a lot of work with Boojum Factorization, and I've been working on Boojum Spectrometry, which could improve your Boojum Factorization methods in the following ways..."
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I'm assuming the first two Jake bullet points don't fit your current situation.
His third bullet point is something you can already do, though. Here's how to fit it in. You can write a letter along these lines: "I will be traveling in your area in the early part of the new year, and would welcome the opportunity to visit your lab." Then describe briefly something exciting you've been involved in (such as Jake's Boojum example). You want to give the impression that a visit would be a win-win situation.
If you have a talk you could give, you could mention that (and the title and brief abstract).
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<issue_start>username_0: One of the answers [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/35194/how-do-academics-find-time-to-write-books) says that some researchers in humanities publish their thesis as a book. Could the same be done for example in physics, chemistry or math degree? By book I mean the whole thesis, not just a handbook with selected material.
And if it is possible - could the thesis on which you would defend your degree be written in a book format, i.e. be ready to go to the print shop immediately? Or do supervisors and reviewers expect the paper to be just a "big article" and having complete book in front of them would confuse them?
I also suppose that the book should not be printed(at least in many copies) prior achieving a degree, correct me if I am wrong.<issue_comment>username_1: I know of several people who have done this in physics. In each case, the book was an exact copy of their thesis (right down to acknowledgements and appendices). If I remember correctly, there are some publishers which will publish any thesis, you just have to pay for the first n copies (where n is an integer I don't remember).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Definitely don't print it before achieving your degree, in case you have to make major corrections (in which case the book would be a wasted expense).
In the UK, at least, it's usual for the final copy of a PhD thesis to be bound as a book - so in some respects, what you say about "ready to go to the print shop immediately" is already surpassed. However, that is not to say that the internal format of the work is that which would be expected for a normal book, and I imagine that this --- as well as perhaps writing to be accessible to a slightly wider audience --- is what is normally involved with somebody publishing their humanities thesis in book form.
The question that you perhaps need to ask yourself (or better explain to us) is: Why do you want to do this?
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: In mathematics this is also possible. I myself published my PhD thesis as a book in a [Springer series](http://www.springer.com/series/11155), and I know of people who published their thesis in the [Memoirs of the AMS](http://www.ams.org/books/memo/) series. Note that all these still require a refereeing process, so typically the published version will be (slightly) different from your final PhD thesis.
This publication is separate from the Dutch tradition of creating proper printing-press copies of your thesis for distributtion to the reading committee, colleagues, friends, family, which could already considered to be a book (one typically obtains an ISBN). In my case that meant that I had to make only few changes to the layout of my thesis to submit it to Springer; basically adapt to their style.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: At least in some German universities, it is required for the thesis (after all the amendments) to be published as a book. This applies to all disciplines, not just humanities. So it is certainly possible but definitely wait until the final version is accepted.
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/04
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<issue_start>username_0: When publishing in some popular scientific journals, it is easy to understand that it is worth referring to in your CV, job applications, or elsewhere when it is appropriate to talk about your publications.
But what if your publication is not in some scientific journal known worldwide with 50 years history, but on some online web-site, that is definitely not considered to be very scientific and professional among universities, but at the same time it is quite popular among researchers. I mean it has quite big number of people (tens of thousands daily) using it daily, contains many articles on some kinds of research written by researchers themselves, posting comments pointing out the mistakes, etc.
Is it worth mentioning or would it be considered not respectful enough place to be published?
And moreover, what if you "publish" some research on your own blog? Suppose it is popular enough to be considered published paper (i.e., few hundreds or thousands of people have actually read it).
Of course you could ask, "Why not then publish it in the respectable journal?" I would answer that publications I am talking about are not some breaking news or anything, rather just some experiments, that yielded some results, explained couple of things, but not new in any sense, i.e., it is more of educational publications saying "Hey, you can do this and this is how, check it out", probably repeating some experiment done by others, but with more explanations, research, etc. Such publications are not suitable for many journals and I would suspect many journals would not even consider printing it, so it basically can't go further than internet article, though it can get pretty scientific.<issue_comment>username_1: One problem with the blog and the website is the quality assurance. A peer-reviewed article guarantees that your research at least meet the quality of that specific journal. Of course some issues exist with the peer-review system but at the moment it is the common way. Everyone can open a blog and popularity does not imply good research. I would suggest submitting the work to a regular journal, and write a shorter blog entry for communication and discussion.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I would say there are two significant things to consider:
* Some journals *will* consider replication studies, and some explicitly support it (e.g., [Perspectives on Psychological Science](http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications)). Depending on your field, you may wish to investigate this. Replication studies, however, typically aim for a degree of rigor which you may or may not be aiming at.
* If the effort is more explanatory and educational in nature, then is still belongs in your CV and similar documents, but as "Professional Service" or "Teaching" rather than publication. These count less in many contexts, but are still legitimate and may be important if you are applying to a position that is interested in these types of outreach and education activities.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: It *may* be worth having a section for "Non-peer-reviewed publications". You say you've written tutorial material but other possibilities are that you've written articles for popular science outlets, or the trade press, or even been interviewed about your research in the major news media.
The difficult bit is probably the name for the section (which should go after you "real" publications section. Rather than claiming these as scientific publications (and if they're not really citable/cited, no-one will treat them as real scientific articles) but to provide evidence that you can write for a diverse audience.
Of course, like anything else that could go on your CV, it's about tailoring the CV to the job -- this could be good for jobs with a significant teaching/outreach/science policy component, but might be less useful elsewhere. A selection of these publications might even belong in a section for other interests, depending on the specific nature of the projects and the job you were doing at the time.
There are also (peer-reviewed) journals dedicated to science education at various levels, and studies such as replicating classic experiments with student-grade equipment might find a home there.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/11/04
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| 3,725
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<issue_start>username_0: So I have been talking to a professor in quantum game theory from a unversity in my city whom I have never met. We have been going back and forth on mails discussing ideas. I did alot of research and presented my ideas to him through mails. He has asked me to come meet him to further share the ideas face to face and introduce me to one of his colleagues. The main purpose of me contacting him was that I wanted to work on some research with him and probably find employment along side him as an RA or along those lines. I am really nervous to meet him. I feel that I may fumble while discussing with him. Could you please help as to what sort of discussions usually take place in meetings such as mine and what i should expect. Would the discussion be extremely technical that would test my knowledge to the core or will it be a casual and light exchange of theoretical ideas.<issue_comment>username_1: Since he wants to introduce you to others, I would say you already won. I would expect friendly conversation and discussion, and you should be prepared to answer the question how you would like to contribute to the topic in the future.
Let us know how the meeting ended ;).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Even Houdini can't provide a to-the-point answer to this question; because guessing about the flow of a conversation sounds tough.
But, as this situation has been occurred, with high frequency, among the applicant and the potential supervisors, you might be eager to consider below subjects, will which be, probably, taken into account, within the target discussion.
1. The professor has already heard your ideas. His/Her tendency to hear
them, face to face, is maybe due to his/her propensity to assess your
tone and realize how confident you are about them. Wrap up your
self-reliance and put away any hesitation within talking about the
ideas.
2. You had, noticeably, claimed about any potential abilities within
your emails, such as programming capabilities, acquaintance with any
specific scientific theme and etc. The professor might ask something
about them, trivially, to find out any proof for your claims.
3. Evaluating your mental status and personal reflections would act as
an important factor for the professor. He/She will focus on your
excitation, manner of presentation and the temper. He/She would maybe try to
trap you by anything just like bombardment by questions to see
whether the anxiety will overcome you or not. This case often plays
an important role for professor's final assessment upon you, as
he/she must decide about the gratifying characteristics, presented
by the applicant, to work with him/her, efficiently, within long
graduate-level studies.
Based on my own experience and the fellows, have who crossed this bridge, the main context would be within the aforementioned stuffs.
Good luck
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Here's a starting point for your next letter to your potential advisor:
>
> Dear Prof. So-and-So,
>
>
> Our correspondence has been exciting and stimulating. I am pleased
> about your invitation to visit your institute, but I'm also nervous. My
> hope is to work on some research with you and possibly find employment
> alongside you, as an RA or something along those lines. Therefore I am
> really nervous about this meeting! I feel that I may fumble while
> discussing things with you in person. Could you please help as to what
> sort of discussion will take place in such a meeting, and what I
> should expect. Will the discussion be an opportunity for me to
> demonstrate my knowledge? Is there a particular topic I should
> prepare in advance of our meeting?
>
>
>
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/04
| 1,503
| 6,372
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<issue_start>username_0: In which fraction of the recent papers is significant incompetence of review(s) observed in natural sciences? In my searching, I've only come across [one example of such a review](http://scienceblogs.com/ethicsandscience/2010/04/01/how-do-researchers-perceive-pe/)... is anyone familiar with any others?<issue_comment>username_1: Let's break the possibilities in two, shall we?
1. The reviewers are indeed incompetent. If it is a journal, answer the remarks. If it is a conference, submit somewhere else. It happens. However, this possibility is rather unlikely and will add nothing to you as a researcher, so..
2. Your paper is 'bad'. Don't be angry, but from your question, it seems like you failed to previously address the remarks. Most of the really good papers I've reviewed answered my potential remarks in the paper itself. For instance, they said that ""The applied method is wrong"", therefore, it would be good for you, and your paper, to have a paragraph somewhere saying "While it may appear that the method is wrong, we prove that it is indeed right because....". That way, not only you already cleared any ambiguities, you demonstrate that you reflected on the contents and possible ramifications of your work and that is important.
You might have made some wrong assumptions about your audience, for instance, assuming that they will have a higher level than the reviewers actually have. This is a bad assumption, in general, because it is pretty rare to get reviewers/audience with a proper level. You really have to "take you audience by the hand" and guide them through the work, making the minimum amount of assumptions possible (leeway here if you don't have enough room).
>
> Long story short, your paper **let** the reviewers misunderstand the contents, and that's bad.
>
>
>
Keep in mind that the writing itself is more important than the contents.... yes, I know, but it is true. It's easier to get accepted when you submit a very well written paper, on some not-that-good ideas, than a revolutionary idea, poorly written. Indeed, if the idea is that different (which is very good), the writing part has to be even better, to surpass the bias people have against new stuff and make them understand. (we usually try to understand stuff based on what we know, and new concepts that contradict it are harder to accept).
Of course, without properly reading the paper, this is mostly guesswork, but I've seen it enough to guess with some certainty. Nevertheless, if you paper is good, it will get better by doing this stuff, so no harm done.
---
That said, I'm not sure if I have n publications in the last y years and I don't care to count (my name is there, my scholar exists, have fun). Sorry, but you don't get to rant and pick who answers it, that's not how the world works.
I know you are probably fuming right now, because none of what I said is what you wanted to hear. Please, before you answer, **calm down**. I've been there, done that, it wasn't good for anyone. I'm on your side here, otherwise I could've just downvoted the question, which would be justified, from your tone alone and moved on. This is not the place for those angry rants.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It's difficult to provide any sort of general assessment across all fields. My experience in peer-reviewed publication, however, has led me to conclude that truly incompetent peer reviewers are much rarer than it often "feels" to authors.
It's always fun and cathartic to slag on [Reviewer #3](https://youtu.be/-VRBWLpYCPY), but I disagree with your assessment of what makes an incompetent review.
Scientific communication is not a one-way street, although people often approach it in this manner. When you are writing an article, it needs to be well-matched in presentation to its audience. Comments of the form that you discuss typically reflect a disconnect between author and audience, resulting from one of two failure modes in the paper:
* The material may not be presented as well as the author thinks. We get *very* familiar with our own work, and often start losing track of all of the assumptions and delicate connections between different aspects of the work. It's *hard* to linearize the complex tangle of relationships in most work into an accessible form.
* The presentation may be good, but poorly matched to the audience. Different communities have different things they are looking for in papers and different contexts against which a manuscript will be judged. Often a paper that will be lauded by one community will be hated by another *because the paper isn't appropriately presented for that community.* This doesn't mean anything is wrong with the community, but rather with the authors' understanding of that community. For example, different aspects of some interdisciplinary work of mine have been published in both the [programming languages](http://username_2.com/Publications/FPCDSL13-BioCompiler-DSL.pdf) and [synthetic biology](http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0022490), and the two papers are utterly foreign to one another even though they are about essentially the same work with the same piece of software.
A truly incompetent review, on the other hand, is one that doesn't bother to particularly discuss the paper at all. For example, as a program chair a couple of years ago, I received the following review for one of the conference papers, as presented here in its entirety:
>
> Nice work.
>
>
>
The reviewer was clearly happy with the paper, but this review gave essentially no meaningful input to the decision process.
So, after all of that preamble, let me return to the quantitative aspects of your questions:
* My observation has been that the number of truly incompetent reviews is vanishingly small. Editors and conference chairs generally deal swiftly with reviewers who fail to live up to minimal standards.
* Reviews showing a frustrating disconnect between reviewer and authors, like you present in your question, have been steadily decreasing over time as my skill as an author increases.
* I spend very little of my time appealing or writing rebuttals---probably less than an hour per paper, on average. I spend much more time than that revising in response to reviewer comments, however, and my papers are generally much better for the work.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/11/04
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<issue_start>username_0: I am one of the five authors in a paper about to be submitted.
Some of us stated in the affiliation their membership in a certain chemical society closely related to both the subject of the paper and the target journal itself (electrochemistry). I am member of a different chemical society not really germane to that field.
Should I state my membership in such society ?<issue_comment>username_1: It depends on the journal. E.g. In ieee journals it is common practice to add 'member of ieee ...' to the affiliation.
If the journal is the main publication of a society, you should not mention affiliation to a different organization, at least as long as there are no official relations between the both.
If in doubt, send a short question to the editor.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The affiliation does not possess an important role within the case. There are a plethora of the papers, do which composed by the authors, affiliated with different universities, institutes, companies and so on. The important point is that either of them might be irrelevant parties in comparison with the subject, as first glance, but one could assert that the existence of the researchers from different disciplines, employed in various organizations, to cover the R&D-based affairs, leads to the usual emergence of the distinctive and even divergent affiliations.
All in all, you better to stick to your own current affiliation, safely.
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/04
| 1,023
| 4,168
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<issue_start>username_0: I would like to relocate to Germany and obtain a PhD from a German University. I have a BSc(Hons) in Psychology, which is obtained from Edinburgh Napier University, and MSc in Information Technology from Aberdeen University. I really enjoy IT and I would like to stay in the field and combine it with academia and research. Specifically, I am interested in web development and human-computer interaction. My questions are:
1. where can I check if my qualifications meet German PhD admissions criteria?
2. are the PhD studies being paid in Germany? (I am married so I cannot afford lack of any salary)<issue_comment>username_1: 1. To obtain a doctorate in Germany, you must have a qualifying degree from an accredited institution. Nowadays this is always a Master's degree with a thesis (Master's degrees without a thesis are effectively worthless if you intend to pursue a PhD). It should be in the field you are intending to obtain your doctorate in. If your degree is from an applied institution such as Napier, expect to have considerable difficulty finding a PhD program that will take you. (Though it is not impossible and things are changing.)
Don't expect the German system to be much like the British, as they are culturally and technically different. In Germany, you do not apply to a PhD program; you establish a relationship with a professor who is willing to supervise you, and the admission as a doctoral student follows from that. That is very difficult to do if you are coming in cold from outside the country. There are some EU-sponsored programs which explicitly solicit applications from other EU countries, but they are the exception.
How is your German? Anybody suggesting that you can get by in Germany without a decent command of German is not being totally honest with you. Even though PhD candidates here are often foreigners and the international language of many disciplines is English, you will be working in institutions in which the administrative language is German, and not being able to speak it will put you at some disadvantage. If nothing else, the competition will be much harder if you can only speak English as your second language, particularly if you are expected to teach.
Your best chance might be to apply to another academic M.Sc. program at a research university in Germany and get your foot in the door that way; this will expose you to professors and give you a chance to establish a relationship that could lead to a PhD.
2. The [Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg](https://fau.de/) long had a good reputation for computer science. There is also the [Karlsruhe Institute für Technologie](http://www.kit.edu/index.php) or the [Leibniz-Universität Hannover](http://www.uni-hannover.de/). [Freiburg](http://www.uni-freiburg.de/) is also an option. Note however, that these are the better institutions and the competition is strong. You may not be in a position to be too selective. Cast your net wide and look at all institutions with a computer science department.
3. PhD candidates are generally hired on as "WiMi" - Wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter - on time-limited contract. Pay varies but 1500 €/month is typical. How far that takes you depends on where you are living. In Munich, it will barely cover your rent if you have a family. In some east German cities (Dresden, Leipzig, Halle, Magdeburg, Jena) you might yet support your family and live decently. The situation in Berlin is changing rapidly and while it is currently just affordable, it won't stay that way.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: To find out if your degree is recognized in Germany you can check the Anabin database here: <http://anabin.kmk.org/no_cache/filter/hochschulabschluesse.html>
From what I can see your Universities are listed as H+ which means they are recognized but I was unable to find anything on the individual degrees. However, as others have stated the usual approach would be to apply for a doctoral position directly to the professor these are often advertised. I would check the Die Zeit Stellenmarkt for example for doctoral positions.
Good luck.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]
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2015/11/04
| 459
| 1,832
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing my thesis. In second chapter, I would like to propose a model with a figure. In third chapter, I want to propose a framework which is based on that model. It would be easy for a user to understand the framework if I can have the same figure in chapter three. Is this OK to copy the same figure? Or should I just add reference to the figure in second chapter?<issue_comment>username_1: It is not good to insert the same figure every time you refer to it within the same work (a thesis or an article or a book). You have to refer to it, e.g. Fig.2.1.
I do not know where you are from, but this is like a general regulation everywhere.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: The reason why we have figure numbers (or for that matter, equation numbers) is to ensure that *calling* these numbered objects becomes easier, you can identify these things with their labels. In fact, if you keep pasting the figure over and over again, whenever it is needed in the text, you will unnecessarily lengthen your thesis, and confuse the reader, who will scroll back to the earlier instance to see what is the difference from what he/she saw there.
Simply identify it by the figure number, and refer to it as Fig. 1.1 (or whatever it is, more generically,
>
> Fig. \ref{figure\_label}
>
>
>
if you are using LaTeX), in all later instances when you feel the need to call it. This befits clarity, conciseness and convention - all three of them.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: As @JonCuster's comment says, you certainly can repeat the figure is it helps clarify your text. But don't overdo it, consider just refering back to it.
Perhaps you can give a sort of outline figure when explaining the model, and give a more detailed version to hang your framework on it.
Upvotes: 0
|
2015/11/04
| 457
| 1,909
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a grad student, graduating in the spring. In my application for postdocs, I include a cover letter that lists faculty members I want to work with. If there is one person that I am really interested in working with, should I just list that person? Or should I add another so that I sound open to working with other people too. More generally, if there isn't one specific person I am interested in, how many people should I list? How many is too many?<issue_comment>username_1: At least in mathematics, I would recommend something like:
"I am especially interested in working with X, as her research in Y overlaps with my interests in Z and W. I would also look forward to interacting with V and U, as their work is also related to my interests in T."
This might be different in fields where mentorship is less fluid (e.g., the laboratory sciences, if you would choose one faculty member's lab to work in).
Indeed, in my own postdoc, I learned a great deal from my formal mentor -- and I also learned a lot from his colleagues in his research group.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As @username_1 says, you can certainly name several potential advisors, but *not* too many (it surely depends on how many people at the target department are working in closely enough related fields, or work together as a team in charge of a lab) and, like @username_1 says, make clear *why* you are interested in each one. No, you aren't interested in all fields, at least not enough to do your thesis.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: The mathjobs.org description for the University of British Columbia reads "The cover letter should give the names of up to three UBC faculty members whose research interests are closest to the applicant's." This is probably a good general rule: If any faculty members names are listed in the cover letter, there should be at most three.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/11/04
| 1,150
| 4,758
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<issue_start>username_0: I am currently a math PhD student, and will be graduating next spring.
If I'm applying for a position at small liberal arts college, what should my research statement look like? How detailed and how long should it be? I have heard/read that small liberal arts colleges are focused on undergraduate research. I am wondering how much of my own research I should talk about in the research statement. Should I go into as much detail as I would in the research statement for a postdoc?
(My advisor has never worked at a liberal arts college, so he doesn't really know the answer to this question.)<issue_comment>username_1: Your research statement does not need to be exhaustive, but it should give enough information that the reader will be able to see clearly two or three concrete examples of ways you could incorporate undergrads into your research program. This might require rethinking your plans somewhat.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I have worked both in academia and in the industry (currently). The best way to set yourself apart is to relate what you have done or what you're planning to do to the things being done in the place of your prospective employment. In your case, you can do a bit of research on the specific research projects that the undergrads are doing and point out how your current or future research might result in similar projects. Concrete examples work best. You should also try to figure out who will be reading your research statement and what language to use. The more people can understand it (without watering down the essence) the better. You can also reach out to their recent math hires (perhaps through intermediaries) to get more reliable info.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I don't know why @username_1’s answer was downvoted. I teach mathematics at a liberal arts college, and when we hire, a detailed research statement is not very important, but a research area that has the possibility of involving students is a plus, and we’d like to hear about how you might do that. But chances are good that no one in the (very small, teaching-focused) department will be well-informed about your specific area to be interested in great detail.
What I look at first is the cover letter. If it’s nothing more than a summary of your CV, and/or mostly about research, my interest is diminished. If it’s not well-written (good communication skills matter, even in the math department) I’m worried. But if it elaborates sincerely and believably on “Your position interests me because I want to teach at a liberal arts college. Here’s why.” If it shows you did your homework and know some particular things about my university that attract you (and I don’t mean generic praise for “our excellent reputation” and “strong department”) I’m more interested.
We (I don’t know about all liberal arts colleges, but I might speak for many) want great teachers who will remain professionally active and engaged in their discipline, but that can be interpreted broadly and doesn’t have to include a fancy research program. We also like colleagues who are interested in other disciplines. Maybe you’re a world-class analyst, but we’d rather hear you tell us about the time you helped an art student study perspective for her thesis than tell us about your improved bound for some well-known (to analysts in your area) asymptotic formula, not that there’s anything wrong with that. We’d rather read your thoughtful blog on teaching or frequent, patient and carefully written answers on math.stackexchange.com, too.
Related to your question is the issue of recommendation letters. All too often we get letters for new R1 Ph.D.'s that go on and on about research and assume we know all the best young recent Ph.D.s from that school (“Janet’s research is comparable to ”) and then barely mention teaching (“She gave a seminar talk that was very good,” or “She spends a lot of time with students during office hours.”) This, even though we ask for letters that specifically address teaching excellence or potential. Tell your letter-writers that you want them to address your creativity, your ability to explain, your cross-disciplinary interests, and so on. Perhaps even choose teachers you think you did great homework or exams with, or ones you T.A.’d for. Even a letter from a LAC faculty member who finished a few years before you, knew you well in graduate school, and has kept in touch with you.
Honestly, I find it incredible (not in a good way) that so many R1 senior faculty think the research-focused letters they write will be helpful at places like LACs. It’s more understandable that applicants don’t know what we want, but asking, like you’re doing here, is a great idea.
Upvotes: 4
|
2015/11/05
| 1,818
| 7,272
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<issue_start>username_0: Today, a very respected professor of ours, uttered a scattering reply that instilled within the hearts of my colleagues greasy distaste for him.
It all started when one colleague of mine, when the topic had dramatically went from discussing physics to discussing the potential of a 21st century physicist to imitate the work of Newton/Einstein, asked the question "Is it possible for a lone wolf to exist in today's era, a lone wolf who can give us revolutionary insight onto nature?", and suddenly as this question ended, another colleague could not maintain patience and asked in succession, "Are all of us capable of revolutionizing physics, just through hard work, creativity and extreme diligence? Or perhaps, is this ability rare and impossible to achieve?"
My professor smiled and said what would later lead us to contemplate the idea of reporting him to the department;
>
> Einstein and Newton were godlike geniuses. They had it by birth, and it was something which cannot be obtained by practice. I am sure that there are many geniuses today, perhaps more than ever, but none of them is a godlike genius. You have Witten, Hawking, Hamed and many others, but I think they can be considered to be ***extraordinary*** geniuses perhaps, but ***not godlike.*** And regarding whether a single individual can revolutionize physics today, yes.
>
>
>
He continued;
>
> That is possible but unlikely, just as it was possible but unlikely for somebody to revolutionize physics before Einstein published his papers in 1905. But for many reasons, I believe that if such a lone wolf would exist, he would not revolutionize physics within academia but rather outside it. Academia has too much noise for him to do so. And regarding the fact that physics is now too vast of a field to revolutionize single-handedly, I think this too is misplaced. Only 45% of it you need to revolutionize physics.
>
>
> In fact, I believe it is impossible for one to turn physics upside down within academia. None of you will ever revolutionize physics, but do not be disheartened, for only one within a billion men are capable of doing so. But what you can do, what we can do, is that we can atleast contribute, however minor it may be, so that it may be a part of some other revolutionary work.
>
>
>
Yes, I agree it is extremely difficult, to a degree where it becomes almost possible, for "normal geniuses" like me and everybody else in academy today, to revolutionize physics single-handedly but this put off some students in the class, and it effected me too.
For example, he said that only "one in a trillion men" are capable of revolutionizing physics, excluding women, and there were 4 female students present who got very angry at the end of the class, saying things like "A sexist idiot!", "What does he know?!", "Women are as capable of doing good physics as men, what he says is nonsense."
The female students were mainly suggesting that we should report the "sexist" to the department, but not only them, many male students were too saying so. Almost all of the class is angry, which I believe only for the "You will never revolutionize physics." remark.
It could be true, perhaps it IS true, but what should be done about it? Should it be just pushed aside? Or should it be reported?
And I must also add here that the professor is very famous and respected and if you are in physics, you probably know him. We were all surprised to hear such a thing from him.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Is it acceptable for a professor to claim that his students will never
> revolutionize the field?
>
>
>
Yes. He was clearly expressing his opinion. This is what we do in academia. If you are so soft and fragile that hearing one man's opinion that you disagree with causes you such extreme discomfort, I suggest that you go and find yourself an occupation where one does not encounter a diversity of opinions on a daily basis.
>
> It could be true, perhaps it IS true, but what should be done about
> it? Should it be just pushed aside? Or should it be reported?
>
>
>
Who would you report it to? The thought police?
My suggestion: be the change you want to see in the world; go out there and prove him wrong! Revolutionize physics yourself, and then you'll laugh at this small and silly man who had no imagination. And if it turns out he was correct after all, then you will still have a lot of fun and discover some cool things. Not everyone needs to be a Newton or an Einstein.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Is it acceptable for a professor to claim that his students will never revolutionize the field?
>
>
>
**It all depends on the point of view.**
I really came to love the 'dent hypothesis'.
You can make a difference only in a *very small field* which for you will be the world.
Human knowledge simply progressed over the point that you could just throw everything upside down but you can certainly advance a part of it.
To you - to everybody else in that part - it will look like a big part of the world.
I found it best visually described in this comic by Dr. Might - though you could discuss the actual size of the dent you can make and when exactly you can make it:
<http://matt.might.net/articles/phd-school-in-pictures/>
Reading between the lines of the question as a whole one could guess the overall motivation of those young students in this context would most likely be to go in for a career. This almost always fails since the intrinsics of that motivation will change as the person gets older. As the question now suggests, this hasn't been factored in.
Please also see a very good example of this by Dr. Might in his follow-up post:
<http://matt.might.net/articles/tenure/>
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: This is exactly why physicists today desperately need to incorporate the history and philosophy of science into their education. To claim that Newton and Einstien were 'godlike geniuses the likes of which only occur with a 1 in a billion likelihood' reveals an incredibly naive understanding of how science actually unfolds. These characters are romanticized long after their deaths and the portrayal of these men is one of a cult of personality.
The reality is that **nobody revolutionizes physics by themselves**. Period. Does that deny the existence of geniuses in the field? Hardly. But much more important is recognizing that a revolutionary idea is revolutionary only if it is incorporated into the main body of scientific knowledge. Any work that significantly deviates from the norm is usually rejected. Put another way, there are undoubtedly thousands of papers that could have completely 'revolutionized' physics had they been produced under different circumstances.
You should read *The Structure of Scientific Revolutions* by <NAME>. And so should your prof. One of the main takeaways is that scientists continuously rewrite history to further the narratives of their textbooks. I'll end with one example. Everyone credits Boltzmann for having invented statistical mechanics and defended atomism (in physics!) long before anybody else. But this was a very minority view, and the exclusion that he felt from his peers contributed hugely to his suicide.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: Until now I've been completely focussed on research. I did serve as teaching assistant on some occasions, but I must honestly admit that I didn't give it much thought and my only concerns have been:
* being clear and detailed (and slightly slow) in explanations;
* being available for further clarifications;
* being fair (and not particularly harsh) in evaluations.
These are, I guess, the characteristics that *I* value the most in a teacher. However, now, teaching will be a more prominent part of my career (although *not at all the most* prominent) and I will be assumed to have a sound "teaching philosophy". So I'd like to ask to experienced faculty (and also to students):
>
> **What is the role of a teacher of mathematics at university level?**
>
>
> What are the traits that are most commonly associated to good teachers? Should I read some research papers on pedagogy to find answers the question above and prepare myself to be a better teacher (and in the future also a good advisor and mentor)? Which ones do you suggest?
>
>
> What research papers on pedagogy can I read in order to develop a "scientifically sound" point of view when it comes to grading, course design, presenting to students, solving exercises in class, and other aspects of a teacher's life?
>
>
>
---
I prefer to post this question here rather than on *Mathematics Educators Stack Exchange* because I really welcome remarks and answers from scholars (and students) working in other fieds too.<issue_comment>username_1: As a student (of courses in mathematics) I really most enjoyed when the teacher had good pedagogical skills - being able to give "Ahaa" moments in their explanations when stuck on a problem and actually "see the connections" between the theory from the lectures and the workbook problems to solve. This can of course be achieved in several ways - drawing good parallels, by showing other well-chosen examples which aid the bottom-line understanding. I have not taken any courses on pedagogy but perhaps try to find out how countries with working educational systems do. Finland is one example of such.
A pedagogue should know and have true interest in optimizing the exchange of knowledge and understanding from lectures/classes to students. I am sure there are tons of material on techniques for memorization/understanding/maintaining or planting seeds of enthusiasm and learning interest/cognitive theories etc. Sometimes the solutions are simple, sometimes not, but let me bring an example:
The brain (especially a tired student's one) needs to be activated to actually learn/understand and create new neuron connections). There are many ways this can be achieved, but keep in mind /why/ I remembered the following:
We had a lecturer who, when some really important concept to understand and remember was about to be explained, brought out an arsenal of different tricks. One time he had a bike with the steering wheel connected to the back wheel which everyone who dared could try during the break and which the lecturer himself tried out several times. Yes, people sat up straight, started laughing and they immediately had the focus on the lecturer and the bike. That focus then remained for 10-15min, enough time for him to present the very important concept he had in mind. And I had no trouble remembering or understanding it, because the brain is associative and every event and data which is presented before us while something out-of-the-ordinary happens will have /much/ greater chances to be remembered - that info might be important, so that's why the brain tries to suck it up and absorb like a sponge.
Do not make the classes too monotonic. People cannot keep their concentration for too long anyway (there is much research done at this point too) and it is very enjoyable for the brain to alternate the way it learns. Like, reading theory for a while, then watching a video clip where more is explained and shown in a multi-media fashion, then the teacher may continue on the problem on the board etc.
The bottom line: Just sitting in the same way doing math is great at some times (like when at home in the kitchen with a large cup of tea, with no crowds of people walking about etc so that you can really concentrate for hours) but at the University class where you actually have access to a teacher for help, that time should be used with care to address the ways people learn and avoid the pitfalls which make their brains ignore new incoming information.
Most importantly I think that teachers and lecturers should have a deeper level of communication and both should be well-informed of what was said and done on teh lecture as well as the mathematics class afterwards. This is something I really missed when studying (not too many years ago, got my degree in 2011). It really seemed that way too often "the left hand/right part of brain did not know what the right hand/left part of brain was up to" at the University. Poor intercommunication between lecturers/teachers/students, low level of feedback possibilities from students and student rarely had any non-imaginary possibility to influence the course - it was always like "thanks for your feedback (if any), we will try to address this for the upcoming years.." Yay :/
Another problem that I often scratched my head about was that every lecturer/teacher (especially lecturer) always thought that their course /was the most important course and the only course (worth to concentrate on) for the students. While in fact as a student you probably have three or four simultaneous courses and all are equally important. Basically, attitude. Attitude does a whole lot!
When I had to go to the lecture where I knew that the lecturer enjoyed tormenting the students instead of working /with/ them, I had a completely negative setting in the brain even before the class/lecture...affecting the knowledge exchange very negatively of course.
The above are just feedback, "a student's diary" if you will, from IRL and not anything I have looked up officially or anything like that.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm a student. I have always wanted to be a researcher/scientist cum professor all my life. The following are the qualities I would like to be instilled in me (and a few which didn't turn out the way I expected from a teacher) as a teacher at a university level. Note that some of the points are applicable for teachers in general and some specifically for math teachers.
(The following are in no order of preference)
* One of the most important things that a teacher must do is to **use the blackboard and more than you use a powerpoint**. There is some kind of magic related to using the board for math. One of my professors used to use powerpoints for his classes, and most of the time students (including me) fell asleep.
* **If** in case you do **want or have** to use powerpoints, then [make sure to create animations like the ones here](https://class.coursera.org/calcsing-005/lecture/preview). One of the fascinating things about those animations is how perfectly it fits to capture a person's attention.
* **Encourage** students to use **online resources** like [OCW MIT](http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm). When I was in my university (graduated this year), neither did I have internet connection, nor was I aware of such a resource online. Encourage and suggest MOOCs from [Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/), [edX](https://www.edx.org/), etc. which might be relevant to your course. It is not *necessary* that they should register/complete every single course or resource. Give them two or three options and ask them to pick one.
* **Make it an active class.** And make it fun too. I learnt a lot from [<NAME>](http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/mathematics/18-06-linear-algebra-spring-2010/video-lectures/) and [<NAME>](https://see.stanford.edu/Course/CS106A). Be enthusiastic in class, that will help students get out of their tiredness. You can also **toss out chocolates** like Sahami does **when students answer/ask questions.**
* **Solve problems in class** - either *all types* of the same level (easy/medium/hard) or *one type* with all the levels, going from the easiest to the hardest. The point is to make sure they understand the problem solving process. In addition, solve example problems from the textbook or handout **and** for every example problem, give them a problem to solve either in class or as an ungraded homework. This makes sure they are actually doing something in a math class rather than just trying to consume the knowledge passively.
* Make sure the **subject** you're taking **can be related to other majors and fields.** Most of the technical subjects have some variation of mathematics being used in them. Take [Calculus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus#Applications). It is used everywhere, even when we think we don't need it. I always thought it was used only in continuous domains, mostly in physics and not at all in any other fields. [I was](https://www.quora.com/What-topics-in-Computer-Science-make-use-of-Calculus) [mistaken](http://www.brynmawr.edu/math/people/vandiver/BiologicalapplicationstoincorporateintoCalculus.htm). You don't have to make this a mainstream for your class. Maybe as an ungraded homework or just a casual mention when the relevant topic comes up is enough to keep the spark up.
* **Go a bit beyond the syllabus.** I know this will be hard, but, just a bit will be enough. It may involve deeper concepts, real world applications, etc. That is up to you to choose. Personally, I have always found it beneficial for me to learn a bit more than what is needed so that I won't be caught off guard during exams. This also helps students if they wished to pursue higher levels of the course possibly leading to research.
* **Have a review class before exams.** <NAME>'s lectures had reviews for midterm and the finals. It sort of helps to review everything in class rather than spending extra time apart from the newer material to be learnt the day before exams.
* Inform students **exactly how many hours they'd need to spend on an avg outside class**. I wound up with terrible time management because I had no idea how to allot the required time for each course. This led me to focus on subjects I loved and got better grades and subjects I didn't find interesting for which I didn't spend time - and I flunked in them. Huge mistake.
* Use **standard textbooks**, especially the ones which have 4 and above ratings on amazon. Ask students if they liked a different textbook, and if it is a better suited one, then switch. Don't use textbooks which you find personally attractive.
* If it is not a problem with your university rules, **make sure attendance isn't compulsory.** There will be at least one or two students who might find attending lectures boring. To counter that effect, make sure you deliver *incredible* lectures that makes students feel *want* to attend rather than *have* to attend. In my university 80% was mandatory and I found it a huge waste of time for most of my classes.
* Make sure **problem sets contain all *levels*** of problems. It helps students to practice properly. This increases confidence. In addition, don't pick problems from the prescribed textbook. Just pick another textbook and give them the problems to solve. For math, I'm sure there are numerous books and resources online.
* Identify the distribution of students in your class. There will be one/two/a few *gifted* students in your class. Maybe conduct a simple quiz at the end of week 1 or 2 to find out who they are. (I find it hard to explain it in words) As a teacher, *you will **know** who these people are*. Now, chances are that they might be bored if the class feels too easy. In this case, add extension problems which are very very challenging. These can be ungraded, but interesting to solve. These *gifted* students will *always* go out of their way to solve them. This ensures that their skills don't rust away with time. Another horrible experience of mine.
* **Rehearse** for every class you take, fully. Practice. If it is a 50 min lecture, give a 50 min lecture to the empty hall. <NAME> used to do this for every lecture he gave (he quoted in an interview somewhere on OCW or YouTube, not sure where).
These are the ones off the top of my head. Hopefully, these are enough.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Like you describe, I spent my time through to the end of my post-doc position focusing heavily on reseach, and in teaching thinking about the sorts of things you list. I have spent the year-and-a-half since then looking for answers to your question. I don't think I have learned everything I need to yet, but unless you are teaching top students I believe that the things you list are really not sufficient to teach mathematics well at undergraduate level, if you want to achieve anything beyond rote memorization.
One good source I suggest for starting to understand relevant issues is [Ideas from mathematics Education](http://homepages.lboro.ac.uk/%7Emalja/Home_files/Alcock_Simpson_book.pdf) by Alcock and Simpson (it's based on UK teaching, but the concepts are pretty applicable anywhere). It helps to describe something of how undergraduate mathematics look to students, which is very different to how you are likely to see it as a research mathematician.
Another book I have been finding helpful is [Mathematics Teaching Practice](http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1898563799?keywords=mathematics%20teaching%20practice%20mason&qid=1447519657&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1) by <NAME>. It has lots of specific ideas for different aspects of mathematics teaching, as well as more general theory.
Although education literature for other disciplines can be helpful, I would advise focusing on the mathematics literature first, as many of the things considered good practice in other subjects do not translate well to mathematics.
In terms of what things you need to think about, here are a couple of ideas I've come across so far:
1. definitions:
Students generally do not understand the role of definitions in mathematics because it differs from how definitions function in society. Many will focus on their intuitive idea of an object, thinking this is enough to get by, without noticing when they are likely to fall into traps. However, they are on the whole not very good at building this intuition themselves, so need you to guide them through concrete examples. They are also likely to not identify what aspects of examples are general and which are specific to the case at hand.
Others will work just from the string of mathematical symbols in a definition. This means they don't necessarily have the understanding needed to identify when they have written the definition down wrong.
The students who do best are those who manage to link the intuition with the formal definition and combine the advantages of each.
2. reading:
Initially students are very poor at reading mathematics. They tend to focus on the mathematical symbols, and ignore the logic. They are also prone to thinking that being able to read something is the same as understanding it, and so will often prefer to read the answer rather than work at finding it themselves.
3. the nature of mathematics:
Many students who arrive at university, at least in the UK, are used to mathematics as the practice of applying prescribed algorithms to numbers, resulting in the correct answer. The change in aim at university can come as a(n unwelcome) shock, or can pass them by so that they are trying to achieve something very different to what you are trying to teach them.
4. methods of learning:
What students like best and what helps students learn do not always coincide.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: So I am applying to a research group in Quantum Optics and Quantum
Information. The professor has asked for my research interests and why I would like to join his group. My research interests are in the same field that he is researching but is not exactly to the point. For example, someone might be researching on the shape and size of the apple but I'm interested in the color and taste. We are still researching in the same field and I am also interested in doing my phd in the project he's working on.
How do I express my research interests in this situation? Also, when someone asks "why are you interested in joining my research group", what are the usual points or aspects you talk about?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> When someone asks, why are you interested in joining my research group, what are the usual points or aspects you talk about?
>
>
>
You have to read up on what the PI and the postdoc(s) and the students are doing and read some publications. Then when you are asked that question, you can say what you found interesting or exciting about what is being done in that group.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Depends on the person who you are talking to. In a research group which is not exceedingly interdisciplinary/varied, it might deviate from what your professor is looking for and thus it might be a downside for the person who is evaluating the applications. If the group is searching for variety, it might be beneficial to state the different fields in which you are interested.
In a more practical way, look to the research group itself (and, as @username_1 just mentioned, their publications): if it is way too large and its publications are wide-ranged in topic, it might not be a disadvantage and it can definitely turn the balance in your favor. Nevertheless take a good look into their research fields! If they are concentrated in a single topic, it might be good to introduce the difference in scope *after* you are used to how does that particular research group work.
Anyhow, never be too specific: the field you are speaking of has a lot of interesting research opportunities and you can end up researching a field you had no idea you were interested in.
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<issue_start>username_0: Let there be some professor who whole-heartedly supported your application to some position in academia; let the decision be a rejection. Then what is a wise way and the right timing to inform the professor of this matter?
I think: if I inform the professor right after I am aware of the decision, then I may hurt his/her feeling, because he/she was for me; if I inform him/her later, then the same concern takes place and I cannot justify why I procrastinated letting him/her know it. Moreover, I am not quite sure what is a wise way to draft such an email.
I know that there is no "the" right timing; I just want to know a win-win timing, so to speak.
Thank you for taking time to share your wisdom.<issue_comment>username_1: I believe you're over-thinking it. Send an email at some point within a month of the decision, saying "Many thanks for your support; unfortunately I did not succeed."
If you have a particularly close relationship with the professor, you might ask for advice or suggestions on how your application could improve next time, but that's not necessary; just thanks and an update is polite and professional.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> I think: if I inform the professor right after I am aware of the decision, then I may hurt his/her feeling, because he/she was for me; if I inform him/her later, then the same concern takes place and I cannot justify why I procrastinated letting him/her know it.
>
>
>
You shouldn't worry about this at all:
1. Faculty members generally aren't particularly emotionally invested in these decisions. For the students involved, they feel (and in fact are) incredibly weighty, but faculty members are involved in dozens of cases per year, so they get some good news and some bad news and it all averages out emotionally.
2. Even if this professor is unusually emotionally invested in the outcome, delaying reporting the result won't make it better. They might end up feeling unhappy with the unfairness of life or the poor decision-making skills of whoever turned down your application, but they won't be upset with or disappointed in you, so there's no reason to worry or delay.
I'd recommend just letting your letter writers know when you find out, without stressing out about when or how you tell them. You could just forward the rejection e-mail with a brief note (such as the "Many thanks for your support; unfortunately I did not succeed." suggested by username_1).
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I would be surprised if the professor felt anything other than bad for you about your rejection, after all, for every n people seeking a position, n-1 will be rejected. As n is often >> 2, it is far more common for people to be rejected than to be accepted. People who write letters of recommendation realize that the rejection is not aimed at them, nor at you. The fact is, only one person can take one position. Rejection is more common than not.
Also, while I think it is great that you are such an empathetic person, you have to realize you can't hope to shield everybody you care for from the truth. After all, science is about the truth. It is only from failures and mistakes that we learn.
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<issue_start>username_0: My second supervisor suggested that I add a final paragraph in my Relevant Work chapter which essentially explains why the discussed work is related to my own. I wrote the paragraph which explains this but also how my work differed from the discussed literature.
What should I call it? I stand at "Relation to my work" at the moment.
If more info is needed, please let me know.<issue_comment>username_1: Why do you think it needs a title? You can just leave it as another paragraph in the same section.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If it's just a paragraph, then it probably doesn't need its own section title. You can leave it just as "a final paragraph", which is apparently what your second supervisor requested.
If it is more substantial than just one paragraph (maybe three or more), then it might deserve a section title. In that case, I would probably name it something like "Distinctiveness of [my work]". (I personally think literally writing "my work" is rather informal language for a scholarly work, but that's up to you and your supervisors to decide.) Note that rather than titling it "relatedness", I recommend you title it "distinctiveness"--you want to emphasize how your work is different from otherwise related work and how it goes beyond it.
Upvotes: 1 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: Where can I find information about the demographics about previous majors of Finance/Econ PhD applicants to US schools?
I mainly want to know what are their undergraduate/graduate majors. I assume most of them would be Econ/Finance major, but how many actually comes from a different major? How many of them carries a math double major?
Even information of a particular school would be helpful.<issue_comment>username_1: Why do you think it needs a title? You can just leave it as another paragraph in the same section.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If it's just a paragraph, then it probably doesn't need its own section title. You can leave it just as "a final paragraph", which is apparently what your second supervisor requested.
If it is more substantial than just one paragraph (maybe three or more), then it might deserve a section title. In that case, I would probably name it something like "Distinctiveness of [my work]". (I personally think literally writing "my work" is rather informal language for a scholarly work, but that's up to you and your supervisors to decide.) Note that rather than titling it "relatedness", I recommend you title it "distinctiveness"--you want to emphasize how your work is different from otherwise related work and how it goes beyond it.
Upvotes: 1 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: Having taught calculus for several semesters, I've noticed that the number of students attending lectures are gradually declining (especially for the 9am session). I would not be worried if they have learned the material by themselves so don't see the need of coming; However looking at their exam scores I concluded that a lot of them are not doing so well in the class when they miss lectures.
So what are some good ways to keep students coming to lectures?<issue_comment>username_1: Here are my suggestions:
1. Make sure your lectures actually add something to their learning experience. Ask one of your coworkers or someone from the teaching support center (if you have one of those) to come watch a class every now and then and give you feedback on how to improve. (Even if you are a teaching super star, there is always something you can improve.)
2. Take 5 minutes to ask the students to fill in anonymous "exit tickets" with three questions: Something you should keep doing, something you should stop doing and something you should start doing. This should be done in class after a few weeks, but before the attendance starts dropping. Actually follow any reasonable suggestions.
3. Over the long term, create a scatter plot of number of lectures attended versus final grade. If your lectures are useful, then there will be a strong positive correlation between the two. Show students the plot during the first class every semester and tell them to make their own decision about attending or not.
4. If you really want to *make* them attend class, schedule daily quizzes that account for some not insignificant percentage of the grade. If they don't attend class, they receive a zero.
5. Remember that your students are adults. They are responsible for their own learning, and if they decide to sleep in rather than come to class no matter what you do, that's still their choice and their responsibility. You can't force them to attend. If your lectures add value, and they still choose not to attend, that's ultimately their problem.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Pop quizzes! Make participation a part of the grade. And tell students that the tests will include material taught in class, not just in the book.
The classes I was most motivated to attend in college were ones in which the professor performed example problems that closely resembled the problems to appear on midterms. After the first midterm, pretty much the whole class realized the easiest way to do well on tests was to attend and take good notes. If any of us missed class, we would collaborate (i.e. scramble) to get notes from one another on the missed lecture. The students ended up bonding and cooperating to study together too, which was crucial in an engineering major!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Just wanted to add my 2 cents:
I had a professor who played one of his and ours (the students) choice of music 15 minutes before the lecture started. I liked that a lot.
I find the best lectures are the ones where the professor tells small anecdotes that may or may not be related to the curriculum. It may just be a few minutes or so, but I find it to be a nice break and you get the feeling that it's really just another human being standing there instead of some robot going through a book. Bonus if it's a funny story.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: You're asking the wrong question. It's not about getting students to come to lectures but getting them to understand calculus.
If you need them to show up for some reason, irrespective of their learning, just mandate a 10% grade attendance policy. If you'd like ideas to help them learn calculus, edit your question accordingly.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: As a student at university I took a module on proposition logic which looked into Calculus. Our class behaved in a similar manner as yours. I would suggest using real life example of use of Calculus which can relate to students. Also I ask myself why am I studying this? as student can't see the relations to computer science so making the relations more clear would keep them interested. I learned using YouTube and a few books as the formal notation which is show in class puts me off, maybe just teaching the method first then introducing notation will make it more fun. These are my personal thought which I can relate to hope this helps.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I answer this from the point of view of a student. One approach that is NOT a good way to accomplish this goal is to make attendance mandatory. Courses with such policies have a very strong correlation to problems in all the other areas mentioned in other answers to thie question.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: I'm a bit suprised that no-one else seems to have said: make sure the lectures are different to the online/handout material.
If you put up slides that the students can read online not at the lecture, and work off them, you are just inviting them to do this "more efficiently" themselves.
Make the lecture an interesting and valuable exposition on the material in the handouts/online material. Add value to those materials. "Here's something I think you might struggle with in the material" and explain it in a different way.
Then your students have twice the opportunity to learn: the way it is in the online/handouts and the way it is in the lecture. Those who want to learn will soon find that your lectures are a worthwhile and irreplaceable addition to to what they can do themselves without attending.
The only lectures I ever skipped in my time at Uni were the ones read off the slides.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: From my experience as a student, I can suggest you:
1. Don't be just the lecturer. Make the lectures interactive and fun, not only about the material you teach. Add something to the lecture that is interesting and cannot be found in the lecture notes (for example, if you teach something abstract, try to make people understand where is that useful).
2. Make jokes. They are a nice way to make people relax and wake up if they are asleep.
3. Make them curious in a similar way the movie series make us want to see the next episode. If your lectures are recorded, try watching them and asking yourself if you have the same curiosity you get at the end of an episode of a movie series to see the next one.
4. Don't try to teach them everything. One of my best lecturers has very short lectures. And he is doing a good job since he has our full attention for 20 minutes or so, time when he presents the core ideas and says a few words about how it can be extending, letting us study the details on our own. And, in my opinion, this is a way better approach than lecturing for 60 minutes and nobody paying attention.
5. Don't make the lectures compulsory. They will come and sleep.
6. Be friendly. If you are lucky enough, you could get to know few good students better and be able to ask them in an informal environment for some advice about the lecture. Personally, I would be more open for a discussion like this if the lecturer manages to make me feel comfortable than to some piece of paper that ensures my anonymity.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: I'm answering this as a student.
Following some extra courses, it sometimes isn't possible (for me) to attend every lecture. Because of cases like this, **it should be possible to follow a course without attending lectures**. If you tell something that's not in the book, please publish slides or lecture notes. Please don't give quizzes or don't let them count to the final grade. Giving a bonus could be okay, but still it should be possible to get all points without coming to class.
One of the courses I have followed recently had two blocks of two hours and didn't devote one to tutorial and one to lecture, what is common here, he devoted the first hour of every block to a tutorial session and the second to the lecture. This made the lecture less long for some people, and both the lecture and the tutorial sessions are attended better than similar courses. It of course depends on your course setup if this could work.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: The "obvious" solution is to find a way to incorporate attendance into grades. This has some disadvantages (it takes time and effort and is paternalistic), but for some classes it's the right solution.
There are a number of ways to do this which may be appropriate for different situations:
* Literally write down who's there, of course
* Have an in class quiz. (In a class where the pre-class reading was particularly important, I found this useful---it not only automatically took attendance, but it also gave quick feedback to me and them on how well they'd understood the pre-class work, and served as a transition from the pre-class work to what we were doing in class.)
* If quizzes every day take up too much time, a few unannounced random quizzes have the same incentive.
* If technological solutions are an option, using "clickers" to have students answer questions during class can be incidentally used to take attendance. (You could treat participation in the question as showing attendance, and not grade based on whether they get it right, which is often appropriate for such questions.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_11: **Academic literature**
A [study](http://www.researchgate.net/profile/John_Foltz/publication/227463087_Evaluation_of_Factors_Influencing_Student_Class_Attendance_and_Performance/links/54178c880cf2f48c74a40be3.pdf) found that "motivation, prior GPA, self-financing by students, hours worked on jobs, quality of teaching, and nature of class lectures" to be significant factors influencing attendance. Let's focus on the latter two.
**Quality of Teaching**
It sounds like you are a new educator at the university level. In my opinion, the think the single biggest thing you can do to improve your lectures is to prepare them well. Most of us could teach, say, factoring quadratics, in our sleep. That easily leads to little to no preparation, especially when there's other work we feel we must do. Unfortunately, just because we're clever enough to lecture extemporaneously, doesn't mean we do it well. I have found the quality of my preparation has the greatest effect on the quality of my lectures.
As you prepare on lectures, try to develop empathy. Ask yourself: where will students struggle? How can I can help them understand the difficult parts? Your ability to prepare lectures well will improve with practice, so work hard at it.
Try to bring your passion into the lecture. Some teachers yell and jump around, others are quiet and careful, but every great teacher I've ever seen brings their passion for the material into the lecture. Work to give your students a taste of the power and beauty of mathematics.
**Type of lecture**
How can you design your lecture to increase attendance? Engage the students in work of learning actively. A few things I have seen used with success:
* Give students a problem and few minutes to work it out. Ask students to share and discuss their solutions.
* Put students in groups, and have each group work on a challenging problem together. This works best if the problems are on the board so that each group is standing and working a section of the board.
* Begin each class with a short quiz. Make it easy problems related to the previous day's lecture, but award no partial credit so you can grade them in a minute.
* If the lecture is large, consider using clickers for quick quizzes during your lecture.
* Use the [Socratic Method](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socratic_method).
* While difficult to get right, you might consider using a [flipped classroom](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flipped_classroom), where students watch recorded lectures outside of class and work problems in class.
If you design your lectures to include learning activities, you can grade students based on their participation and performance, and this encourages them to attend. Allow some grace: students may sometimes be preventing from attending by illness, work, childcare, etc.
Work to create a social fabric that enmeshes the students. Learn their names. Ask and answer questions. If they know that they will be missed (by their peers and by you), they will be far more likely to attend.
Why bother working on attendance? The above-mentioned study found "strong empirical evidence of the positive influence of class attendance on student performance."
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_12: Let's assume that your lectures are as polished as you can make them, that you teach passionately and in an engaging fashion, that you have active-learning in-class exercises (which is, thankfully, trivially easy in a math class), etc. Then I'll be somewhat contrarian and say that it might be best to not worry about student attendance; they have to meet you at least halfway and that's the part that's their responsibility.
I teach at a large open-admissions urban community college, and many of our students are poorly prepared for college work. I could and have in the past made attendance mandatory, assessed points for it, ejected students with over-absences, etc. But what I found was that I then had numerous surly, combative, argumentative students in the room just barely complying with that requirement, and more-or-less sabotaging the learning process of the other students (talking, playing music, laughing at students asking questions, egging other students into fights with me, etc.).
By lifting those requirements, I have lower day-to-day attendance numbers, but what I find is that the quality of the learning has gone up. The students in the room are highly motivated, they are engaged, and the level of our discussions is much higher. I have more time to spend on individual inquiries and work. I don't spend time on attendance or tardiness arguments (in-class or after-the-fact). I don't have any saboteur students. I am personally much happier specifically due to the higher level of mathematics conversation. If a student really doesn't want to be there, then it's a good thing for them to not be there.
I actually say on the first day that statistics show that regular attendance is the #1 best practice and predictor of success in a college math class. And then I let them take responsibility for how they act on that information. Give regular assessments (for me: weekly online quizzes and monthly tests) so that students can check and re-align how their study habits are working for them. Be clear and transparent about grading protocols, and don't scale any tests just due to low class performance. Around the midterm (2nd test), I have a number of heartfelt conversations with individual students about why they're not succeeding on tests, and what in their life needs to be re-prioritized to reverse that. But having a small, focused, motivated number of college students in the room is no bad thing.
(P.S.: I have had a small number of winter-session trigonometry classes at 8 AM in which I started lecturing to an empty room, and when students started showing up they could catch up based on what was on the board.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_13: I am a visual learner - I learn by reading and doing, and not by listening. The ***first*** thing I do on a new purchase is read the manual; then play with the controls; then read the manual again while playing with the controls. Take no offence, but recognize that most lectures are consequently a complete waste of my time, for most of their length. Only the most spectacular lecturers will **say** anything of true value to my learning process more than a few times a semester.
I also have dysgraphia, making it extremely difficult to take legible notes. Not only is my writing painfully hard to read, I can write (cursive) only as fast as most people print. In 4 years of undergrad and 3.5 years of post-grad studies, plus four years of part-time study to get my CPA CGA designation, I took meaningful notes for only 4 half courses given by truly superb lecturers who kept their notes concise; wrote them on the board clearly; and spoke to them after presenting them. Those notes I still have nearly 4 decades later.
So, if you want the attendance of someone with my learning disability you must not only add true value beyond what is available in the text books, you must write it clearly on the blackboard; **before you speak to it**. If you merely state your contribution to my learning I might as well be in Timbuktu. If you speak and then write I again might as well be in Timbuktu. For me to learn I absolutely must be able to read the material before it is spoken to. Any lecturer who insists on revealing his slides bullet-point at a time, after speaking to them, is not only wasting my time, he is ***deliberately*** wasting my time. I am likely to be spotted throwing paper airplanes at this lecturer.
I actually attended most lectures while at university, but was much more likely to be reading the text or looking at the pretty girls than actually paying attention. I am too much of a control freak to risk missing an announcement regarding exam contents or assignment due dates, but don't mistake my casual attendance with actually paying attention to a mediocre lecture.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_14: Here are my answers (mostly from my experience), and by the way, the other answers above and below too are gems of knowledge worth any teacher's time (I have already made a note of all of them :)) -
**1) Make sure you are teaching what students will find useful, and show them *how / why* this will be useful. Show them its relevance.**
(If you feel it is not, you need to ask yourself why you are teaching it in the first place. And yes - it can come in the exam is as excellent a reason as "you will end up using this in your first year at work when xxxx happens")
**2) Use Von Restroff effect to your advantage.**
Every 10-15 minutes, add / change something to break the monotony. Students like that. Say something funny, ask them questions
**3) I tend to use the white board a lot**, and many of my students like this as it gives them time to write. I also use cartoons as it helps them remember things better and makes them smile and thus remember by association. (Confession: I am a bad artist, which makes this even more effective!)
**4) Reconsider if you really wish to upload ppts *before* the class -** Students have told me that when all the ppts are uploaded in advance, they sometimes feel there is sometimes no good reason to come to class. They after all do not know that you have planned somethign additional
5) Related to 4 above - **write your ppts such that they can only be understood if a person sat through your class.** I tend to write questions in my ppts which are only answered in class (often through discussion)
**6) Involve your students in activities.** And do something (related to the subject!) that they will talk about later. This makes students who were absent curious, and they turn up next time sheerly for the entertainment value. It is left upto you next to merge this entertainment with teh topic at hand
**7) Use good and creative videos -** I used a vlog by Superwoman (!) to make my students understand how *not* to do their assignments. They loved it. And for the first time, there was not a single late submission.
**8) Use Activities** as far as possible ( My kpi is one activity per class - even if it is a short 5 minute discussion with their seat mate. I know I am saying this twice) -
Similarly, to teach the various downstream and upstream legs in supply chain management, I used DHL's short advert on hot pepper sauce from West Indies to China. This was followed by a team exercise where the students had to figure out each leg, and how this could be further optimized keeping in mind the restrictions of each country involved. The all discovered new hub ports in Miami, and our Jamaican and Chinese students were in much demand as students wanted to learn about transport systems and issues there.
**9) Dont shout at students** / Dont scold them unnecessarily
This may not suit everyone, but I dont like to scold students in class, as it insults them in the peer group / in front of other boys and girls and embarrasses them. Some of them show their resentment by not coming for future classes. If you need to tell them something, as far as possible say it in private, or if telling in public, put it in a jocular fashion.
10) One of my lecturer friends always invested in a **small bowl of candy** that he would keep out 30 minutes before his class was going to get over. It became a ritual and the candy always changed each time. There were always a few special ones that he knew his students liked (he actually asked them!) - and those students came initially (a) for the candy (!) and (b) because they felt that the teacher cared enough for him / her to do this extra action
**11) Related to 10 above - do something different from other lecturers.** This is actually easily - just do what comes naturally to you, and most of the time it will be different from others.
**12) Always focus on students assignment topics / their future career aspirations and relate what you teach in class to these.** It is best to do the former right at the beginning - it is interesting how those magic words "this forms part of the answer to your assignment essay *blah blah*" miraculously result in pens and notebooks coming out.
**13) Lastly - don't take anything, including their absence personally** (I know that is difficult, especially if you are a dedicated teacher). Remember, sometimes students do sleep late and wake up late, they sometimes miss buses and trains, and sometimes, they may just want to not come. At the end of the day, your are answerable to yourself and if you did your best, that is it.
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/05
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<issue_start>username_0: I wonder why most academic conferences don't make their budget publicly available.
Making budgets publicly available could help explain high conference fees (which attendees often complain about), help other conference organizers, receive feedback to be able to improve, improve transparency towards the taxpayers since they fund most of academic research, explicitly mention what the private sponsors are and to what extent they are involved (e.g. to detect conflict of interests), etc.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't think there's any universal policy behind this. One reason is lack of interest: in many cases I'd bet nobody involved has thought much about the issue, the world isn't clamoring for the budget, and publicly releasing it would take at least a little work. Inertia is a common reason for not doing things.
Another reason is to avoid arguments. The main thing people would do with a publicly available budget is criticize it. Some criticisms would be based on ignorance of the options and constraints, while others would amount to saying "more should be spent on my favorite things, and less on the things I don't care about" (which is not so useful if there's no consensus as to which aspects are more valuable). E.g., is money for snacks essential or wasteful? What if they are overpriced hotel snacks, but there's no other option without moving to a venue that is worse overall? What about a reception with alcohol? Basically, imagine repeating every discussion the organizers had about the budget, but with an unmanageably large group arguing, and with random trolls from the internet chiming in.
In general, I would assume it's not an attempt to preserve secrets or disguise unpopular spending. If the conference is funded by a grant, then the funding agency saw a budget. If it's funded by registration fees, then participants at least know how large those fees are and can compare them with other conferences.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I can't answer directly the titular question, but, having served in the organizing committee of a couple of conferences, I can try to explain the high conference fees.
Let's take as example a medium-sized 5-day conference with about 500 participants. The main expense is the venue: a quality venue with a capacity of 500 participants, with several rooms for parallel sessions, can cost around (200-250) k€ for five days, probably more for high-quality venues in several countries (e.g. large 5-star hotels in the US). This makes already (400-600) € per participant.
Then, you have to serve lunches and coffee breaks. This, depending on the service, can cost around (20-30) €/day. For five days, this adds another (100-150) € to the conference fees.
Then there are the conference gadgets and the proceedings. These are not too expensive if the proceedings are edited voluntarily by the organizers -- let's consider around 50 €/participants for both the gadgets and the proceedings.
Now, what about inviting a few speakers? Paying the travel, lodging and conference expenses of, say, five speakers can cost around 20 k€, which divided among 500 participants, adds another 40 €/participant.
Finally, there is the support for young researchers, and this can add another 50 €/participant.
So, we are already in the (700-900) € range. But, wait, am I missing something? Sure, how could I forget? Of course, you might need to pay some extra-personnel, depending on how many services you need to outsource (conference secretariat, side events, etc.). These can quickly add another bunch of euros for participants. And if you also want to the social dinner, add another bunch.
You see that we have quickly arrived to conference fees in the (800-1000) € range.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: There are two basic reasons that I know of:
First, **we have better things to do** with our time than putting together a detailed financial report along with necessary explanations.
Second, **the information is not useful to anyone except a potential conference organizer**, and the variation across institutions in terms of what one has to pay for is considerable.
For example, some universities charge for room usage, and some don't; some require you to use official catering facilities, and some don't. Sometimes you can get a student assistant for free, and sometimes you have to pay. Costs vary according to venue so much that a having someone else's budget is useless. What might be useful for a neophyte organizer is a summary of things that they might not think of (such as huge catering charges for coffee breaks; administrative fees for processing credit card payments; ludicrous room rental charges; surprise, you have to pay extra to get projectors in those rooms).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: My experience is that the conference budget is typically presented and discussed in the business meeting (which is of course open to all conference participants). So there is no mystery about the registration fees: all participants see precisely where the money goes.
Moreover, conference organisers are usually very happy to share conference budgets with anyone who is e.g. organising the same conference in the future.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Game Theory Answer v.0.1
Suppose that two rival groups, the Mathematician's Guild Of Firenze ("a") and the Firenze Guild of Mathematicians ("b") both get granted some money and use of a building to hold a conference on game theory mathematics. Each wants to attract Da Vinci to their conference and each wants to ruin the other, as this town is too small to have enough funding for two rival guilds doing much the same mathematics as one another.
Now if (a) publish their budget in full then (b) can calculate how much money they need to borrow to decorate the conference hall with paintings by Michaelangelo, provide lavish conference food, and any other comparable nonsense thought likely to make their conference more popular and ruin the other lot. Alternatively, (b) can publish their budget with enough exaggerations in it to provoke (a) to outspend the published budget with borrowed money and ruin themselves.
Personaly, I prefer the approach taken by Da Vinci, which was to lock himself in his room, write everything backwards just in case, and stay away from the likes of a and b.
Upvotes: -1
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2015/11/06
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<issue_start>username_0: Can you be a post-doc if you secured funding from a private organization to do research at a university in the social sciences/humanities, or do you have to have governmental funding to do a postdoc?<issue_comment>username_1: Short answer: **Yes**, you can apply for post doc position in university if you have private funding. (Example of such funding is [wellcome trust](http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/Funding/Humanities-and-social-science/index.htm) funding for Humanities and social science)
Warnings: You should *always* check norms with your funding agencies and universities because some times it is possible to have conflict of interest between both.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It is absolutely possible to have a postdoc funded by a private organization - there's nothing about a postdoc inherently tied to a particular type of funding. A couple ways this might happen:
* As @username_1 mentions, there are private trusts and charitable organizations that fund research. This can occur either by funding a fellowship directly, or allowing funds from a grant to be used to hire a postdoc.
* There are also commercial companies that have research grant programs in a number of fields. It's entirely possible to use the funding from one of these to pay for a postdoc.
* A private university could directly pay for a postdoc - for example, as part of a professor's startup package.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/06
| 477
| 1,845
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<issue_start>username_0: In a particular course, there will be one final exam and an online activity.
Say the final exam is worth 50 points and the online activity is worth 5 points.
Based on the following statement, how should the course be graded?
"Online activity points added to the course cumulative score."
For a sample case, we will assume a 49/50 on the exam, and 5/5 on the online activity.
While I know what the above statement means, is it ambiguous to others? If so, how can I remove the ambiguity?
EDIT1: The course grade is only made up of the final exam and online activity. There are no other sources of points.
EDIT2: I bring this up for two reasons: A student has interpreted the grading policy to mean he should get 54/50 (using the example numbers) in the course. He feels that if the points are *added* to the course cumulative score, they should not increase the total number of points possible (54/55). In order to prevent this misunderstanding in the future, I'm trying to reword the policy.<issue_comment>username_1: I recommend that you work with weighted averages, as being less confusing. For example: the final exam will be worth 50% of the grade; online participation will be worth 5% of the grade. (I just made those numbers up -- you get to figure out what your scheme is.)
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Maybe the best way to eliminate the ambiguity is to add a concrete example to your syllabus:
>
> The final exam is worth 50 points and the online activity is worth 5 points. Therefore, if a student scores 48 on the final exam, and earns 4 points in the online activity, then that student will have scored 52 out of 55 points possible.
>
>
>
That seems much less confusing and ambiguous than:
>
> Online activity points [are] added to the course cumulative score
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/06
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm an international undergraduate junior at an university in the U.S. whose math PhD program is ranked about 20th in the nation. By the end of my next semester, I will have taken 16 math graduate courses, most of which are for second year graduate students (e.g. Shimura variety, advanced algebraic geometry, and some special topics courses). Thus, in my senior year there will be not many courses new for me. Also, I have to pay $40k/year. Therefore, I'm considering to graduate a year earlier. However, applying directly to the PhD programs of my choice, such as Princeton, is not a good idea, since I don't have as much research experience as the successful applicants of those programs. Therefore, it is preferable if I can concentrate on research without paying too much. One solution is to go to a less competitive PhD program, including the one of my current institution and then to apply to programs of my interest a year later. Is my idea bad? What other opportunities do I have?<issue_comment>username_1: From my personal experience it is unusual for undergrad students to have taken 16 math graduate courses while he/she is still in the junior year. What you have taken clearly exceeds the expectations of most graduate programs. If the professors who taught the classes think highly of you, that could be a strong selling point for your graduate school application. As for research experience, you may not want to take it too seriously as a budding mathematician. As Krantz explained in the book *A Mathematician's Survival Guide* (which, btw, is a book you may want to read):
>
> Mathematics is a bit different [than other natural sciences]. We don't use test tubes. The hard fact of life is that mathematics is a subject that builds vertically. You are not really qualified to do serious research - the sort of research that mathematicians actually do - until after you pass the qualifying exams.
>
>
>
So research experience is great in exposing you to the world of math research, but your coursework performance may be sufficient to get you to the graduate school you want to be. I think most graduate programs won't mind that you are graduating in three years as long as you complete the same workload as those who graduate in four years.
I should say that I'm not in a math PhD program; so take my advice with a grain of salt.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: (Speaking as a math professor.)
For one thing, I recommend working on a research project *now*. Don't worry too much about graduate courses; instead, do what successful grad students do: go to colloquiua and seminars, chat visitors up about math, try to generate research ideas.
I also recommend applying to Ph.D. programs. Although I haven't been involved with graduate admissions, I suspect there is no harm done in applying this year to Princeton and to any other schools which you are extremely excited about.
That said, your professors will know, and they should ask them. They will know how strong their recommendation letters will be. Either they will think you have a good chance of getting into your top choices of program, or they will know what you should do to improve your chances over the next year and will likely be eager and willing to help you.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/06
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| 2,958
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<issue_start>username_0: I've done my masters in CS/Artificial Intelligence. My thesis work is related to Human-Robot interaction, that involves robotics and psychological theories.
I did that project because it seemed to me as more interesting, I'm still interested but during my masters studies I have realized that I am more interested in machine learning, deep learning and its applications in so many domains. Which is why I'm highly motivated to pursue my PhD in machine learning, specifically deep learning.
I do have theoretical concepts about machine learning, image processing and good knowledge about research process (working as research assistant currently). I'm quick learner and have good CGPA as well, few conference in different research area. What I don't have is any research project or publication in this area and hence I don't have any proposal prepared so far.
Now I want to contact professor showing my interest in Deep learning. My question is since I don't have a prepared proposal, how do I approach him? Do all professor expect the proposal attached at first email or Can I prepare proposal while being in touch with him with little bit of his guidance.
Should I spend like a month and prepare proposal or would it be better if I just contact professor and with his guidance I can be more focused and save my time?<issue_comment>username_1: the answer depends a bit on the culture of your country and even on the individual professor you are adressing. If you would contact me, sending an e-mail containing more or less the question posted would be sufficient to get an invitation to talk about potential research topics and about how to proceed.
At least in my position, the answer is more dependent on whether I have an idea on how to finance your position - so if you have ideas about this (grants, ...), you should include such information.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: At least some professors will be quite willing to have a more general chat about potential PhD ideas. And given your position, I think you should seek out someone friendly who is willing to do this. This is what will be most useful for you.
If possible, approach someone you are already connected to. Since you have studied in a closely related field, a professor you already know might be able to have a conversation about machine learning PhD ideas, or they might be able to put you in contact with someone who would be happy to talk.
However, I think even if you contact professors completely cold, you have a good chance of someone being interested in talking about this.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: In the U.S. at least, at the admissions stage, you don't need to have a well-formed PhD research proposal all baked and ready to take out of the oven. Advisors expect a student to spend some time choosing and defining a topic. If a student arrives with that already done, that's a nice extra.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/11/06
| 1,487
| 6,192
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<issue_start>username_0: I wrote a short note, showing that someone's recent conjecture is false. Is it a good idea to submit the manuscript to the same journal the conjecture originally appeared in? Will it expedite the reviewing process?
**Update:** After reading the comments in here and talking to my advisor, I ended up submitting the manuscript(including the counterexample and a little improvement of the original result) to the same journal as the original was appeared in. Paper got accepted in less than 40 days. I highly believe in my case, choosing the same journal shortened the reviewing process significantly.<issue_comment>username_1: Submitting your manuscript to the journal the original conjecture was published in is probably a good idea. After all, if the journal published the original conjecture, then the conjecture is obviously in the journal's scope... and so should be a counterexample.
In addition, your submission may well be handled by the same associate editor, who may be able to call on the same reviewers as for the original conjecture. (Of course, it would be a good idea to get at least some new eyes to look at matters, to avoid academic inbreeding.) This could accelerate the review process somewhat.
Beyond that, you likely won't get any preferential treatment beyond what the shortness of your manuscript and the immediate relevancy of your counterexample warrant.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: I think you are correct to consider first the journal in which the paper stating the conjecture was published. You should still make an evaluation of whether that is the best place to submit.
(I am in a similar situation myself -- in a graduate research seminar I am leading with a colleague, a student decided to read a 2012 paper which states a certain conjecture and derives partial results. Within a week my colleague showed how to use the tools developed in the earlier paper to give a complete proof of the conjecture. In the last few weeks, I have worked together with the student and my colleague to prove similar, but stronger results. We are now almost finished with the writeup and thinking about where to submit. So the thought process is fresh.)
The main question to ask is: might there be some reason for which the journal who published the conjecture is not the best home for a paper which resolves the conjecture? Some reasons:
1) The journal is too strong.
Top journals are (and must be) *extremely selective* about what they publish. Resolving a conjecture that appears in a top journal is a distinctly positive sign as to the value of the conjecture, but it is not conclusive. Maybe the conjecture was not such an important part of the paper. Especially if you have *dis*proven the conjecture, is it possible that the conjecture was just not fully thought through by the authors? I cannot help but think of Grothendieck's notorious "Hodge's general conjecture is false for trivial reasons," which adjusted the statement of one of the most famous problems in mathematics -- this is one of the Millennium Prize Problems -- to its current form. And of course this paper of his is famous and important. It just was not published in the kind of journal it would have been if it had "really resolved the Hodge Conjecture". I hope you see what I mean.
This reminds me of a curious feature of the Millennium Prize Problems: you win the $1 million for *proving* any of the seven problems. Do you win the money if you *disprove* one of them? The text of the prize does not guarantee this. I think this is pretty dopey (and I would guess that from public pressure alone they would have to cough up the money), but there is some sentiment that if you disprove a conjecture by a "mere counterexample," that may be less exciting.
2) The journal is too weak.
It could go the other way as well. Perhaps what you had to do to disprove the conjecture was truly heroic, and the construction is interesting and important beyond the scope of the original conjecture. If so, consider aiming higher. (I am mildly kicking around submitting the paper alluded to above to a better journal than the one the paper we are riffing off was published in, because that paper gave partial and conditional results towards a conjecture and we can do significantly more than proving the conjecture. My guess though is that in the end the thought of submitting to the same journal in which the conjecture was made will win out.)
3) A paper resolving the conjecture may be out of scope for the journal.
This sounds unlikely, but it can happen and has happened to me. I read [an article published in the *College Mathematics Journal*](http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.4169/college.math.j.43.4.331?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) which ended by asking three questions. The last, most interesting question [was one I had previously asked on math.SE](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/111164/in-which-ordered-fields-does-absolute-convergence-imply-convergence). After putting a bounty on it (who said SE reputation is not worth anything?) I got a wonderful answer by <NAME>. So I immediately wrote up the answer into a (joint!) paper and submitted it to the *CMJ*. They were surprisingly unpersuaded by the idea that they would want to publish a paper resolving a question that had just appeared in one of their articles. They found the construction too technical to be suitable for their target audience of undergraduates and college math teachers. After many revisions, [the paper](http://alpha.math.uga.edu/~pete/Clark-Diepeveen14.pdf) was eventually published in *The American Mathematical Monthly*.
In general though, unless you feel your paper is *significantly* too strong or obviously inappropriate to be published in the journal in which the conjecture it resolves was published, sending it there seems like a good first choice. They certainly do not have to accept your paper, but if they're not going to then they probably need to explain themselves a bit...in practice, if the paper is a bit borderline, I think many referees and editors would find it easier to accept the paper and not look hypocritical.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]
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2015/11/06
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in my third year of a Mathematics degree (UK). Where a masters is concerned, It seems like I only have to declare unspent convictions. But it is not clear where research positions are concerned.
It is spent now, has been for 12 months. I had 50 hours community service for the crime (Not a custodial sentence).
The research I would be interested in doing would be in either Applied Mathematics(Physical fields) or Computer Science. I feel ill whenever I talk about it.
The offence was an assault. I pressed charges, so did he.
Also I am interested in UK/Euro universities, not America.
Could anyone shed some light on this? maybe someone who may have applied for research positions in these fields?
If this is the wrong place to ask this question then please say so I can remove it.<issue_comment>username_1: It appears that in the UK, they must state on the application form that they are exempt from the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974, if they are; if they are exempt, you have to declare the conviction, and otherwise you don't. The probability that a PhD position would be exempt is low. [This document](http://www.lawreform.ie/_fileupload/Reports/rSpentConvictions.pdf) provides extensive discussion of "spent" convictions under Irish law, indicating that if asked, you must tell (Ireland appears to be the only member of the EU without some analog of the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act).
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I do not know about the legal situation, but from my experience from hiring and scholarship committees I would say that everything not affecting your work at university has little influence on your chances. So a pub fight gotten out of control or an excessive reaction to some perceived provocation would be no problem, theft of university equipment or sexual harassment would be a problem. In any case, not being open about whatever you did will bring you into trouble. Academia is a small world, chances are that I meet someone who knows you next time I come to England. Rumors do spread, and are usually far worse than the truth.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/06
| 440
| 1,980
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in the process of applying to several computer science PhD programs in North America, and I was wondering if any of the courses that I have already finished in my Master's (in a US university) could be applicable for credit transfer?
If I apply to the PhD program in my current university I will have less courses to finish for my PhD program, because I have already finished several of the required courses. Will I be exempted from taking some courses if I get accepted in a different university of similar or lower ranking?<issue_comment>username_1: Some of them may transfer, it depends on the department. For example, my department transfers a blanket N credits for PhD students who come with a masters degree. That is, instead of evaluating each individual class on the masters transcript, they just apply N credits of transfer credit towards the PhD credit requirement. (I don't remember the value of N offhand.)
You will have to check the individual policy of each department you apply to.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The policies will differ depending on both university and department guidelines, but I would find it surprising that a university wouldn't take the credits (unless you hadn't finished the masters, then they may look at your classes individually).
Some of the policies that I've seen are as follows (and no doubt there are others or variations of these):
* specially defined program structure for PhD students with a master
* credit for a fixed number of hours (36 I would imagine to be the norm) toward the PhD program, regardless the number of hours in the masters.
* credit for all post-baccalaureate work, but with a small number of courses required by the department.
The last one is what I experienced and the program simply required X number of graduate hours and didn't care the source, so long as all other requirements — 4 specific classes, exams, dissertation — were met.
Upvotes: 1 [selected_answer]
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2015/11/06
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm currently a (physics) postdoc at a university. I'm currently applying for academic jobs (tenure-track research professor and postdoc positions) as well as jobs in national labs.
**Question(s):** Do I need to use my current university's letterhead for my cover letters? If it is optional, is it somehow better to use the official letterhead?
**Note:** This is similar to the post [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13559/12915). That post was specifically for someone who is currently a lecturer at a university, and the answers ranged from absolutely yes to absolutely no (with no clear consensus). Therefore, I I want to know if any of the specifics in my situation make a difference for this question (e.g. field = physics; I'm currently a postdoc which is expected to only be temporary; does academic appointment vs national lab job have different expectations etc…).<issue_comment>username_1: Yes you should use your current institution's letterhead. It is important to do so because much of academic hiring turns on prestige and snap judgments. Look professional, look serious, look affiliated with a prestigious place. Use the letterhead.
**Edit in response to <NAME> in the comments below:**
First, letterhead is to be used in correspondence that constitutes official university business. If helping postdocs and PhD students obtain the positions for which the University has trained them doesn't constitute "official university business," I don't know what would. (Certainly I am instructed to send my undergraduates' letters of recommendation on official university letterhead.)
Second, consider two scenarios. Scenario 1, you apply for a position along with 99 other people. You put the cover letter on letterhead and the other 99 applicants don't. Scenario 2 is flipped, the 99 use letterhead and you don't. In both scenarios, you stick out, which is in general bad. However, they aren't equally bad. Scenario 1 is like showing up to a wedding in a Tux when everyone else is wearing suits. You're a little fancier than you need to be, but nobody's going to think you just weren't putting in care or effort in. Scenario 2, on the other hand, is like showing up to a wedding where everyone is wearing a suit in a shirt and flip flops; you look like you just didn't care what the convention was. So, even if both scenarios were equally likely, I'd still say err on the side of using the letterhead. However, it isn't the case that the scenarios are equally likely--the convention (at least in the US, I'll let others comment about the European or other conventions) is to use letterhead. I'll cite [<NAME>,](https://chroniclevitae.com/news/50-the-professor-is-in-why-letterhead-matters) the job market consultant, to corroborate this final point.
I'd hope that no department would allow a faculty who was daft enough to hold the use of letterhead against a candidate anywhere near a search committee.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: *Need*? No. I got a tenure track position from my postdoc without using letterhead.
It's definitely optional, but I'll leave the discussion of the merits of that option to others who have more insight from the other end of the process.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I personally dislike applicants who deliver very formal letters, research statements, motivation descriptions and so on. There are people within academe who share my opinion, so be cautious.
It will be perfectly clear from your application where and which your current professional assignment is. This is not a function of the letterhead.
The bottom line, do what you like and concentrate your application on your actual achievements.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/11/06
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<issue_start>username_0: I had a PhD interview last week, the professor send me an email:
**Thanks for taking the time to participate in the Skype interview.
We are a bit delayed in making decisions, but I to get back to you on Tuesday 3 November.
Have a nice weekend,**
However, I have not got his Email yet. What happened? I wrote a email to him after Tuesday, but no reply. I think that I am just a substitute. I gave up hope of this position. But I really like this project. What can I do?<issue_comment>username_1: As you already assume, it's likely that they have settled for another candidate. However, the fact that they didn't reply to your request indicates that they're not quite ready to dismiss you. Maybe their preferred candidate has not agreed to the position yet, and they want to keep their options.
The only thing you can do is write them another polite email, expressing your sincere interest and motivation to do the project, stating again why you think you are the best candidate. In case their first choice declines, you might be in for a good start.
But in any case, I'd wait out Monday morning, assuming that that's the deadline the other candidate might have negotiated for a decision.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I will wait for one, maybe two weeks and then send a polite reminder, something like "I would like to know if you had the chance to review my application and reached a conclusion, or other wise if you have in mind a time frame for a conclusion". Also you could contact one of the post docs in the lab and ask upon it.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/06
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<issue_start>username_0: I received an email from a graduate student at a well-known university in the UK. The email is a marketing email for a campaign run by a company the writer of the email is affiliated with. The campaign is about something that may possibly be of interest to people in academia, so I bear no ill will to the writer for sending me such an email. However, I have concerns about the way the writer presented him/herself. The email starts roughly as follows:
>
> Hi [recipient's name],
>
>
> I am a PhD student at [name of university] and I am writing to tell you about [the campaign]
>
> [... long marketing blurb ...]
>
> [... request that I forward the email to other people.]
>
>
>
and ends roughly with
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
> [writer's name]
>
> PhD candidate, [name of university]
>
> [name of department]
>
> [university-affiliated email address]
>
> [link to the company's website]
>
>
>
The things about the email that got my attention are:
* The writer presents him/herself as a PhD student in the opening and signature of the email.
* The email is sent from the writer's university email account.
* The email is about a campaign run by a non-university entity (a for-profit operation, to judge from a look at the website linked to at the bottom of the email) that the writer is affiliated with.
* The writer does not explicitly explain his/her connection to or affiliation with said entity, except indirectly by saying things like "we believe ..." and "our mission is ...".
* In a later short email exchange I had with the writer, (s)he seemed fairly polite and well-intentioned (specifically, I emailed the student to say I will not be forwarding the email to anyone at my department since it is not relevant to them, and (s)he emailed back apologizing for the inconvenience and promising to remove me from the mailing list). So, my impression is that although the details above may may make it sound like this is a very shady and dishonest attempt to create the impression that the campaign is originating from the writer's university, it is possible that using the university email and affiliation was done out of naivety and lack of thought rather than out of an intent to deceive.
My questions are:
1. Is it acceptable for a graduate student who is involved with a non-university entity to use their university email to send marketing emails for their non-university campaigns?
2. Is it acceptable for graduate students to send mass-distribution emails of any sort from their university email accounts? Does this violate any standard policies university IT departments have, particularly in the UK?
3. Is it acceptable for a graduate student who is also involved with a non-university entity to represent themselves as a PhD student in connection with a marketing email that they send out? (Note that this is a separate question than questions 1-2 above; i.e., assume that the email is sent from a private email server but that the writer is mentioning their status as a PhD candidate at a well-known university, e.g., in an attempt to gain credibility. Is this okay?)
To clarify, by "is it acceptable" I mean that I am interested in these questions from several different angles, such as: are such behaviors ethical? Are they legal? Do they violate any standard policies that universities, particularly in the UK, have? Do they violate any cultural norms within academia or the larger professional world? If I complain about the student's email practices to their department, are they likely to get in serious trouble? Etc.<issue_comment>username_1: Well, I'd start with university technology-use policies, which this student is quite likely to have broken. Where I am, policy contains the following stipulation:
>
> Commercial, Political, and Non-University Activities
>
>
> Users may not use University IT resources to sell or solicit sales for any goods, services, or contributions unless such use conforms to *{university}* rules and regulations governing the use of University resources. They may not use University IT resources to represent the interests of any non-University group or organization unless authorized by an appropriate University department.
>
>
>
Another possibility may be called something like "non-academic misconduct" (to separate it from "academic misconduct" such as plagiarism or cheating) or an "honor code violation."
If you care to pursue either of these avenues, you'll have to hunt down appropriate chapter and verse at the student's institution, as well as instructions for reporting.
If you don't care to be this formal, and if you know any faculty or staff in the student's department, a "what the actual heck is this and did you folks know about it?" email might be the way to go. Where I am this would certainly be grounds for at least a stern conference with the student, and at worst, non-academic misconduct charges.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In my institution (not in the UK) the relevant policy has two parts. First, the burden is put on the user to establish that an act is allowed, because users are responsible for ascertaining what authorizations are necessary and for
obtaining them before proceeding. Use of university IT resources is not prohibited but is frowned on, specifically "personal use of university computing resources for other purposes is permitted when it does not consume a significant amount of those resources, does not interfere with the performance of the user's job or other university responsibilities, and is otherwise in compliance with this policy". However, specific units may also impose further restrictions if they want. My department ran its own mail server, so it could impose an absolute ban on sending emails that attempt to drum up business. In lieu of such a ban, an action to punish the individual would have to be based on showing that it consumed a significant amount of resources or interfered with the person's university responsibilities. It does not sound as though this persons use would cross that threshhold. There are also policies against "claiming to speak for the university", but stating that you are affiliated with a university does not constitute claiming to speak for a university. (Professors frequently make public political statements and list their affiliation, without running afoul of the "claiming to speak for the university" rule).
So, indeed, you would start with the university policy.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: As @username_1 already said, university IT use policies typically do not allow commercial ads to be sent out.
But there are scenarios where such use of the university IT and even the university as affiliation is OK or even wanted (from the university/funding agency point of view):
* Obviously, whenever the university approved this use.
* One reason for the university to do so is: The company may be a spin-off of the university.
* As one example, one of the conditions of the ["exist"](http://www.exist.de/EN/Home/home_node.html) business founding support programs for university spin-offs in Germany is that the university has to support the company (or company-to-be) with resources including use of university IT.
So such a spin-off may be using university IT resources like the university email *server* or even university IT hosting their company web page.
* That being said, from the company point of view I'd always try to spread the *company email address* as much as possible (as they have their own website, there should be email addresses as well - who technically provides these services is secondary).
It would be a marketing nightmare if people remember the university email instead of the company...
* As for whether it is acceptable that a marketing email writing PhD student points out they're PhD student: as long as they really are the PhD student they are allowed to tell whomever that they are.
Whether it is smart to point this out in the email is again a completely different question, where the answer would depend very much on how tightly the field of the thesis and the marketed product are related.
(Similar to my thoughts about the email address, I don't think a "PhD student" signature is a smart move for the company. Depending on the product, it may be good to state the profession, though)
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/07
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<issue_start>username_0: The only thing I can think of is scholarship application. But how much do scholarship committees look at extracurricular activities? Do they look for the positions that you held?
Frankly I'm very weak at extracurricular activities and don't know what to do.<issue_comment>username_1: I think this would depend on your meaning of "extracurricular". In terms of having photography as a hobby, I am not sure how that would help. However, for faculty, extracurricular activities that benefit the university have been well discussed on academia SE, for example, serving as a reviewer on a journal. Other activities that could be seen as beneficial is volunteering for a first robotics at the local school (if the university if public, that may be more important for secondary education), or organizing a TEDx event.
In general, I would view the reason anyone would care about extracurricular activities is for students; how does it make the student more diverse, more capable, more knowledgable, easier to work with, etc. And for faculty; how does it make the faculty represent the university better, improve student or research connections, make their own research more interesting, etc.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The answer to this question depends on the country you live in. In most European countries extracurriculars carry little weight. If there are several applicants who are very close together in terms of academic merits, people active in welfare are preferred, as such behaviour is usually correlated with general social skills. I have no personal experience in the US, but it is "common knowledge" that extracurriculars are more important there, especially in early stages of your career.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: It depends on the type of position you are aiming for, and the type of extra-curricular activities.
If you have served on committees in the past, it is reasonable to form a belief that it is in your nature to be a person who can readily be persuaded to serve on committees in the future, relieving others of the need to do so.
Given the tendency of documents listing such activities to be read by those presently serving on some committee, such a belief may engender sympathy (or other, less noble emotions).
Athletic activities may suggest a dangerous ability to run away too fast.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: In academia, the most crucial aspect of your application are your qualifications.
However, extracurricular activities can give your job application a personal note, and make you stand out from the crowd of applicants with similar qualifications. Stating your hobbies (e.g. hiking, or playing the guitar at a decent skill level) will give the person who screens the applications a bit of an image of you as a person, instead of just ticking off the requirements.
Especially for scholarship applications this can be helpful, since many organisations don't only look at qualifications, but also at the person that they will support over the next years.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]
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2015/11/07
| 1,640
| 6,640
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<issue_start>username_0: For me as a graduate student, there are some papers out there that really stand out among the others. Some of them are really meaningful and inspiring.
**Is it polite or even acceptable emailing the authors of a paper you enjoyed reading?**
Sometimes I think some people would be happy for knowing that a student got inspired about the work they did. But at the same time, I think this could be taken as a weird/spam/useless e-mail.<issue_comment>username_1: One approach is to indeed write the email, complimenting the authors on their work, but also include:
* a mention of a specific part of the paper that truly got your attention.
* a question or more related to the paper.
As a published author, I get emails (and letters) like this every now and then, I am very appreciative of them - but, having said that, each person is different in this regard.
Writing such a letter can provide opportunities for academic networking that could potentially benefit both parties.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I think this would be partially a function of the fame of the author.
A minor nobody like me would be happy to hear someone is reading his work and finds it useful.
A major somebody in my field would probably experience it as pretentious spam. (Though perhaps people who are major somebodies can comment on this).
Either would probably enjoy if you had a question or two for clarification or asked for further related reading.
Of course people differ so *mutatis mutandis* and the answer can only be general.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Is it polite or even acceptable emailing the authors of a paper you
> enjoyed reading?
>
>
>
**Yes!** Who doesn't like getting a compliment about work they did? Nobody, that's who. On the somewhat rare occasions it happened to me, I was delighted. And I don't think it matters how famous the author is -- trust me, *no one* in academia is so busy that they will not enjoy receiving fan mail.
The only caveat I would make to the above advice is that the email should be 100% genuine in its intent to express your admiration of the authors' paper and achieve no other purpose. **Do not appear to have a hidden agenda or ulterior motive of any kind**. Do not start telling the email recipient elaborate stories about yourself, ask leading questions about jobs or collaborations, etc., and for heaven's sake don't attach a CV. Keep it short. And please don't make up a technical question to have an "excuse" for sending the email -- in my opinion, aside from being dishonest, this runs the risk of coming up with a question that is clearly lame and inauthentic-sounding, which may spoil the whole effect. On the other hand, if you do have a genuine question, even a vague one like "that formula in section 3 is amazing, how did you think of it?", go ahead and ask it, but be considerate of the recipient's time, and make it clear that you would be extremely grateful for a reply but that you are not expecting one and that the recipient should feel free to ignore your email if they are too busy.
Here is an example of how I would go about phrasing such an email:
>
> Subject: your awesome paper (no reply necessary)
>
>
> Dear Prof. Goodpaper,
>
>
> I hope you'll excuse this unsolicited email from a grad student.
> I recently read your paper "Traveling salesman optimizers in pseudo-logarithmic time". I'm writing to let you know that I was simply blown away by how good of a paper it is. Not only was it an incredibly clear and fun paper to read, but I was also really inspired by the clever ideas. In section 3, your definition of the class of problems solvable in pseudo-logarithmic time really captures the essence of the kind of algorithmic complexity that was previously studied only in a few special cases in the Jones-Truckey paper you cited. And your idea of taking the Mellin transform of the recurrence relation to get the asymptotic behavior of your TSP optimizer was also very inspiring -- I've never seen that trick anywhere, and was wondering how you came up with that idea. I'm currently working on a problem involving an asymptotic analysis in a graph connectedness problem that has a somewhat similar structure, so I'll definitely try to see if the same technique could apply.
>
>
> Anyway, thank you again for the inspiration, and thank you for reading this. If you have any references to other papers you wrote or other books or papers by others on pseudo-logarithmic time problems that you think I should look at, I'd be very happy to hear about it. However, I realize you're very busy, so please do not feel obliged to send me anything or to reply to this email at all.
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
> [your name]
>
>
>
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: **Is it acceptable to send thanks to the maker of a work that you enjoyed? Yes, totally.** Note that I chose the word *maker* and not academic nor author. This question is far more general than you may be framing it. You're communicating, one individual to another. Furthermore, you're conveying a positive and reinforcing message. Nothing weird about it.
To be polite, keep it brief and just show your appreciation. This takes one or two sentences tops. If you have more to write, so be it, yet don't expect the recipient to read an essay. If you have a specific question, feel free to add it in. Whether or not you receive a reply depends on the time and interest level of whomever you contact.
I've sent brief messages to academics who have spoken at my university - those that have inspired me. Some were big names, some weren't. A couple shot me back a sentence that expressed *their* gratitude! People *like* feedback!
In a similar vein, you can send short messages of thanks to musicians, photographers, and even to companies! It's no different, is it?
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: **Yes, it is totally acceptable.** I have never heard of anyone frowning upon their work being valued and appreciated.
And I, for one, would not consider an email stalking. However, just telling me what you like, is not always what I am after. I would appreciate it more if you tell me what you do not like, what you cannot agree with and why. No man is an island. I have found I come up with concepts faster working in isolation, but that input from others give me insights in developing my ideas better, because others have skills, experience and knowledge that I might lack.
Of course as long as it stays at an email . If you show up at my work or residence, then I might look at it in a totally different light.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/11/07
| 919
| 3,609
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an undergraduate senior. I wonder why people keep doing page breaking in their thesis, like one diagram for one page. Is that for the page count? or just because they have to? Also, I wonder if it is a good thing to do in my thesis.
thanks.<issue_comment>username_1: They do it because they do not know how to do it differently.
In general, pages shall be "full" -- either there is text on them with a figure on top or bottom, or the figures are placed on a separate page if the figures are too large or you get a lot of them. Of course, at the end of each chapter, you will have an empty space, between "nothing" and "almost two pages", because each chapter should start on an odd page (on the right when you open the book).
To make long story short: You should not have a lot of white space on pages around figures; the figures should be arranged in such a way that you get rid of the white space.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: A reason for some is because LaTeX will do this.
If you have Floating figures, and the layout engine can not work out a good way to place them, as to balancing the amount of whitespace, and other rules for an "good looking document" (eg No Figures on First Page is a rule for IEEE transactions) it will shunt them to the end.
The rules LaTeX uses to define what is a "good looking document" can (and often should) be adjusted. See for example [this](http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~aty/bibliog/latex/floats.html), where the rules for the various fractions of text etc to figure are adjusted.
Positioning can also be forced some, eg with `!`.
A lot of detail into how LaTeX placed figures can be found in this [TeX.SE question](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/39017/how-to-influence-the-position-of-float-environments-like-figure-and-table-in-lat).
Obviously this only applist if the thesis was prepared in LaTeX (or some other system with automated rule based layout, that prefers figure only pages to squeezing a figure in to a page badly).
---
In other cases, it could be because the page was inserted from the output of another program. Eg a simulator output printed to PDF, merged in. Or a scanned hand drawn diagram inserted as a full page image. This is not a good or attractive why to do things, but it is fast/convenient.
In general, as a undergraduate thesis is not heavily judged on its appearance, its often not worth the time to do better. I know when I was writing mine, I had 3 final year (and thus difficult/timeconsuming) coursework/project based units to do at the same time. I had better things to do, like ensure the wording was clear, and I didn't exceed the word-count. Placing figures well is hard, I was satisfied once I [got FloatBarriers working](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/4854/floats-how-to-restrict-floating-to-subsection-only-in-one-section-of-the-docum), to stop the figures from floating all the way to the end -- FloatBarriers can be used to force figures not to be shunted beyond the current section (etc).
The undergrad thesis will likely be the first serious academic writing of that form they have done, and writing it comes at the end of the hardest work they have done, during or just before their final exams. Don't hold any up as perfection in method to judge yours by.
There is a quote (I believe from someone on this site) which basically said:
"Your PhD thesis will be the worst academic writing you have ever done; because anything written after will be better as you will now be more experienced."
This goes double for an undergrad thesis.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2015/11/07
| 1,449
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a student that started doing CS research not too long ago, and I'd like some advice on making sure I'm in good terms with my peers. I've been helping another student's project (in my field, the first author is usually *the* author. I was to be the second author because it wasn't my project, but I'm also very interested in this research direction), but I feel that my contributions are not appreciated, and I'm often blamed for bad results. Just as an illustration, one such situation is, when I come up with an idea (e.g. finding algorithms, relevant papers that we can use in our research), the other student would pretend as if they knew about it already and tries to explain it to me as if I've never heard of it before, and takes credit. Then when I implement that idea as we discussed, s/he seems happy with it, but later when it turns out to be not exactly what we wanted (either another slightly different method performed better or his/her advisor didn't like it), I'm blamed for introducing that problem.
And I also feel that, while I'm interested in solving the same problem, I want to approach in a different way (s/he wouldn't accept it in our current project for reasons like, there are other more important things we should be working on, and so on. and I can't argue much because it's not my project). I understand that I shouldn't simply victimize myself, and it could be a different story from someone else's perspective, but regardless, I think I started seeing how there are politics in academia and how researchers can act petty and selfish, and I want to avoid that as much as possible and focus on having fun doing research and growing my career.
* If I wanted to leave a project and do similar research in my own ways, is there a wise way to do this without accidentally taking credit for anything I didn't do or giving the impression that I'm trying to steal the research? I would simply cite the work we did together if there was a paper, but there is no publication yet because we couldn't finish on time, and I don't really see it being completed this way. In addition, we found out recently that there are other papers that solve this problem or part of this problem in a very similar way. I could take a significantly different direction for solving a different problem under different assumptions, but I can also see that backfiring and giving the wrong impression.
* What are some potential source of unwanted politics/conflicts that beginning researchers should be aware of in general?
* If you've observed students that ended up not being able to collaborate well, what was your perspective, and what did they seem to be forgetting?
* If you've had conflicts or ended up not being in good terms with another researcher, how did it affect your career, if it had a long term effect?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> What are some potential source of unwanted politics/conflicts that beginning researchers should be aware of in general?
>
>
>
Remember, it may take two to tango, but it only takes one to be a jerk. So, Rule #1: Inasmuch as it depends on you, don't be that jerk.
Rule #2: If you're stuck working with that jerk, you have two choices – adapt and endure, or find another research group. Depending on your sunk costs, the latter option might be impractical, so beginning researchers should keep their eyes and ears open, and be on the lookout for petty politics while they still have other options available. Unhealthy partnerships can make research long and unpleasant, harder than it has to be, and ultimately unfruitful.
As for working on an existing problem by using a different approach, that can be a tricky one. Sometimes your approach will lead to a dead end, and it's best to heed the advice of your fellow researchers. They might be absolutely correct when they say, "There are other more important things we should be working on." But sometimes you have a novel idea, and others just are too stuck in their ways to see its merits, so heeding their advice isn't always the right answer, either. Tread carefully.
After reading your question, I see a major issue and a minor issue at play. The major issue is the new approach: How can your efforts help the research team the most? By going off in a different direction, and trying something new? Or by focusing your efforts on what the team is doing now? When doing research, time is extremely important. Research can be slow and laborious enough as it is, and it can be frustrating when someone new joins the team and wants to reinvent the wheel.
The more minor issue is the credit-and-blame game. That can be frustrating, and people can get burned, but I don't think it's the same kind of problem. Choose your battles wisely.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Starting a collaboration comes with commitments. If you work together with someone, you cannot just walk away, because the other members of the team have invested a serious amount of work, which might depend on your contribution. So usually the only thing you could do is to finish the project and avoiding starting a new one. The latter might be difficult, because people trying to exploit you can prove quite clingy. However, as I read your question, you are in a easier situation:
>
> In addition, we found out recently that there are other papers that solve this problem or part of this problem in a very similar way.
>
>
>
Face it, your project is dead. You might get a publication by applying your method to some variation of the problem, but this is neither good science nor good for your career in the long run. So cut your losses and do something else. Ending the project can also be used as a pretext for ending the collaboration, which apparently did not work out.
While you are certainly right that scientists are as selfish and petty as everyone else, quite often both sides in such a conflict feel exploited by the other side. If you tell your collaborator every idea that comes to your mind, while s/he thinks things through before communicating, s/he will think that you leave all the hard work to him/her, while you will feel starved of necessary information. So a collaboration can end in a disaster, even if all people involved behaved exactly as they expected the others to behave.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/11/07
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<issue_start>username_0: Out of curiosity, I would like to get a feeling of what is the attitude in general for a present-day editor of a prestigious (not an objective modifier, of course) journal to deal with a new submission before sending it out for review.
I notice that some journals of high impact would state it as an editorial policy that an editor may desk-reject (so to speak) a submission without finding a reviewer if the submission is so-and-so. Then I think that, if I am an editor, I definitely do not want to waste any reviewing resources; hence I become a pre-reviewer in this sense. Does this line of thinking apply to most editors? If this is the case, then a submission passing over an editor's inspection means at least that the editor feels that the submission is potentially publishable; but to what extent this implication is true?<issue_comment>username_1: Most journals exercise editorial prior-to-review rejections based on, allegedly, low urgency, significance and novelty.
While an editorial rejection due to a poorly written discussion can be clear, rejections due to the other above enumerated reasons constitute a contradictory practice since in this case a fairly small group of people (editors) decide which research topics/authors/institutions/viewpoints get represented in the high-impact journals and which do not.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: Yes, because the pool of suitable and reliable reviewers is very limited. It's necessary to make sure that one doesn't burn out the good reviewers on evidently poorly reasoned or unclear articles.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: When you are running a journal, no matter how where it sits in the prestige rankings, all sorts of things wash up in the submission box. One might think of these as roughly falling into four categories:
* Clearly plausible and on-topic papers
* Papers whose focus or quality is dubious, but are still worth sending to review
* Papers that are clearly off-topic
* Papers that are clearly below the journal's quality threshold
Until you actually see such a stream, you might not realize just how bizarre the material can be that shows up in the third and fourth categories. I'm talking about likely-schizophrenic ramblings where the text changes color and font multiple times per paragraph, blatant plagiarism, or papers that don't even bother to connect themselves to the research field of the journal. Heck, even as a graduate student I was once sent a videotape by a man who had decorated his trash can to look like a robot and explained in great length how the "robot" can would react to [All in the Family](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_in_the_Family) episodes so that it could save humanity by terraforming the Sahara desert.
In a highly interconnected world with people working at all sorts of levels of quality, a *lot* of this type of junk shows up. It's entirely appropriate for an editor to reject category #3 and #4 material, so as not to waste everybody's time. I really don't want to ask people to review plagiarized or insane material. I also don't want to waste time asking them to review things that are probably science of some sort, but still absolutely certain to be rejected. It is thus the case that nearly every editor will be asked and find it justified to perform some degree of pre-evaluation and desk rejection.
Where it becomes difficult, however, is that different editors and different journals have different standards for determining where to draw the line. When authors disagree with the journal, it can get rancorous, especially for the "glamour" journals that can be so high value for authors to publish in. Thus, we hear primarily about the mistakes, the borderline cases, and the places where politics and prejudice hurt the scientific process.
The key questions are this:
1. What percentage of the time is the system going wrong?
2. What can be done to improve it?
I'm almost certain that #1 is a pretty small percentage, simply because there's a lot of detritus that nobody is likely to object to desk rejection on. Despite that, the number may well be too high: study of this topic would be both useful and likely very difficult, given the subjective nature of the judgements. There clearly *are* places where the system goes wrong, and reducing that fraction will likely be good for all of us.
Upvotes: 4
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2015/11/07
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<issue_start>username_0: Academics have called for [a boycott against Elsevier](http://thecostofknowledge.com), with some success for instance because it has led to resignations ([recently in the Lingua journal](http://arstechnica.co.uk/science/2015/11/entire-editorial-staff-of-elsevier-journal-lingua-resigns-over-high-price-lack-of-open-access/)).
As I understand it, Elsevier is not the only publisher with absurd subscription prices, but it is being targeted because it is the largest one. Are there any similar initiatives against other publishers? (Springer, Wiley, Taylor and Francis, ...) If not, why?<issue_comment>username_1: Example of boycott against Springer leading to the creation of an freely accessible scientific journal: the [Journal of Machine Learning Research](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journal_of_Machine_Learning_Research):
>
> The journal was founded as an open-access alternative to the journal Machine Learning. In 2001, forty editors of Machine Learning resigned in order to support JMLR, saying that in the era of the internet, it was detrimental for researchers to continue publishing their papers in expensive journals with pay-access archives. Instead, they wrote, they supported the model of JMLR, in which authors retained copyright over their papers and archives were freely available on the internet.
>
>
>
The journal Machine Learning was published by Springer.
A number of people have called for boycotts against JSTOR after [<NAME>'s death](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz#JSTOR).
---
Elsevier isn't indeed the only publisher to have high prices, [some examples](http://lemire.me/blog/2012/01/23/boycott-elsevier/):
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/jcCkU.png)
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: The Elsevier boycott seems to be the largest one of its kind. I understand the argument to be:
1. A boycott is easier to maintain against a single publisher than against several publishers at once, since it limits the cost to the participants while, if anything, making the boycott more painful to the publisher.
2. There's a short list of likely candidates for a single boycott---probably just Springer and Elsevier, and perhaps Wiley, as the largest and most expensive academic publishers. Elsevier had been particularly active in lobbying on some related issues (SOPA, PIPA, and the Research Works Act), and had recently been involved in several publishing related scandals (the ones involving [Chaos, Solitons, and Fractals](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Elsevier&oldid=839151004#Chaos,_Solitons_&_Fractals), and the [Australasian Journal of Bone & Joint Medicine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australasian_Journal_of_Bone_%26_Joint_Medicine)).
(I personally found these arguments strong, but plenty of people didn't, and some people have refused to participate in the boycott precisely because they think such a boycott should be more widely targeted.)
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]
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2015/11/07
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student and often I will meet with my advisor and our collaborators. But they always do all the talking even though I am the only one writing code. And sometimes I will try to ask a question or make a suggestion and then half the time they will just talk over me.
I am wondering if this is because I am a woman, or because I am the only PhD student in the meeting, or if I am just not talking loud enough or something. I am also wondering if this would keep happening to me if I quit my PhD and worked at a male dominated software company, or if it is more specific to academia, and made worse by the fact that everyone I interact with is much more senior than me.
I have another project where both my collaborators are women and this never happens when I work with them.<issue_comment>username_1: Why not write an email to your advisor with your concerns?
Women are not the only ones with this problem. Those fast-talkers maybe don't even realize they are leaving you out.
Here is a good book.
*Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking*,
by <NAME>
It may help you understand your situation. But it's those other guys who *need* to read it, and probably won't.
When you get to a software company, it may get better. At least if it is large enough to have managers who are not merely former programmers who were promoted. One can hope that those with management training know about these things: *The one with the loudest voice may not be the one with the best idea.* And there are management practices that can make the best of all workers, whether they are fast-talkers or timid wall-flowers.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The problem may or may not be gender linked: there's a good chance that at least part what you are facing stems from implicit sexism, just based on the general tendencies in both academia and industry, but saying for certain would require more information.
Regardless of the source of the problem, however, it's a problem and it needs to be dealt with. I would recommend, however, focusing on the *outcome* you want to achieve (being welcomed as a participant in discussion) rather than the question of cause and intention. If you focus on the outcome, then you've got something objectively measurable, whereas if you focus on the cause then you may be opening things up for debate.
I would recommend starting your communication on the matter by email, for two reasons:
1. With email, you can take time to edit your communication carefully, to deliver exactly the message you want. This is especially important if you're feeling hurt and upset, since many of us make communication choices that are not particularly productive when feeling that way.
2. It creates a record, which may be useful later if your advisor disregards you.
If your advisor responds sympathetically, then you can move on to the question of how best to address your concerns. Just knowing that the problem is happening may be enough. More likely, though, you and your advisor may want to add some "helper" structures that can help break up the pattern that is currently happening, such as having you give short presentations or having you raise your hand to signal when somebody is talking over you and needs to show more respect.
If your advisor dismisses your concerns, on the other hand, then I think it would be time to consider switching advisors, especially given the difference of experiences you've had elsewhere.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The gender aspect is relevant in this situation, one way or the other, because it is only natural for you to *wonder* if it's a factor, and because it seems to be making it extra challenging for you to assert yourself and jump into the discussion.
In terms of software companies -- there often seems to be a critical threshold of female software engineers per group, for an incoming woman to be comfortable. (I mean the larger group, as in 30-40 people, not the little cell of people who work together on a daily basis.) When you interview for a job, make sure you get an opportunity to speak informally with a couple of female members of the larger group (but not in front of a male host) to get a feel for what it's like there.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: There is probably a mix of factors involved, but many studies are backing you here: women are more interrupted than men, even by women.
Here is a news article that points to many interesting studies : <http://nytlive.nytimes.com/womenintheworld/2015/03/19/google-chief-blasted-for-repeatedly-interrupting-female-government-official/>
This is mostly an unconscious bias, so most probably if you step up very clearly (saying "I am talking now, please don't interrupt"), everybody will listen.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/11/07
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<issue_start>username_0: I was thinking the following: suppose that one writes an article or lecture notes where he or she uses some lemma. I have understood that every lemma should be used somewhere in the document. But is it enough if I use some lemma in an example, or should there be a theorem or proposition that uses that particular lemma?<issue_comment>username_1: The typical convention that I have seen is for a lemma to be a theorem that is only of interest as an "intermediate" result on the way to another theorem. Well-organized presentations thus often use the lemma/theorem distinction to highlight which results are most significant within the material.
There are, however, exceptions to this typical practice. For example, [Urysohn's Lemma](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urysohn%27s_lemma) is an important result in topology that is nonetheless referred to as a lemma. I suspect that such examples typically appear for historical reasons (i.e., the result was originally presented as a lemma but turned out to be more important than the associated theorem), though I do not know for certain.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> But is it enough if I use some lemma in an example, or should there be a theorem or proposition that uses that particular lemma?
>
>
>
I don't think it really matters. An example would be fine for most readers, while a few really formal people might disapprove. However, even someone who disapproves wouldn't consider this seriously problematic. I.e., they wouldn't think less of you or negatively evaluate your paper because of this. The worst case scenario is that someone complains about it in a referee report, and even then you wouldn't have to follow their advice.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: As far as I understand, a lemma is a mathematical statement that does not have an aesthetic value of its own, and exists only to serve a technical role in proofs of other more interesting statements. The usage of a lemma need not appear in the same document, or in the form of a theorem. For example, it would make total sense for a paper to say "the main result of this paper is a lemma that we think would be useful for proving some fancy theorems in the future. However we still don't know how to use the lemma, and reserve the fancy theorems for future work"...
The question you should ask yourself is whether this is a technical statement that has no internal beauty but can be very useful for other proofs. If this is the case, you can call it a Lemma. However if it is aesthetic and/or unravels some deep truth, it should be a theorem (if its proof is long or complicated) or a proposition (if its proof is short and elegant).
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/07
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<issue_start>username_0: If a PhD student who behaves badly, e.g being rude to other PhD students/staffs, distracting people in the same office by talking loudly or making noise..., should his/her supervisor do anything to deal with that student? If the answer is yes, what should a supervisor do?<issue_comment>username_1: There's obviously no universally accepted policy here (e.g., there are labs where brashness unfortunately starts with the principal investigators). You also need to be careful about what is meant and perceived as rude, as it is, partly, an artifact of culture (e.g. I've witnessed Japanese managers fake sleeping during business meetings, which I would be inclined to perceive as negligent or rude, but apparently expresses ritualized trust in their underlings acting for them). That said, and assuming there is confirmed rudeness, here is how I would handle this.
There should be a zero tolerance policy for rudeness towards staff as it is likely abuse of power, or perceived status. If you experience such rudeness towards other students during meetings, etc., I'd call the offender out as it happens ("There's no need for (X). We are all working together/(Y) didn't mean to imply this."); if during inter-student conversations you happen to witness, I'd first confirm with the person on the receiving end if they share your perception ("Is everything all right? You feel comfortable in our lab? (...)"), if the case is not blatantly obvious. In all cases that warrant action, I'd call the offending student for a personal meeting, in which you could outline that you prefer a more mellow lab, with suggestions how to better handle what happened. If this is a meeting with a repeat offender, be more forceful and tell them that they continue to be out of line, and that this has to stop.
If you are personally disturbed by the noise level, you should say so - it's your lab. However, if you'd rather provide a quieter lab for your students, this is a common workplace problem with few known satisfying solutions. [Here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/51365/how-to-cope-with-lab-noise) is an old question discussing the issue. The main problem is that some people prefer to talk while at work, others prefer to focus; if you take one side, you are likely to annoy the other. I find loud talkers rude and inconsiderate, but have never managed to change my surroundings in a lasting way.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Necessary note: I'm a PhD student. My experience in these matters is zero, and this is merely opinion.
With regards to distracting others, that isn't something to take lightly. However, as long as the others regularly tell them to be quiet, they'll hopefully get the hint eventually. A lot of the time, people just don't know that they're being a distraction. There are also some circumstances where they don't even realise they're being rude to others. Self-awareness might not be strong with this one.
Alternatively, it could be an attitude issue. If they acknowledge their rudeness and habit of distraction, or if they get very defensive about it when asked, I think that it's safe to say that they don't understand their position. Perhaps they believe they are more important (or less disposable...) than they truly are, or maybe they *want* to be important and see placing themselves on a pedestal as a way of achieving that (I think we've all met someone like **that**).
There are a lot of "if"s and "but"s surrounding this. Have you approached them about it at all? Has anyone even said anything to them? I would say that it's your role (if not your job description) as a supervisor to steer them towards becoming a better researcher as a whole. Their attitude towards other researchers, as well as their idea of their conduct whilst doing their own research, is a key part of this, so IMHO it would be your responsibility to give it a shot, at least.
The method? Well, when my supervisor wants a non-academic discussion (from "here's something interesting Im working on, do you want to join in?" to "I could do with a draft of that paper ASAP"), it's always a cup of tea and an informal chat, so that's a tactic I can vouch for. In your case, nothing intense and nothing to get their defences up if they're that way inclined. If things dont improve, repeat. If things don't improve THEN, make that water and a more formal discussion. If things don't improve, they have made their attitude towards your advice clear, and you should take matters *out* of your hands and up the chain of command, so to speak.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: (Note, I don't think it's fair to assume from the question whether the OP is the supervisor in this scenario.)
If I imagine a student being rude to other PhD students, and distracting people in a group office by talking loudly or making noise, I would say that these interpersonal problems may be solvable by working things out at the student level. An I-message like this might do the trick:
>
> Clark, you have one of those nice, big booming voices that's incredibly helpful in a crowded room. But when I'm meeting with a student in the class I TA for, I have trouble hearing, and making myself understood, over your conversation. Also, when I'm concentrating on my own work, sometimes I end up typing what I hear you saying -- it's so compelling. So I was wondering if you could take your chats down to the coffee room?
>
>
>
If a student is consistently rude to a secretary or a technician, the secretary or technician will probably give that student "least favored student" status, and things may work themselves out naturally.
On the other hand, the problem may be beyond the above.
Nevertheless, some supervisors aren't comfortable dealing with this kind of problem. Let's face it, not everybody is good at research in their field *and* managing human resources.
Fortunately, there are structures in place in departments that can be asked for assistance if need be.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/08
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<issue_start>username_0: I currently have a masters degree in an engineering field and I don't currently have any PhD degrees (I may study for a doctorate degree in future). It happens that when I go to conferences or scientific occasions, even in the emails I receive from people; they use a doctor prefix for my name; but I do not have a PhD degree.
What is a good etiquette to deal with such thing? Should I directly tell them that I do not have a doctorate degree? Or should I neglect such a mistake by them and don't do anything?
I think it is unethical not to correct such thing, because the person may still think that I have a PhD degree; and such wrong usage of title should be corrected some way. Once a person used doctor title for my name in an email and I just added a line in my reply to his email, stating that I have a masters degree.<issue_comment>username_1: Perhaps it would be best to say something like "You may call me Mr. (or Ms.) Something, as I do not have a doctoral degree yet." Keep it very short.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I would say this depends on context. When contacting academics, it is common to assume they all have a doctorate. A mass email (or mail-merged etc.) is therefore likely to use Dr. even for a PhD student on the list, because checking would take much more work. Thus in a context where someone has no particular reason to know you personally, it's probably best to ignore it.
On the other hand, if it's coming from someone who who might reasonably be expected to remember specific information about you as a person, I would be inclined to point it out. Personally I put things like that as a PS to an email, or similar, to try not to make a big deal out of it.
Edit: Another thought on the ethics side. I would agree that you should not allow people to continue acting on the assumption you have a PhD when that is not true. However, in many cases where this arises, it is not that the person specifically believes you have a PhD, but that they are not really thinking about it, or doesn't really care.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: Sign your reply email "Enthusiastic Student, M.Sc.", and write the same on your conference name badge.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> It's Mr. Evil, I I have not yet spent six years in Evil Medical School so you can just call me "mister,"
>
>
>
Optionally followed by :-P
You could also substitute *Evil Graduate School* for *Evil Medical School*.
Referencing (and reversing) Dr. Evil [*Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery* (1997)](http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0026630/quotes)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I would just point it out in the next email - there is absolutely no harm in doing so.
As one person once put it - apparently it is better to assume people hold a doctorate and to address people with "Dr." rather than to not acknowledge it when they do hold one.
Any decent person/organisation should and will treat you the same irrespectively of whether you hold a doctorate or not.
I.e. a technical query from a PhD Student it equally valid as a technical query from a PostDoc.
A PS: During my PhD at least two support places gave me a title I didn't have and I mentioned it in the next email - no harm done. Having said that, I have finished my PhD since but still prefer not to use a title when say filling in a form - unless there is a good reason that it is needed. - I.e. if you apply for a PostDoc, filling in "Dr." as the way to address you makes sense, but filling in "Dr." on say Amazon or another shopping invoice - what for?
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I think it would be reasonable to politely correct someone who did this consistently. "I actually don't have a PhD"; something very short. If it's someone you're never going to see again I don't think it would be worth saying anything.
In my field (physics in North America) basically everyone goes by their first name so this never really comes up. The only people who go around calling people 'Dr' are nervous undergrads.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: In these cases I tend to sign my replies with an explicit title, such as e.g.
>
> Best wishes,
>
>
> Mr. <NAME>
>
>
>
without any formal correction beyond this.
Particularly for a short email, it's sufficiently awkward to sign with an explicit title that it's there if they care at all about the correct title without unduly intruding into the conversation. If they don't care about it, then that's their problem, and you've discharged any moral duty you had to correct the error.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: You could say that you can't wait to actually bear that title and are working very hard to get it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: You can't always win. While I was studying for my PhD I submitted my MSc thesis as a research paper (really, I wrote a research paper and submitted it to gain my MSc, then polished it and sent it to the journal).
The referee's remarks came back in an envelope addressed to "Dr.". Since I had to send a revised version back, I wrote something like "Since I am currently studying for my PhD, I'm not yet 'Dr'." It wasn't a big deal to me, but I didn't want the departmental secretaries thinking I was misadvertising myself. This all seemed to go OK -- it passed without comment, my revisions were accepted and my paper went to print. Then the printers sent my preprints addressed to "Professor".
It occurred to me recently that they may have taken my letter into account, since in the U.S. "Professor" is the lower title (as far as I know, it applies to anyone who teaches), but at the time I read this as an upgrade -- in the UK "Professor" implies tenure!
So yes. I don't think you need to worry about including a short sentence like "By the way, I don't currently hold a PhD so for the moment I'm just 'Mr <NAME>'". I'd advise against the out-and-out joke response ("That's *MR* Evil..." etc) but it's fair to assume your interlocutor is at least good-humoured.
If conference badges seem to always include "Dr", perhaps ask if it's possible to omit the title, as if it's a technical question?
(On the related question of whether to include "Dr" in various contexts, I use it when a title is required, since it is my title -- and it appears that way on my billing information for example. This may mean people misidentify me as a medical doctor, but I've never had that problem. However, I don't use it most of the time. My e-mail sig is just 'username_9', for example. Outside the "match the billing information" examples I use my title only when doing things directly relevant to my degree. If I was applying for a post-doc, or writing a letter to a newspaper *in a professional context*, I might do it. Otherwise, I wouldn't.)
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/08
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<issue_start>username_0: One suggestion I received for my thesis is to include a summary of related studies and compare the results with my results.
Should I include the summary in Review of Related Literature? Is it a good idea?<issue_comment>username_1: You most definitely need to compare your results to other related results: otherwise, how is the reader to know the significance of your work?
Whether this should be done in a literature review section or in your results section depends on how quantitative a comparison can be made.
If your results cannot be quantitatively compared to the prior work, then the comparison should be in the literature review section and discuss the qualitative relationship between the two pieces of work. For example, if the previous mechanism handles only fribbles but your system handles both fribbles and tribbles, then you can't quantitatively compare tribble-handling capability, but can state the difference much like I just did in your literature review section.
If you can make a direct, quantitative comparison between results, on the other hand, then it is best to do that right in the section where you are presenting your own quantitative results. For example, if you created an algorithm, you might compare it against other algorithms that do the same thing, running on the same tests as your algorithm, and show that yours is faster, smaller, more reliable, etc. You should *also* mention the other algorithms in your literature review section, with a qualitative comparison that will then have the details filled later by your results comparison.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: In my opinion, results are most important part of the thesis. Please make a comparison of your result with related works results (don't forget to compare with at least one recent work 2014/2015), and include them in the appropriate section of the thesis.
Regarding summary of related work. Normally we provide a detail analysis of the work has been done in past. However, it is also nice, if you include a summary table of the related work, such as follows:
S. No., Author (write first author surname et al. [cite] (year of publication), Related Entities/objects (the approach about), Description (include pros and cons of each approach), any other remake/comparison you wish to make.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm an educational/instructional technology major in China. My supervisor asked me to analyse my thesis' possibility, necessity and feasibility which seldom have I seen in papers written by Western researchers. What's more, I have articulated the literature review ahead. I'm just wondering if masters in your university need to write such things.
### the background
It may sound strange to you, but I'm truly confused on this issue. I'm pursuing a master degree under a very reputed and elderly tenured professor. Although he has a PHD background in Dutch in the earlier 1980s, I thought he is kind of too non-international.<issue_comment>username_1: In my completed and successful MSc and PhD, as part of the Introduction, in a section named 'Rationale', I included a justification of the possibility and necessity of the research using a literature review of the current status of the research. The literature review also formed as a basis of the feasibility of the methods that would be employed.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The introduction of articles usually explain why are you doing what you are doing, i.e., the necessity. You don't see feasibility analysis because they are, obviously, possible, since they have been done. On the other hand, grant proposals do it: they have to convince the committee that the research they propose is possible, useful, and can be done on time. You could ask your supervisor for some of his grant proposals as an example. This is not always done because this is in general a difficult analysis to do.
Furthermore, MSc thesis are often used as feasibility analysis on their own: the professor gets someone to work for a few months on a topic, and can (hopefully) discover most of the problems in advance. If the results are promising, it will be offered as a PhD or postdoc project.
By making you do the literature review in advance he is making you get up to date with the field, something that everybody has to do when starting a new research topic. Bear in mind that this section will have to be expanded and rewritten as you advance your research and discover that you need other tools.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I submitted a paper to a journal several months ago (less than six months). That journal does not have an electronic submission systeem. I sent an email to one of the editors of that journal and I wrote politely (I believe) that I am submitting a paper to the journal. It’s my bad that I forgot to CC the email to the managing editor of that journal.
Up to now I have not received any acknowledgement of the submission and therefore I don’t know whether the paper is in the editorial process (i.e., being reviewed). I did send another email to the editor (and CC it to the managing editor) and ask if the submission was arrived safely. But again I has received no response (from both). So I am kind of afraid that my submission and/or the last email is regarded as spam. Of course I won’t reveal the journal’s name but it is a good and decent journal.
I know it’s not rare that authors may not receive acknowledgement of submission. But I do’'t know how to make sure that the submission email didn’t go into the spam folder.
What should I do? (Unfortunately this is not the first time I encountered this situation)
Edit: By the way, I would like to know if my situation is typical or rare? Of course if the journal has an electronic submission system, then this situation is not likely to happen.<issue_comment>username_1: You can also find out, if there is an assistant editor. Some times volunteer can work for such review processes. He/she may help you. I also faced a similar issue. I was keep on writing on almost every week to editor, and then one he finally responded with anger. But at least I got the response!
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Let me first state my strong opinion, and ask everyone to agree, that for an editor to not answer a request for acknowledgement of a submission in a reasonable amount of time, assuming they actually received your email, is **inappropriate and unprofessional**. Yes, we have probably all seen such behavior. I don't care that it happens, maybe even not infrequently; I don't care that editors are overworked, busy, tired, absent-minded, or that they are volunteers who are not paid for their services (note: *unpaid*, but not *uncompensated*, since they very much enjoy the prestige that comes with being a journal editor, and in many cases receive benefits such as a teaching reduction at their institution). A journal is a professional entity and needs to conduct itself professionally. If you are an editor, you signed up, voluntarily I assume, to perform a job, so there is simply no justification for not doing that job. So, repeat after me: **not acknowledging a submission, especially when requested, is wrong**. Feels good, doesn't it? ;-)
The point is that if nagging the editor makes them angry or annoyed, I don't see that as a problem. It is 100% the editor's fault that they are being nagged, not the OP's fault for nagging. And if their anger leads them to treat the OP's submission vindictively in some way (as the OP seems to worry it might), then that editor is an unprofessional loser, and their behavior reflects very poorly on the journal. In that case I would seriously advise the OP to consider not publishing in such a journal and seeking a fairer treatment elsewhere. (Also, as @username_1 commented, an angry response is at least a response!)
It's also important to note that mistakes do happen, so there is a non-negligible possibility that if you are not getting an acknowledgement then your submission was actually not received. That is why acknowledgements are needed in the first place! Here are two related stories that happened to me:
* Many years ago I submitted a short paper to a good journal. I don't remember if I received an acknowledgement, but I definitely did not receive a referee report... until two years later, when an apologetic email from the editor came. He confessed with embarrassment that my submission had been on his desk that was stacked with lots of other papers so that he lost track of my submission, and that at one point my paper fell into the crack between the desk and the wall, where he now found it while cleaning up his office. (I guess in those days some submissions were not handled electronically.) To my surprise (since I myself had some misgivings about the paper and had given it up as being possibly unpublishable) he then added he liked the paper very much and would be happy to accept it, assuming I was still interested, which of course I was.
* A couple of years ago I saw in my files a note about an old gmail account I had set up to receive email forwarded from an institution I had left several years before. I had completely forgotten about the existence of that account, so I logged in to see if there was anything important there. I assumed there wouldn't be, since anyone who is trying to reach me can just google my name to get to my current home page on which I list my current email address - right? Well, to my surprise, I found on the old gmail account a series of increasingly desperate emails from the editor of a certain combinatorics journal, asking me to referee a paper, then some months later asking if I had received the earlier email, then asking for an acknowledgement, etc.... What seems to have happened is that the journal had some kind of automatic system for tracking the email addresses of authors who published there (obviously a bad idea), and the editor was sending me those emails through the automated system instead of doing the sensible thing of just looking for my email address and sending me an ordinary email.
To summarize, my advice to the OP is to consistently nag the editor, including indirectly through any intermediaries you can think of (editorial assistant, managing editor, colleague at the editor's department etc.), every week for a few weeks. If you do not hear back after 2-3 weeks I would assume that the submission had not been received, write one final email in which you politely inform the editor that you are withdrawing the submission due to the lack of response, and submit the paper elsewhere.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: There's one other thing you might try (in addition to the good advice already given). You could look up the affiliation of the editors who haven't been responding, and call them up at their home institutions.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I submitted a paper to a prominent journal in my field. The reviewers all indicated that the paper would make a positive contrition to the field in the first round of review and asked me to make a major revision. I revised the manuscript according to their review and all reviewers indicated that they like my revision. However, one of the reviewers kept raising new issues and asked me to undertake another round of "major revision." Personally, I really feel that the new issues are not too difficult to address. However, I am wondering whether it is fair to keep raising new (*major*) issues in each round of review. And, what is my chance of getting the paper accepted in the scenario described above (two rounds of major revision)? Thanks very much for your insight.<issue_comment>username_1: I can see two reasons why a reasonable referee might request a second major revision after you've addressed all the issues raised in the first report. (1) Your revision to address the original issues might have introduced new problems that now need to be addressed. (2) Some problems in the original manuscript could not be detected until after other issues had been resolved.
As for your second question, about the chance of getting the paper accepted after the second round of revision, I cannot make any guess without a lot more information about the journal, the paper, the nature of the revisions, and perhaps the editor's mood.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I think of requests for revision as falling into three basic categories, sorted in order of importance:
* New technical results (e.g., additional experiments, more theorems)
* Large-scale text improvement (e.g., reorganizing text, dealing with pervasive language issues)
* Localized text improvement (e.g., improving explanations, adding references)
Of these, only a request for new results should be of concern as a possible road to rejection: for the other two, if you want the paper published, if one cares to one can typically always put in sufficient work to address reviewer comments. It may be hard, unpleasant, and unrewarding (depending on the particulars), but this is an area where any request for revision almost always has a clear path to publication, and of a stronger paper than you started with.
Requests for new technical results, on the other hand, might or might not be something that you cannot reasonable address. If you can address them, then it's still a clear road to publication of a stronger paper. If you can't, however, then it's a question of scope and may be worth discussing with the handling editor to see whether they are a sine qua non for publication.
In general, however, my feeling about requests for revision, even major revision, is that they're generally good news. Once a paper hits at least a major revision, it's highly likely to be eventually accepted if the authors just keep answering the requests for improvement, and will likely be the stronger for it. There *are* exceptions (I just had one rejected by a journal for the rather unusual reason that "they only allow one revision,"), but in my experience these most frequently reflect an author who has chosen to fight the reviewers rather than to improve the paper.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I review many journal and conference papers frequently. In my opinion, first round decides whether the quality and technicality of the paper is considerable or not. If yes, then reviewer provides his/her minor and major comments. In second round of review, first reviewer checks whether all his/her comments have been addressed or not. Is the paper now seems reason to accept? If not, the reviewer ask for next review, but minor (may be with mandatory changes).
I have also observed that some reviewers keep on doing this and ask you every time to revise the paper with new comments. I don't think it is a good practice. The reviewer must give his/her major concerns in first round of review. If he/she is not satisfy with the quality of the paper, justify the reason and the reject the paper.
In my understanding your paper can be accepted (high probability), but you still need to revise the paper considering reviewer's comments.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: In addition what others have said, I sometimes (as a reviewer) recommend major revision, with a threat to reject the paper in the second round. This is mostly with the papers, for which I believe are worthy of publication, but cannot be reviewed due to language or writing issues (mostly papers from Asia, where many papers lack proper english-speaking author). I have no patience guessing what people wanted to say, when the language is totally unreadable.
In that case, I treat the actual second round of revision as the first one, so I may request the second major revision, if necessary. If, on the other hand, authors do not fix the paper to the point where I could understand what they actually mean, I reject the paper (but always following the threat in the first round).
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: If I am a biology major from a lower tier liberal arts school, and I wanted to make myself more attractive for future applications( ie: grad school, job listings), **should I bother obtaining a minor in a related field**?
In this case the minor I was attempting was chemistry, but my last semester of undergraduate school is one I want to be "lightish", so I can study for GRE's or hopefully line up internships.
Ideally, I would hope people see my chemistry minor as me having more laboratory experience than other biology majors, since while obtaining the minor I took mostly chemistry courses with their corresponding laboratories. And that laboratory experience maybe could land me in a laboratory internship of some kind. Or look attractive for potential graduate assistance-ships.<issue_comment>username_1: Sure. How much depends on the field and the department; some places have fairly strict requirements for what you have to have learned in undergrad, and if a minor can hit some of those things, then that works.
However, in such cases, it tends to be less about the official minor and more about the coursework. For example, if you're applying to grad school in a mathey field, getting good grades in linear algebra, differential equations, and real analysis will probably be a big help whether there's a math minor on your transcript or not.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This is also true with side projects and work experience in other subjects. For example, if you were a Physics major, but did programming project on the side, this would help you case if you apply to a program (or job) also looking for those skills.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The minor you described would certainly bolster a student's preparation for grad school in your field.
On the other hand, I can see that you are feeling stretched and are not sure getting those last credits needed for the minor are really worth it.
Let me reassure you that the strong showing in your almost-minor field will be clear from your transcript, and you can also include a sentence or two about your complementary studies of chemistry, somewhere in your transcript.
Knowing how to take good care of yourself, and how to pace yourself, are very important skills, both for yourself, and to show admissions committees and prospective employers.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: If you have good GRE scores, is it a good idea to put them on the resume that you submit with your grad school application?<issue_comment>username_1: Sure. How much depends on the field and the department; some places have fairly strict requirements for what you have to have learned in undergrad, and if a minor can hit some of those things, then that works.
However, in such cases, it tends to be less about the official minor and more about the coursework. For example, if you're applying to grad school in a mathey field, getting good grades in linear algebra, differential equations, and real analysis will probably be a big help whether there's a math minor on your transcript or not.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This is also true with side projects and work experience in other subjects. For example, if you were a Physics major, but did programming project on the side, this would help you case if you apply to a program (or job) also looking for those skills.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The minor you described would certainly bolster a student's preparation for grad school in your field.
On the other hand, I can see that you are feeling stretched and are not sure getting those last credits needed for the minor are really worth it.
Let me reassure you that the strong showing in your almost-minor field will be clear from your transcript, and you can also include a sentence or two about your complementary studies of chemistry, somewhere in your transcript.
Knowing how to take good care of yourself, and how to pace yourself, are very important skills, both for yourself, and to show admissions committees and prospective employers.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am currently writing my Statement of Purpose for graduate admission in mathematics. I am wondering how specific I should be when describing my own research.
Should I merely include the (broad) area of my research? Should I explicitly state what I am working on, but not more? Or should I also loosely describe the main idea, and explain why this is interesting (possibly also mentioning some results)?<issue_comment>username_1: The Statement of Purpose (SoP) literally means a short eassy of your career path till date. So, mostly, the selection committee look into your SoP to know who you really are and what is your research plan. So start your SoP with few lines how did you get motivated to mathematics through accademic achievements. Then provide your current reseach interests, relevant results with some achievements if any (Conference Presentations/publications) and future plan. All of your mentioned points should be in SoP in proper way- give more stress about your main idea and explain why this is interesting and why in this particular grad school/ university.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Two equally successful statements of purpose can look very different from one another. Some graduate students enter with broad interests and others enter already knowing a specific question they want to work on. Both types of students can be good applicants and will have very different personal statements, potentially with very different levels detail when describing past research. Your advisor will give you much better, and more specific advise than the general advice you would get from academia.stackexchange.
Write a draft of your Personal Statement and then show it to your advisor [or other math professor who knows you well] to get feedback. After editing it based on this feedback, it is also a good idea to ask for feedback from professor(s) you intend on asking for a letter of recommendation. This serves two purposes (1) likely these letter writers will be less knowledgeable of your research area and give you a different perspective than your advisor (one that may mimic the academic diversity, to some degree, on an admissions committee) (2) Them giving you feedback on your Personal Statement will allow them to get to know you better and hence write you a better reference letter.
Generally speaking, if you can go into some detail, this is a good thing, and will set you apart from other applicants. In pure math, it is quite rare for students to have a very specific research direction before graduate school. Of course don't go so far into detail that only specialists can understand it.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm currently 2/3 of the way through my first postdoc, and starting to look around at, and apply for, my next job. I've noticed that some places require three letters of recommendation, whereas other places simply require two or three references -- i.e. they will call or email the referee if they view that as appropriate or necessary.
Writing an actual recommendation letter -- which typically has to be uploaded by the recommender -- is much more of an "ask".
Is an actual recommendation letter standard at the UK Lecturer or US Assistant Professor level? The pattern I seem to be seeing is that more prestigious places are more likely to require an actual letter; would others confirm that?<issue_comment>username_1: An actual letter is generally required at all levels in the US. It's a lot easier for a committee to read letters from 100 applicants, instead of actually contacting even 10 references.
I actually think writing a letter is likely to be easier for your referee than being available as a reference. They can write a single letter in their spare time, and send copies to as many employers as needed (perhaps customizing where need). If you just list them as a reference, they need to be available to respond to contacts on short notice, possibly setting up phone calls with employers in distant time zones, etc. To me, that seems like the "bigger ask".
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Letters of recommendation are pretty standard because they can be read immediately, as opposed to waiting for a response with a reference.
It's not strange to simply send the same or similar letters to multiple places though, so if you need them for one application, might as well get them for all of them.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Having made more that 50 applications for Lecturer posts in the UK, I can share some of my statistics.
* Only 3 Universities of 50 asked for LoRs to be communicated through the applicant.
* The majority, 47 of 50, asked for a list of references, and contact them asking for LoRs only if a candidate is shortlisted.
In the U.S. the customs may differ.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I've participated in searches at my university in different departments that handle this in different ways. In some cases we required everyone to have letters of recommendation sent, while in other cases we contacted the references of our short list of 10-15 candidates and requested letters. When there are hundreds of applicants for a position, the later system saves the letter writers work, but it does mean that the committee doesn't have the letters in hand when they select the short list.
In some disciplines there are online systems that allow a letter writer to upload one letter of recommendation that the applicant can't see but that the applicant can have forwarded to potential employers. If your discipline has such a system, then you should use it to make things easier for your letter writers. See for example the mathjobs.org web site in the US.
Since practices vary across disciplines and departments, I'd encourage you to do whatever the advertisement asks for.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: The older tradition in the US was that you would ask for actual letters to be sent. This is being replaced with asking for names of references for later contact (usually by the candidate). The rationale is that we get so many applications many of which have no serious chance, that there is no point in getting letters (which then have to be managed in some way). The committee can construct a long short-list and email those candidates to ask that letters be sent, once they've reduced the pool to a set that they could realistically hope to read. Eventually, they will require actual letters from anyone being interviewed in person. Letters almost always go from writer to committee, with 2 exceptions in my experience both for jobs that were on the margins of being academic as opposed to administrative.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I have collaborated and written several research papers where my co-authors withheld the final draft and submitted the paper without my name as co-author. Two papers have single authors (not me) and a third paper has three authors (one of whom was not even on the research team when I conceptualised the research and analysed the data). The explanation for excluding me as author is that I did not meet the third criterion of the Vancouver protocol (final approval of the version to be published). The university supported this cheating because it follows the letter of the law. I have analysed data for a fourth paper which my collaborator has not yet published as her own. However, she is one of the single authors mentioned above, so my guess is that she will publish this as her work too. I no longer work at that department. What should I do?
I was never given a chance to review the final drafts of the manuscripts. They were submitted behind my back.<issue_comment>username_1: It is not clear from your question whether you were denied the chance to review and potentially approve the manuscript for submission, or you did review the manuscript but did not approve of the decision to submit the paper. If it is the second case, then there is, in my understanding, very little chance for you to make a case for your authorship, since you voluntarily gave up your authorship right. Depending on the particulars of your case, it may be argued that the collaborator should have delayed publication until a consensus has been reached after additional revision. But again, it is unclear from your question whether this option has been explored appropriately. However, if it is the first case, the reason given by your collaborator sounds dubious - if you do not have a chance to review the manuscript, how can you possibly approve the manuscript? In this case you should consult the previous questions and answers suggested by @ff524.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: You might want to consider [this](http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html) discussion of authorship by ICMJE, the statement of interest being that
>
> The criteria are not intended for use as a means to disqualify
> colleagues from authorship who otherwise meet authorship criteria by
> denying them the opportunity to meet criterion #s 2 or 3. Therefore,
> all individuals who meet the first criterion should have the
> opportunity to participate in the review, drafting, and final approval
> of the manuscript.
>
>
>
So if you made substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work, then you should have been given the opportunity to meet the third criterion. If indeed your colleagues just hijacked the work, there is a clear argument to be made that this is a violation of an ethical principle (depending on whether there are other material details that we don't know of).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I know a PhD candidate that had the same issue with one co-author (the supervisor). Right after the paper was submitted without consent, the candidate sent an email to the journal editors and they rejected the paper based on evidence and for the sake of doubt. They asked the supervisor to re-submit the paper with signed declarations by all the authors and contribution declarations. At the end, the supervisor recognized that the paper was submitted without consent and the paper re-submitted with a new approved version.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: So I am an undergraduate in university right now studying applied physics with applications in aeronautical/aerospace engineering. I have a 5th year M.S option to get my masters in physics with applications in a certain field. After that 5th year M.S I want to go and get my masters in aeronautical/aerospace engineering but always wanted to do research at the PhD level, so is it possible for me to get a PhD in physics or aerospace/aeronautical engineering after two MS's in physics and aeronautical engineering respectively?<issue_comment>username_1: If you can afford to do all that graduate study without a TA-ship or RA-ship, more power to you! Perhaps you could get the two masters concurrently... or at least get some of the coursework for the aeronautical/aerospace engineering masters out of the way. Maybe there will be some nice overlap that will speed things up a bit for you.
You could also take those a/a courses in the early stages of a PhD program in either field.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I did exactly this, just with some differences in the subjects. I did my Masters degrees in Education and Physics and had no problem getting into the PhD in Physics. I am fortunate, as where I am, students are not required to pay for research degrees (Australia).
One major advantage I found was that the increased research skills benefited me in the PhD, this is what helped me when I was putting together my research proposal which my University's selection panel focused on.
If you can, go for it! As always though, speak with your advisor - it may be unnecessary.
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/09
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<issue_start>username_0: Princeton has two nice options called "visiting student" and "qualifying student". UCB and MIT also have the same options, but their policies and names are slightly different. The former is for undergrads from other college who want to take courses in Princeton, and the latter is for those who graduated from their colleges who are not qualified for Princeton but would like to take courses in Princeton as a non-degree seeking graduate student. The cost is roughly the same (no stipend) as my current college, and both are a year only, but the only difference is whether the student is undergrad or grad. As a junior undergrad, I have exhausted courses on mathematical physics and relevant pure math courses offered in my university, so I would like to take courses, attend seminars and do research under professors of Princeton. Although my school's math PhD program is great, it's not comparable to Princeton, since they have Y. Sinai and professors in IAS for mathematical physics.
I can graduate this year (as a junior) and become a "qualifying student", or become a "visiting student" and I can graduate a year later. Which option is better? Or are both options bad? This is for the case that I will not get into PhD program of my choice this year, so please assume that situation. According to the following question, being a non-degree seeking grad student is waste of money. Does it apply to my case, too?
[How will study as a non-degree student affect my graduate admissions chances later?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/52564/how-will-study-as-a-non-degree-student-affect-my-graduate-admissions-chances-lat)<issue_comment>username_1: Enrolling as a non-degree-seeking graduate student in a U.S. mathematics graduate program is almost never a good idea, and this is in no way a mainstream option. (I'm talking about not seeking a degree anywhere. For comparison, it's not uncommon to be officially seeking a degree at University X but visiting University Y while your advisor visits there.)
It's easy to get the wrong impression from course catalogs, since they give short descriptions of options that may not reflect how they are used in practice. For example, I doubt the Princeton math department ever admits anyone as a [qualifying student](https://gradschool.princeton.edu/academics/nondegree-student-categories); if it happens at all, it is exceptionally rare. I can imagine it might happen for a clearly brilliant student from a deprived background, but not for the vast majority of applicants. There's just too much competition for admission.
If you are accepted as a non-degree-seeking graduate student:
1. You won't be treated in any way like an ordinary graduate student. To the extent anyone in the department is aware of you, you'll be in a special category of "person who wasn't admitted to the graduate program but is paying a lot of money to take courses anyway", which is not a flattering description. In particular, you should not expect faculty to supervise your research or interact with you any more or differently than they treat the undergraduates in these classes. (It could happen, but I'd guess it probably won't.)
2. It won't help with admission, compared with doing equally well in similar courses elsewhere. Specifically, any admissions committee will have members who want to make sure this isn't used as an easier back door to admission, and they will be sure to enforce strict standards.
>
> I can graduate this year (as a junior) and become a "qualifying student", or become a "visiting student" and I can graduate a year later.
>
>
>
Are you sure you're interpreting these programs right? In [this listing of the categories](http://gradschool.princeton.edu/academics/nondegree-student-categories), visiting students are enrolled in graduate programs elsewhere, while qualifying students are non-degree-seeking students who are trying to make up for weak backgrounds in the hope of future admission. I'm not aware of any option for undergraduates to spend a year at Princeton, except for some [international exchange programs](https://www.princeton.edu/oip/sap/exchange/). However, I might well be missing some possibility.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If you want to learn something in an academic environment, without earning credits (which I strongly support you to do while you are treading water), there is a low-cost option at most schools: auditing!
Besides enrolling as an auditor (for a fraction of the cost), you should also contact the instructor directly. You'll want his or her blessing. You should include an informal transcript and a little description of your experience and interests. And an explanation of why you are treading water for a semester (or two).
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: Should figure captions only describe all of the necessary components (e.g. the meaning of axes, etc.) or can the figure caption also include a brief sentence about the main conclusion drawn from the figure. For example, say the axes are labelled "speed" and "time". One caption might be "Speed of a giraffe in meters per second as a function of time in seconds from when it first starts moving." It could also have the additional sentence "... Note that Speed is increasing with time." For the previous example, this is probably unnecessary, but for more complicated "take home messages" the point of the figure may not be as obvious. So should comments describing the main result behind the figure be only put in the text body or is it OK to put it in the caption as well? I think this might be field dependent.
The justification for wanting to put the main message of a figure in the caption is that it makes the paper easier to skim, as, anecdotedly, I've heard quite a few people say they skim the paper and focus most of their effort on the figures before ever looking at the results.<issue_comment>username_1: A short comment in a caption is ok. But generally captions should stay descriptive of what is drawn in the figure e.g.
>
> Fig. X: estimated airspeed velocity of an unladen European swallow.
>
>
>
They should also ideally not be too redundant with legends although sometimes it helps to say things like "shown at various headwind velocities". The place to draw attention on a specific aspect of the data shown in a figure is the results section.
These are customs and not strictly-enforced rules, nothing bad will happen to you if you take a few liberties. Worst case scenario, you'll have to make a few minor edits during revision.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It's always worth getting someone to proofread your submissions. All co-authors should anyway, and those less involved with that aspect of the work can be best qualified to judge the clarity of your exaplanations (they can also be most liekly to skim over that section). Otherwise, you have peers, help each other. The best style partly depends where your figure is going.
*In a journal paper*, styles vary between journals, even from the same publisher. Some like dense figures with long captions, or at least, these become the norm when page limits are tight. Other journals prefer more spacious figures, fewer insets, and simpler captions. The correlation between cpation and figure styles is only meant to be indicative; I'm sure you could find examples of simple figures and very full captions. Some journals prefer the legend to be given in the form of text in the caption.
*In a thesis* you'll normally have a list of figures, with short captions in it. These short captions should give enough information for the reader to find a figure ("There was a figure relating bandgap and lattice spacing, now which figure was it?") while including a subset of the information in a full caption. Thus the full caption will end up reasonably descriptive.
There are a few other, competing, factors:
* *Help your reader*. This is a point I often make, but here could be interpreted as:
+ Don't waste space and the reader's attention stating the obvious...
+ ... but add clarity.
+ If a figure really works only in colour (and these should be rare), provide enough information so the reader knows this, and doesn't juyst hink your figure is rubbish.
+ Consider a reader who may not see too well -- give them the information in text to decide whether to print a large copy. (This is an example, but helping this hypothetical reader may help all your readers).
* *Help the reviewer*. This overalps with helping the reader, but a reviewer will be looking for different things. By all means say "for a full description of the samples, see main text", but rather than just "Sample A (red squares), Sample B (black circles)" give them a gentle reminder of which sample is which (this of course is easy if it's a treated and a control population).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: There are different schools of thought about this; how much information to include in a figure caption depends largely on personal taste.
Proponents of minimalist figure captions put forth that
* It needs less space.
* It says in one brief sentence what the figure is about.
* Having a long block of text below a figure is ugly.
In contrast, proponents of long figure captions state that
* People who (if only at first reading) only skim over the paper and just look at figures do not have to search in the text what each figure is about. The very points found within the figure are explained in depth in the caption.
* When looking at a figure in detail, readers do not have to switch forth and back between the descriptive text and the figure, as a concrete description is right below the figure.
**Personally, I consider the points in favour of an extensive figure caption more convincing, and I usually go for those as long as space restriction allow so.**
An additional benefit is that you can use the paper text for an abstract description of some aspect of your work, and then use the figure caption for an equally detailed, but more concrete description of the example shown in the figure. This way, you improve comprehensibility of your paper without making it seem redundant or repetitive - as a certain degree of overlap (or even exact repetition) between text body and figure captions is acceptable.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I strongly advocate for captions that are as self-contained as possible, saying not only what the figure is but also the essence of what the reader should take away from it.
Yes, this introduces some minor degree of redundancy, but I believe this minor inelegance is well worth the benefits that can be obtained. Figures are extremely salient for a reader's attention: there are relatively few of them and they each have a strong visual impact, going through a different set of cognitive pathways than text. Many readers first impression of a paper will thus be formed by its figures, as they flip through a paper deciding whether to read it (and many journals explicitly encourage this with "online previews" that show only the figures of a paper). Even once somebody has decided to read a paper, they may not read all of the sections in depth, but may skim some and read others. Finally, even for a reader going in depth, the cognitive availability of the information associated with a figure is increased when the reader can pull key points right out of the caption rather than needing to go to some more distance part of the text.
As such, I believe that insofar as is possible, figures *and their captions* should provide a complete sketch of the paper narrative. Doing this will significantly increase the impact of your papers by helping readers at many different levels of commitment to reading.
Upvotes: 4
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<issue_start>username_0: Many researchers list out their submitted manuscripts on their website. Some specify the journal name, like
>
> <NAME>, <NAME> (under review) My awesome paper. Nature.
>
>
>
while others don't, like
>
> <NAME>, <NAME> (under review) My awesome paper.
>
>
>
One reason I can think of as to why some don't mention the journal name is that they may get embarrassed in the case where the current journal rejects the paper. Then, the "circle" will know this paper gets rejected from `Nature` first and then ends up in an inferior journal.
Besides this, are there any other considerations preventing people from mentioning to which journal they submit a paper to?
P.S.: I am asking because my advisor is a researcher who only mentions accepted papers on his webpage. As a student hunting jobs, I feel it is advantageous for me to mention my submitted papers on my webpage. I hesitate to do so, as I worry I may make my advisor unhappy by announcing in which journal our papers are currently under review.<issue_comment>username_1: I think a main reason why many find it preferable to not list the journal name is because it can come across as presumptuous and doesn't really advantage one over not listing the journal name, anyway. For an established researcher (such as, probably, your advisor), the few papers in submission probably do not bear too much influence on his/her reputation, compared to an early-stage researcher for whom these comprise a large percentage of the publication record, so there isn't much to gain.
Two alternatives that may allow you to list your submitted publications in a manner that is consistent with your advisor's are:
* **Do not mention the journal, but mention that the paper has been submitted**. This shows most of the important details of the paper and allows you to record it on your webpage without explicitly naming the journal. E.g.,
>
> Student A and <NAME>. (2016) "Our awesome paper." Under review. 12 pages.
>
>
>
* Depending on your field and the journal to which you submitted, **you could post an archival version online (say to arXiv)**. Then you can reference this on your webpage until it is accepted in a journal.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: This has nothing to do with embarrassment, and everything to do with **credibility**. Not advertising where you submitted your paper is part of a much more general principle that I recommend to everyone to follow. Here it is:
>
> **NEVER brag about an achievement that you have not yet accomplished.**
>
>
>
The reach of this principle extends far beyond academia, but academia is one place where it is particularly important, since research communities are small and very soon after you enter one, everyone in it will know exactly who you are and what you are about. It is therefore crucial to establish your credibility from day one.
Imagine two researchers, Alice and Bob. They work in the same field and are equally talented, but:
1. Alice waits until her paper is accepted before listing the journal on her publication list, and Bob doesn't.
2. Alice does not list "in preparation" papers on her publication list. Bob always has several of them listed.
3. Alice only gives a talk about her latest results after she has finished writing the manuscript and checking all the details, and has either posted the paper online or is getting ready to do so very soon. Bob gives talks about unwritten projects that are very far from fruition.
4. Alice's papers are very careful to claim only the results that she has rigorously established, and not rely on future as-yet-unwritten results. Bob's papers often make rosy promises about future extensions of the work he has done and how important they are, or will be.
Here's what will happen. Initially, Bob will be able to attract more attention than Alice from senior researchers in the field. At the early career stage when researchers like them are still judged by fairly superficial metrics, his publication list will appear longer, with catchy journal names his papers are "submitted" to. His talks will be more exciting, with mention of great results that he is working on and is confident he'll have written soon. But then... pretty soon people will find out that he is full of hot air. Many of his projects will not materialize. Many of his papers will be rejected from the fancy journals and quietly published in second-rate journals. Sure, he will have some successes, just like Alice, but after a while he will find that when he goes to a conference, much fewer people come to listen to his talk than to Alice's talk the same day. He will notice that when she announces an exciting result she has been working on for a long time, she has a paper to back it up, and people are much more impressed by that than when he announces a similarly exciting result. And he will notice that when he submits a paper, the referee report always comes back with many complaints about the unfounded claims he makes in his papers, sometimes citing them as the reason for rejecting the paper or requiring a major revision.
Even when he does finish a nice paper, Bob will notice that since he already gave a bunch of talks about the result, the community has moved on and the result is no longer seen as very exciting, again reducing the impact of his work just when he is about to submit the paper and needs that excitement to be at its peak.
After a few years, Bob will notice that despite him and Alice being about equally talented researchers and publishing a similar output of good papers, Alice is more successful than him. Her papers are accepted more frequently, to better journals, and she is more respected and appreciated by her community. That is the point when he understands the principle I mentioned above, and starts to follow it himself.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I agree with the basic point highlighted in username_2's answer, never brag about an achievement that you have not yet accomplished. And I would add that submitting a paper to Nature is not any more of an accomplishment than submitting it anywhere else or even just posting it on the arXiv; in all these cases, the only accomplishment is that you've written the paper.
I don't see anything wrong with including submitted papers in your CV, but I see no point in saying where they're submitted. In fact, I've been in a hiring committee meeting where an applicant's grandiose claims of this sort ("submitted to Annals of Mathematics") were ridiculed. Of course, your CV should make clear what the status of each not-yet-published paper is: accepted (in which case you can and probably should name the journal) or submitted. Some people also list "in preparation" but that can mean anything from "I've almost finished writing it, and I'll submit it next week" to "I think I can prove some theorems but I haven't yet written a word nor have I even carefully checked the proofs." As a result, I tend to ignore "in preparation" papers.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_1: I'm going to give a counterargument to the existing answers, because like everything else ever asked about academia, **it depends on your field**.
In my field (astrophysics), we don't have the sort of high-impact, low-acceptance-rate journals some other fields have. There's *ApJ* and *MNRAS* and maybe *A&A* and not much else. Thus there's no "journal shopping" where one just keeps resubmitting down the chain, hoping to get an article accepted at the highest possible impact factor.
As a result, it's not unusual at all to see "submitted to ," and this carries no negative connotations. The implication is that the work is in the process of being reviewed and will most likely be accepted in due course, since credible researchers don't submit works they don't think will be accepted (hurting your credibility with the only journals in the field is a pretty bad career move).
In fact, the name of the journal carries some useful information. If I see a researcher only submitting to third-rate journals, I wonder why they aren't following the standards of the field. If I see submissions to *Nature*, I know the research is flashy but shoddy and probably isn't worth paying attention to. If I see no journal name at all, I assume the worst. In the end, good journal names provide a bit of assurance that the researcher is doing mainstream research in line with the expectations of the field.
Just to provide some numbers to back my claims, there were 45 new submissions to [astro-ph](http://arxiv.org/archive/astro-ph) today. Of those, 31 were already accepted at a journal (in press or published), 10 listed a specific journal as the submission entry, and 4 listed no journal (and some of these last group are articles that are not intended to be published beyond arXiv).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: As mentioned by <NAME>, there are field-dependents habits that one should follow unless one really knows what one is doing. Independently of the reasons a community comes up with such habits, not following them may be frowned upon pretty easily.
In maths, the habit is not to list the name of journals before acceptance, but to list preprints. Listing papers in preparation is done by some, but not all.
In any case, if you have a stellar paper and you want people evaluating your record to be aware of that, write things neatly in your research statement and on your web site: it might do more good than saying that your paper is submitted to the Journal of Upper Snobiness. I like to have a small web page for each of my paper explaining what's in it, and it can be the place to talk about a particular achievement (make your case clear without being too presumptuous - a delicate equilibrium).
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: When using the same variables in many equations, should I redefine each time the variables and their meanings or is there other ways to avoid redundancy?
E.g.
c = a + b
where a is...
z = a / b
where a is...
It will maybe depend on the journal, but thanks for any general idea or opinion.<issue_comment>username_1: I think of this as a matter of "[breadcrumbs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breadcrumb_(navigation))." If a reader is constantly wondering what "a" is and having to look back to try to find its definition, that is a problem. On the other hand, if I put so much redundant definition in that the math gets hidden by uninteresting boilerplate prose, that's also a problem.
My preference is thus to take a two-pronged approach:
1. Create a table of symbols that collects all of the definitions in one easy-to-find location, and
2. Match every equation with a prose summary of its meaning.
For example, if I were presenting Newton's laws, then I might say:
>
> "The force exerted by an object is proportional to mass and acceleration: F = ma."
>
>
>
and in the table of definitions "F" and "m" and "a" would all have their formal definitions. In this way, I remind the reader about the definitions without repeating them, yet at the same time have a simple reference point at which all definitions may be readily found.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Different authors use different notations and when making a litereture review it might get confusing if there is no explaination of the symbols whatsoever.
In general I would say that it helps if all symbols are explained once in the paper, at a centralized table or by their first appearance. Even if to you it may be redundant, please keep in mind that the reader is not necessarily familiar with your topic.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: My original paper has already been published in the conference proceedings. Now, the body organizing the conference has invited me to submit an extended and revised version of my paper to be included in a new book.<issue_comment>username_1: In my experience, extended versions most typically contain three classes of new information:
* More extensive prose and examples to explain, discuss, and otherwise clarify the material presented in the original paper. Conference papers are sometimes rather haiku'ed due to page limits.
* Important details omitted from the original paper due to length. For example, a discussion of the key points of an algorithm may become a full presentation of its details, and a proof sketch may become a proof.
* Extension work, either enhancing evaluation or extending the set of material studied, as suggested by the original paper's future work, feedback from the reviewers, questions raised in the conference talk, etc.
Some combination of these is almost certainly the right sort of material for your extended paper, but which combination exactly is something that only you, your collaborators, and your advisors are in a good position to determine.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I think the easiest way to understand the possibilities for what you might do is to look for examples of papers in your field that have been through the same process. If you can find some then you use these tangible examples as templates for making your own improvements.
You might also benefit from asking some people to read the paper, and then asking them which parts they were confused and interested by. For example, you might find that the section on one aspect of your theory is actually a little bit to complicated for non-experts, and that one aspect of your findings seems to have interesting implications for a specific area of research. Once you know these things you can expand these sections to create a better, but also longer paper.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I have been following certain mailing lists for PhD opportunities. About a week ago, I found a really interesting position. Unfortunately (?), it is in a top school, so I don't know if my qualifications are enough.
I will finish my master's early next year with decent grades (average is near 4.5 of 5.0). However, my grades in the bachelor's degree are not that good (around 3.0 of 5.0). Anyway, I have several publications, teaching and research experience, and a notable research award. I do not meet desired level of proficiency in one of the sub-components of their preferred english language test (though my average score is higher than what they want).
How would I go about asking more information about the position? I would like to send a brief email but mentioning all of the relevant "positive data" is rather difficult. Should I just ask some specifics, and give a URL to my CV?
What to do here?
(I am aware of the other question asking about how to get bad grades past admission committees. My question here is not the same one. Instead, I would like to know how to make the first contact)<issue_comment>username_1: I'm currently looking for a PI to take me as a student ina PhD program. So, I've contacted the student's affair office and they told me to introduce myself to the PI like this:
Hi Professor ABC,
My name is X and I am currently doing BLA BLA BLA at the Z Institute. I am interested in applying for a PhD at BLANK in the area of BLANK and was wondering if you were interested in taking on more students/have room in your lab for me.
---
Simple as that, he will probably ask you for a more detailed profile of yours with your cv.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You don't need to provide much information about yourself when asking for more information. I would say something like this:
Subject: Expression of interest in PhD position
Dear Professor X,
My name is X and I am currently doing Y at Z. I am contacting you as I am interested in X and have a few questions in relation to this position that I would appreciate your help with. First, I noticed that you want X skills, is having X-1 acceptable for this?
...
Thank for taking the time to read this.
Kindest Regards,
Y
I would make sure that you only ask the Professor questions you really need to know, and that he alone can answer. Some of the questions you have might be best suited for the admissions office or some other university body. Also keep the email as short as possible, as academics are very busy so they are less likely to answer long emails. Make sure that it is well written and has no typos.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Whenever you send someone your CV (or a link to it), a cover letter should accompany it. Your cover letter should be one to three paragraphs, and should be tailored to the specifics of the position. You'll need to read up on that department (and the relevant professors), so you can say something relevant to their work. You don't need to pretend you know a lot about their field; but you should say something personal to help the reader understand why you are interested in working there.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: In a similar position, I contacted the program coordinator who had put out the call. I told them I was interested and described my preparation in a bare-bones way, they got back to me a couple days later and asked for specifics to discuss with faculty in the program, I responded, and eventually I got a very polite note that I wouldn't be ready to do well in the program at this time but please keep our institution in mind for the future.
So to echo previous comments, keep it simple. I think it's good to consider it as a conversation at this stage, and you wouldn't try to open a conversation with everything at once.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: Is a Polish PhD degree in engineering equally revered as a North American degree (i.e., from Canada or USA) in the area of academia and job-market?<issue_comment>username_1: It is equivalent, in the sense that a PhD from Yale and MIT are "equivalent" (but, depending on department, not equivalently revered).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: No, it generally wouldn't be as revered. If you look at the university ranking systems, Polish institutions are generally not as well ranked, or regarded as North American institutions. This is also true if you look at the specific rating given for the quality of engineering education within these universities. For example, see:
<http://www.topuniversities.com/qs-world-university-rankings>
<https://www.timeshighereducation.com/world-university-rankings>
Upvotes: 2
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| 1,922
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<issue_start>username_0: My friend has told me his own story. He's a researcher and he's trying to publish his paper. His supervisor is a Chinese researcher, but they're working in the states. My friend has written all the code and contributed to everything for the project (including writing the paper). However, his supervisor is insisting to add three professors to the authors' contribution. In the contribution, it's clear my friend is merely a software developer while the other authors contribute the ideas, paper and case studies.
My friend isn't very happy because merely implementing an algorithm would not be a good career path for him. More importantly, those three professors did absolutely nothing, but they did indirectly provide funding for the project.
My friend is a fresh PHD graduate. His supervisor is an average post-doc, he's building his own career path as well. The supervisor told my friend it's normal to add unrelated names, something he'd been doing quite lot in China. In fact, he said everything about research in China is about connection. The more high-ranked names you add, the more likely those professors will "pay back" and find someway to promote you or land you a job/project later. He claims that's exactly why nobody cared Tu Yoyyou, before she won the Nobel prize. She was always a brilliant researcher but she didn't know how to use connections to make a better career path for herself.
My friend was further told that he would have a brilliant research career if he allowed himself be a software developer for this project. The professors wouldn't be happy if their names weren't on it. He was told it wouldn't be wise for him to being "blacklisted": *it's not what you can do to make you a good researcher, it's about whom you know that distinguish yourself from other researchers*.
His supervisor has written the authors' contributors for the three professors and is about to send the paper to a journal.
Question:
Is this normal in the Western world and what should he do?<issue_comment>username_1: I think that what you have mentioned is relatively common in China. This view is partially based on my experiences and what I have learned from others but also backed up (a little) by some research. Overall research suggests that networks may be more important in China than in the western world. The concept of [*guanxi*](https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Guanxi) is frequently referenced to explain this. Similarly, based on measures of culture, such as those outlined by Hofstede, China and the west are quite different in terms of power distance and individualism. Specifically, Chinese culture has been argued to lead to Chinese people being (relative to Americans) (i) more clearly divided into social hierarchies (e.g., peoples status has a bigger influence in social setting) and (ii) more focused on working toward group success rather than their own individual success.
From your friend's supervisor's perspective, it makes perfect sense to leverage his network through this form of reciprocity. Basically, he does something for these professors, wins their favour and then expects that they will eventually do something for him in return.As they hold more power then him, they may potentially be able to open doors that otherwise would have remained closed (for example through recommendation letters, or personal influences). Indeed, many of these professors may have acquired their position partially due to their own networks, and similar practices in the past.
I think your friend should accept that this is the way that things will work if he continues to work with this group of researchers. If he is too principled and reliant on autonomy to tolerate this then he will need to leave and work with someone else. On the other hand, if he can tolerate this for a while, he may very well end up being the beneficiary of similar behavior in the future.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It is strange that your friend's supervisor has been working in the US for a while, but is unaware of the ethical standards expected there. Clearly, what the supervisor wants to do, is a case of gift authorship, which is unethical. The [ICMJE recommends](http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html) that authorship can be granted only if a person has made substantial intellectual contributions to the work, drafted or revised it for intellectual content, given their final approval for publication, agree to be accountable for all aspects of the work, and be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. Any other form of contribution should not be considered as authorship. To quote from the [ICMJE guidelines](http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/browse/roles-and-responsibilities/defining-the-role-of-authors-and-contributors.html): "Contributors who meet fewer than all 4 of the above criteria for authorship should not be listed as authors, but they should be acknowledged. Examples of activities that alone (without other contributions) do not qualify a contributor for authorship are acquisition of funding; general supervision of a research group or general administrative support...." Your friend should not give his approval on the manuscript. He should explain to the supervisor that this is considered unethical and could even lead to a retraction of the published paper. If this does not work, your friend should try to talk to someone in a higher position of authority.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think the current answers are not worded strongly enough.
Going along with this is **VERY HARMFUL**.
* Giving a gift in expectation of return makes your friend dependent of these people, whose motivation is already under question.
* It is rare to point fingers to unsavory scientific practices in public, but people have eyes and ears. Getting associated with a clique that elevates the connections over honest science will tarnish your friend's reputation.
* Going along gives a little bit more power to the group of people who abuse power. Nobody benefits in the long term.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I am a postdoc in China, and have been here since almost 2 years. I am looking forwards to leaving mainly because [I cannot cope with their cultural ways](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/104541/persistent-issues-with-salary-pay-as-a-postdoc-in-china-what-can-i-do) at work, e.g. how the local academia works. The supervisor mentioned in this question does speak the truth about gift authorships in Chinese science, thus firstly let me acknowledge his sincere contribution and advice. As another answer states clearly, ultimately such decision lies in the hands of the true first author and his/her advisor. However there is the conflict of standards over international ethics and clan-specific ethics.
Typically what happens is exactly this: a young researcher gets stuck in a moral dilemma with collaborators and is advised to either abide or walk out. The problem is, too often morally questionable standards are not announced before a project starts and abusers rely on the lateness of the dilemma to push for a win-win situation. Adding to the problem, Mainland Chinese people are culturally prone to speak through contextualised subtle insinuations, leaving a lot of margin for belated misunderstanding when dealing with other cultures.
Surely by this point a decision was already taken on this specific conflict, but I will leave here the main advice to others in potentially similar situation. Gift authorship from my experience seems widespread in Chinese academia. Engaging in scientific collaboration with Mainland China academics is therefore prone to lead to conflicts over ICMJE and similar guidelines on authorships and other aspects. This is not to say gift authorship doesn't take place elsewhere as well, however the local approach tends to be more straightforward and intense than elsewhere (i.e. **absolute zero** intellectual contribution; numerous added names; openly offended if denied).
As I believe supporting parasitic academics rapidly leads to bad quality science and somewhat kills the original meaning in the career for most people involved, I refrain from providing gift authorships as best as possible while always reciting the international guidelines. I hereby recommend other serious colleagues to do and preach the same, even if some conflict ensues.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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2015/11/10
| 1,571
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing a paper for a class that requires me to write from a perspective I disagree with. To an external observer it may not be clear that I am not allowed to disagree with the premise of the prompt.
I disagree with it to such a degree that I would like to add something at the beginning or end of the paper that expresses my dissent in case my work or record is made public for some reason. It would be professionally and personally embarrassing to have the work become public.
Is there a way to do this professionally? Is there a way to do this without offending my professor?<issue_comment>username_1: I would precede my paper by a strong explanatory note disassociating myself from the views expressed in the paper, **in boldface and surrounded by a big black frame**. For extra clarity and safety, I would then quote verbatim the assignment that the project is fulfilling, before starting the actual paper. E.g.:
>
> Confessions of a cannibal
>
> Final project for Philosophy 101
>
> [your name]
>
>
> **Explanatory note: the views in the essay below are written in the context of a final project assignment for the course Philosophy 101. They are fictional and do not represent the author's actual views on cannibalism or on any other subject.**
>
>
> Project assignment: "Write a 4000-word essay written from the point of view of a cannibal living in New York City in the year 1987. Discuss the narrator's views and opinions on cannibalism and other topics of interest."
>
>
> [body of the essay]
>
>
>
I should note that you say "To an external observer it may not be clear that I am not allowed to disagree with the premise of the prompt." It's not clear to me if you mean that you are not allowed to include an explanatory note of this type, or even to quote the assignment text. If that's what you meant, I'd have to say that forbidding you from including such explanatory text would in my opinion be tantamount to requiring you to *actually pretend to be a cannibal* (or other such person with unsavory views), which would be a highly unethical requirement. In the face of such a restriction, I would frankly refuse to hand in such an assignment, and take the matter up with the instructor and/or higher university authorities.
Upvotes: 8 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Use a pseudonym. Write a separate email, or tell the professor in person, what your pen name is for this project.
You don't need to give a reason for using a pseudonym.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Provide context by putting the prompt/constraints at the top of the page, preceding the content.
Use this to demonstrate that you are answering the task assigned, rather than coming up with the content completely on your own. That helps shift a reader's evaluation to "how well does this fit the prompt" instead of trying to assess it against their own evaluations (like agreeableness of points presented).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: I'd like to point out that the traditional debate form often involves defending a proposition that you don't agree with, as may the traditional essay form. A brief statement at the start that this is hypothetical/fiction will do the job (as I said in the comments, this could be abbreviated down to "*n.b.: non credo*").
But I'm reminded of the student who, in response to te Writing Requirement's demand for "a great man", wrote an essay about Hitlers strengths and successes. The school accepted it without an eyeblink; they understood that he was protesting the assignment, and that all that mattered for their purposes was that he had proven he could write. Unless you're doing things like actively posting the essay without explanation, and/or posting it to hate sites, I really don't think it will be that hard to explain.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: It's extremely troubling if the professor will not allow you to disagree with an opinion that is a premise of a writing prompt, except perhaps in a debate class, as was mentioned in a previous answer. It may also not necessarily be the case.
One approach to consider is to email the professor, tell him that you disagree with the premise of the prompt, briefly explain why, and suggest an alternative prompt that is substantially the same but assumes a premise that you can agree with.
The advantage to this approach is that either (1) the professor may permit you to discuss the subject from a position with which you agree or (2) you will have on record that the professor required you to answer the prompt as written.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Find something better to worry about.
First of all it is very unlikely that someone is going to try and smear you by either publishing this paper or keeping it for a number of years and then publishing. I don't know why you are specifically worried about this, but it's hard to think of many situations where someone would have a significant motivation to do this.
Secondly, even if someone does try and do this, it's unlikely to work. Information simply sticks around longer than it used to at the times of Barack Obama's birth certificate and <NAME>'s joke exam. If it's possible to find your paper, it's probably going to be relatively easy to find the nature of the assignment, details of the course, the contact details of other people who remember the situation, etc.
Thirdly, disclaimers and so on just will not protect you against a certain type of attack. If someone is really holding up your paper in the future as an example of your true but secret beliefs, they will easily be able to claim that the disclaimer is fake, that it was not present in the original, that its presence was itself a deception, and so on. These claims might be laughable - but so was the original one. This won't stop some people from believing them.
You might be someone with a very active imagination, who spends their whole time reimagining how their current actions will look when they are a presidential candidate in the future. Maybe you are simply indulging in a form of role-playing where you cut down cherry trees with your little hatchet, and then refuse to lie about it, and so on. I suspect however, that you simply object to having to write a paper from an opposing point of view, so you have invented this supposed practical objection as a form of protest.
In either case your energy might be better spent trying to develop your compassion and emotional maturity.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in a difficult situation in regards to letters of recommendation and I would like to ask for a bit of advice from all of you.
This past June, I applied to several different medical schools across the country and each one required me to submit at least 3 letters of recommendations (1 from a non-science professor and 2 from science professors). All of the faculty members that I asked were happy to write me letters of recommendation. However, one of the faculty members delayed writing the letter of recommendation for a very long time (almost 5 months) despite several reminders. One of the medical schools had a strict deadline by which they wanted their application to be completed and because of the delay from this one letter writer, I was automatically rejected from the school. At this point, I decided to return to my university (I already graduated) and speak with my letter writer in person.
From the discussion with my letter writer, I found out some very disturbing things about his intentions. He was very displeased with my in-person visit to his office (even though I did email him several times beforehand without him bothering to respond). It was at this point that he began accusing me of things that were 100% false and was threatening to include this false information in his letter of recommendation. He eventually submitted his letter of recommendation, and, at this point, I could not stop him from doing so.
Now I know that many of you will say that I should have been able to see this coming and avoid asking this faculty member for a letter of recommendation. But, with all honesty, I was completely under the impression that this professor will write me a strong letter of evaluation. I viewed this person as someone that was a true mentor to me throughout college, and this situation is very disheartening. In my honest evaluation of the situation, I believe that writing a negative letter of recommendation that includes false information about a student out of spite is completely unethical. I also believe that I should have the opportunity to defend myself.
There is no way that I can see what he wrote in his letter of recommendation. If anybody here has any sort advice in regards to this situation, please I would greatly appreciate it. I would hate to see a letter of recommendation that contains false information ruin my chances of pursuing my academic goals. Is it possible to take legal action in this matter?<issue_comment>username_1: I don't see how you could take legal action, the content of the letter is confidential. In my institution at least, there would be no way for you to ever see it. So, effectively, you would be taking "blind" legal action, regardless whether the letter was positive or negative. This might be construed as if you intended to have a back-up in case of rejection. That is why the institution probably won't take into account any objections from your side (including a legal action). The only thing that you might hear from them, if you brought it up, is that you should've chosen your letter writers more carefully.
That being said, I really don't think anyone would on purpose sabotage someone else's career just on a whim and on top of that being a nice person (as you describe the professor in question). So, if the letter was sent, I'd assume that it contains no lies in it. As being noted in the comments, that might very well also damage the professor's reputation.
In the end of the day, there isn't much you can do at this point. If you get rejected and still think that the professor had sabotaged you, re-apply (possibly somewhere else) and don't ask for any more letters from them.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This is a most unusual situation. It's extremely rare for there to be such a large discrepancy between what a student *thinks* a professor thinks about them and what the professor *actually* thinks about them. Considering also that in this case the professor's opinion is wrong (as I will assume for the purposes of the answer, though I know nothing of the details of course), this scenario falls right through the cracks of the whole system of letters of recommendation, which was simply not designed with such situations in mind.
With that said, I think that somewhat ironically, the very strangeness of the situation offers a glimmer of hope, since it means that you can consider unusual steps that would not be acceptable in a more normal situation. Specifically, two such steps that I can think of are:
1. You could write a letter to the schools to which you applied (specifically, email it to the admissions committee, and make sure to cc a staff member and ask for an acknowledgement) in which you explain the situation. If your letter is well-written and the explanation that you offer is credible, this may counter the effect of the hypothetical damaging letter from the professor. You may want to line up another letter writer in advance of sending your letter to substitute for the bad one.
2. You could complain about the professor's behavior to the department chair or another professor you trust at your university, explain the details of the story, and ask *them* to write to the schools you applied to. This would not be a normal letter of recommendation. It should be an email sent directly to the admissions committee (rather than uploaded via some kind of automated system for LORs), again explaining the situation. Having the explanation come from the chair or another faculty member, if they agree to do it, will be more credible and increase the chances of success. In fact, the chair may very well know of similar stories of odd behavior involving your professor that you were not aware of, which he could mention or hint at in his/her letter, further strengthening the credibility of your claims.
Note that in both of these suggestions you will have to disclose *all* the information about what took place between you and your professor to make the explanation credible and have a realistic hope that the professor's false accusations will be ignored. If some of what took place is embarrassing or damaging to you due to real rather than imagined reasons, I'm afraid that's just a risk you'll have to take. Good luck!
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: The professor had probably (and hopefully) just threatened to include these false accusations, but in reality has not. Apart from the fact that most people would not ruin someone's career prospects just out of spite, he would probably be aware that the other letters of recommendation from the other professors would not corroborate with this view. You clearly do not have any way of finding out what he has actually done. Additionally, if he has not actually written those lies, it might appear extremely odd if you write to the schools where you applied, explaining the situation. I don't think there's much you can do now. If you are rejected, you should apply to some other institution with a letter of recommendation from someone else.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: This sounds like a situation where mediation could be extremely effective. If your town or university has a mediation office, you could formally request mediation. If not, you could still approach your dean and broach the idea.
As part of the mediation, after clearing up the misunderstanding, you could ask the professor to submit a corrected letter, with a brief explanation that there had been a misunderstanding that has since been cleared up.
Mediation can be very effective. However, there's no guarantee of success, and no guarantee the professor would accept your invitation to have a mediation. It's generally an entirely voluntary thing.
It shouldn't be you who invites him.
Some mediators are better than others. Choose carefully.
---
If the professor doesn't accept your invitation to mediation, I think it would still be worthwhile to go to your department, describe your predicament, and ask for assistance.
Please keep in mind that departments like to see their students get placed well after graduation.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I have an interview scheduled at the same time as a class, and I'm wondering if I should tell the professor in advance that I won't be attending class that day. The class is important to me, but the interview is more important.
My performance in this subject is really bad, and I'm afraid that asking for an excuse will give the professor a worse impression of me.
Also, the class contains only 11 students.<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, tell the professor about your planned absence. Explain the situation, and ask for notes, homework, etc.
---
The additional info is helpful. How's this:
>
> Subject: Planned absence
>
>
> Dear Prof. So-and-So,
>
>
> I am sorry, but a personal matter prevents me from attending class next Tuesday afternoon.
>
>
> I feel just terrible about this, since I have not been doing as well as I would like in [name of class] this semester. Still, it is an unavoidable conflict, and I thought it only fair to let you know that I won't be able to attend class that day.
>
>
>
Ask a classmate for notes.
I didn't realize you didn't feel you were in good standing in this class -- your comment helped me understand your internal conflict over something which would normally be straightforward.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: **It depends on the context: the class size and style.**
If it’s a graduate seminar of 8 students, then you should certainly tell the instructor. If it is a calculus lecture of 300 students, then this will not be expected at all, and might be seen as a waste of time. Unless of course there is a test in the class, or a record of attendance taken.
It’s hard to draw an exact line, but a good rule of thumb is perhaps: *will your absence either affect how the instructor teaches, or go on record somehow?* If the former is the case (as in a small class with a lot of interaction), then advance warning will be appreciated by the instructor. (If this is borderline, then it would be courteous but not necessary to let them know.) If the latter, then for the sake of your place on the record, you should give the explanation.
And of course, if the instructor has said anything specific about attendance expectations, then that trumps this general guideline!
Upvotes: 5
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<issue_start>username_0: I've a Skype interview for PhD application (it will make me miss [one of my classes](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/57903/should-i-tell-the-instructor-that-i-will-miss-the-next-class) today.) I've been asked, in advance, to prepare a short presentation and then there would be some discussion with the panel (I guess.) **I expect that they will ask if I have some questions** so, I'm wondering what are the best (type of) questions one might consider?<issue_comment>username_1: I guess, your presentation topic must be in alignment with the interviewing professor's research area so IMHO it's best if you ask some questions like (1) What is the future plan or goal of that research i.e. some abstract model or a prototype etc. (2) You can discuss about your ideas which you got after reading any of his paper.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It is not mandatory to ask questions. Generally they offer you the opportunity to ask questions in case you are not sure or confused about anything or any process related to application/lab/university.
When I had given PhD application interview almost all times interviewer asked me if I have any question. I didn't ask questions for most of the time. However few times I do asked question specially when position they were offering had partial **financial support** from supervisor. That case I asked about chances of getting rest of financial support. They were quite helpful and actually suggested me to check for RA positions in other related departments. In another case, I asked professor about **possibility of collaborative** work because I was interested in some interdisciplinary work. He was very impressed by question as it showed that I had already focused area of interest.
I also remember few of my friends have asked questions like, "Are there many flowering plants around campus because I am **allergic** to pollen-grains?" , "Can I get **accommodation** on campus if a dependent is accompanying me? ", "You were **working** on XX problem before are you still working on that?" etc.
You should ask questions depending on university you are applying and professors interviewing you. Do some basic research on their background from university web page. Don't ask cliche questions and don't ask for the sake of asking.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: you should ask something around the lines: What qualities do you think I am missing, that would make me a better candidate?
He will tell you what he perceives as your weak points and give you a chance to elaborate.
E.g.:
>
> Student: What qualities do you think I am missing, that would make me a better candidate?
>
>
> Prof: It would be nice if you have more publications
>
>
> Student: I didn't manage to publish anything yet, however we have 3 manuscripts submitted, 2 in preparation and I am a columnist for 'Cats and Dogs' magazine.
>
>
> Prof: You're hired!
>
>
>
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: One of my favorite go-to questions is along the lines of "why should I choose you?" Basically, ask them what makes their research group different or special, compared to other places you might be applying for. You could research X at a million different places, so why is institute Y the best? I think this question is great for a few reasons. It's nice and open-ended, and you'll often get an interesting response that can give you some insight into the group. It's a versatile question, so you can ask it literally anywhere you interview, but it still has more substance than "when's lunch?" Finally, it puts an ever-so-small amount of pressure on the interviewer by shifting the dynamic so that they're trying to impress you, rather than the other way around.
Of course be a little gentle with the phrasing of the question. Something like, "I've been applying to a number of PhD programs, and I know that Institute Y is one of the best departments with great faculty and an excellent lab. I've been wondering, though, what do you think makes this place unique, or what's different about it compared to some of the other top-tier research institutes?"
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: 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.
1. I 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?
2. Ph.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?**
I appreciate any helpful advice including to questions I did not ask but maybe should have.<issue_comment>username_1: 1. I'm not familiar with the European Masters or PhD programs, but US schools vary greatly in how they handle students with a US Masters. You'll have to check the specifics of each school you're interested in. Most programs should have a "Degree Requirements" or "Steps to Graduation" type page on their website.
2. It's extremely common for PhD students in the STEM fields to not pay tuition and be paid a stipend by the University. In fact, I don't know of any PhD student who isn't funded by their University. That said, it's not always a free ride and many schools will require you to teach or TA in addition to your PhD duties. This can be offset by fellowships or grant funding.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> I am planning to do a Ph.D. in theoretical physics in the US, more specifically California
>
>
>
Many American prospective graduate students limit their search with severe geographic restrictions. I view this as being a poor investment in a future academic career, but if someone truly prioritizes being an easy drive from their family and childhood friends, that's certainly up to them. If you are coming from abroad it makes no sense to me to concentrate your search in "California". California has some excellent institutions, but certainly only a minority of the nation's best institutions are in California. Moreover, if by chance you have family living in, say, Los Angeles, going to graduate school in San Francisco is not going to put you close enough to them to be helpful to you.
>
> I 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.
>
>
>
First of all, American PhD programs can take less than five years to complete -- though it is quite rare to see a student graduate in less than four -- and also more than five years to complete. In my field (mathematics) the time to completion is certainly less than the overall average, but I think there are very few, if any, math PHD programs where the average time to completion is 5.0 years or less. (I went to one of the top programs in the country. I did graduate in five years, which was most common in my program. I think though that more students took more than five years than less than five years.)
>
> If a master's degree was already obtained, do American universities allow for a more European style Ph.D. completed in around 3 years?
>
>
>
I think you may be misunderstanding the system slightly. There are (virtually) no length requirements in American PhD programs. You probably do have to complete a certain amount of coursework, but this is just what you would automatically get by spending 2-3 years in the program. In most cases you can get "course credit" for your thesis work, so the amount of *actual courses* that PhD students take varies considerably and to a large degree is up to them.
Entering a PhD program with a master's degree makes much less of a difference in an American PhD program than you might think, and the better the program the less it matters. For instance, I had a sort of "secret master's degree" in that I got it along with my bachelor's degree. I don't think having this master's degree impacted my studies at all (except of course to convey that I had roughly equivalent training to the excellent foreign students who were admitted to the program). At a certain point in our PhD program we "earned a master's degree" and could, with a little paperwork and a small fee, formally collect it. I seem to recall a few people did that, perhaps to get a leg up on some summer job. I already had one; I could have gotten another, but what PhD student needs two master's degrees in the same field?
My present PhD program (mathematics, UGA) is around the 50th best in the country, and things work differently. Up until a few years ago having a master's degree was actually *a formal disadvantage* to our entering students in that it conferred one year less of guaranteed PhD funding. But we observed that students with entering master's degrees were not in general better prepared than students without, so we rolled back that requirement a few years ago. In this regard let me say: in the American system a master's degree is kind of a "no man's land": we have absolutely no agreed upon notion of what skills and work a master's degree should convey. If you get a master's degree from a low quality institution, you are probably less prepared in every way than if you get a bachelor's degree at a solid institution. Conversely, a master's degree at a pretty good institution is worth something: of my first four PhD students, they only one who graduated in five years came in with a master's degree from a good place. This counted for something: in fact he started working with me in his first year in the program, whereas many PhD students spend a year or two or three entirely focused on coursework and exams with no research in sight.
>
> Does a Ph.D. necessarily involve paying the university's tuition fees?
>
>
>
Nooooooo. As a good rule of thumb, if you are in a STEM field, you should not enroll in a PhD program unless your fees are being paid.
>
> Ph.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?
>
>
>
Yes! Most PhD students in STEM fields not only do not pay tuition, but also receive a livable stipend (which is some combination of money for teaching, for research assistance and outright scholarship money). There are some circumstances in which one might want to consider enrolling in a STEM PhD program without such a stipend, but they are the exception, and you should think very carefully before agreeing to this.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: There are some students on my masters program in mathematics who don't even know the basics of mathematics like an example of a continuous function or similar. They pay someone else to solve the problem sheets and projects for them and somehow managed to pass exams by learning by heart only past exams. Of course I don't have a proof for any of this but I know since they have told me. The head of school thinks he is doing a good thing and that all of the students who passed exams are good students, while myself and students like me were put in a very unfair position. Would there be any sense of addressing this thing and how? For the thing to be worse, those students are female students from the rich Gulf countries and they and their husbands do not need to work(I have absolutely nothing against that, but situation might be politically and religiously complicated in case of addressing this problem. Of course, these kind of things happen in case of any other countries/religions as well, but this is the situation in my case). Just for the sake of argument, in my case, I had to work full time while studying full time. Any advise would be appreciated. Thanks.
EDIT:
I am unable to comment so will answer here. The projects and problem sheets took a part in a scoring of the final grade. As they have told me they have been studying only one semester material (out of 2 semester material) and have been learning solutions from the old exam papers from the previous years and many of the questions have been repeated.
Also we just had to send the paper via email or give it in a paper form, without any reporting or discussion.
EDIT: in reply to comments, @scaaahu asked: "My point is the student does not even know the basics. How useful would the old exam papers be?" Well, it can be if you are learning without any understanding and by heart from the old exams.
EDIT: It would be impossible for the head of school not to know what is going on, he is well aware of them and the situation but still does not want to do anything about it.
EDIT: I did not mention that their English language proficiency almost does not exist and they presented papers with a great English and professional maths.<issue_comment>username_1: You are working in a criminal organization.
Your question is not an academical question, your question is a criminality question.
On my opinion, what should be done:
* the license of the university should be revoked to grant diplomas
* criminal lawsuit should be started against any teacher knowing this and doing nothing
* criminal lawsuit should be started against any student if there is a suspect that he parted in that activity
* any diplomas granted by the uni in the last X years should be revoked and/or re-examined.
These will likely result the destruction of the University, which it really deserves. This is what should be done.
You could also consider:
* collect evidence
* go with them to the media
* ask the police silently.
As a young student I also taken part in such activities, but now I am not proud for that. And these were very far from these unimaginable levels as you describe. The normal punishment of students got in such activities was 1 year of suspension, in the first time. Second time they got lifelong suspension. If criminality were also suspected (f.e. forged documents, etc), a criminal lawsuit was also initiated. Any such cases - with the names of the offenders and also their resulted punishments - were reported in the local news of the University.
It is also highly country-specific what you describe. In other, luckier countries even the rare cases of minor cheating is nearly unimaginable.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: It does not seem that you have any doubts about how their actions are morally wrong. In that case, the right course of action for you would be to officially report this behavior to competent authorities, unless it is clear from other facts that this would seriously endanger you. I doubt that the university actually encourages such behavior for the sake of attracting a clientele that would buy a degree. The one risk to you that I see is making a serious and unproven accusation, assuming that the parties would not confess. It then reduces to a matter of asking whether it is important enough to you to take the risk that they will deny what they said, and the university is willing to take their denial at face value.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I will take a wild guess and speculate that the university referred to in the question is in a country that has high levels of systemic corruption, as measured for example by Transparency International's [Corruption Perceptions Index](https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results). Countries near the bottom of this ranking have the feature that most if not all of their main institutions experience high levels of dishonesty and unethical behavior. That sounds consistent with the OP's description, and conversely, in countries that rank low for corruption it is hard for me to imagine an academic environment where such rampant large-scale dishonesty could be practiced with impunity by so many people and tolerated and ignored by so many others.
Assuming this premise, I find it helpful to reframe the question as a broader and more general one, that would contain the OP's question as a special case:
>
> What should I do if I am an honest, hardworking person who wants to learn a trade, get an honest job, be judged for my abilities and become successful thorugh talent and hard work; but I live in a country with such high levels of corruption and dishonesty, and such dysfunctional institutions, that I see people all around me getting ahead through cheating and other dishonest means, leaving me no practical way to realize my dreams in the honest way I wish to?
>
>
> Should I try to fight this behavior? Should I try to find a rare honest person around me in a position of power to complain to about the dishonesty I observe? Will this change anything?
>
>
>
My answer is probably not a very helpful one, but I think it is the only realistic one: **leave**. The forces you are trying to fight are so much bigger and more powerful than you, that unless you are willing to dedicate your entire life to fighting them, knowing that you will achieve either nothing or very little, your only other choice would be to keep your head down, either ignore or join in the cheating, and resign yourself to a life of dissatisfaction and unfulfilled dreams.
Sorry it's pessimistic and depressing, but there it is. I would probably vote this answer down myself if I could. :-(
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: As we don't know if Dan's premise is actually the case, I'll offer an answer with a different premise.
If we assume this institution is in the U.S., then I would start by reading university policy. You're looking for academic integrity and protections for whistleblowers.
Figure out what body accredits the department.
Your next step is to google the top administrators in your university as well as the individuals who direct the accrediting body. Read their CVs. Read their facebook pages. Read their Stackexchange answers. Out of this pool of fish, you are looking to select one who gives you the vibes that she or he will take you seriously, protect you, and take thoughtful, long-term action.
Once you've chosen your fish, now you need to get an appointment to meet with him or her. To do that, you need to get past the secretary, who will push you for a reason for the appointment. I would suggest that you make something up, for example, "career exploration, I want to understand better what a dean does."
Prepare three bulleted lists for your appointment, and print two copies. First, the list of problems that you mentioned here; second, some simple checks this fish could perform to satisfy him or herself that there is a serious problem; and lastly, suggested action steps. Cite relevant university policy.
If you can find at least one ally to attend the meeting with you, so much the better, but be careful in your recruiting.
Make sure you leave with a follow-up appointment scheduled.
For inspiration, read <http://whistleblowing.us/2012/02/remembering-roger-m-boisjoly-challenger-disaster-whistleblower-1938-2012/>
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm interested in finding all undergraduate/graduate study programmes on the topic of "Sustainable Consumption".
Is there a global database across all universities and teaching institutions that allows the user to search for study programmes filtered by a certain topic?<issue_comment>username_1: You are working in a criminal organization.
Your question is not an academical question, your question is a criminality question.
On my opinion, what should be done:
* the license of the university should be revoked to grant diplomas
* criminal lawsuit should be started against any teacher knowing this and doing nothing
* criminal lawsuit should be started against any student if there is a suspect that he parted in that activity
* any diplomas granted by the uni in the last X years should be revoked and/or re-examined.
These will likely result the destruction of the University, which it really deserves. This is what should be done.
You could also consider:
* collect evidence
* go with them to the media
* ask the police silently.
As a young student I also taken part in such activities, but now I am not proud for that. And these were very far from these unimaginable levels as you describe. The normal punishment of students got in such activities was 1 year of suspension, in the first time. Second time they got lifelong suspension. If criminality were also suspected (f.e. forged documents, etc), a criminal lawsuit was also initiated. Any such cases - with the names of the offenders and also their resulted punishments - were reported in the local news of the University.
It is also highly country-specific what you describe. In other, luckier countries even the rare cases of minor cheating is nearly unimaginable.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: It does not seem that you have any doubts about how their actions are morally wrong. In that case, the right course of action for you would be to officially report this behavior to competent authorities, unless it is clear from other facts that this would seriously endanger you. I doubt that the university actually encourages such behavior for the sake of attracting a clientele that would buy a degree. The one risk to you that I see is making a serious and unproven accusation, assuming that the parties would not confess. It then reduces to a matter of asking whether it is important enough to you to take the risk that they will deny what they said, and the university is willing to take their denial at face value.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I will take a wild guess and speculate that the university referred to in the question is in a country that has high levels of systemic corruption, as measured for example by Transparency International's [Corruption Perceptions Index](https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results). Countries near the bottom of this ranking have the feature that most if not all of their main institutions experience high levels of dishonesty and unethical behavior. That sounds consistent with the OP's description, and conversely, in countries that rank low for corruption it is hard for me to imagine an academic environment where such rampant large-scale dishonesty could be practiced with impunity by so many people and tolerated and ignored by so many others.
Assuming this premise, I find it helpful to reframe the question as a broader and more general one, that would contain the OP's question as a special case:
>
> What should I do if I am an honest, hardworking person who wants to learn a trade, get an honest job, be judged for my abilities and become successful thorugh talent and hard work; but I live in a country with such high levels of corruption and dishonesty, and such dysfunctional institutions, that I see people all around me getting ahead through cheating and other dishonest means, leaving me no practical way to realize my dreams in the honest way I wish to?
>
>
> Should I try to fight this behavior? Should I try to find a rare honest person around me in a position of power to complain to about the dishonesty I observe? Will this change anything?
>
>
>
My answer is probably not a very helpful one, but I think it is the only realistic one: **leave**. The forces you are trying to fight are so much bigger and more powerful than you, that unless you are willing to dedicate your entire life to fighting them, knowing that you will achieve either nothing or very little, your only other choice would be to keep your head down, either ignore or join in the cheating, and resign yourself to a life of dissatisfaction and unfulfilled dreams.
Sorry it's pessimistic and depressing, but there it is. I would probably vote this answer down myself if I could. :-(
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: As we don't know if Dan's premise is actually the case, I'll offer an answer with a different premise.
If we assume this institution is in the U.S., then I would start by reading university policy. You're looking for academic integrity and protections for whistleblowers.
Figure out what body accredits the department.
Your next step is to google the top administrators in your university as well as the individuals who direct the accrediting body. Read their CVs. Read their facebook pages. Read their Stackexchange answers. Out of this pool of fish, you are looking to select one who gives you the vibes that she or he will take you seriously, protect you, and take thoughtful, long-term action.
Once you've chosen your fish, now you need to get an appointment to meet with him or her. To do that, you need to get past the secretary, who will push you for a reason for the appointment. I would suggest that you make something up, for example, "career exploration, I want to understand better what a dean does."
Prepare three bulleted lists for your appointment, and print two copies. First, the list of problems that you mentioned here; second, some simple checks this fish could perform to satisfy him or herself that there is a serious problem; and lastly, suggested action steps. Cite relevant university policy.
If you can find at least one ally to attend the meeting with you, so much the better, but be careful in your recruiting.
Make sure you leave with a follow-up appointment scheduled.
For inspiration, read <http://whistleblowing.us/2012/02/remembering-roger-m-boisjoly-challenger-disaster-whistleblower-1938-2012/>
Upvotes: 3
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2015/11/10
| 2,115
| 8,803
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a graduate student in a physics department in US. My department's ranking is really low. In fact, you cannot even find the ranking in, say, usnews. This year is my 6th year and I am seeking a postdoc position in high energy phenomenology, and gravity related postdoc positions.
But I have a strong feeling that I will fail because of my background. Even if I got a postdoc position, I would still go to a low ranking institute. Having studied in this department for 6 years, I did not get very good training. There are many reasons, but one of them should be related to the department. I want to continue studying physics and do not quit completely. So I think I might transfer to a good university. But the problem is I already finish nearly 6 years graduate program now. It would be a waste of time to restart a new Ph.D program in a different university in some sense. But if not, I cannot see my future in academia.
I have no idea now. I really want to hear your advice and your experience. Thank you very much!
---
I stated that I did not get very good training. I think I need explain that a little bit more. There are many aspects. Firstly, I should blame myself. I should have transferred earlier. After I decided not to transfer, I should have worked harder. Perhaps, I am one of the best students in my department: probably, there are only two best students with whom no body else can compete no matter how hard they work. So I kind of lost motivation: I am not good at motivating myself. Although I did not motivate myself very much, I did like learning stuff. However, I liked learning mathematics by myself. Probably I spent too much time on math which is not very useful. (I like highly formal, abstract things, eg, topology) And there are many others...
On the other hand, I just want to say some thing about my department. Professors in my department are really nice. But they are not devoted to teaching very much. I am pretty sure that they understand their courses very well, but I could not get any deep insight after class. All I got was "plain text": I could even just read textbook instead of listening to their classes. There are only 3 professors in our group. Two are very old. One is too young.
Finally, about my own project. I am working on a project which is outside of my advisor's expertise. He does not have good projects, so he find a professor outside my department and asked him to offer a project. That professor is far away and, he did not work on related area either... Probably, I should not choose this project... **Edit based on comment**: Probably, I should not have chosen this project...<issue_comment>username_1: You are working in a criminal organization.
Your question is not an academical question, your question is a criminality question.
On my opinion, what should be done:
* the license of the university should be revoked to grant diplomas
* criminal lawsuit should be started against any teacher knowing this and doing nothing
* criminal lawsuit should be started against any student if there is a suspect that he parted in that activity
* any diplomas granted by the uni in the last X years should be revoked and/or re-examined.
These will likely result the destruction of the University, which it really deserves. This is what should be done.
You could also consider:
* collect evidence
* go with them to the media
* ask the police silently.
As a young student I also taken part in such activities, but now I am not proud for that. And these were very far from these unimaginable levels as you describe. The normal punishment of students got in such activities was 1 year of suspension, in the first time. Second time they got lifelong suspension. If criminality were also suspected (f.e. forged documents, etc), a criminal lawsuit was also initiated. Any such cases - with the names of the offenders and also their resulted punishments - were reported in the local news of the University.
It is also highly country-specific what you describe. In other, luckier countries even the rare cases of minor cheating is nearly unimaginable.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: It does not seem that you have any doubts about how their actions are morally wrong. In that case, the right course of action for you would be to officially report this behavior to competent authorities, unless it is clear from other facts that this would seriously endanger you. I doubt that the university actually encourages such behavior for the sake of attracting a clientele that would buy a degree. The one risk to you that I see is making a serious and unproven accusation, assuming that the parties would not confess. It then reduces to a matter of asking whether it is important enough to you to take the risk that they will deny what they said, and the university is willing to take their denial at face value.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I will take a wild guess and speculate that the university referred to in the question is in a country that has high levels of systemic corruption, as measured for example by Transparency International's [Corruption Perceptions Index](https://www.transparency.org/cpi2014/results). Countries near the bottom of this ranking have the feature that most if not all of their main institutions experience high levels of dishonesty and unethical behavior. That sounds consistent with the OP's description, and conversely, in countries that rank low for corruption it is hard for me to imagine an academic environment where such rampant large-scale dishonesty could be practiced with impunity by so many people and tolerated and ignored by so many others.
Assuming this premise, I find it helpful to reframe the question as a broader and more general one, that would contain the OP's question as a special case:
>
> What should I do if I am an honest, hardworking person who wants to learn a trade, get an honest job, be judged for my abilities and become successful thorugh talent and hard work; but I live in a country with such high levels of corruption and dishonesty, and such dysfunctional institutions, that I see people all around me getting ahead through cheating and other dishonest means, leaving me no practical way to realize my dreams in the honest way I wish to?
>
>
> Should I try to fight this behavior? Should I try to find a rare honest person around me in a position of power to complain to about the dishonesty I observe? Will this change anything?
>
>
>
My answer is probably not a very helpful one, but I think it is the only realistic one: **leave**. The forces you are trying to fight are so much bigger and more powerful than you, that unless you are willing to dedicate your entire life to fighting them, knowing that you will achieve either nothing or very little, your only other choice would be to keep your head down, either ignore or join in the cheating, and resign yourself to a life of dissatisfaction and unfulfilled dreams.
Sorry it's pessimistic and depressing, but there it is. I would probably vote this answer down myself if I could. :-(
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: As we don't know if Dan's premise is actually the case, I'll offer an answer with a different premise.
If we assume this institution is in the U.S., then I would start by reading university policy. You're looking for academic integrity and protections for whistleblowers.
Figure out what body accredits the department.
Your next step is to google the top administrators in your university as well as the individuals who direct the accrediting body. Read their CVs. Read their facebook pages. Read their Stackexchange answers. Out of this pool of fish, you are looking to select one who gives you the vibes that she or he will take you seriously, protect you, and take thoughtful, long-term action.
Once you've chosen your fish, now you need to get an appointment to meet with him or her. To do that, you need to get past the secretary, who will push you for a reason for the appointment. I would suggest that you make something up, for example, "career exploration, I want to understand better what a dean does."
Prepare three bulleted lists for your appointment, and print two copies. First, the list of problems that you mentioned here; second, some simple checks this fish could perform to satisfy him or herself that there is a serious problem; and lastly, suggested action steps. Cite relevant university policy.
If you can find at least one ally to attend the meeting with you, so much the better, but be careful in your recruiting.
Make sure you leave with a follow-up appointment scheduled.
For inspiration, read <http://whistleblowing.us/2012/02/remembering-roger-m-boisjoly-challenger-disaster-whistleblower-1938-2012/>
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/11/10
| 513
| 2,065
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in second year of my PhD. I have a plan for my second paper, I did a full scale literature review etc. But then I put it on hold to finish my first paper.
A new student started this term and is coincidentally pursuing the idea for my second paper!
I highly doubt we can both have the same paper.
I know that co-authoring is a possibility. But, is there grounds for me to argue that she should find a new topic, instead of me. As it will mean that I wasted a large chunk of my first year on this topic.
We plan to use data for the same country, which means that we will ultimately end up with the same statistical model, because the data available is not the best, so there is not much leeway on what model I use.
From what the student has told me, her statistical plan (is the same as mine), which is also the popular method in the literature field.<issue_comment>username_1: You should probably talk to your advisor and possibly arrange a meeting with the other student, her advisor, your advisor and yourself. You need to sit together and discuss how your work and her work are going to differ, because nobody has anything to gain from two competing PhD students undermining each other within the same research group. Once you have fixed boundaries, you will be free to go your own way and collaborate on the common parts, which will benefit both of you.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Your professor is your god on this one.
1. You come to him with wisdom and patience, and not with wrath.
2. You tell him:
1. this is the situation (describe).
2. you tell him/her that you will do whatever he/she tells you.
3. you ask him/her what to do.
3. You do exactly as your professor says. No more and no less.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: I have seen that research fields are a vast territory. I am sure that if you arrange a meeting there will be a lot of ideas and aspects of the problem to explore. Maybe it's to soon to say that the other student "has the same idea" as you do.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/11/10
| 1,967
| 8,301
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<issue_start>username_0: Is it possible to get a refund from a publisher if I bought an article that contains a major flaw (i.e.,one that invalidates the main results or the main conclusions)? Assume the article was bought through one of the main academic publication's paywall.<issue_comment>username_1: Of course you can request one - just send an email. You'll brighten up the publisher's office for the afternoon, and they'll be chuckling all the way home.
So just as long as you don't seriously expect to get your money back, you'll be fine. When you paid your fee, you were paying for access to read the paper. As long as that access was provided, then the publisher has met their side of the bargain. Peer review is not a guarantee of correctness. It's a first-level junk filter, nothing more.
And on top of you getting what you've paid for, you've got the additional bonus that you've now got a new paper that you can write, that's practically already written itself; the paper where you take apart your bought paper's argument. Magnanimously, the publisher won't require you to pay extra for this bonus - you got it thrown in for free.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_2: You can ask for anything you want, but you will not get a refund. The terms and condition of the site where you purchased it most likely clearly stated that it wasn't an option.
One example from Taylor & Francis:
>
> The content in this site is provided "as is" and without warranties of any kind either express or implied.
>
>
> Taylor & Francis Group Ltd do not warrant or make any representations regarding the use or the results of the use of the content in this site in terms of their correctness, accuracy, reliability, or otherwise.
>
>
>
And another piece of sound advice:
>
> If you do not agree to these terms, please do not use this site.
>
>
>
More generally, the money you pay for the article is strictly for its publishing, the actual research that resulted in a "major flaw" was paid via other channels, on which it's very unlikely that you'll have any direct influence. The people making the original claim about the content of an article, and taking responsibility for it, are *the authors* not the publisher to which you paid the fee.
If you witness that a given journal has consistently low acceptance standards, make sure to notify your institution's library, they might consider resigning subscription if they gather enough similar complaints.
Sadly, for the occasional 20 bucks you consider wasted for that article (I'm sure this is purely fictional, there are many ways of getting subscription journal's content without paying for it) there are 10 unscrupulous scholars, somewhere who use 3000$ of your tax money to publish complete rubbish in an open access journal. And here the perspective of a refund is nonexistent.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: There is a case where I think you might have a very strong moral claim even if not a legal one: if the paper is retracted, there is no question that you ought to be able to obtain a refund.
**Addendum** One argument contrariwise: The last science needs is any further disincentive for publishers to retract papers. Maybe better for the enterprise as a whole to have a few readers get cheated than to have fraudulent and otherwise untrustworthy papers remain in the literature.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: If you are just looking to get your money back, then I am afraid it is not worth an effort; you probably will spend more on the telephone calls than they charged you for the article.
However, it could be nice to set a precedent like this: to request a refund and eventually to sue a lazy publisher, who do not bother to introduce a proper level of scrutiny in their peer review process, and instead charge the authors to publish some bogus papers and then charge the readers to access them. I have no idea whether or not such a case can win (and I guess it depends on jurisdictions). The question just adds to the bigger question of very complicated relations between academic publishers and academia.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: The publisher does not guarantee that the article has no major flaw. Indeed, for all they know, the reason why you requested access to the article in the first place was to refute it. Or to check other people's criticism of it.
Also, consider how many articles there are that are wrong yet of great historical interest. One example that pops into mind is the papers Einstein published before November 1915, containing his "work in progress" on general relativity, including some blatantly flawed thoughts.
So no, I do not believe you are entitled to a refund. You certainly don't have a legal basis, but I don't believe you have a moral basis either.
I can, however, imagine a scenario in which you might be legally entitled to a refund: if the article in question was based on fraudulent research, and the publisher was complicit in the fraud (e.g., the paper remains available for a fee even after it has been demonstrated unambiguously that it represents fraudulent research). Respectable publishers retract such papers. Other publishers... well, good luck with them.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: There's only a few narrow reasons you might demand a refund in this case: first, if the download/manuscript was somehow damaged or malformed, e.g. pages missing, or somehow "broken"; secondly, if the precis you used to make the purchase decision described something fundamentally different than what the paper delivered; third, if there was something fraudulent about the paper.
Being "incorrect" or "false" is different than being "fraudulent."
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: To be successful in a request for a refund, either the publisher would have to be remarkably generous, or they would need to conclude that it is in their best interest. I'm skeptical that appeal to threatened "public hue and cry" would persuade them, since academic publishers are generally immune to negative publicity. A potentially more powerful motivating force would be legal pressure, for which I see two bases. One would be fraud, where the publisher knowingly represented falsehoods as truth. It would be challenging to establish fraud. The second is via warranty of merchantability (in the US enshrined in law via the Uniform Commercial Code article 2). In some cases, e.g. Taylor & Francis (following the lead of every known software producer), publications are offered as-is, in which case you have no option. Any product without an as-is disclaimer carries a warranty, to the effect that if the seller knows (or should know) that the item is used for a particular purpose, then the item is fit for that purpose. This is why one can sue a company for negligence, if they sell something as fit for a purpose when it is not.
In order to make any traction with a threat for violating the implied warranty of merchantability, you would have almost certainly have to enlist the aid of lawyers willing to help you pursue the matter. The two main things that you would have to objectively establish is that the article has a known purpose, and that the article actually is not fit for that purpose. I don't believe that you would have to establish that the publisher was aware of the defect (I'd like to be more assertive about that, but that's what lawyers do).
If you just email them asking for a refund, they will probably say that they don't make any guarantees. However, if your attorney uses suitable language, they would probably reply that they have a stated as-is policy (you're out of luck), or, that there is no way they could know of the mentioned purpose, or that the article is in fact fit for that purpose. Since "merchantability" isn't defined under the law, courts would generally compare the item in question against comparable products. The reason is that no product can be absolutely flawless, and a claimed based on merchantability would have to show that the product was egregiously defective, not just less than satisfactory.
That all said, you did not actually purchase "the article", you purchased a license to copy the article in a particular manner, for which reason it is not clear that UCC article 2 is applicable.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/10
| 978
| 4,133
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<issue_start>username_0: I was wondering if it's possible to use the same research question, just using different methodology and a more expanded research area.I don't mean if you can just extend the topic of your Master's thesis into something that you're going to research on, in your PhD (as in your MA thesis becoming one or two chapters of your PhD thesis).<issue_comment>username_1: Certainly, if this is fine with your advisor and committee and there are enough "blank spots" left in this particular area.
(Some researchers could be accused of not only devoting their Master's and Ph.D. theses, but their entire research careers, to a single research question. These researchers, however, do not tend to be too highly regarded. *Some* switching of focus in one's early career is beneficial.)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Researching the same topic for a Ph.D. as a Masters is entirely possible, and not necessarily even all that unusual (it depends on how you define "same"). If the Masters is a first set of results on the topic, and the Ph.D. then pursues a significant advance thereupon, that would be an entirely reasonable progression of research.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: My MSc and PhD were of the same topic - even had the same supervisors!
The way we approached it was to have the PhD research follow on one of the more complex suggested avenues of further study and one of the more surprising outcomes that I presented as part of the MSc. This made writing the research proposal (required at my University) much easier to write, justify and ultimately, be approved.
Essentially, as @username_2 states in his answer:
>
> the Masters is a first set of results on the topic, and the Ph.D. then pursues a significant advance thereupon
>
>
>
My PhD was built out of a complex extension of one of the outcomes of the MSc
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Along with other answers here, Im going to add another yes. I'm doing that right now - after taking a detour via a Doctoral Training Centre, I decided to go back to where I left off. Best decision I've ever made.
Firstly, this was good because my masters supervisor was simply brilliant; as a PhD supervisor he continues to be enthusiastic, push me in the right directions and give me the freedom to explore whatever area I think may come in handy later on.
Secondly, I really enjoyed my masters. It gave me a good amount of background knowledge in a relatively niche field. I've abstracted from my earlier work, and now I get to push forward and get some much deeper and more general understanding of the original work.
Thirdly, the skillset. My masters project was in condensed matter physics (theoretical), and simulations formed a big part of that. I had built up a codebase, and went through the process of figuring out how things patch together. When I came back to the project, the first thing I did was start from scratch, knowing the limitations of my earlier code, and made things more efficient and flexible. Whilst this applies to code, it applies in general - you learn tricks, you hardwire your brain to think in a certain way and you make many, many mistakes which you learn from.
Note, though, that a DIRECT continuation isnt always wise. I'd recommend spending your early PhD days reading, absorbing, and attacking new problems. Combine that with your knowledge from your original project and you will be unstoppable.
Many people will tell you that it is better to explore the more general area, chsnge supervisors and move around (maybe abroad). Sometimes, this is good advice - your later career may benefit from having worked closely with multiple people, it'd make for a more colourful CV and your skillset would be wider. On the other hand, your jump start would get you more publications earlier on, your supervisor can arrange/encourage collaborations.
One final note: above all, if you're happy with your project and happy in your research environment, don't take that for granted. It doesnt mean you should stay there forever, but it does mean you should choose your next place carefully.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/10
| 891
| 3,598
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<issue_start>username_0: I returned to school a few years ago to earn the grades I needed to get into medical school; consequently, I'm the same age as some new professors. One of my acquaintances from a sports club I belong to is approximately my age and is a professor who researches something of interest to both of us. A conversation about his research lead to me volunteering as an RA for his lab.
Given that we were friends first, I worry that addressing him as as 'Dr.x' might feel weird for both of us. Moreover, it seems that few professors are comfortable asking to be called 'Dr.x' when someone asks them what they want to be called (even if they would prefer it), so I don't think asking him will be of much help.
Lastly, I don't worry about calling young professors 'doctor'; I wouldn't have much of an issue calling someone older, or even younger, than me 'doctor' even if we met outside of academics, It's the fact that we're the same age and that we were introduced outside of academics that makes it, for some reason, weird.
That said, using his first name doesn't feel right either.
I'm considering using his first name in private conversations and 'Dr.x' in public ones.
How should I address this person?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> How should I address this person?
>
>
>
You should ask him how he would prefer to be addressed, and then follow that.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As mentioned in the other answer, it is always the best to ask the person how he prefers to be addressed.
In my opinion, first look at the etiquette in your country and university. In some cultures in the universities and companies, people call their workmates, professors, colleagues, etc. by their first name, regardless to their level of education or their place in the system. In this case, calling that professor with his first name may not be that much trouble and will be considered a polite manner.
If it is an etiquette to formally call people in your university, for instance `Professor Enthusiastic Student`; it may be a good idea to call your friend `<NAME>` when you are in a group of students and other researcher, in the classes or in the lab meetings; and call him by his first name when you are alone and you have private meetings in which only you two are talking to each other.
I have the impression that this is the right way to address that person, because in the academic environment he is not considered your friend, he is your professor and you are his student, so calling him in a friendly manner *may* be considered impoliteness; also in your private meetings and sports club, you are fiends and he does not have any teaching or research role in this occasion, so calling him with professor title is *probably* considered inappropriate and unfriendly.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: **Listen to what other people say.** How do the other people in the lab address him? We cannot answer without this crucial bit of information. There are three possibilities:
1. First names, everyone. No problem in this case!
2. Everyone calls him Dr Whatshisname. Then you'd better stick with the unwritten lab rule and address him formally in a work context.
3. Generally Dr Whatshisname, but some of the more senior colleagues are 'allowed' to use his first name. In this case, I'd suggest using the first name, too. The fact that you are his age will make this look more natural.
Every research group I have been to used either 1 or 3 (but I can imagine 2 being used in other fields and cultures).
Upvotes: 3
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2015/11/10
| 693
| 2,880
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD graduate applying for teaching (assistant professor) positions at smaller liberal arts colleges. I understand that generally cover letters should not exceed 1 page, especially when applying to large research universities. However, are longer letters acceptable when applying to smaller schools? Again, the job posting requests that statements of teaching philosophy and research interests be *included* directly in the letter. If more than 1 page is ok, how long is appropriate?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> How should I address this person?
>
>
>
You should ask him how he would prefer to be addressed, and then follow that.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As mentioned in the other answer, it is always the best to ask the person how he prefers to be addressed.
In my opinion, first look at the etiquette in your country and university. In some cultures in the universities and companies, people call their workmates, professors, colleagues, etc. by their first name, regardless to their level of education or their place in the system. In this case, calling that professor with his first name may not be that much trouble and will be considered a polite manner.
If it is an etiquette to formally call people in your university, for instance `Professor Enthusiastic Student`; it may be a good idea to call your friend `<NAME>` when you are in a group of students and other researcher, in the classes or in the lab meetings; and call him by his first name when you are alone and you have private meetings in which only you two are talking to each other.
I have the impression that this is the right way to address that person, because in the academic environment he is not considered your friend, he is your professor and you are his student, so calling him in a friendly manner *may* be considered impoliteness; also in your private meetings and sports club, you are fiends and he does not have any teaching or research role in this occasion, so calling him with professor title is *probably* considered inappropriate and unfriendly.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: **Listen to what other people say.** How do the other people in the lab address him? We cannot answer without this crucial bit of information. There are three possibilities:
1. First names, everyone. No problem in this case!
2. Everyone calls him Dr Whatshisname. Then you'd better stick with the unwritten lab rule and address him formally in a work context.
3. Generally Dr Whatshisname, but some of the more senior colleagues are 'allowed' to use his first name. In this case, I'd suggest using the first name, too. The fact that you are his age will make this look more natural.
Every research group I have been to used either 1 or 3 (but I can imagine 2 being used in other fields and cultures).
Upvotes: 3
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2015/11/11
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<issue_start>username_0: In my statement of purpose, I want to include a web link to give details on research projects that I've worked on. I was wondering if it's a good idea.
JeffE [recommended](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/1555/14716) the practice, although I'm not sure if his recommendation is limited to the CS area. I also worry that this may be seen as a way to circumvent the length restrictions on the SOP.<issue_comment>username_1: My feeling is that whether including a link is a good idea or a bad idea depends on how you are using it. A statement of purpose should be a generally self-contained document. Thus:
* If your statement of purpose is difficult to fully comprehend without following the link, it would be in a problem (whether in computer science or elsewhere)
* If the statement of purpose is complete without the link, however, and the link is essentially an faster alternative to googling for more information, then I would find it a useful courtesy to the reader.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Most of the time your statement of purpose is likely being just skimmed or ignored altogether because the search committee doesn't want to spend the time reading more than they have to. As a result, I can't imagine too many of them wanting to go the extra step to view a webpage too.
Regardless, your statement of purpose will likely reflect briefly on anything significant from your previous work that is relevant to the position your applying to. If you cannot succinctly include it in the statement, then leave this job up to your CV.
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/11
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<issue_start>username_0: How different are papers that are "in draft", "in review", and "pending publication" for graduate school application?
I have a research paper that's already drafted, but my PI is aiming for a high-profile journal, so he wants me to address all foreseeable questions about the method I'm about to propose, which means I need to do some supplementary experiments. But this way my paper can't be submitted at the time of my application, and I will have no objective proof about the significance of the work.
Or alternatively, I could submit my draft and wait for the reviewer's opinion, so I can put mark the paper as "in review". This will serve as a proof that my work is mature enough to be seen by others. But is it worth it?
By the way, I'm an senior undergraduate, and I got another paper in draft, but definitely won't be submitted before January. And both drafts are at the stage where they're fit to be reviewed by the admission committee. Besides my supervisors for both projects are listed as my recommenders, and should be able to vouch for me if contacted.
Thank you!<issue_comment>username_1: My feeling is that whether including a link is a good idea or a bad idea depends on how you are using it. A statement of purpose should be a generally self-contained document. Thus:
* If your statement of purpose is difficult to fully comprehend without following the link, it would be in a problem (whether in computer science or elsewhere)
* If the statement of purpose is complete without the link, however, and the link is essentially an faster alternative to googling for more information, then I would find it a useful courtesy to the reader.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Most of the time your statement of purpose is likely being just skimmed or ignored altogether because the search committee doesn't want to spend the time reading more than they have to. As a result, I can't imagine too many of them wanting to go the extra step to view a webpage too.
Regardless, your statement of purpose will likely reflect briefly on anything significant from your previous work that is relevant to the position your applying to. If you cannot succinctly include it in the statement, then leave this job up to your CV.
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/11
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<issue_start>username_0: I am 32 years old now and I want to apply for a degree in computer sciences at a European university. I am afraid they could consider me to be too old. That's why I want to show them somehow part of my code and improve that way my chances to be admitted at my age.
I thought about uploading a video in Youtube showing how my program runs and publishing the code of the program in other place, and then putting the links inside my CV. I am not sure how to do all this. My code is an unfinished emulator. It is about 20 000 lines of pure ASM and it hard to read. I feel that I need a way to prove that the video shows a real existing program and not only fake animation I may have done.
* First, I wish to know if it is good to put the links to my code and videos inside the CV.
* Second, I would like to know the best site (and simplest to use) to publish my code. It would be not lucrative at all for somebody to steal my code. Still I think it would be painful to find out some day that someone copied and pasted chunks of my code and said that he made it. I need a basic protection against plagiarism provided by the site. Maybe based on the date I posted the code.
* Third, I am very worried about critics. This is 20 000 of ASM code(only part of the nearly 50 000 lines long project). It is messy! It looks really ugly. It is cool and highly optimized but I know there is always place for more optimization. I love it, it uses lot of SMC and code reusing. I love it but always there are people who could say it is junk.
* Fourth, it is not finished. It works perfectly, but part of the OP-codes are not coded yet. I coded more of them, the ones I think would be used more frequently.
Given a situation like this, what would be the best way to proceed with sharing code to help boost chance of admission?<issue_comment>username_1: It sounds like you have a portfolio that should be a part of your application to university or a job or anything. Furthermore you're saying that the working product is a better testament to your skill than the code itself. This is also fine.
The only concern I see is how much work you will require on the reader of your application. If you link to a YouTube video, also include screenshots. If you link to a GitHub profile, consider writing up some basic statistics on the activity or health of your activity there.
Regarding where to publish code, don't overthink this. Github is popular, but a Dropbox file, a Google Doc, a file sharing service, or anywhere else you can post a file will do.
I do not know the proper channel to submit a portfolio or the proper format. This situation is probably documented in the application instructions however, so you should be able to find info there, or reach out to a recruitment officer for how to proceed.
**EDIT** regarding where to post - actually a .zip file or similar may be problematic since they tend to look like viruses to people, who don't want to open them. Github or a competitor may be the best choice since the source code is browsable in their web UI. It is best practice to include a software license whenever you publish (literally "make public") code, even if you think it is unusable. I think the MIT and Apache licenses both amount to (IANAL) "do whatever you want with it, just don't sue me."
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: First of all, you actually wrote 20000 lines of code in assembly? People don't write large programs in assembly anymore because it is very rare for a human to do better optimization of a very large program than a compiler. They write assembly in special cases to optimize a small subroutine or to micromanage the execution.
That said, I would propose for you to write a small paper (2-3 pages, or more) explaining what is the purpose of your program, why you chose assembly to do it (maybe to learn how the low level stuff work?), put some snapshots of it working, and how you solved some issues. You can put it up in a repository (maybe researchgate?) and add a reference and link to your CV. If I was recruiting you and saw a paper about a program in assembly, I would check it out for sure. However, **I would never go to read an assembly program...** This solves your issue of not getting the code stolen.
Moreover, if you came to my interview, I would ask you: "Why assembly and not C? Is it a performance issue? Is it a hobby? To learn?". If you add it to your CV, be prepared to defend it.
Second, 32 is not too old to get into university, There were people much older than you during my studies. I'm not sure in which country you want to study, but how competitive is the procedure to enter the university? In some EU countries, anyone can access university and then they have a strict exams scheme for going to upper years. Check your alternatives.
Finally, try to catch up a little bit with current technology. I know you want to go to uni to learn, however, kids now learn Python at high school, and are usually quite skilled when they come to uni. Not knowing about Github or where you can put your code, while having written 20k lines of code yourself, tells me that you are not good at searching things up. Try googling "platforms to publish my source code".
I don't want to discourage you and I apologise if I was harsh. If going to the university is your dream, go for it. But you can start already learning to become a good programmer, there are so many information out there for free, that ignorance is no longer acceptable.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Don't share the code as part of your application.
Do *describe* what the code does, and the approach you took, and what you would like to do differently if you had it to do over again, and how all of that ties into what you want to do in grad school.
If it doesn't tie in, then there's no need to bring it up at all.
Programmers who are able to document their code are 100 times more valuable than those who can't. If you write a clear, interesting description, as I outlined above, that will impress the committee far more than reading the code or watching a demo.
If you want to skip the middleman and prepare your own application, you are welcome to ask specific questions about the process here as you go along.
I do understand that the process seems daunting, but Academia can help you and also a language stackexchange site, such as <https://french.stackexchange.com/>.
One last thing. Your age (32) is not a big deal.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_1: A second answer to get at the quality of your portfolio.
This revolves around a blunt point that I think is critical to understand if you want a successful application:
Your code is NOT good. (But that's okay.)
-----------------------------------------
Nobody writes 20000 lines of assembly anymore. For any nontrivial program, you cannot write better assembly code, in efficiency or size, than the person next to you writing C. You can talk about the merits of the code and the efficiency gains you have made that would not be possible in C, but still, a C programmer will be able to write faster, better code, faster, hands down.
If you get into an argument trying to defend the absolute quality of your assembly code, you will *quickly* find yourself defending, basically, that you're really crappy at writing C hence your ASM is much better. Hopefully you have the humility to understand that C is a good [given we're talking about low-level speed] language you haven't mastered, not a language you have been able to surpass by eschewing. If you don't have this humility, then school is not the place for you in the first place. I personally would be able to detect this difference as an interviewer at a company or for admissions.
But you have a good story.
--------------------------
*This* is what your portfolio demonstrates:
* You *really, really, insanely* enjoy this stuff.
* You are very willing to make improvements and hacks all by yourself with minimal guidance.
* You persevere to build something big that works.
* Given that high level languages are basically easier to code in than low level languages ("in some sense"), you've proven you'll succeed at learning them.
* You know *why* you enjoy it and *what* you did to make it work.
This is solid application material which is why I'm so enthusiastic about including it in your application in the first place.
**But I think it's really important to understand that this story does not involve touting the benefits of ASM over C.** If you go this route, you will quickly make out-of-touch, egregious technical errors in your application, and steer away from what is actually a **highly compelling** story.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: I have written instruction-by-instruction emulators in C and C++ when working on performance analysis of computer systems under development. Based on that experience, these are some questions and issues you should consider if you decide to use your code as part of your application. They don't need to be answered here, but you should be prepared for these issues to come up.
You made two choices that may be difficult to defend, assembly language and self modifying code.
**Assembly language** There are two possible justifications, your own education and speed. Personally, I would never claim a speed improvement without having benchmarked both versions. As I understand the situation, you do not have a high level language version, so you cannot do that comparison.
When I started programming, it was easy to beat compilers by writing assembly language directly. During the 1980's and 1990's it got harder and harder, as compiler optimization improved. Some of the optimizations modern compilers routinely use make for difficult bookkeeping if you try to hand code them. The last few times I used assembly language were situations in which I needed very tight control over what a processor was doing for hardware performance measurement.
That said, if you have a particularly clear, well-written piece of assembly language code it may be worth presenting as evidence of your programming skills.
**Self-modifying code** The only justification you mention is to save space. In writing emulators in C or C++ I never hit memory size problems, not even in the 1980's, when memories were much smaller than they are today. 20,000 lines of assembly language are unlikely to result in more than about 100 KB of instructions. Why do you need to save instruction space?
In addition to the obvious readability downside, self-modifying code may run slower than having separate copies for each function. Many processors have an instruction cache that is optimized for feeding instructions into the pipeline, not for handling changes. Frequently used code that does not get modified can sit in the instruction cache. Code that does get modified has to get reloaded after each change.
Have you measured your code performance with and without self-modifying code?
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/11
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<issue_start>username_0: When I create a bibliography, do infixes of names always go with the surname as follows?
>
> <NAME>, Herbert
>
>
> <NAME>, Theo
>
>
>
The examples come from bibliographies I have within my collection where this style is used. My question is more about whether this claim is generalizable. More precisely, are there differences between different style guides or depending on the background of the name?<issue_comment>username_1: This answer may be a little disappointing, but I’ll give it a try:
I assume that the author’s name is *[First Name] [infix] [Surname]* (omitting other possible pecularities for simplicity’s sake) and you want to decide between the following ways of citing:
>
> [infix] [Surname], [First Name]
>
> [Surname], [First Name] [infix]
>
>
>
Obviously, your question boils down to whether the infix is considered to belong to the surname or the first name, i.e., whether the first name is *[First Name] [infix]* or the last name is *[infix] [Surname].* Now, in all European cultures/languages that I am aware of, such infixes go with the surname. Moreover, I am not aware of anything comparable in other cultures.
Now, I cannot possibly know every styleguide, but given the influence of European cultures on academia, I do not expect many to group the infix with the surname as a default or general rule. Going by [this answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/65530/7734), at least some seem to do this, however. Moreover, the bibliography software BibTeX considers every non-capitalised part in a name a prefix to the surname by default.
However, if there is a culture in which such an infix does not belong to the surname, I would consider it appropriately to group it differently. As already mentioned I am not aware of any culture that does this (but you could probably ask for this on [Linguistics](https://linguistics.stackexchange.com/)).
What is much more problematic than listing is sorting, i.e.: do you ignore the infix when sorting or not? Even for a given language, there may be different approaches to this. You could devise some complicated rules here that treat names differently depending on their origin, but I consider this a horrible idea: As you cannot expect readers to be familiar with those rules, not using a consistent approach for all languages here is a disservice to them, as they are more likely to search entries at two positions. After all, facilitating the look-up of entries is why we bother with sorting in the first place.
Finally, note that infixes may also occur in between two parts of the last name, e.g., in the German surname [Schmoll genannt Eisenwerth](http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schmoll_genannt_Eisenwerth).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Unfortunately, it's complicated. The proper organization and alphabetization of names is dependent on the identified nationality of the person in question. Thus, a German "van" name is handled differently than a Dutch "van" name. It may change further again upon immigration, e.g., Americans of Dutch or German origin typically follow English conventions or even remove the space.
Here is [a nice guide](http://blogs.bournemouth.ac.uk/research/2011/08/10/referencing-dutch-flemish-german-names-in-the-harvard-system/) to navigating these muddy waters, as well as [a question from the German Language SE](https://german.stackexchange.com/q/1783).
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: >
> Now, in all European cultures/languages that I am aware of, such infixes go with the surname.
>
>
>
That's incorrect. Examples, all from the Chicago Manual of Style, 16e, 16.71:
Beauvoir, <NAME>
<NAME>
<NAME>
<NAME>
<NAME>, <NAME>
<NAME>’
Upvotes: 0
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2015/11/12
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<issue_start>username_0: Ok... so I have hated graduate school since day one but have slogged through because I couldn't find anything else to do (I have applied for hundreds of jobs as an escape route with no success). It has been an enormous amount of ungratifying work, especially because I am not interested in the subject I am studying and am not interested in the obtuse contributions of the study. But I am only a dissertation away from completing my PhD and being finished with my poor decision, but I am having enormous difficulty finding motivation to write it. I sit down every day and nothing comes out. I can't find the energy to read any more boring articles I need to cite or find the energy to write a complete sentence. Every time I start I find an excuse to distract myself and I don't know how to find external motivation since I lack internal motivation.
Exacerbating my lack of motivation is that I am skeptical that this degree will lead to employment (if I would want it in this field of study anyway): as I haven't been interested in my subject I haven't made the connections and done all of the networking I think is necessary to get a job with this degree, so I feel it is pretty useless to finish because I will likely have to reinvent myself after I am finished anyway. But leaving without a degree seems wrong somehow, given all this wasted effort (aren't we all subject to the sunk cost fallacy?). Any ideas on how to find the final burst of energy to finally finish?
I should add, I have already written 3 chapters and am about half through the fourth. I only need to finish the fourth, revise the 3 earlier and then write an intro and a conclusion. Plus I will need to find the energy to defend something I don't care about to my committee and the public before I can call it over. But even after all of this work it seems impossible to find the energy to write another sentence.
**Update:**
I wanted to thank those who chimed in and offered me kind and sincere advice. Thank you for taking time to help me, a stranger, with my life's problems. I think your suggestions were solid, practical and generally useful. I have been thinking about your advice for the month since I first posted this, and I unfortunately have to admit these strategies haven't helped me find any motivation to make much progress on my dissertation.
I thought I would respond to a few of your suggestions and see if anyone has additional thoughts or considerations.
There was the suggestion that I should go visit a counselor and to be screened for depression. I had been seeing a counselor using the services provided by the school. It is a very nice service and I have had access to what I felt was a high quality counselor, they screened me for depression and gave me the all clear. I am not depressed, although disappointed at my decisions (or lack thereof).
I like the suggestion to talk about my work with an interested person but do not think that my work is interesting in anyway, and have no pretense that the work is contributing to make the world a better place. I don't feel the need for the work to make a difference is required to get it done and think trying to convince someone it is interesting is wasting my time and theirs.
I think <NAME> hit a nerve with his comment that is at the root of my conundrum. I know continuing with something that I don't care about is a waste of my time, but the social (personal) obligation looms large and quitting this close to the finish line seems so foolish (and ire provoking for my program and committee). But despite these social pressures finding motivation to complete the daily tasks has eluded me. I know I need to finish, but the only motivation I have is to *Be Finished* and that isn't helping me with the daily drudgery.
To Wolfgangs comment: part of me fully agrees with you (that I should finish because of the unknown channels that may open if I complete the phd) but part of me feels the same logic applies if I quit. I will never know the future and perhaps not completing will open up doors that wouldn't exist had I completed... and anyway because of the lack of success in getting job interviews my career counselor has suggested that I leave the phd off my resume for the jobs that are outside of academia (which are the bulk of the positions I have been applying for and don't require the phd as a qualification). This is again another factor that has sapped at my motivation to complete the degree. And this brings up a side question of how I am supposed to spin the 4 years as a phd student on my resume without saying I was a phd student (but I will ask that as a separate question at a later date).
Given my current degree is so poorly valued by the market (or maybe it is myself) I have set a deadline of 400 job applications and if I haven't gotten an offer by that time I am going to reinvent myself (such as a job in customer service, which will have the benefit of paying more than my graduate stipend). I am at 290 now, and I only got one interview. It went well but they cancelled the position (the grant fell through).
My tails of the job market is winding away from the original question of this post and I need to return to that. And I need to comment on the solid advice from Peter. I think is is exceptional advice and I should implement all of these practices into my life, but unfortunately I don't feel this advice pertains to this situation as doesn't help me with the core underlying issue: that I lack any interest in my work and do not have any internal motivation that comes from connection and passion about the research I am doing. All of these practices, in my estimation, would help one to train and develop ones internal motivation, but I have little internal motivation (only guilt) for completing my work, and think it is late in the game to try and find personal connection and interest in the work and think that external pressure should be good enough (although it hasn't been enough).
I am very happy for the people in this world who have developed a personal connection to their work and to their jobs, but I don't think that everyone is so lucky as to be personally connected to their work. I think it would be wonderful if it were the case but Peter's reason #3 is an example of the disconnect between ideal and reality. Many people in this unequal world would be ecstatic to be earning $10K a year for the chance to write papers and do research for a professor, but no amount of counting my blessings (and I am very thankful I was born into a world that allowed for the luxury of higher education) gives me the belief that the dissertation is anything but wasted time and paper. I may have felt that way in a different project, program, school, country, etc. But that isn't my luck to care about my work. And now I am not looking to find internal motivation to channel my passions to create my life's master work but to finish writing something that is good enough to pass the defense and can be forgotten about on the back-shelves of the library. I haven't been interested in what I have studied since day one and now is beyond the time to expect it to get interesting now. Of course I regret I chose this field of study and my decision to continue but I am too deep now not finish.
Again, I don't want anyone to think I didn't appreciate their advice. I do, and think it applies to other parts of my life that I am proud of and want to develop. I am very thankful you took your valuable time to console a stranger. So I am elaborating my post today hoping I can distill the question a bit more and tap the expertise of this community, because the comments on the earlier iteration of this question were earnest and insightful. So now I ask for more help because what I think I need is a strategy to help me do something I do not want to do and hopefully there are strategies that do not require convincing myself I want to do it. So, my question for all the thinkers and experienced sages of the forum: how do you convince yourself to do something that is enormous amount of work that you don't like to do, you don't want to do, and don't think will help you but to do it anyway?<issue_comment>username_1: Ok, so here are some things that worked for me.
1. Attempting to strongly connect what you are doing to avoiding negative outcomes and achieving positive outcomes. Here are some examples. If you have ever experienced unemployment (and the resultant sense of worthlessness) then make sure that you make the connection between not finishing the PhD and being unemployed clear in your mind. Similarly, if you can see ways in which the PhD will enable you to achieve goals in life then fixate on how happy those goals will make you. For me, it helped that I could connect the boring irrelevant stuff I did to the social impacts I wanted to make - I watched documentaries to help me to keep these things at the forefront of my mind.
2. Use cognitive behavioral therapy. This involves identifying ineffective/sub-optimal thought processes and cutting them out. For example, when I was about to start academic work, I would often spend a lot of time thinking about how pointless it was. I would think "what is the point of this" or "why do it this way when that way is so much more effective". This didn't get me anywhere - I often didn't even start the work or stopped very quickly. later, I started to cut out that thought process. Funnily, enough my technique was to imagine that I was a medieval peasant and that I had no option other than to do the work assigned. Eventually, I overcame my counterproductive habit and managed to start working whenever I needed to rather than putting things off until the last moment.
3. Stop making upward comparisons with ideal situations. As related to the above I used to always compare what I was doing to what I could be doing in some perfect world where it would be the most relevant essay, or research, or whatever. That was really not a good idea as it was not a productive comparison to make. Instead it is much better to remind yourself of how lucky you are to have the opportunities you have when so much of the world does not. Sadly their are geniuses who killed themselves for want of making greater contributions when people with equal intelligence but more unfortunate circumstances were denied any chance to achieve anything at all due to no fault of their own.
4. Develop and maintain a positive association with your work (where possible). Basically this involves making your work something you like rather than hate (to the extent that this is possible). When I was younger I saw work as something that took me away from what made me happy. I wanted to party, play computer games, socialise etc., and work was the reason I couldn't. As a result I worked badly and did badly in academics. In turn this ensured that I got bad marks and felt bad about myself. Now things are quite different for me. I changed my perspective so that I treat my work as my personal interest - a form of personal expression and journey of learning that I treat as a priority. Partially due to this and other changes I start all tasks early and work hard on them. Inevitably I stress less than I used to and do better, which gives me more positive reinforcement. Additionally, you should try things like avoiding work when you are stressed (don't want to associate work with stress), working in places where you are calm and relaxed (I tried moving out of my office near the end of my PhD and it was a tremendous help to work in other places). Having a comfortable seat, and a quiet room at the right temperature are also very important.
5. Do lots of exercise. This is crucial - most people have too much energy to spend a lot of time sitting in front of computers. I work out every day (even if it is just a short workout) so that I get to burn off excess energy. Speaking from my experience, I think that a lot of my problems in the past were due to having too much energy to relax and focus on what I was doing. Additionally exercise makes me happier and more relaxed which really helped throughout my PhD where I was occasionally too unhappy and stressed to work well.
6. Meet your bodies needs. A happy person works better than a stressed person in the long term. If you are not getting what you need then you will struggle to focus on other things (like work). Maybe you need to talk more with people? Maybe your brain needs novel information or situations, time in nature or whatever. You need to figure this out. For me, I need all of these things and if I don't get enough of them then I won't be working well until I do.
7. Have a prioritised to-do list that breaks down the tasks you need to do. I used an Eisenhower grid on evernote. One advantage of a to-do list is that it will give you a sense of productivity and success when you get things done. It is much easier to find the motivation to do something small as part of a larger goal, than to feel like you achieve nothing at the end of a day. A second advantage is that a to-do list will free you from having to remember things and keep you on track. If you can wake up and see a list of things you need to do today then you don't need to think through the "what should I do today process" - you get straight to work. A third advantage of the to-do list is that it can give you direction and clarity. Often people don't know which task to do first therefore they switch between them. However with a good to-do list and discipline you have a clear list of things to do, and an order to do them in.
8. If the going is really tough, and you need to get something that you hate done, then manipulate your hormones to make it easier . Your motivation and energy to act, is based on your levels of dopamine {1}. Accordingly, if, for whatever reason, these levels are extremely low, then you likely won't be act. Based on your recent update it seems that you may very well have reached a point where your levels of dopamine are too low to enable you to work. Consequently, you should consider doing things to increase them. Here are a few things that should work. First, you can take substances to increase dopamine, such as St. Johns wort, rhodilia rosea, and nicotine (gum works with few health risks). Second, you can do more exercise {2}. Third, you can listen to music while you work {3}. All of these were useful for me at the very end of my PhD where I was very depressed at times.
That is all for now - I will add more if I think of it :). Happy also to dig up references where they might reasonably be needed.
References:
{1} <NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>. and <NAME>. (1999) 'Neural systems for reinforcement and inhibition of behavior: Relevance to eating, addiction, and depression'.
{2} <NAME>. (2007). "How to increase serotonin in the human brain without drugs." Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience : JPN 32(6): 394-399.
{3} <NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>. and <NAME>. (2011) 'Anatomically distinct dopamine release during anticipation and experience of peak emotion to music', Nat Neurosci, 14(2), 257-262.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: username_1 already answers the immediate question of how to motivate yourself. I'd just like to add one more thought about *why* finishing up your degree is worth it.
If you look around you and start asking how many people in their 40s or 50s are still doing the work their college degree qualified them for, you'll realize that the fraction is not actually all that large. Having a degree in one field does not lock you into employment in this field for life. What it does is open doors: you will be considered for some jobs and career steps *simply because you have a degree at the required level*, oftentimes regardless of the field where that degree was earned. For example, in many "traditional" companies, non-PhDs will rarely become heads of units that have a significant fraction of PhDs. You can often see this in job ads that say "expected qualification: MSc in a relevant field" or similar, where "relevant" is often broadly interpreted as long as your *qualifications* (not your degree) matters to those seeking to hire you.
Maybe seeing that your PhD will allow you to do things in life you wouldn't be able to do if you didn't finish it, provides you with the impulse to actually go finish it, regardless of the level of (dis)engagement you feel with the subject.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I don't have much advice, but I have a lot of sympathy! I'm in the same boat. I understand it makes sense to finish since I've already come this far, don't know for certain what my opportunities may be post-degree, have no other immediate path to fulfilling employment, etc... I had planned to stay in my institution after completing the PhD, and largely pursued the degree so I could maintain employment there. However, personnel changes have negatively affected what used to be an amazing work environment, and I can't see myself being happy if I stay. On top of that, I was forced to change my dissertation topic from one I was quite interested in, to a topic I don’t care about at all (but data is readily available). I don’t want to relocate so working at other Universities isn’t an option, and since I have little support in my current position it would take a lot of effort for me to make my current position be anything less than soul-sucking. I’m left wondering why bother?? I’m paying out the nose to stay enrolled and haven’t touched my dissertation in entire semesters. I’m mystified about my inability to just get the damn thing done, or at least make some progress. Feeling frustrated with myself paired with genuine apathy means I feel really shitty all the time, and make no progress. I’ve tried all kinds of methods to motivate me, but I just don’t care. Nothing makes me care about it! Although hemorrhaging money is enough to keep me continually stressed about it.
We’re in different fields and I have almost completed a clinical license that would allow me to provide direct services without supervision (in other words, I could open a private practice). Private practice takes a ton of work and hustle, areas in which I now doubt myself due to this dissertation garbage. Plus until I build a client base I don’t have money, and I’m the breadwinner for my family; not exactly stepping into certainly. However, I do have an “out” with the private practice option and have decided to focus on that: I will eventually escape this place, and wherever I end up is bound to better than here. My mission now is to salvage resources as much as possible, which involves finishing the damn dissertation so I can at least put the stupid PhD on my business card. It also involves salvaging my conception of myself as professional. It was (IS) painful to let go of my academic career – and the feeling that I’ve ‘failed’ by not wanting to stick it out in academia – but when I got real with myself, I found that I don’t care about the PhD. Things that I care about, I get done EASILY. This isn’t a reflection of my inability, it is a reflection of my priorities. And it is okay for priorities to change – academic validation is no longer important like it used to be =) I’ve only started to revisit the issue today (that’s why I ran across your post), so I’m not sure how this will play out, but I’m in full-on survival mode. My plan now is to write a formal timeline along with ridiculously large bribes ie finish first chapter and buy the dining room table I’ve wanted for years, get halfway and allow myself to a one-week break to lounge at home free from work and school, etc... On top of that, I plan to implement ways to support me emotionally as I drag myself through a miserable process: Scheduling regular time with friends, allowing myself to do mediocre work (this was a big, hard one), sending myself silly encouraging notes, regularly venting to people outside of work, etc…
For me, the most helpful thing has been changing my thinking from “Why can’t I motivate myself to work on my dissertation???” to “This dissertation work is the shittiest of shit. Although I am able to accomplish all kinds of amazing things, this dissertation is a stupid, meaningless, and exhausting task. I will get through this to be done with this shit, but it is shitty, meaningless work and no wonder I don’t care.” I think there is something to be said for being honest with yourself: Maybe I’m not a great researcher (I secretly suspect I’m at least an okay researcher…) but I am more than my career, and happiness is a priority in my life, even if that means I make less money or have a less prestigious title.
Even if you don’t have a clinical license to fall back on like I do, I encourage you to seriously investigate alternate options. If you can allow yourself to let go of academia and think about where else you’d like to land, you may be able to allocate your resources (emotional energy, especially) in more helpful ways and/or finish the dissertation. Even if that means working in customer service with a PhD you may be much happier – that’s worth it to me. Best of luck!
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a professional programmer with 15 years of experience, working in game development as a game and engine programmer, currently working at a prestigious game company on two well known games.
I've submitted a paper to a graphics journal (jcgt.org), and am waiting on the review process. (2.5 months into an expected 3 month process!)
In the meantime I'm working on a computer science paper which doesn't pertain to game development, but is more related to cryptography and metaprogramming.
That realm is a little bit more of a challenge for me since it isn't my area of expertise, so I don't know as many obscure things, proper terminology, or what people expect to see, etc.
How would someone like myself - who is a professional with no academic ties - find a more academic minded mentor who knows more about these areas, that I could ask questions to, bounce ideas off, etc?
Or is that even a likely possibility?<issue_comment>username_1: I think it this can be achieved. Here are some thoughts on how I would do it.
Many academics lack practical skills but require practical skills to evaluate and test their theories and get the publications they desire. These are the kind of academics who will be interested in working with you. To find them, you should first find areas of research that you are interested in where your skills are relevant. Find researchers in those areas who are looking for people with skills you possess (look for what they want for their funded PhD positions and Post-doc positions). Based on this information prepare a clear value proposition - a set of things which you can offer the researchers, and what you would want in return.
Make contact. Ideally do this through a mutual connection who is well liked and respected. If that is not possible then you should try to talk with the academic face to face or on the phone so you can make it as easy as possible and create trust more quickly. Academics are often very busy and cautious of having their time wasted so this is important.
The suggestion above might seem like it involves too much commitment, but you will almost definitely need to show you can provide some sort of return for an academics time before they will work with you so unless you can show how working with you will get them publications or grants they probably won't be interested in helping you with your personal interests.
With that considered, if you are successful with your journal publication you will have a much better chance as the academics will be able to see that you have what it takes to write papers and thus infer that you will be likely to be able to get more publications with relatively little help from others.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: **Method 1.** Look for scholarly articles that get you really excited, and that are somehow related to what your own scholarly interests. Once you find half a dozen such articles, look up the authors. Find their home pages, find their CV's, their page describing current research interests. Choose three scholars that look like likely candidates for some level of collaboration.
Now that you've identified them, work on cultivating a relationship one at a time -- because one may be enough -- you might not need to proceed to #2 or #3. Here's how you do it: after reading one or more of this person's recent articles, you write an email saying you read such-and-so article(s) with interest, and you wonder if s/he has thought about such-and-so related aspect. Ask for recommendations of other articles about such-and-so. The length of this email should be about 100-300 words.
(Small vignette to inspire you: I was interested in a particular topic, looked for articles about it, only found one author who was working on that topic, wrote to her to ask for more information about specific aspects. After a couple of emails back and forth, she invited me to a skype conference. A few days later came an invitation to collaborate on a project. Most researchers really enjoy collaboration.)
**Method 2**. Attend a conference. Don't be shy about talking to people.
**Method 3**. Take a course as a non-matriculated student, or audit. Preferably in person, but online if necessary. Attend department seminars. Don't be shy about talking to people.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: In particular, what differences are there in how these three things are taught? Is the terminology regional?<issue_comment>username_1: My impression is that there's a large element of euphemism and trendiness: "remedial" can sound off-putting or condescending, while "developmental" has fewer bad associations, but they really mean exactly the same thing (namely, a low-level course designed to build skills and fill in missing background in preparation for successfully taking the standard introductory course).
In my experience in the U.S., "remedial" used to be the standard term, but "developmental" has almost completely taken over. Nowadays, anything described as "remedial" sounds worrisomely old-fashioned. I haven't run across the term "enabling" in this context, but some quick web searches suggest it is popular in Australia.
There may be differences on average in how remedial or developmental courses are taught, but they reflect how pedagogy changes over time, correlated with but not caused by the change in terminology. Any previously remedial course could be relabeled developmental without making any further changes.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: They mean basically the same thing. I think there's a cyclical nature to this: the situation is fundamentally bad, so once people know what a particular term means (e.g., "remedial"), it becomes something like a slur that people take offense at. So, a new term (e.g., "developmental"), which not everyone knows and hence causes less offense. Likely once people know what this means there will be equivalent offense taken and some other euphemism chosen.
Compare to a similar history of words that mean below average IQ: feeble-minded, dull, idiot, moron, defective, retarded, etc. Obviously the situation is inherently not good, so there's continual churn in the phrases each becoming negatively-connotated, and then some other description is used instead by well-intentioned people.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I have often read articles describing graduate education talk of "unstructured research problems". What *exactly* does an "unstructured research problem" mean?
*Some context: All that I've read is in the context of computer science and electrical engineering. And I recently graduated with a undergraduate EE degree.*<issue_comment>username_1: An *unstructured* problem is one that does not have a direct solution already established: that is, it's not immediately obvious how one gets from the problem statement to a working solution, or even **if** there is a solution.
This is the standard for most doctoral-level research problems in STEM fields: if the problem is so well-defined that the strategy for solving it is immediately obvious, it is likely unsuitable for doctoral work, and a new (usually more challenging) problem should be selected.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Thanks for the examples. I think I understand what you are asking now.
>
> I have often read articles describing graduate education talk of "unstructured research problems". What exactly does an "unstructured research problem" mean?
>
>
>
In much of one's undergraduate work, one is assigned problems where the person doing the assigning has at least one solution, and solution method, in mind. The assigner has structured your work for you. Also, the assigner has given you a due date!
But the thesis is the thing that will prepare you to be an independent researcher, finding problems of interest to others, solving them, and presenting the solution in a compelling way.
Although there are exceptions to this, for a PhD, no one is going to hand you your assignment and say, solve this, and hand it in to me in three months. Your advisor might say, read this paper, tell me what you think; then you might say, the authors suggested applying their technique to such-and-so other problems, and I'm curious to see if that would give useful results; and the advisor says, a collaborator of mine actually tried that once, and didn't get anywhere, but I've been thinking about the experimental set-up he used, could you take a look at it and see if you can come up with a way to.... And then you're off and running. Only you don't know whether the improvements that you spend three months designing and building are actually going to get you anywhere.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a high school student who published some academic. Today, I saw a paper which looked quite similar to a paper that I published back in May. I was shocked to notice that the author of that paper had plagiarised my entire paper verbatim. He went as far as saying that his results were novel and found out all by him and his co-author.
Now, this paper was published in a junk journal. I am worried because, although I do not want to pursue a career in academia, these papers mean a lot to me as I have worked so hard on them. Moreover, I believe that they can play a major role in securing me admissions at graduate college in the years to come.
I have already notified the journal but I doubt that I will get a reply. Could you please let me know the further steps to be taken too?
Thank you for your time.<issue_comment>username_1: As username_4 notes in a comment, you need to be able document clearly that you have been plagiarized rather than the other way around.
Assuming that you can do so, contacting the journal is a good first step. If your case is well documented, you could also contact the university of those who plagiarized you. You could begin with a letter to the chairman of the department in which the plagiarizing authors are employed.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Firstly, congratulations on being able to publish before college - that is a significant achievement.
In regards to your plagiarised paper, I would contact the editor of the journal that you published your article in (not the junk journal), inform them of what you have found and supply the evidence that you have found.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: It would be more important to notify the editor of the journal in which your paper was plagiarized than just the editor of your journal publication (which would also be useful). It is their negligence that lead to the publication of a plagiarized article. The journal authorities should be obliged to do what's necessary as this would risk their reputation.
Date of manuscript submission is the key element to be compared here. Apart from which if your matter involves simulation, you would be having the original codes to reproduce the matter which would also serve as evidence.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> I am a high school student who has worked on multiple (well, 4 to be
> exact) pure math and CS papers. All of them deal with fairly
> significant problems, so some of them have been published by now too.
>
>
>
Wow. That's awesome!
>
> Today, I saw a paper which looked quite similar to a paper that I
> published back in May. I was shocked to notice that the author of that
> paper had plagiarised my entire paper verbatim. [...] I am worried because [...] these papers
> mean a lot to me as I have worked so hard on them.
>
>
>
Yes, of course. Trust me, there is no one who has ever written a serious paper who isn't just as emotionally invested in it as you are in your own papers, so we understand. I personally discovered only a few weeks ago that some loser plagiarized some of my work and submitted it as his own (not to a journal but as a final project for a university class, fortunately), so I know quite what an annoying and hurtful feeling it is, even though in my particular case this action does not threaten me in any way.
>
> I have already notified the journal but I doubt that I will get a
> reply. Could you please let me know the further steps to be taken too?
>
>
>
I agree with your assessment. Junk journals, like the people who publish in them, have no ethics, they are predatory entities usually based in corrupt and lawless countries. The "editor" is most likely a nephew of someone at the criminal or semi-legal enterprise that set up this journal.
As for what you should do, there aren't that many options that do not involve legal action of some sort. Basically, you should try to discredit the journal and the plagiarist (who are both complicit in this misconduct), and shame them into removing the plagiarized paper from the web, by contacting:
1. The department chair and other administrators (dean, ethics committee, ombudsperson) at the plagiarist's institution. Note that chances are this institution may itself be a very low-quality, poorly ranked and possibly corrupt institution in a less-than-developed country, so it is just as uncertain that your complaint will lead somewhere as in the case of complaining to the journal; but regardless, it certainly won't hurt to try.
2. Any journal indexing service or other similar entity that gives credibility to academic journals by including them on lists it compiles, and may not be aware of the scamminess of the journal in question. [Here](http://sindexs.org) is an example of such a service that I found through Google (which also has a list of excluded journals that apparently it considers disreputable). I do not use such services myself so do not know which ones are important/credible and which ones aren't; perhaps others can comment on this.
3. Any news media in the country where the journal and/or plagiarist are based who may be interested in this story of academic fraud.
4. Western bloggers or journalists who are interested in dishonesty and fraud in academia. Again, I'm far from an expert on this so don't have too many specific suggestions, but [Retraction Watch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retraction_Watch) is a name that gets thrown around a lot.
At the end of the day, if all of those methods fail, your last resort would be legal action, since the journal and plagiarist author are committing an infringement of your copyright. Even if they are in far away countries, they are probably within the reach of the law, but it would likely be a long and costly battle, and I think you are right to want to avoid taking that route. Good luck, and keep up the good work! I'm sorry you are getting to experience the nasty part of academia at such an early stage before getting a chance to see all the good parts. I am sure this experience will not be representative and will be followed by many more positive ones.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: First of all you have *priority*. The date of your publication is earlier. Even if the later paper was identical by pure coincidence (however unlikely that is) you still got there first. Anyone now or in the future who conducts serious research in the area will discover that.
From a peace-of-mind point of view, I suggest you decide precisely what it is that worries you from a *practical* standpoint. Are you worried that the other person will receive a Fields Medal in your place? Are you concerned that it will affect your chances of being accepted at the college of your choice? Whatever the case, avoid being bitter and twisted about it -- that would only make you an unattractive prospect to work with. Always look forward not back. Only when you are very old should you look back with satisfaction at a successful and productive career.
1. Fields medal
If you build a reputation as a trailblazing mathematician with many results to your name, then that in itself will make people tend to believe you rather than this other person. In any case there will be thorough checks before presenting any awards. If they discover that someone has plagiarised you then this will lower their opinions of the other person and of the other journal.
2. College admissions
(a) The people examining your application will see that you have several published papers--not just one. (b) They will be aware of the difference between a prestigious journal and a junk one. (c) If they read your paper they will see what others led up to it and, if they are thorough, they will see if anyone has cited your results in later papers. They are less likely to pursue a thorough survey of the field unless they give that task to a grad student. If they do and discover the other paper they will clearly see that your publication date comes first. If they have the slightest thoughts of plagiarism then the dates of publication will clear that up. If they still suspect you then they will quiz you at interview to make sure you understand your own paper. Obviously you will understand it and be able to expand on it if necessary. If the subject of the other paper comes up, you can casually say you saw it and mention the flaws. There's no need to throw accusations around. Simply say "It must have been a coincidence. I was disappointed they didn't find my paper when they did their literature search. I notice they missed a few points that I covered in my paper and there were a few errors, for example ..." Allow them to draw their own conclusions. If you display a calm forgiving attitude, they will see you as a mature individual who doesn't get snarky around other people's work and therefore someone they want to have around.
>
> **Sample conversation (substitute your own words)**
>
>
> Interviewer: Are you aware that #### published a very similar paper on
> the same subject?
>
>
> You: Yes, I saw that. It was in the xyx journal I believe. I have to
> admit I was a little disappointed they didn't find my work when they did their literature search.
>
>
> Interviewer: What did you think of the other paper?
>
>
> You: Well I noticed that they missed the result that ###### implies %%%%%%%. Also there seemed to be a couple of errors, for example they said that aaaaaaaaaaaaaa whereas I think I can show that bbbbbbbbbbb. Apart from that it covered pretty much the same ground.
>
>
>
P.S.
Before interview, thoroughly review your own paper as well as prior and subsequent papers in the same field and of course the paper you are complaining about. If they have even the slightest suspicion of you then they will test your knowledge -- that is guaranteed. If you have done this review, all the facts will be at your fingertips and they will see you as someone on top of their game. Avoid criticising the other author -- it makes you look petty. Remember to acknowledge the contributions of the other *good* authors. That way you will come across as thoughtful, generous and a generally good egg.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Other suggestions have been made that I agree with (notably contact the journal you published in and the journal and publisher the plagiarized paper was published by), but you can also turn to the [ethics committee of the EMS](http://www.euro-math-soc.eu/committee/ethics) (even if you are not an EMS member nor a European resident). In particular, if your first move don't give you the expected result, you should appeal to the ethics committee ; they don't have much legal power (if any at all), but they can have some influence on journals. Ultimately, by issuing statements about such cases they can help clarify which publishers and journal can be called junk -- a good thing and something that can hurt them.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: Copying your paper without permission of the copyright holder is copyright infringement. If you are the copyright holder, that is if you didn't assign your copyright to the paper that published it legitimately, then all you have to do is to send a DMCA takedown notice to arxiv, and you can be quite sure that the paper will be removed.
However, it is essential that you are the *copyright holder*. Not the author, but the copyright holder. Which you are unless you signed over the copyright to someone else. You don't have to prove it at this point, but it must be true, because you have to state under penalty of perjury that you are or that you represent the copyright holder of the paper that you think has been copied. Of course if paper that published your paper is the copyright holder, you can just ask them to send this DMCA takedown notice, which they will most likely do, since they don't want papers that they use to sell their journal to be copied.
What will happen is that arXiv will remove the paper and inform the person who put it up there. That person can then give in, or they can inform arXiv that *they* are the copyright holder (which you know would be a lie). If that happens, you'll have to meet in court. But I doubt that anyone would be so stupid to go to court claiming that they have a copyright on a paper that they just copied.
BTW. That approach wouldn't work if someone truly plagiarises your paper. If I read your paper and then write my own paper copying ever single idea of yours, without any original thought of my own, but rewriting everything in my own words, that would be plagiarism but not copyright infringement.
BTW. If this paper is indeed *a copy* of yours (not just stealing your results, but stealing your words) then removing it "in a while" is absolutely unacceptable after they receive a DMCA takedown notice. The journal has to remove it *immediately* or you can sue them for copyright infringement.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: Three months ago, I had a one hour interview with a professor in a scholarship. After the interview, she advised me to go to these places: the biology department of Harvard, MIT Media Lab, and Sante Fe. Since then, I have researched about my interest more carefully, and decided that my interest is slightly different. As a result, those places are not my desired destinations (except Santa Fe, but maybe for my postdoc).
I don't intend to follow the fellowship. It has a lot of restrictions. I applied for it just to have the advice after the interview.
But still, being advised to apply to those prestigious schools is an advantage for me. It indicates that I have the ability to study there, with an assurance from a professor. I think that I should show this in my SOP, even when it's just a minor detail. All I want is to optimize all of my available resources I have.
I don't think it's a compliment since after suggesting the schools, the interviewers showed me the weak points of mine. And the words from them **should** be honest, since it needs to help the fellows to have a good applying strategy. This is stated in the announcement of the fellowship. I think that this professor can be my unofficial recommender. All of my official ones are from my country, so if I have someone from the US, it would help me a lot. I have emailed her to ask her about this, and a reminder, but she doesn't answer.
Should I put it in my SOP? And if yes, how to do this effectively?<issue_comment>username_1: There's no way to use this at all. If a professor who met you for an hour can say anything that your recommenders can't, then something is probably wrong. Especially when it sounds like this was more of an off-hand compliment than a carefully considered statement. If you actually get and use the scholarship then that can be very beneficial, but it sounds like you aren't interested in that option.
On a side note, I agree with @Alexandros that applying for anything that you have no intention of accepting is extremely rude and borderline unethical. I highly suggest getting rid of that habit before entering academia proper. You are deliberately wasting a lot of people's time and money, and stuff like this can damage your reputation if it becomes known that you regularly do it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Given your context, without knowing the exact situation, it seems it was not necessarily advising you 'to go', but instead 'to apply' to those places, as the professor had thought they would be top programs for what you were interested in. However, if you are not interested in those places, it seems like the advice and the meeting you had was not very fruitful. If someone can not recommend a lab that is similar to your research and interests after an interview, I doubt you can take their advice to apply somewhere as any endorsement.
Stating something like this would come off as naive and overreaching. The only time I would take this advice into account is if the professor was actually from one of the labs, and asking you to apply to their lab themselves. In that case, it would be possible to mention in your SOP that you have interests inline with the professor.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Don't ever use anything shared with you in a conversation without that person's consent. End of story.
That's not to say that I wonder how you would. Do you expect a statement to the sort of "Professor X, who I met once and talked to for 5 minutes, mentioned I should go to Harvard. Here I am, people!" to be even remotely helpful?
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: The answers to [this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/2945/20862) question promote a view that the personal pronoun *we* is acceptable in an academic paper. But I did not see an answer there, or more generally on this site, that discourages the use of *we.* This question is different to the one mentioned above because it queries whether the word *we* should be used at all, not just to ask whether *I* or *we* is more appropriate.
The economics department at my university (UCT) discourages the use of personal pronouns in an essay – I was marked down in my essay for my use of the word *we.* At the end of my essay, I wrote
>
> In conclusion, we note that the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.
>
>
>
I decided to use *we* in my essay because I had grown accustomed to seeing it in mathematics textbooks, so I assumed that it was formal enough. But the economics department says that it is not formal enough.
Even though it seems acceptable to use *we* in some circles, it seems that it is a point of debate. What guidelines should I be using in order to make my decision about whether to use *we* or not?\* Should I continue to use *we* as I see fit, except for economics essays? Or, should I apply this rule to **all** my academic essays (I also study public policy & administration)?
It would ostensibly be silly to have different writing styles emanating from the same person. The problem has not been brought up before, and I have used the word in a number of sociology essays in first year, and one public policy & administration essay in second year. In those essays, I used the word in the following ways.
>
> In this section, we discuss motivations for why provincial government should be restructured.
>
>
>
and
>
> Applying this model to provincial government, we can graph a U-shaped function of long-run average cost.
>
>
>
and
>
> Approaching the question from the side of the teacher, we find that inequality can be caused via culturally insensitive teaching methods.
>
>
>
As a final clarification, I *do* prefer to use the word.
\* Edit: Although it was not initially made clear, I have not been provided with style guides. However, I doubt that I would ask this question if I were provided with style guides. Saying that I should "follow the style guide" makes perfect sense, but doesn't really help me in my situation. I asked this question on academia.SE so that I could ask others to brainstorm ideas about how I could make the decision without a style guide (e.g. how were those rules formed in the first place?).<issue_comment>username_1: Styles differ by (sub-(sub-))discipline, so if you work in different disciplines you'll do a lot better if you adapt your style to that discipline. Its unfortunate, but I don't think there is a real solution to that.
As can be seen in the comments, it is also discipline specific whether you should use "we" or "I" if you are the only author, and opinions are quite strong on that. So here the same rule applies: you will be most successful in communicating what you want to communicate if you just follow the conventions of the discipline you are aiming at.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You're doing a postgraduate degree, so you should have been taught / be about to be taught the basics of academic writing.
Here is one of the basic rules.
1. Follow the style guide.
You've been told what the style guide for your coursework says about personal pronouns: it says don't use them. Follow it. Don't use personal pronouns in your coursework.
When you write for something with a different style guide, follow that style guide instead.
Different style guides have different rules. That's what makes them different.
No, it is not ostensibly silly to have different writing styles from the same person, assuming that person can comprehend and follow Rule 1, above.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: As already noted, there is usually little you can do against a styleguide, unless it’s blantantly against every convention. Be prepared to encounter styleguides with much weirder rules, in which, e.g., the punctuation at the end of this sentence is “correct.”
That being said, you can impose some guidelines. I am aware of the following occasions on which *we* (or *I)* can be used in an academic paper:
1. To **describe experiments or simulations** you performed, e.g.:
>
> We transmogrified 500 apples and determined their contrafibularity.
>
>
>
2. To **refer to the results** and other work from the same paper:
>
> In comparison to Smith’s transmogrificator, our method has the advantage that […]
>
>
>
3. In **derivations** (most common in mathematics):
>
> Combining equations 23 and 42, we obtain: […]
>
>
>
4. To **summarize** the paper in an abstract or introduction:
>
> We here present a new method to transmogrify bananas.
>
>
>
or
>
> In this review, we summarise recent advances in the transmogrification of fruit.
>
>
>
5. In **phrases** such as:
>
> We note that […]
>
>
>
6. In the **acknowledgements**:
>
> We thank <NAME> for constructive comments.
>
>
>
Now, if you are writing an economics essay, you are probably not performing experiments or deriving new theories, which excludes reasons 1–3. In fact, most review papers use *we* only for reasons 4–6. Moreover, you likely do not have a summary in the style needed for reason 4. Using *we* only due to reason 5 would be so rare that it can be considered inconsistent style, in particular since it can usually be avoided easily.
Thus, I expect that the reason for which you were marked down was that you used *we* in a way that is not considered appropriate in academic writing at all, or because you used it only due to reason 5 only.
If you want a general guideline (if none is obviously imposed): If you describe experiments, derivations and similar of your own, use *we.* In the abstract or introduction of a review paper or something similar, you can use *we.* If you are doing neither, avoid using *we* except in the acknowledgements.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I googled
style guide avoid personal pronoun -gender
(could someone edit that to center it or at least move the margin over a little bit, please?)
and found plenty of people recommending avoidance of *I* and *we*. Apparently, whoever graded your essay is one of those people.
Here's your *we* sentence again (thanks very much for posting it):
>
> In conclusion, we note that the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.
>
>
>
I'm a big believer in "rules are made to be broken," but in this case, even without your department's stuffy rule, I don't see a need to include the "we note that". I could sort of see it in an outline of the content of your article -- as a tour guide might describe the different places your article goes.
Look how much stronger a statement this is:
>
> In conclusion, the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.
>
>
>
By the way, there are a few other things you could do to increase the impact of your final sentence. By its location, it is already clear that it is the conclusion. So let's give "In conclusion" the axe.
"Dealt with this" is such a vague expression -- perhaps you could be more specific here about *how* South Africa dealt with the crisis? If your article doesn't get into that, but only shows how South Africa was affected by the crisis, then perhaps you could put in something about the particular way, or the particular degree to which, the country in your magnifying glass, South Africa, was affected.
*What a shame, that you've got nasty people in your department penalizing you (in a vague, non-written form, yet) instead of giving you friendly edits.*
Upvotes: 1
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2015/11/12
| 1,535
| 5,820
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<issue_start>username_0: There are many different kinds of bachelor degrees. In my country, there seems to be no difference between bachelor of science in engineering and bachelor of engineering. There is only one kind of degree for undergraduate majoring in engineering. I am now applying to graduate program in the US, and I want to know which one I should choose to correctly get my background known by people in the US.<issue_comment>username_1: Styles differ by (sub-(sub-))discipline, so if you work in different disciplines you'll do a lot better if you adapt your style to that discipline. Its unfortunate, but I don't think there is a real solution to that.
As can be seen in the comments, it is also discipline specific whether you should use "we" or "I" if you are the only author, and opinions are quite strong on that. So here the same rule applies: you will be most successful in communicating what you want to communicate if you just follow the conventions of the discipline you are aiming at.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You're doing a postgraduate degree, so you should have been taught / be about to be taught the basics of academic writing.
Here is one of the basic rules.
1. Follow the style guide.
You've been told what the style guide for your coursework says about personal pronouns: it says don't use them. Follow it. Don't use personal pronouns in your coursework.
When you write for something with a different style guide, follow that style guide instead.
Different style guides have different rules. That's what makes them different.
No, it is not ostensibly silly to have different writing styles from the same person, assuming that person can comprehend and follow Rule 1, above.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: As already noted, there is usually little you can do against a styleguide, unless it’s blantantly against every convention. Be prepared to encounter styleguides with much weirder rules, in which, e.g., the punctuation at the end of this sentence is “correct.”
That being said, you can impose some guidelines. I am aware of the following occasions on which *we* (or *I)* can be used in an academic paper:
1. To **describe experiments or simulations** you performed, e.g.:
>
> We transmogrified 500 apples and determined their contrafibularity.
>
>
>
2. To **refer to the results** and other work from the same paper:
>
> In comparison to Smith’s transmogrificator, our method has the advantage that […]
>
>
>
3. In **derivations** (most common in mathematics):
>
> Combining equations 23 and 42, we obtain: […]
>
>
>
4. To **summarize** the paper in an abstract or introduction:
>
> We here present a new method to transmogrify bananas.
>
>
>
or
>
> In this review, we summarise recent advances in the transmogrification of fruit.
>
>
>
5. In **phrases** such as:
>
> We note that […]
>
>
>
6. In the **acknowledgements**:
>
> We thank <NAME> for constructive comments.
>
>
>
Now, if you are writing an economics essay, you are probably not performing experiments or deriving new theories, which excludes reasons 1–3. In fact, most review papers use *we* only for reasons 4–6. Moreover, you likely do not have a summary in the style needed for reason 4. Using *we* only due to reason 5 would be so rare that it can be considered inconsistent style, in particular since it can usually be avoided easily.
Thus, I expect that the reason for which you were marked down was that you used *we* in a way that is not considered appropriate in academic writing at all, or because you used it only due to reason 5 only.
If you want a general guideline (if none is obviously imposed): If you describe experiments, derivations and similar of your own, use *we.* In the abstract or introduction of a review paper or something similar, you can use *we.* If you are doing neither, avoid using *we* except in the acknowledgements.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I googled
style guide avoid personal pronoun -gender
(could someone edit that to center it or at least move the margin over a little bit, please?)
and found plenty of people recommending avoidance of *I* and *we*. Apparently, whoever graded your essay is one of those people.
Here's your *we* sentence again (thanks very much for posting it):
>
> In conclusion, we note that the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.
>
>
>
I'm a big believer in "rules are made to be broken," but in this case, even without your department's stuffy rule, I don't see a need to include the "we note that". I could sort of see it in an outline of the content of your article -- as a tour guide might describe the different places your article goes.
Look how much stronger a statement this is:
>
> In conclusion, the European sovereign debt crisis created uncertainty in the global financial market, and South Africa was one of many countries that dealt with this.
>
>
>
By the way, there are a few other things you could do to increase the impact of your final sentence. By its location, it is already clear that it is the conclusion. So let's give "In conclusion" the axe.
"Dealt with this" is such a vague expression -- perhaps you could be more specific here about *how* South Africa dealt with the crisis? If your article doesn't get into that, but only shows how South Africa was affected by the crisis, then perhaps you could put in something about the particular way, or the particular degree to which, the country in your magnifying glass, South Africa, was affected.
*What a shame, that you've got nasty people in your department penalizing you (in a vague, non-written form, yet) instead of giving you friendly edits.*
Upvotes: 1
|
2015/11/12
| 725
| 3,020
|
<issue_start>username_0: I'm a post-doctoral research fellow and I've just been offered another post-doc position at another university. I still have a year and a half left on my original contract, but it's not going as well as I'd hoped and ultimately is not going to lead me to a place I want to be in my career. The new position is at a better lab with many more PhD students to work with, somewhat less research freedom but more resources and support, and also genuine guidance to prepare for life as a professor. As an added bonus, the new position is in the same city that my partner lives in, and we will be able to live together.
The problem is, for the sake of professional etiquette, I can't tell my current advisor that this position was offered to me, as my new advisor doesn't want to be seen as poaching a post-doc from another university. I don't want to burn any bridges or cause ill-will at my current position. I'm at a bit of a loss now, trying to figure out how to approach a conversation with my current advisor to tell him I'm leaving, and I would really appreciate some advice!<issue_comment>username_1: I changed from one unfinished postdoc to start a new one. In your list of reasons, there is one that easily trumps all others:
>
> the new position is in the same city that my partner lives in, and we will be able to live together.
>
>
>
Tell your current advisor that you are moving to another postdoc **so you can live with your partner**. Any remotely humanoid advisor will understand and accept that. The reason for my move was exactly this.
All your other reasons are less important, and may be interpreted as implicit criticism of your current place. Since you have the [two body problem](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/two-body-problem), you can move without mentioning any other reason.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Unless you are living in a country I've not heard of, post docs are employees like an other and are under no obligation to work until the end of their contract. Just hand in your notice as soon as, but not before, you have a new job.
By all means give your current boss a reason for quitting but if you don't want to don't sweat it, they'll have some plan to spend the money.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I would suggest talking to your current and future supervisors about a solution that works best for everyone. Trying to keep the new position secret from your current advisor is silly since he/she is going to figure it out when you start the new position. For example, it might be best if you split your time between the two projects for the next 6-12 months. This way you could wrap up your current work and get a head start on the new project. You might be able to work in the new location with only occasional visits to your current lab (thereby solving the 2 body problem). Maybe your current advisor or the new advisor has no flexibility, but if you do not ask, you will not know.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/11/12
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<issue_start>username_0: If I should mention it then what should I write about it or how should I link it with the rest of my statement of purpose?
(I just suck at courses like history and other core humanities and courses which require you to rote learn a lot of stuff)<issue_comment>username_1: I don't know if I'm 100% suitable to answer your question, since I have never applied to a US university; however, I can tell you for sure that in all personal statements I've written for UK universities, I've never mentioned my grades. I don't personally see the point in writing about your grades, since they can find out from your transcripts and from the academic references.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I had the same issue a couple years back when applying for graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin. Their program required a minimum GPA of 3.4, and my overall GPA was below that while my major GPA was higher.
During the online application process, I remember they specifically asked for each type of GPA, which required me to calculate my major GPA on my own (based on unofficial transcripts). So that's one potential route to indicate your higher major GPA, and it suggests that at least some people are interested in that information. This was in an online form, but I still mentioned my sub-par GPA in my SOP.
If you're not provided that avenue, then they may not really be interested in it. However, I don't think it would hurt to mention it in your statement of purpose. Both in academia and the workplace, it's worthwhile to admit to your faults. Eg. 'I had a really rough time in my second year at university, but I was able to turn it around and earned As in later years' or 'I have worse scores in some classes, but always performed very well in major-related coursework'.
Saying something to that effect on a SOP would help them understand that you're ready for graduate school, even if you don't have a blemish-free record. If you can follow it up with strong GRE scores and strong recommendations, then (from what I've heard) many admissions committees will be more lenient on GPA.
I don't personally recommend putting it on your CV. I tried doing that by putting "Major GPA: x.xx" under "GPA: y.yy" and it seemed to confuse people more than anything else. It's really not standard to differentiate the two, so anyone who hasn't seen that before will wonder why you're doing that. The SOP uses plain language and allows you to explain yourself, so it seems a better fit for this kind of information.
Overall, I would devote maybe 1-3 sentences on this point in your SOP; you want to focus their attention on your strengths, after all.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/11/12
| 500
| 2,279
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<issue_start>username_0: When teaching an undergraduate or graduate course and knowing about some good students, what would be the best approach in inviting them to join a research project? Contacting them directly, or send an email to all students and then select the "good students" that are also interested?<issue_comment>username_1: At my institution the selection was two-fold. The professor usually has an open invitation for all students to apply for their lab, but chosen students were known to be approached to raise their interest. This was always done carefully as to don't imply any precedence between students, but not secretly, and almost always orally (not by email or similar). For example, at the project oral defense, the instructor would suggest to the best students to consider applying for their lab.
At least all of my instructors were careful not to "flatter" the students, but only to raise their interest. There is little sense to have a, no matter how brilliant, student working on a project, if they are not interested in the subject.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As an undergrad, I was both approached directly by a prof and responded directly to a job advertisement that a prof posted on a bulletin board near the entrance to our building. Both led to great research experiences for me and no apparent sour grapes or other complaints when my peers found out about my research opportunity. I have also seen a professor simply advertise during class that they had some opportunities available and that those who were interested could see them after class during office hours.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It would be better if you could contact whole class and then select the students who might not only be good, but also very much interested in doing the research. If you think that, someone is good and haven't approached you, you may just ask him/her about it.
Also, there's a possibility that you might not know all the students very well, so if you plan to select only the students whom you think who are already good, there's a chance that you might miss out someone who might be better and also more interested.
So, I would say to ask the whole group and then decide, depending on the response.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/11/12
| 1,911
| 7,748
|
<issue_start>username_0: I just started being a TA in mathematics at a university in continental Europe. My big problem is my time management: I feel like I don't have time for my own research. During a working time of 40h per week, I usually have the following duties (other than my research):
* Teaching duties 3h
* Attending two lectures (total of 3h) plus their exercise sessions (total of 2h)
* Attending a seminar of 2h
* Solve exercise sheets of the two lectures I attend
* Think about good exercises for the course I'm a TA of
* Write solutions to the current exercise sheet
If I include the last three points with a total of - say - 7h (which is probably too little time), my duties in the week take around 17h. Well, this does not sound too much. I *do not have* to attend these lectures and the exercise sessions, but my advisor strongly recommends attending, as their topics are very important in my field, although they are not at all related to my current work.
But, of course, there are some other things which prevent me from working on my stuff:
* The two lectures I'm attending are right one after another. Between these two lectures, I have a break of 30 minutes. But in this short period of time, I cannot be productive. When I finally got started working on my research, I already have to attend the next lecture. This problem occurs a lot for me: during my teaching duties and another duty, I have only one hour to do something. But in this one hour, I mostly have to prepare for the next lecture/seminar/... - Basically, my whole Mondays and Tuesdays are blocked by problems like that (I cannot be productive in just one hour - it's just too little time to get started).
* Prepare seminar talks for the seminar mentioned above. This is not a regular work to do, but nevertheless takes a lot of time.
* As my two lectures are on the same day and there is only a 30min break between them, I usually feel very tired after the second lecture. This decreases my working efficiency by a lot. I do take some lunch break after the lectures, but I usually feel even more tired after the break.
* Attend seminar talks which take place on a irregular basis.
* The only day on which I don't have any duty is Friday. But on Friday, I'm usually really tired as a consequence of the stressful week. Therefore, I cannot be as productive as I should be, even on Fridays.
* As I just started being a TA, there are many "small" things which have to be done. Set up a new computer, find out how to use SSH on this one, ... - those small things add up and end up costing a lot of precious time.
I also considered working on weekends, but this would be too much for me; there have to be some days spared for regeneration. Sometimes I think about the exercise sheets of the two lectures on weekends, but nothing else.
About the two lectures and the seminar: I really want to attend those to broaden my view of my field and learn new things which are (currently) not important for my work. One could think about not solving the exercise sheets of the two lectures, but then I won't learn a lot by attending these lectures.
So my question is the following:
**How do I maximize my productivity as a TA (in mathematics)?**
(Closely related: *How can I stay being concentrated after two lectures/on Fridays/...? How do I maximize my productivity-to-time ratio?*)<issue_comment>username_1: 1. I would like to point out that life as a graduate student is tough, especially if you indeed want to achieve something. 40h/week working time is much less than one should normally invest in. (At least from my personal experience and my personal observation)
2. Things are just bumpy in the beginning. It's normal. Just keep moving.
3. *You are not superman.* Everyone has limited energy and time, you just can't do everything in the same time. You may want to give up one of the lectures that you are attending if it's not closely related to your topic.
4. Plan your own research, set milestones and keep progressing.
5. Try to do one thing in a day. If you work on your own research during the weekends, do not think about your TA duties or lectures at all in the same time. Make a bigger chunk of time to work on one thing instead of fragmented pieces of time is a good idea for improving productivity
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> My big problem is my time management: I feel like I don't have time for my own research
>
>
>
This is the very one problem that most PhD students have, and it is indeed so, in particular in fields like mathematics where the core productivity comes from concentration. Your schedule seems nevertheless to be pretty standard, as having one teaching class to support per semester (with related exercise corrections) and seminars to attend, which reduce the free time to bring on individual research.
I have undergone the same (PhD in theoretical physics) and adapted the following approach:
* hopefully you will not have to teach every single term, just during some semesters. When such, it is a matter of fact that your time will be reduced due to the exercises charges; accept it as part of your PhD programme and try to focus your intensity on those semesters when no teaching is involved (it is anyway the same for post-docs and professors: they rarely publish revolutionising results when teaching classes).
* although many classes in mathematics are appealing and interesting, only focus on those ones that are important for your final thesis. Unfortunately, your committee will judge you based on the results of your thesis and not by how much passion you have put into your studies (it is sad but true).
* same holds for literature and papers: only read those articles that significantly help your research; have a selection of little but important material that you can easily go through.
* understand that you cannot master all the areas of mathematics just being led by the passion of solving exercises and attending lectures. I spent a lot of time widening my interests but at some point I had to narrow it down for the sake of completing the thesis without running out of funds.
Do not work on weekends: have in mind that the valid reason to enroll in a PhD programme is that you have to enjoy it, included your valuable spare time. Do not make it run over yourself as this will most likely lead to unsatisfaction, which will make the entire point of an Academic career worthless.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Hmm. On Fridays you feel wiped out, on Saturday you are being a human being the whole day and evening, and Sunday too.
I'm not surprised to hear you are feeling frustrated about the short amount of time you are able to spend on your research!
Something has to give. If you still want to do as good a job with your TA role as you have been doing, AND you want to spend a reasonable amount of time on your research, then I think you're going to have to forgo the three days off in a row. How about taking Friday for groceries, laundry, and cleaning up a little; and work half of Saturday and half of Sunday? That would still give you time for a movie or concert Saturday evening (or whatever you like to do in your spare time), and a hike or religious observance (or whatever) on Sunday morning. (Those are just examples. It will vary from person to person.)
I think that once you get revved up a bit, you will find yourself really looking forward to that special time at your desk, where you get to really concentrate on your project.
By the way, there is a trick to not feeling more tired after your dinner break: low carb. Fill yourself up with protein and vegetables, and skip the carbs. It really helps prevent that feeling of tiredness after a meal.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/11/12
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| 10,816
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<issue_start>username_0: During my research I often have side results. By a "side result" I mean e.g. a mathematical lemma, that I use to prove something in my game-theory paper, but that may be useful in other contexts.
Since mathematics is not my main area of research, nor the area of my advisors, I find it hard to tell whether these side-results are new. I can Google, but I since this is not my field, I don't know what keywords to use. I can do an extensive literature review, but this might take me months and it is too much time to spend for a side-result.
What if I just submit a side-result to a medium-class journal? The reviewers will probably know whether the results are new. Then:
* If the results are new, they will be published and this may help other people.
* If the results are not new, the paper will just be rejected. This is not a big deal for me since these are only side-results.
My only concern is that the editor and reviewers will be angry at me for having wasted their time on results that are not new. This may be harmful to my reputation.
So, my question is: how harmful is it to send side-results that are not new?
EDIT: Many thanks to all the repliers. The solution I actually used was slightly different: I asked a game-theory expert! I thought that, just like I thought of this mathematical lemma in the context of game theory, other researchers in game theory may have come across it as well. He did not provide a reference, but immediately provided a very short proof of my lemma. So, now I am quite sure it is not worth publishing.<issue_comment>username_1: As a CS guy, I would never send something to a Math journal, without a good mathematical collaborator. Sending half-baked results, without prior solid literature search and sufficient background knowledge is not a good way to promote your career.
I also think you make one crucial mistake:
>
> If the results are not new, the paper will just be rejected. This is
> not a big deal for me since these are only side-results. My only
> concern is that the editor and reviewers will be angry at me for
> having wasted their time on results that are not new.
>
>
>
This is not your major problem. The main problem is, if those results slip through the cracks of peer-review and get published and (i) they are wrong (ii) they are not new (iii) this thing happens more than once. Then you will get a reputation for sending half-baked ideas, bad papers or try to present other people's results for novel and yours.
**TL, DR**; Only send the best papers you can write and only in areas you have sufficient knowledge to judge their merits. Not every paper has to be seminal, but they must all be correct and with a proper literature search.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Your impulse to try to find out whether your "mathematical side results" are new and/or publishable is a great one, but I think you need to go about it in a different way. If you are not a mathematician and working without the guidance / mentorship of an experienced mathematician, trying to get your results published in math journals will be somewhere between difficult and quixotic.
Have you tried making use of the site [mathoverflow.net](https://mathoverflow.net/)? Asking whether a result exists in the literature should be on-topic for that site providing the result is viewed to be a sufficiently contentful piece of mathematics. (Yes, there is a certain amount of elitism / snootiness here, which most people seem to agree is necessary in order to keep a research level math Q&A site afloat). Anyway, you can certainly *try*: what is great about MO (and in fact most SE sites) is that it is very likely that whatever happens will happen with almost magical quickness: with high probability, if within a few hours no one comes along to answer your question, then the answer is not "well known" by the mathematical community.
Here are some specific issues with the float-it-to-the-journals plan that you propose. (It is not an exhaustive list: probably that is not necessary.)
>
> What if I just submit a side-result to a medium-class journal, e.g. American Mathematical Monthly?
>
>
>
The *American Mathematical Monthly* is not a "medium-class journal". It occupies a specific niche, and within that (small) niche it is one of the top journals. For instance, I have submitted four papers to the *AMM*. Two of them were rejected. One of these rejected papers was easy to publish in a more "mainstream" journal; the other was not. The other two papers got accepted...eventually. But I turned in a larger number of revisions on these two papers (I believe they were 3 and 7 pages long) than on most of my other papers. Most of these revisions were made *after* the mathematics was agreed upon to be correct and of the sort they wanted to publish.
After my first four submissions, many years of close reading and half a dozen referee reports, I think I have a pretty good idea of what the *AMM* wants to publish (not necessarily the same good idea as everyone on the editorial board). I now sometimes advise other people as to whether their manuscripts ought to be submitted there. Even so I have just written an article that I had at first thought I wanted to submit to the *AMM*, but now I am leaning towards submitting elsewhere, and I am not sure. It's complicated!
>
> If the results are new, they will be published and this may help other people.
>
>
>
No, just because the results are new does not mean they will be published by any reputable mathematical journal. I have a few manuscripts that I tried to publish at several different places but did not succeed. Eventually I stopped. I agree that in theory they could be published somewhere, but in practice this can be a lot of trouble.
(I agree that the results may help other people! Consider making them available in some other form, e.g. in a manuscript on your webpage and on the arxiv. You can put things on the arxiv that you do not have plans to publish, so long as you are reasonable about it.)
>
> If the results are not new, the paper will just be rejected. This is not a big deal for me since these are only side-results.
>
>
>
Hard no. Results get republished all the time. The refereeing process for math journals is that the editors seek opinions from one or two people. If those one or two people have not seen the results before -- maybe they made a reasonable attempt to search the literature, or maybe they didn't; both occur frequently --
then the paper will likely not be rejected *for that reason*. There are some notorious examples in the mathematical community of papers that were published containing content this is not only "not new" but is well known material from undergraduate courses, or is actually at a lower level than that. This is actually a pretty bad way to be sure that the results are not new.
>
> My only concern is that the editor and reviewers will be angry at me for having wasted their time on results that are not new. This may be harmful to my reputation.
>
>
>
I think that is a legitimate but rather minor concern. The mathematical community is vast, and although we talk about people in some ways, gossiping about poor submissions (that never appeared) is very rare (in my experience, obviously). If you are willing to "take no for an answer" and spread out your submissions among multiple journals, I don't think this will be very harmful to your reputation. Yes, you might be wasting people's time and that is worth thinking about, although the less appropriate the paper is, the quicker and easier it should be for a qualified party to see that. I think the main consideration here is **wasting your own time**. Are you aware that if you submit a paper to a math journal you should expect to wait at least six months for a referee report, and that delays of a year or more are not uncommon? That's way too long to wait to find out whether some lemmas should be put in your game theory paper or not, isn't it?
In summary: I urge you not to use the journal refereeing process the way you suggest, but more for your own good than for the sake of your reputation. I hope you know that even if you don't have any mathematical connections, *you could still make some*. Universities have multiple departments for a reason: have you tried to make contact with anyone in the math department of your university? If your colleagues there do not have the specific expertise to help you, they are still your colleagues so some of them should be willing to take a little time to direct you to the people who do. I encourage you to take advantage of this.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: One possible strategy is to submit to the arXiv first and then look for verification that it is new and potentially think about publishing. This gets your results out of the door and out into the open where they can be helpful to others, with a lot less hassle than it would take to publish through a journal. If you go through this route, you have something concrete to talk about in, say, MathOverflow, or with any mathematicians you care to approach, and you are protected regarding priority.
If you do this, I would recommend you to be very clear in the abstract and comments, and in the title too if possible, about the exact nature of the piece: say that it is something you found but that you are unsure of its relation to the literature, and that you're looking for comments regarding it.
This is a feasible route as long as you can submit to the arXiv; this is generally fairly inclusive but it is not universal, and if you are outside of a university then you might struggle finding endorsers for your submission. Nevertheless, it might be worth a shot, and if you say you're looking for an endorsement it may (or may not) help in getting a mathematician in the know to look at your manuscript and help you figure out if it is novel or not. If you cannot submit to the arXiv, there is also [viXra](http://vixra.org/), but honestly speaking I would think twice about submitting there.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: One significant hazard in including "side results" is that you can discredit yourself in the eyes of a referee... That is, if your "side results" are either very elementary, or are well-known-to-experts, you will give the appearance of cluelessness... which might make the referee wonder about your "main" results, too.
Mathematical things do get discovered over-and-over, and are apocryphal (in the sense of not having any good, definitive source), while being "well-known to experts". Probably such a state is inescapable, but it does create complications for non-experts and novices. Just try to get advice from subject-matter experts.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: As a new junior faculty member in life sciences, I would like to recruit a PhD lab manager/technician. The duties would include some basic administration (such as ordering reagents) but mostly carrying performing experiments and training students. I am open to the possibility of this person having their own research project. The position will be long-term, as one of the goals it to have a permanent senior lab member that can pass on experimental knowledge that we have accumulated. This means it is a critical position in the lab which requires good candidates.
I am considering how to attract strong candidates for this position. The problem is that the salary is set by the university and it is quite low compared to industry or tenure-track faculty.
My question is **what kind of incentives could one offer for such a position?**
The two main incentives that come to mind are the ability to do interesting research and relatively flexible hours. What are some other possibilities?<issue_comment>username_1: The prospect of enriching his or her publication list is what will make it most enticing. Being on the author list of some of the papers that come out of your lab would help, as would having some as first author (with your mentorship, if desired).
In other words, I'm imagining a hybrid position between a hired grunt and a postdoc.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I've actually worked in a lot of places with paid staff scientists in permanent/semi-pemanent positions like the ones you're describing. Below are a list of things they've mentioned about their jobs that they like, or things that made me consider exactly those types of positions:
* Some academic freedom. Of course they are being paid by you, so they need to work on funded projects primarily. But some ability to be working on side projects, "There's an interesting direction I'd like to take this in..." etc. are extremely valuable. This also applies to research output - being able to author the occasional paper, take some credit for things they've worked on with authorships, etc.
* Respect. This is a big one, and one of the major perks that can be offered. Treat your staff like trash, and it's just another job. On the other hand, if you treat your staff like highly-trained professionals who have expertise, don't accept hot-shot new grad students acting like they're "just" technicians, etc. that goes a long way.
* Job security. Hard to do as a new faculty member, but most of the more established faculty I know treated their staff as essential employees. If funding started to get hit, staff salaries were the last thing on the list to get cut before you hit "Turn off the lights and go home" stages. Make it clear to them you consider this to be true.
* Support if they want to do something else. This one seems a little counter-intuitive, but supporting the professional aspirations of staff has been helpful in my experience. It means they're not looking for an escape hatch under the radar (and thus leaving with little warning), they talk to other people who are interested in replacing them, students of yours see that working for your longer term wouldn't be a career dead end, etc.
* Flexible hours, the ability to work from home, etc. Essentially some of the same things that make academics value their positions over industry jobs.
* Insulation from some of the petty nonsense of academia. Basically, make sure you're the shield between your staff and the things that make an academic's life hard. That includes things like not having grant writing duties fall squarely on their shoulders to keeping them out of most departmental politics.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: This situation has arisen a couple of times for me and I don't know how to deal with it:
I'm writing a paper that contains formal mathematical statements and proofs. I am very careful about ensuring that my statements are precise and that the proofs are correct. Usually my coauthors are equally careful, but sometimes I have a coauthor who isn't.
The coauthor will edit my careful statements and proofs, presumably with the goal of improving the exposition. But they end up inserting errors, such as dropping necessary assumptions from theorems or incorrectly simplifying something in the proof.
If this happens once or twice, I don't care - it's an honest mistake and they are improving the paper overall - but some people make a habit of it, sometimes to the point where they are more of a hindrance than a help. It really annoys me, as I need to fix their errors and I end up not "trusting" my coauthor - i.e. whenever they make edits I'll go through and check what they've done.
Here's an example: Essentially, the proof of our main theorem involved defining a function, proving several properties of that function, and then using those properties to bound the integral of the function. My coauthor "simplified" the proof by redefining the function to be the integral of the function I had defined. This meant that the function was now a constant and the rest of the proof made no sense. He obviously had good intentions, but didn't understand the proof he was editing. This error made it into the arxiv version of the paper. It was not a big deal and nobody said anything, but it was annoying, as I had correctly written that proof.
I keep my displeasure in this situation to myself, as I don't want to offend my coauthor or appear unreasonable, but I want to tell my coauthor to be more careful. It's also good for them to improve their work habits. Usually I'll leave a comment for my coauthors in the manuscript explaining why things have to be done this way, but that doesn't seem to get the message across.
Is there some way I can encourage my coauthors to drop this bad habit without offending them?
EDIT: To be clear, I'm talking about coauthors at approximately the same seniority level as myself.
EDIT: In the example, it wasn't just the two of us. There were other more senior authors. So I didn't feel like it was my responsibility to address this issue. I didn't talk to the other authors about it, but one of them did also express irritation.<issue_comment>username_1: I recommend two different approaches, depending on the other types of value contributed by your co-author:
* If your co-author is not contributing technical value to the project at all, then you don't need to make a big issue of things: just simply do not invite them to collaborate with you on your next paper.
* If your co-author is contributing in other areas, but inconsistently for the proofs, I would recommend using a good version control system (e.g., Subversion, mercurial, git). Then you have an easy mechanism by which you can do explicit review of the changes that they introduce and adopt precisely the ones that you are *positively* comfortable with.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> **This error made it into the arxiv version** of the paper. **It was not a
> big deal** and **nobody said anything** [...]
>
>
>
Hmm. I see three telling issues just in this short text fragment, which I think provide some insight into the situation.
1. *A serious error made its way into the arXiv version of the paper*. Sorry, but to me that would be a very big deal, and I would be quite pissed.
2. You are saying that *this was not a big deal to you*. Maybe I'm reading too much into this statement -- it could be your understated personality; or maybe you were upset at the time but have gotten over it and are less upset now that the error has been corrected; or maybe you think that you *shouldn't* be upset, and that being upset is a sign of immaturity. Well, as I said above, in my opinion (the opinion of a random mathematician on the internet, which obviously counts for a lot :-) ), it *is* a big deal and deserves to be treated as such.
3. *Nobody said anything*. As I said: **hmm**; these are in my opinion the most important three words in your question. It sounds like your coauthors are "nice guys," as you say, and one of them actually made a good technical contribution so you may want to collaborate with him again. However, **good communication** is essential to a good collaboration, and what seems to be happening is that this nice guy and good technical contributor is simply unaware of the damage his sloppiness is causing (and possibly even unaware that he is being sloppy). I understand your reluctance to confront him -- maybe he's a sensitive person and will be offended, and we all hate to have awkward conversations in which we criticize someone else. Well, I don't see what other choice you have other than to terminate the collaboration, which would be a pity, or to carry the burden of working with a collaborator you can't trust, which would be very unfair and dispiriting for you and would not bode well for the future of the collaboration.
My advice: have a friendly chat with your coauthor. Bring up the example with the proof he messed up, and another couple of examples, and explain in as sensitive a way as you can that you would be really happy to continue collaborating with him, but that this issue of sloppiness and lack of trust is bothering you a lot. Focus as much as you can on positive things, e.g. by saying "you're a great researcher and I think you made a very good contribution to our paper, but ...". Here, after the "but", there should come a clear, direct and unambiguous description of what your coauthor did wrong; i.e., try to soften the criticism as much as you can by wrapping it with positive things, but don't be tempted to make the main criticism itself vague in order to soften it. The feedback has to be expressed directly, rather than in a passive way by leaving easy-to-ignore comments in the latex source file of the paper.
To summarize, I think you will find that although people generally don't enjoy too much being criticized, a lot of people actually appreciate being given constructive feedback that helps them improve, especially if it is delivered in a sensitive and positive way. In any case, even when they don't like it, sometimes it needs to be said. Good communication is important to keep any relationship, whether it's with an academic collaborator or anyone else, healthy.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: There are two things you can, and should, do:
1. Point out errors when you see them. As long as your communications stay 100% about the work, this needn't be an emotionally charged action. People should have a thick skin about receiving constructive feedback, and if they don't, that's their problem rather than yours. You can let errors slide in early drafts and come back to them later, but **it is your responsibility as a researcher not to submit or publicly post work you know to have significant flaws, or allow such work to be posted in your name**. In fairness to you, it's also the responsibility of the person posting a preprint to get a go-ahead from all the authors, and it sounds like that didn't happen in the situation you mentioned.
2. If someone habitually does this sort of thing, avoid working with him/her if you have a choice.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: My approach would be as follows:
1. Taking the 'blame' for focusing on this issue: Tell him you're kind finicky about phrasing and style in article's you're co-authoring, so you're asking for his patience when it comes to discussing changes and that s/he be receptive to your nitpicking more than s/he might expect.
2. Ask that you both use change tracking when making changes. If it's LaTeX, there's the [changebar](http://www.ctex.org/documents/packages/auxiliary/changebar.pdf) package, and a bunch of packages for making notes, or coloring text etc. If it's LibreOffice or MS Word, insist that you both use Track Changes.
3. Ask that, when s/he makes a significant change, that s/he also add some comment explaining why it was made.
This already puts you in a better position, I believe, since either s/he accepts your requests, in which case you can easily check whether they screwed something up (and s/he will think twice about each change as s/he makes it) - or s/he argues with you about it. The thing is, it's much better to argue about your wanting to supposedly be pedantic than to argue about your accusations of his/her being an "error introducer"...
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: This is a great question. Following on from what username_2 said about the best approach being to communicate your concerns - this is what I would do, and this is basically how I would do it (I am assuming certain things here, such as the strength of the relationship, or communication culture in the group, so you might want to pick and chose the aspects that work for you).
When picking a time for a meeting, I would make sure that I am as relaxed and cheerful as possible (well exercised and well rested), and that the co-author in question is also in good mental health. To arrange the meeting I would mention that I had something really minor to discuss with them. I would start that meeting by telling them how much I enjoyed working with them and some of the positives related to that experience. Eventually, I would get a point where I would say, however, while our work together has been very rewarding, I have one little concern that I would like to discuss with you. Having come around to the point I would ask if I could be honest with them - they will say yes (people nearly always do). At this point I would explain my concerns with their actions during the writing of the paper. When doing this I would use lots of qualifiers and try not to injure their ego. For example, having explained my concerns I would say things like, it is not big deal obviously...we all make mistakes and I have done similar things in the past etc.. I would also follow up by explaining that I wouldn't raise this concern with them if I didn't value the relationship and want to keep it improving. Finally, after doing this I would ask for their opinion, and ask if their was any feedback that they wanted to give me from our previous collaborations.
If this goes well and they respond to the feedback in a positive way then you will both have a stronger relationship and they may be come a collaborator for life - someone who has shown that they can change and improve and that they care about your opinion. If it doesn't go well then you have probably dodged a bullet as this issue was going to come to a head at some point so it was better to resolve it sooner rather than later.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: I think the time to get your ground rules straight is as near the beginning of a collaboration as possible.
Here's a possible way to do it:
>
> Hi all,
>
>
> I'm excited about the project. Since it seems to be taking off, I wanted to take this opportunity to let you know a preference that I have. I'm pretty easy going in a lot of ways, but when it comes to proofs that I contribute, I'm meticulous to a fault.
>
>
> If I contribute a proof to this project, and one of you wants to rewrite it, please **flag that edit**, and please don't wait until we're very close to publication to propose such a change.
>
>
> Thanks. This will do a lot for my peace of mind.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student and got a workshop poster (only poster based on abstract, no paper, at one of the workshops co-located with the major CS conference) accepted at the top-most conference in my field ([NIPS](https://nips.cc/), Computer Science).
Since I am not a full-time student, I am supposed to fund my own travel, accommodation and other expenses. The conference venue is in Canada while I am located in Asia, so the expenses are quite large. The deadline for student travel grants for the main conference has already passed and the funding for workshop student travel grant has not been yet announced.
I have the following questions with regard to this:
1. Is it worth it to attend such tier-1 conferences only to present a poster which won’t be published/indexed/not included in proceedings?
2. I would need to attempt to publish in such conferences at least once during PhD and since I am self sponsored, expense for that too would be upon me.
3. My advisor says: “Go and have some exposure, meet and network with new people.” But he is aware that I am self-sponsored so he is not too pushy but has asked me to go. Does such networking really happens when I would be only an attendee for first five days of the conference and having a poster demo during the last day of the conference.
If my questions seems too vague, please let me know. I would try to be more clear and concise.<issue_comment>username_1: Firstly, congratulations on getting your poster accepted. If you don't go, I hope you are able to find someone to present the poster on your behalf (this is actually quite common).
In terms of deciding whether or not to go: it depends on your situation.
Some things you should consider:
1. Your financial situation and how much the cost will be. On top of the flights, you need to pay for registration, accommodation, meals, a travel visa (if applicable), and local transportation (e.g. to and from the airport).
2. Your career stage and future goals. Are you planning to stay in the field? Will you have future opportunities to attend similar conferences? This affects how valuable going would be to you.
3. How much networking you will be able to do. Do you know other people attending the conference? If you don't know anyone, it can be difficult to network. But if you know someone there (e.g. your advisor) who can introduce you to people, that can make things much easier. You should also have some idea of who you want to network with. I will sometimes decide whether to go to a conference based on knowing who will be attending and who I want to network with.
Your advisor will know your situation better than I do and can give more specific advice. So, if you are uncertain, you should talk to him more about it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I think that Sam has given you some very good points to consider. I have attended three conferences and spoken to many others about their views on conferences. Based on my experiences and what you have outlined, I would advise you not to attend the conference for the following reasons:
1. It will be very expensive. That is ok if you are getting your moneys worth, but I am not sure you will.
2. In my experience most conferences involve superficial networking and do not provide sufficient contact to create long term relationships. People meet, make small talk, and then go their separate ways. Sometimes if they have common ground they make plans to work on things but usually distance will prove too much of a barrier for the plans to work out.
3. No-one important will likely want to talk to you about research opportunities if you are just a PhD with a poster. There will be many people competing for the attention of the successful researchers and you will be at the bottom of the pile. In some ways you are probably better not to approach those people until you have something to excite them with - as I was told before, you don't want to "go out half baked," as you may only get one chance to make a good impression.
4. Many people who attend conferences actually treat it as something of a holiday and don't attend much of the conference proceedings.This means that fewer people that expected are actually available to talk to.
I am happy to expand on these points as needed if you want to know more about why I feel the way I do.
Also, despite what I have said, Canada is a cool place so that is one argument for why you might choose to visit and fit in the conference on the side :)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: If you decide to go, since the airfare will probably be a *major* expense, please set up an itinerary to visit one to three departments you are interested in getting to know better, somewhere in the vicinity of the conference. Once you've chosen the departments you'd like to visit, here's how you broach a visit:
>
> Dear Prof. So-and-So,
>
>
> I will be in your area during the month of March, to attend such-and-so conference. I am currently a fourth-year PhD student at *y* University, studying under Prof. Z. I would be interested in visiting your department/institute during my visit to North America. If you like, I could give a talk about xxx (give a one to three sentence description).
>
>
> Sincerely,
>
>
>
Of course, if your advisor has a connection and can arrange an invitation for you, so much the better; but if he does not, please don't let that stand in your way.
If they take your bait and ask you to come and give a talk, plan to spend two days in that town, meeting with people and hearing about what they are doing.
Read up on current research going on in that department before arriving.
Upvotes: 3
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