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2017/10/21
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<issue_start>username_0: The core of the problem is already in the title but I feel as i should add some more details.
I was doing some mathematics and, if there are no logical flaws or mistakes of any other nature (it seems that there are none) I managed to prove some result that, again, if it is proved with no errors, would, I believe, enrich the field in which it belongs.
Of course, I immediately started to think about arXiv.org and I decided that I want to submit an article there, but, when I was reading *help* section, there stands this, written:
>
> *Note: It is a violation of our policies to misrepresent your identity or institutional affiliation. Claimed affiliation should be current in the conventional sense: e.g., physical presence, funding, e-mail address, mention on institutional web pages, etc. Misrepresentation of identity or affiliation, for any reason, is possible grounds for immediate and permanent suspension.*
>
>
>
But, as you are aware by now, I do not belong to any institution and as such, am not affiliated with any, I am just an amateur that among all fields thinks about mathematics the most. So, I have stumbled upon this cautious note quoted above and do not know what to do.
So, I decided to write to all of you here to see what can be done in this case of mine. I am not 100% sure that among all sites this is the one most suited for this problem of mine (for example, I could have written this on MO Meta or MSE Meta) but surely I will try to welcome opinions and help, even if they do not resolve this issue that I am faced with.
What should be done?
EDIT: This is not a complete duplicate of the question mentioned in such a way as this one is a duplicate of that one because the body of the question mentioned goes like this:
"Assume you have already completed your undergrad and have been working for a number of years. Does one need to be part of a university or a learning institution to publish papers?"
But, I did not complete my undergrad and I am working for a number of years (independently). so, there are some similiarites but the question is not exactly the same, although answers seem to fit well.<issue_comment>username_1: The text you found tells you that you must not claim some affiliation which you do not actually have. So either leave the affiliation field empty, or enter something like "Independent Researcher".
You will then probably have to go through the endorsement procedure. For that, you need some researchers that have published in the category you are aiming for before to state that they think you should be allowed to publish to the arXiv.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: My advice toward "what should be done" is to send the paper to a peer-reviewed journal. Only by review will you learn (a) the value of what you've done, and (b) whether there are errors. arxiv.org will not tell you this; it is just a repository.
As for *which* journal to send it to, that's another question entirely. You should probably not try for the top journal(s) in the field, as they will have very high standards and little patience for someone without experience in writing papers.
Upvotes: 3
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2017/10/21
| 1,277
| 5,523
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a faculty member at an R2 institution in the US, looking ahead to a sabbatical. On paper, my university has a typical sabbatical policy: every seven years, a semester at full pay or a year at half pay. However, the administration has recently created policies, apparently for financial reasons, whose effect is to make it harder to actually take sabbaticals. I may not be allowed to take a sabbatical of the length I had planned, or I may be forced to delay it to some unknown future term. There is considerable uncertainty as to what will happen in the long run.
I am wondering whether this kind of thing is common.
Teaching loads at my institution are high, and I had been looking forward to sabbatical as a time to focus on my research, which is very important to me personally and professionally. So I am wondering whether this is a sign that I ought to consider looking for a job somewhere else, or whether I'm overreacting.
I don't really know whether this is the sort of general annoyance that one might occasionally encounter anywhere, or whether it is truly an indication that this institution is not going to be a good fit for my professional goals. Basically, would it be reasonable to quit over something like this?
I understand that sabbaticals sometimes have to be postponed or restructured due to operational considerations, e.g. whether the department will have sufficient faculty to teach all required courses that term, and that this could happen anywhere. But the present case is more systemic.
**Edit**: I should clarify that the new policy is not about increasing *academic* standards for sabbaticals. There is already a process for reviewing proposals based on their academic merit, as well as a requirement to report on the results afterward, and I have no problem with that. The new policy is on top of the existing process, and is based purely on financial considerations; academic merit will not be taken into account at that stage.<issue_comment>username_1: If the fact that you have to *explain the benefits of your sabbatical to your employer* before you're allowed to actually take it, makes you consider changing employers then you've got your head in the wrong place.
That's because I think it is entirely legitimate for an employer to require you to explain in detail why they should continue to pay your salary for 6 months without you actually working for them during that time. After all, the policy you describe does not actually abandon the (objectively speaking, rather generous) possibility of taking a sabbatical. While you don't describe the details of the policy, for the moment I will simply assume that they're similar to the ones that Texas A&M put in place while I was there: as an applicant you had to explain why you wanted to take a sabbatical, how this benefits your research, and how it benefits the university. It then went to a panel at the college level that evaluated all applications. I don't know any research active faculty who actually got their applications denied. But the effect of the policy change was that in practice those old-timers in the department who were not doing much research any more, were now either not approved any more, or more likely not applying any more. I suspect that Texas A&M is not the only university that changed their policies in this way.
Now, I do know that faculty are attached to their privileges. I am too. But I do think that in order to preserve them, we also need to be reasonable in what we're asking for, and that might include having to explain to our employer what the likely benefit of a sabbatical is.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I work at an R1 institution and we've had a similar, if not more stringent policy in place for at least a decade. I will say that the sabbatical review, like the tenure review, process is different for different disciplines, but I can also say from first-hand committee experience that the policy changes are stemming from what some might call the abuses by the older, tenured faculty, not young tenure-track faculty.
The internal soap opera at many schools right now is around the senior faculty who teach one or two classes a year, advise two or three students a year, and claim their sabbatical every 5 years in order to re-edit a book they published decades previously. Upon completion of their sabbatical, those seniors submit a one-page memo to the Dean declaring the whole experience a success because they updated the footnotes of said book. Meanwhile junior faculty are teaching 500+ freshmen in each of their 3 classes, trying to publish, patent, and mentor.
Honestly, the process of documenting or time-tabling the work of the sabbatical is meant to provide accountability on both sides. If you are a scientist who needs computing time or a laboratory and the department has committed the resource to you during your sabbatical and then fails to deliver, you have proof of the broken deal. Deans and Vice Presidents of Research are starting to take this seriously, and they are starting to notice when some departments systematically fail to deliver.
The assumption that the policy is meant to or might potentially harm researchers is misplaced. If you see hardworking, grant-carrying faculty who want to finish their NIH R21 and is denied sabbatical, start asking questions. If you see the guy who only ever shows up for the faculty retreat and hasn't published since the 1980s get denied, go kiss your regents.
Upvotes: 4
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2017/10/22
| 560
| 2,523
|
<issue_start>username_0: I received a review report on my magazine article (Impact Factor 7.6). Based on magazine restriction we can not use more than 3 mathematical equations. But the idea I presented in article require some mathematical evaluation as well. The reviewer suggested that we should publish relevant result and cite them in magazine article. They didn't mention whether the results should be peer reviewed or not.
My question is for such a high impact factor (in my research area the magazine is listed as 99 percentile in JCR) magazine article is it acceptable to refer something which is not peer reviewed?
If its ok then what is best way to do so? I don't have personal website and my school don't have publicly accessible repository and arxiv accept only the full articles not just some kind of mathematical evaluation.
Is it fine to use researchgate to publish mathematical results?<issue_comment>username_1: If the main idea of the mathematical evaluation can be explained in words, then the details may not be necessary to make public, as the motivated reader can certainly rederive them.
If on the other hand the math is non-trivial, then it should be explained in a high level way, with appropriate references to the more advanced techniques used.
If the math is highly non-trivial, then that would be sufficient material for a publication in mathematics, and the full paper on the math may be posted on the arxiv.
And no, personally I wouldn't use researchgate. Researchgate is not a journal, and submissions there do not count as publications. The same applies to arxiv too, and if you have a paper-worthy mathematical result, it ought to be eventually submitted for publication.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It's a policy, not a law, and so likely can be circumvented at least to some degree if you ask the editor. For example, if you need 6 or 7 formulas that are sufficiently simple that a typical reader would understand them, then an editor may make a reasoned exception. If you have trouble getting things down to that level, try expression some of them in terms of formulas.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I'm not sure about whether it should be peer-reviewed or not, but if not, a place that would be better suited to host this than ResearchGate is [FigShare](https://figshare.com/). Using FigShare, your result would actually be available without account, it would have more guarantees about remaining available, and it would actually receive a DOI.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/22
| 596
| 2,537
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<issue_start>username_0: I spent a year with a Phd. supervisor. I am not happy from both aspects: relationship and academically. Is it ethical to change the supervisor? Should I explain the reasons for change in details to the prospective supervisor or just be brief? How to avoid getting the impression that the student is trouble-maker (if I explained details of problems) vs. avoid give the impression there is no real reasons for change or that the student is not serious enough (if I am brief)?<issue_comment>username_1: You didn't say in what situation you need to explain this, which may change the answer.
If it is merely coming up in passing in a conversation, "It was not a good fit" is a good neutral way to give the general idea and leave it up to your interlocutor whether to pursue the topic or not.
If you are specifically asked for your reasons for leaving, a condensed 2-3 sentence version should be enough in most cases. Try to avoid placing blame, it is not a trial of who is right or wrong, you or your advisor. E.g. "our research interests do not align, I would really like to go more into topic B" rather than "he keeps making me do grunt work on things I hate". If you have academic reasons you probably don't need to go into the personal reasons at all, but if you do want to bring it up at some point, frame it as something like "our personalities do not mesh well". Stay carefully factual when recounting details. (This doesn't mean downplaying the issues. Think of a way to formulate it neutrally but still exposing the crux of the issues barefacedly.)
Generally, potential other supervisors will see themselves in the role of your current supervisor, so they will imagine that you will talk about them in the same manner as you will talk about your current supervisor.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: You should definitely look to change supervisors, but you may need to consider the politics of doing so. Academia is a small world and it's possible that you'll run into your old supervisor again some day, or that they will talk to others who you work with, so it's generally better to be tactful.
My department had a Postgraduate Coordinator who was there to assist all the PhD/MSc students. Mine was very helpful when I needed to drop one of my co-supervisors because our working relationship had broken down. If your university has such a role, I'd strongly encourage talking to them about it; they may be able to help you smooth the waters with your old supervisor.
Upvotes: 2
|
2017/10/22
| 455
| 2,001
|
<issue_start>username_0: I am applying for a Ph.D. position in a university. Their system required me to fill in the conferences I attended.
I published my paper on one conference although I didn't attend it personally for some reasons. My advisor went on my behalf. However, if I denied that I had attended that conference, the system doesn't even allow me to upload my paper. I think the paper is an important proof of my research ability.
What should I do? Should I just pretend I attended it. I don't even think they will really check about this thing.<issue_comment>username_1: In general, **no**. If they ask you to specify a list of attended conferences, then a conference that you didn't attend doesn't belong in your answer, even if your paper was accepted. Claiming that you attended the conference would be incorrect and could lead to problems if someone found out.
Normally, you should be able to get credit for your accepted conference paper in another category, where you're asked for a list of your peer-reviewed articles.
However, the form could be designed in a way which neglects the existence of peer-reviewed conference papers. For example, you might be asked for a list for your journal articles only, because the form designers were unaware of fields in which journal articles are not the only kind of peer-reviewed publications. In this case, you should seek contact to the admission committee and ask how to proceed.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: My reading here is that Conferences Attended and Papers Published are not the same thing.
You could attend a conference purely to watch the other presentations, to make contacts or to participate in workshops. You can also attend non-academic conferences, or conferences held within your university.
Based on the way this has been listed, I would not included the paper in this section. However, hopefully there will be the opportunity to submit your list of Publications elsewhere.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/22
| 463
| 1,815
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<issue_start>username_0: I would like to download a database containing all scientific papers published. This is obviously too broad and ambitious. To be realistic, say I want all the papers searchable on google scholar (although other databases are fine, say SemanticScholar, etc.), or an approximation of that. What databases out there allow you to download this data?
I don't want to download the papers themselves (that wouldn't fit on my storage), just a record containing title, authors, journal (if it is not a book), year, and perhaps abstract.
Is this possible? How can I download a database like this, that I can browse and search offline?<issue_comment>username_1: You can download a number of databases, but none, as far as I know, are comprehensive across all fields.
* [CiteSeerX data](http://csxstatic.ist.psu.edu/about/data) is available by request.
* [PubMed data](https://www.nlm.nih.gov/databases/download/pubmed_medline.html)
* [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/help/bulk_data), which contains some publication information
You might also want to check the [list of repositories](https://www.openarchives.org/Register/BrowseSites) compliant with the OAI-PMH metadata harvesting protocol.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Probably the *closest* you can get is the [Open Academic Graph](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/project/open-academic-graph/), a graph-based database of about 321 *million* papers (I don't think the actual papers are stored, but all the information you want is there). You can download all the 143 GB of data from the above link, but do note that because it's a merge of two existing graph-based paper databases ([Microsoft Academic Search](https://academic.microsoft.com/) and [AMiner](https://aminer.org/)) there are going to be *a lot* of duplicates.
Upvotes: 3
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2017/10/23
| 1,025
| 4,760
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<issue_start>username_0: I have recently received reviews for a journal paper I submitted a few months back. The verdict is a major revision (three out of four reviewers requested this, the fourth said accept with minor revisions).
Many of the reviewers felt like we did not justify our approach sufficiently, to which we agree and can improve upon. The editor; however, in their comments to us, stated that we should take a different (much more complicated) approach altogether (even though none of the reviewers suggested changing the entire approach, only to justify why we chose the approach we did).
**Question:** How should we proceed when the editor's comments seem much stronger than those of the reviewers?
It is not feasible to accommodate the editor's requests by the deadline. I'm unsure if the reviewers made (stronger) private comments to the editor requesting larger changes or if the editor interpreted the reviewers comments much differently than we did. The paper will go back to the reviewers after we make the requested changes.<issue_comment>username_1: Well, you can only do what you can do. Since you do not have the resources to implement the editor's suggestions, all you can do is address those of the reviewers. Maybe you can include the editor's alternative approach somewhere in the discussion section if it makes sense to address it there, otherwise just note your reasons in the letter accompanying your revised submission.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: It's the editor's call, and since you have no *right* to get your manuscript published, you don't really have a basis to ignore the editor's request -- if that's what the editor wants, then that's what you likely have to give him/her.
That said, while the manuscript management systems most journals use typically give you a deadline by which you have to turn around revisions, these are not actually enforced. That's because if you need to, you can always let the deadline pass and submit your revision as a new paper -- if you mention in your cover letter that it is a resubmission of a prior manuscript, then it will go to the same editor and from that person likely to the same reviewers.
The better approach is to discuss the timeline issue with the editor. Email the editor back and state that you're looking forward to making the requested changes, but that you can't do it in the requested time. Ask whether you can get an extension, stating how much time you need. As an editor, I can't see a reason why that should not be granted.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: First, determine for yourself the answer to this question:
*If it was not for the revision deadline, would you be willing to follow the request of the editor for the revision?*
If the answer is yes, it's going to be easy: just follow the answer by username_2 and request an extension of the deadline.
If the answer is no, you'll have to explain to the editor why you are not going to do this. In that case, instead of doing a full revision round with just answering to this comment negatively, I'd recommend taking a shorter route and **directly communicate with the editor** about this issue. You can for example explain how you understood the editor's request, why you don't think it's the best thing to do for the paper, and ask whether there might be a different way to get the paper ready for publication in this journal. You could also state that none of the reviewers seemed to make the same suggestion, and, depending on how detailed the editor's comments are, ask for more background information as to the editor's reasoning. It could well be that the editor has misunderstood some reviewer comments or got a wrong impression of the methodology somehow else, and the direct communication will help clarify this.
Of course there's a risk that the editor just won't accept publishing the paper without you following this request. If you're not willing to do it, that may mean moving to a different journal.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: If the editor is requiring changes at this level, I would also suggest that you consider if this really a disguised rejection.
This could happen if the topic of the paper is acceptable, but for some reason they don't want to publish it. An outright rejection may be controversial, so they have instead asked for unrealistic changes, which you're not expected to meet. At this point, they can then reject the paper without feeling guilty.
My recommendation in this case would be to withdraw the paper and submit it elsewhere. As it looks as though all four reviewers did ask for changes, I'd suggest addressing any major flaws they've identified before submitting this to the alternative journal.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/10/23
| 358
| 1,322
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<issue_start>username_0: What is the difference between tuition fees and enrolment fees? The University I'm planning to apply for MA studies, requires Non-EU students to pay 1500 euros per semester for tuition and 150 euros per semester for enrolment.<issue_comment>username_1: At least in Germany, the difference is that everybody (including locals) has to pay enrollment fees. Those are fees that cover some administrative costs and also often include the compulsory purchase of a semester ticket for public transport and money used to subsidize the student canteen. Tuition fees actually cover some of the costs for teaching you.
All *Bundesländer*, except Baden-Württemberg [which charges 1500 €](https://mwk.baden-wuerttemberg.de/de/hochschulen-studium/studienfinanzierung/gebuehren-fuer-internationale-studierende-und-zweitstudium/tuition-fees-for-international-students/) from international students, have abolished tuition fees for undergrad studies and many for grad studies.
References:
<http://www.internationale-studierende.de/en/prepare_your_studies/financing/cost_of_education/>
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Tuition fees are the cost of the degree you want to study. The enrollment fee is just the amount of money you have to pay to enroll yourself into that course.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/23
| 902
| 3,984
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<issue_start>username_0: I have asked a professor that I took a year long project with to write a recommendation to support my application to a well-known, selective masters programme in the UK (my university is based in South Africa). The letter has already been submitted but the problem is, I have no idea how strong the letter is.
Some useful information: I think the project went fairly well and I will not have to interact with this professor again in any formal capacity.
*Question*: (1) Do you think it is **reasonable** to ask the professor about the strength of the letter he has submitted? (2) If so, how should I go about doing this?
I would like to do this for the following reasons:
* If the letter is not so strong, I have other people who are willing to write me strong letters for my other applications (though none with the same reputation)
* I can possibly try to change references for the current application (that the prof. has already submitted the letter for) since I have not submitted the actual application.
Any advice is welcome and appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: I believe it is reasonable to ask a professor for a recommendation letter if you developed a close enough relationship where the professor could do so without compromising his or her integrity. Meaning, if the only way your professor can identify you is by your name and the grade you received in his or her class, no, I would not recommend asking for a recommendation at all...much less as for a "strong" recommendation.
It never hurts to ask for a recommendation; however, requesting how the document read might be pushing the boundaries.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: It is reasonable to ask about strength of a letter. Usually you ask in advance of the letter's writing.
You might consider using your next application to ask about the strength of the letter in general (probably the professor will use the same letter). For instance, you could say,
>
> "I am also applying to Y. I will need fewer letters for that program,
> so I want to use my best letters. I am hoping you might guide me on
> letter selection by letting me know if you were able to write a very
> strong letter or an average letter of support for me."
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: It would be quite acceptable to ask for a copy of the recommendation letter (although your professor is not forced to supply it). That is probably a more reasonable request than asking if the recommendation is strong, which may require the professor to justify the recommendation.
Once the recommendation is submitted, you would also be entitled to request a copy directly from the institution you've applied to, as this is covered under the Data Protection Act.
Now, as someone who both writes references for students and reads them, I can tell you that the norm in the UK is for them to be restrained and factual. References that are full of hype are generally treated with suspicion.
Academic referees in the UK are also rather limited in what they are allowed to say. There are generally university guidelines which dictate the format. They usually have to be internally signed off before they can be submitted. Then a copy is kept on file.
Choosing referees is something that needs to be done carefully. Even with the best will in the world, an in-demand professor is not likely to be able to give this their full attention.
During my busy periods, when I was writing references for students regularly, I could get up to 20 requests a week. Normally, I'd have to write those in my free time, in the evenings. So, even though I would want to do my best for every student, references for anyone other than students I'd worked very closely with would become necessarily formulaic.
Choosing a referee who has had the opportunity to get to know you, who you have impressed in some way and who is not run off their feet with other activities is generally a sound strategy.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/10/23
| 560
| 2,112
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<issue_start>username_0: As I know, using "I" and "we" should be avoided in research paper writing.
But in one of my paper, I am the only one author.
And in the introduction I wrote something like AA et al. proved that ..., BB et al. found that ..., CC et al. stated that ....
Then the problem is that I want to refer to one of my previous research that I had conducted with Mr.CC. I and Mr.CC are the only two authors in those researches.
In this case, which one should I write?
(1) I and CC confirmed that ....
(2) My name and CC confirmed that ....
(3) The author and CC confirmed that ....
(4) Our group confirmed that ....
For me, I think the (2) sounds awkward. (4) may not be able to use because I am not in his group in "CC et al. stated that ....". But I am not sure whether the (1) and (3) are suitable.
Thank you very much in advanced.
For more information : I did not involve in "CC et al. stated that ....". This is the result of his team. But I involve in "I and CC confirmed that ...." which is the work that only I and CC did it. So CC will be referred two times in this paper.<issue_comment>username_1: There are two options I know of (I've seen both).
One is to ignore that the person you are referring to is one of the authors, and write exactly the same way as if they were a third party. I guess this makes some sort of sense if there is no direct link between the two sets of work.
The other option is to use 'the first author' (or 'the second author', as applicable).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Another way to think about it is that "CC et al." and "Yossiri and CC" are also labels of the work, not just you, the researchers. CC isn't being redundantly named, two pieces of their work are being named. And you are talking about your previous work, not your self.
Alternatively, if you have another identifier for the work, like it's a system with a name like "FooSys", you could say something like "As we showed with our previous work on FooSys [Yossir and CC, 2016], the bars were 10x faster than the baz. FooSys proved that the thing was really thingy."
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/23
| 356
| 1,532
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<issue_start>username_0: I noticed during some conference talks that some presenters use their initials rather than their full names on some presentationn slides. Specifically I noticed this when they show name-labeled photos of their teams or have slides where they highlight key contributors to a broader scientific field.
I'm not sure whether this is a cultural quirk (I did't catch any pattern regarding nationality), a means to draw attention towards your research team (it seems to be more common for team leaders and professors) or just a boastful way of understatement (since everybody knows who "X.X." is).
Additionally, is doing this appropriate and/or advisable for an (under)grad student and if so, in what context?<issue_comment>username_1: The convention in mathematics is to use your last initial during talks when citing your own work. Probably it seems a little vainglorious as well as unnecessary to write out your entire name. There's no reason undergraduate/graduate students shouldn't participate in the same conventions as more experienced researchers.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: 1. Long Names: individuals with long names
2. Gender-Neutral Names: <NAME>. Vs. John/<NAME>. Some fields are still ambivalent towards gender equality, and as a result using initials anonymize the author's gender.
3. Marriage or Legal Name Change: Sometimes people hyphenate their last names when they get married.
4. Space Limitation: on some slides with many individuals, using initials can save space.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/23
| 1,063
| 3,931
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm wondering if it is possible to download all articles from references in a pdf file or on a journal website. For example I'd like to download all articles in the following references (I'm using the internet connection of my university, thus I can download all articles if they were purchased; I suppose my university did it):
<https://www.hindawi.com/journals/isrn/2012/170594/ref/>
Thank you for your help.
Ps: I have also the pdf file of the article.<issue_comment>username_1: What you are thinking of is a [web-scraper](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_scraping). The time it takes to develop one and debug it should be weighed against the cost of directly downloading the PDF's manually.
If you don't have experience with python (a popular language) or R (which I am familiar with) I would recommend the old fashioned way (manual download)
With the comment by AJK, read **VERY CLOSELY** your **Terms of Service**, to see if you can use a scraper.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: A easy way to do this is with a Firefox add-on called Down Them All: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/downthemall/>
Screenshots:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/mLy8p.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Nnjt.png)
In this second screenshot, notice that you can specify where the downloaded files should go; and you can specify what types of files should be downloaded. Please note that this tool works with pages that have a bunch of linked PDFs you want to download efficiently -- which is apparently not your situation right now.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: As far as I know, there is no automated service to do this. One of the reasons is that mass download of research papers is frowned upon by the publishers (look up the sad story of [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz), for instance).
If you want to build an automated (or semi-automated) solution yourself, one of the trickiest steps is identifying correctly the cited papers from the citation strings. For this you can use a research paper database, such as Scopus, Web of Science, or Pubmed. For instance, Scopus displays the references of a given paper in its page, and for each paper you get a "view at publisher" link that redirects you to the article page on the publisher website. This web page usually has a "download pdf" link inside it (usually paywalled, too), and since most papers come from the same major publishers it is should be possible to scrape this link automatically at least for these publishers.
Unfortunately the paper that you link to does not seem to be indexed neither in Scopus nor in Web of Science --- maybe because Hindawi is not one of these most "mainstream" publishers. It is in [Pubmed](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3731170/), though. I am less familiar with it, but if you click on the references you also get a page with a "full text" link in it.
Note that Google Scholar [does not display](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/83582/in-google-scholar-is-it-possible-to-view-the-list-of-papers-cited-by-a-specific) "forward" citation information, instead; only the reverse (papers citing a certain paper).
As mentioned in the other answers, you may be violating some terms of service if you do so. Terms of service are not the law, though, and I think you can only get into a very limited amount of trouble for that.
A Google search returns a few tools to do similar things:
* <https://github.com/ppwwyyxx/SoPaper>
* <https://github.com/zaytoun/scihub.py>
* <https://github.com/olivettigroup/article-downloader>
* <https://pypi.python.org/pypi/metapub>
I do not have experience with any of them, though, and I don't know if they are mature/stable enough for casual use.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2017/10/23
| 905
| 3,908
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<issue_start>username_0: I believe that I'm in a rather unusual situation and, as the title suggests, there is some uncertainty about how I should acknowledge a particular referee. This referee was supposed to be anonymous, but clearly (and deliberately) identified themselves in their report for historical context.
>
> Should I identify this person in the acknowledgements section, or is
> it rude to thank the referees collectively without identifying this
> person?
>
>
>
Thanks.<issue_comment>username_1: Can you explain "for historical context?"
Do you mean this referee was suggesting edits and justified the request by pointing to his/her own publications? If this is the case, you might want to adopt the references that were suggested, thus citing him/her, but not acknowledge the person separately as a referee. If he or she provided above/beyond background, methods, or advice then it should be attributed appropriately in those sections.
But more broadly, if the policy is for blind review the referee's choice to break the blinding privately does not necessarily give you the right to also break the blinding publicly. I would thank them collectively for their work, as was the original intent.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I'd thank "the reviewers".
I had the case recently where I guessed one out of three anonymous reviewers (small community, someone I had already a discussion about my work, and from a group likely to be asked for a review given the topic). Even before I returned the revisions, we had a conversation in which they identified a second reviewer (also guessable - distinctive style :-) ). I just thanked the "anonymous reviewers". If the conversation with the first reviewer hadn't happened, I'd have thanked them by name, but their status as a reviewer exempted the previous helpful (mostly just encouraging - it was my first paper) conversation. Also, you could ask.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I agree with @Boris Bukh's comment: as a general rule, feel free to acknowledge whom you want...but if there is any real worry that your acknowledgment could be received unfavorably, ask the acknowledgee first.
I think yours is a "nondegenerate case" of that above principle. In particular, by choosing your language carefully, you can acknowledge the non-anonymous referee *without disclosing that they were a referee*. E.g. you could write "I would like to thank A. Professor for XX. I would also like to thank the referees for YY." As long as XX does not equal YY, you are not being dishonest or misleading; you are just choosing not to reveal certain information. (If XX equals YY, it's not so clear why you need to acknowledge A. Professor by name.) If you decide to do this, sending the proposed acknowledging text to A. Professor for their approval might be a good idea.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: If a reviewer chooses to be non-anonymous, I think you can directly acknowledge them.
There is a precedent for this. In the [Copernicus journals](https://www.copernicus.org/) by the European Geophysical Unions, the LaTeX template contains a command for "thanking the reviewers". Reviewers can choose to be anonymous or not. All invited reviews are public, so anyone can read the review and confirm the anonymity or name of the reviewer. If I recall correctly, there's actually different commands (or different arguments, I don't remember) depending on whether or not they chose to reveal themselves. My colleague published a paper where one reviewer revealed himself (he is a well-known senior scientist) and the other did not. The acknowledgements, which were added by the publisher in the typesetting phase, were formulated something along the lines of *The authors thank <NAME> and one anonymous reviewer for their peer review*.
I don't see why it would be a problem to write this yourself.
Upvotes: 1
|
2017/10/23
| 957
| 4,166
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in the process of contacting potential supervisors for a post-doctoral position. I discussed my initial idea with 2 potential supervisors, but now I refined the idea and I found 2 more supervisors that fit within the scope of the project and that are interested in searching for funding together. The ideas are linked together, so my question is should I apply for funding with 4 supervisors? When is it expected to include someone into a grant proposal? At the moment nothing is written or decided, I was only proposing ideas. I am just feeling naive on these poitics matters. In my head, the best would be to have a first postdoc with 2 supervisors and a second postdoc position with the other 2 that seem interested.<issue_comment>username_1: Can you explain "for historical context?"
Do you mean this referee was suggesting edits and justified the request by pointing to his/her own publications? If this is the case, you might want to adopt the references that were suggested, thus citing him/her, but not acknowledge the person separately as a referee. If he or she provided above/beyond background, methods, or advice then it should be attributed appropriately in those sections.
But more broadly, if the policy is for blind review the referee's choice to break the blinding privately does not necessarily give you the right to also break the blinding publicly. I would thank them collectively for their work, as was the original intent.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I'd thank "the reviewers".
I had the case recently where I guessed one out of three anonymous reviewers (small community, someone I had already a discussion about my work, and from a group likely to be asked for a review given the topic). Even before I returned the revisions, we had a conversation in which they identified a second reviewer (also guessable - distinctive style :-) ). I just thanked the "anonymous reviewers". If the conversation with the first reviewer hadn't happened, I'd have thanked them by name, but their status as a reviewer exempted the previous helpful (mostly just encouraging - it was my first paper) conversation. Also, you could ask.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I agree with @<NAME> comment: as a general rule, feel free to acknowledge whom you want...but if there is any real worry that your acknowledgment could be received unfavorably, ask the acknowledgee first.
I think yours is a "nondegenerate case" of that above principle. In particular, by choosing your language carefully, you can acknowledge the non-anonymous referee *without disclosing that they were a referee*. E.g. you could write "I would like to thank A. Professor for XX. I would also like to thank the referees for YY." As long as XX does not equal YY, you are not being dishonest or misleading; you are just choosing not to reveal certain information. (If XX equals YY, it's not so clear why you need to acknowledge A. Professor by name.) If you decide to do this, sending the proposed acknowledging text to A. Professor for their approval might be a good idea.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: If a reviewer chooses to be non-anonymous, I think you can directly acknowledge them.
There is a precedent for this. In the [Copernicus journals](https://www.copernicus.org/) by the European Geophysical Unions, the LaTeX template contains a command for "thanking the reviewers". Reviewers can choose to be anonymous or not. All invited reviews are public, so anyone can read the review and confirm the anonymity or name of the reviewer. If I recall correctly, there's actually different commands (or different arguments, I don't remember) depending on whether or not they chose to reveal themselves. My colleague published a paper where one reviewer revealed himself (he is a well-known senior scientist) and the other did not. The acknowledgements, which were added by the publisher in the typesetting phase, were formulated something along the lines of *The authors thank <NAME> and one anonymous reviewer for their peer review*.
I don't see why it would be a problem to write this yourself.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/24
| 287
| 1,291
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<issue_start>username_0: Some of the faculty-level academic jobs require teaching evaluations in the submission package, which gives rise to a need to acquire teaching evaluations.
My question is then, how can one obtain teaching evaluations for a course where one is either a co-instructor or a teaching assistant, but not the instructor? The setting is where there is no clear teaching evaluation mechanism for co-instructors / teaching assistants already in place.<issue_comment>username_1: There's probably not very much you can do, other than ask for a letter of recommendation from the main instructor specifically about your performance as a TA/co-instructor. You should let the department -- whoever oversees the TA assignments and managements in your unit -- know that evaluations would be helpful. In my institutions, students evaluate each instructor separately, including the TA.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: With the instructor's consent, create your own evaluation form and hand it out to students on the last day of class. Make it similar to the one they are filling out for the instructor. If possible, ask the same person who anonymizes the other evaluations do so for you. At a minimum, leave the room and provide an envelope for them to be submitted.
Upvotes: 3
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2017/10/24
| 253
| 1,207
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<issue_start>username_0: I have already established contact with my potential advisor. Would it be appropriate to mention his name in my personal statement? Would doing so be looked upon negatively by the admissions committee?<issue_comment>username_1: It's perfectly acceptable to mention a potential supervisor's name, especially if they already know who you are. Indeed, many places that I applied to specifically requested that I include the name of a potential supervisor, either in the personal statement or elsewhere on the application.
In doing so, the admissions committee can see whether you've done your homework on the research that goes on at their institution (for example, it's no good writing down the name of someone who works on observing supernovae to then say that you're interested in theoretical research on modified gravity models).
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Assuming the advisor has agreed to supervise you, you should definitely mention their name.
The committee reviewing the application may not otherwise know this. They could reject you. Or they could assign the PhD to a different advisor than the person you were looking to work with.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/24
| 797
| 3,494
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<issue_start>username_0: If a researcher publishes a paper found to be fraudulent, are the reviewers and editors of the paper also discredited for having approved the fraudulent paper?<issue_comment>username_1: A note about the nature of academic fraud: **Merely being wrong is not fraud**.
In the case where something is indeed fraud, it will depend very much on the paper in question - it would only discredit the reviewers and authors if there is the reasonable expectation that they could catch it.
Consider some examples:
**Fraud by Omission**: You run a study twenty times, and report the one version that gave you a significant outcome. That study is well-conducted and correctly analyzed - it just also happens to be cherry picked. How could a reviewer know that?
**Fraud by Modification**: You alter your data in some way to give you a desired answer, and then re-analyze it. This analysis is done correctly, you provide the reviewers with this "raw" data and they reach the same conclusions, etc. There are some mistakes you might make that could alarm a *very* alert reviewer, but it's also possible, being aware of these mistakes, that you wouldn't make them.
Similarly, if you edit some figures, reviewers might catch egregious versions, but some people are caught out by things like particular artifacts in the image files, which is not something to necessarily expect the reviewers to catch, or even necessarily to have seen (as sometimes we don't get the raw figures, but versions processed by the editorial software).
**Fraud by Just Outright Lying, Absurdly Unethical Studies, etc.** Most of the vaccine denial literature falls in this category. Deliberately misleading statistics, results not supported by the data, etc. These I do expect reviewers to catch, and do think less of the journals that let them go into print.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: The general answer is **NO**.
Academic peer review is not designed to catch fraud. The purpose is to review methodology, check assumptions and reasoning, and verify that the author's conclusions are justified given the data and analysis presented. While it's possible that a peer reviewer might notice some discrepancy and follow up, it's not expected and it's not likely.
Peer reviewers are domain-specific experts, they're not detectives. They do not have the time or the training to fact-check submissions beyond their own expertise and ferret out lies. It may in fact be impossible for a peer reviewer to prove fraudulent activity because most papers do not include their full raw data and many peer review systems are double-blind reviews. Even if you know the authors, a peer reviewer does not have subpoena powers and cannot compel evidence like a court can (the traditional venue for prosecuting fraud).
(As an aside, this is why replication, public datasets, and open-source code is viewed as highly favorable by many academics. Peer review will not catch frauds, but replication studies will fail to reproduce fraudulent findings. Public datasets and open-source code are their own form of proof that a paper's findings are correct.)
There are exceptions to the above. For example, there are rings of editors and reviewers who publish each others' work with little review or oversight as a form of quid-pro-quo and there are pay-for-publish schemes. In such situations where it can be shown that there is group wrongdoing then of course all the members of the group will pay a price.
Upvotes: 4
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2017/10/24
| 3,299
| 13,638
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<issue_start>username_0: My field is extremely competitive for tenure track jobs that I:
1. will most likely be unable to land after graduation
2. don't even really desire anymore.
In comparison to my classmates, my research productivity is absolutely pitiful. It is stymied by an apathy for my subfield and academia in general that has developed over my 2 year tenure in the program.
Problem is, I can't get the industry jobs I want right now due to underdeveloped programming skills and inadequate networking. My best bet is to stick around and beef these up until I see an opportunity to leave.
If I drop out now with my master's, I will have to start out at square one and get entry level work that uses none of the skills I have developed (we're talking competition w/ HS grads).
However, I have already told my advisor about my doubts for a future in academia. They approved an academic leave request due to some issues in my personal life. At the end of my leave period, I have to tell my advisor that I wish to complete the program *and* stay in academia.
On one hand, my situation is not so different from any other PhD student forced to go alt-ac due to disinterest or poor performance, but on the other hand, I will have to mislead my advisor to return.
I only want to continue at this point for job prospects, and my advisor won't be inclined to take me back if I tell them this.
I am willing to pick up the pace with my research and get the PhD, so it won't be a complete waste for my advisor, but it will still be largely a waste of their resources.
A similar question by another PhD student can be found here - [When is the right time to tell my advisor that I plan on leaving my PhD program?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/48160/when-is-the-right-time-to-tell-my-advisor-that-i-plan-on-leaving-my-phd-program)<issue_comment>username_1: As a PhD student, you don't *have* to want an academic career. It's not unethical to pursue a PhD with no intention of staying in academia afterward.
But lying about your plans and deliberately misleading is wrong and unfair to your advisor.
You wrote:
>
> However, my advisor seems to be especially invested in making me a viable academic researcher because I am their first student and have used a lot of their startup funds. My field is also not typically industry-bound like, for example, engineering, so any reputation boost my advisor could hope to get from me is nil.
>
>
>
If your advisor is a new professor whose own career success really depends on graduating PhD students who go on to academic careers, letting them invest everything in you under false pretenses is obviously wrong and unethical.
It sounds like you don't really want to finish your PhD (I infer this from your "apathy for my subfield and academia in general"), and you think your advisor wouldn't want you to stick around for a few more years under the circumstances, either. On the other hand, finishing out the academic year - giving you time to look for a job, and giving your advisor time to find another PhD student in *this application cycle*, while you wrap up and publish your current work - sounds like a win-win. But you should tell your advisor right away, so that the two of you can make informed plans for the future.
I suggest you come up with a plan for preparing yourself for the job market during this academic year, then have that talk with your advisor, and make the most of your remaining time.
On the other hand, if you really *do* want to finish your PhD, tell your advisor that you're not interested in academia, but are interested in finishing your PhD and getting a job that takes advantage of your PhD-level research skills. (Many of the skills acquired by successful PhD students are fairly transferable.) Your advisor may be more willing to support you than you think - successfully graduating PhD students is important for new professors, even if the student isn't interested in academia in the end. But you need to let your advisor make that choice: lying to someone so that they will give you multiple years of research support just so that you can buy time to train yourself for an unrelated career, is wrong.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Questions of ethics are always murky. Let's try to untangle it a bit.
>
> Staying in PhD program with no intention of being an academic.
>
>
>
There is no ethical dilemma in this. Really. I don't know where the notion came from that PhD studies should only develop future professors. It does not and cannot work like that, otherwise every professor could, on average, only supervise a single student his entire career, or professors would proliferate exponentially.
>
> Misleading my advisor about this.
>
>
>
Misleading your advisor is quite obviously a problem. The question is why you need to mislead your advisor in the first place. As said above, it should be completely ok to work hard on your PhD and go to industry afterwards.
>
> to stick around and beef these up until I see an opportunity to leave.
>
>
>
Ok, now we have a big problem. You are essentially intending to misuse your funding to not work on your research, but to ramp up your industry career. **That's not ok and you probably know it.** Contrary to your statement, this is also decidedly **not** the same as trying for an academic career and not making it. It's the same as getting a grant / stipend to do research and then using it for unrelated personal training.
Let me make this clear: you are paid (in salary or stipend) to do research, not to learn to program and build a network for industry job searching. Pretending to do the one and then doing the other is **obviously** unethical, even if you would not need to lie to your advisor about this. There may be some synergies (e.g., you build your network through research interactions with industry, or you learn to program because your research requires it), but doing things entirely unrelated to your research because you suspect they help you find a job is not ethical. It only gets worse if you need to lie about doing it.
>
> I am willing to pick up the pace with my research and get the PhD.
>
>
>
Great! Do that instead. Do not misuse your time to train for an industry job, but finish your PhD. Conduct the best research you can. Collaborate and write papers. See if you can twist your research in a way that you learn more skills that will help in industry (not do things unrelated to research, but try to find synergies if possible). Train for a potential industry career on the side, outside of work.
Tell your advisor **exactly this**. You are not sure if you would want to stay in academia, but you will be writing the best dissertation that you possibly can. **Don't** get all emotional about it, or talk about apathy for your field. Don't make it your or your advisor's fault either - you just found over the long time of a PhD that academia, while interesting, is ultimately not for you. It happens to many (most?) students. Your advisor may be disappointed, but unless there is already a big conflict between the two of you, I cannot imagine him kicking you out over this.
I think the big misunderstanding here may be that you think your main contribution to your advisor's CV is you becoming a professor yourself, and otherwise you are worthless to him. Without knowing your university, your advisor's promotion case, or any other details, I am still willing to bet that this is not the case.
The main career benefit to your advisor lies in the research results you produce, and the papers you write. A secondary factor may be that you graduate, independently of what you do after. That is, in many universities, it is important for tenure and promotion cases that you have a certain number of students that graduated successfully. It always looks nice to be able to say that your students have been successful afterwards (for some definition of "success"), but I really think that the other two factors are much more important to your advisor. Just make clear that your decision to go to industry **does not** mean that you will try to do the weakest PhD that they let you graduate with (and mean it), and you should be fine.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I will try to make this short. I was in your shoes 2 years ago. I was passionate about my field when I entered the program, but my interest had waned within 2 years into the program. It was impossible for me land a job in my research area because of security clearance issue as I was an international student, which was one of the reason why I lost interest, and I didn't consider myself smart enough to have successful career in academia. Let's say I was one of those average student and being average in academia is equivalent to be a failure.I told my PI that I am not interested pursuing my Phd and wanted to leave with my masters. He reduced my stipend for final semester and let me walk away.
Looks like you've drained yourself out mentally as I had once done to myself. I'd suggest that you should put your well-being first and foremost, have an exit strategy, don't think too much about being ethical (nobody knows about your struggle), get your shit together, and leave if you have to. Also, be prepared for the struggle of landing a job once you leave school.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: I am a PhD since many years now. I have been in and out of academia since 2005. I was just like you.
I think that you really should consider completing your PhD programme. The reason for this is that you cannot judge, yourself, whether your progress is going well or not. Some students start really slow, but get some insights or discoveries later that are really impressive. I know that "others" performed more than me during their first years, but in the long run there is another discussion. Science is a slow process, and we cannot tell beforehand if a graduate student will become a good or successful researcher. I was also shocked how different professors thought of us grad students. Some where really impressed with one student, while others were not at all impressed. As a more seasoned academic, there are many different qualities in researchers that are important. Students, however, rarely see this. Instead, they compare with each other. This is a huge mistake.
I remember one professor who was very encouraging to me, despite the fact that I have smaller productivity. He said, look at the others' publications. How are they different from each other? Usually, there is just one idea or question for an entire dissertation, and this idea was generated by their supervisors. Subsequently, the professor told me that I hade the mind, independence and pre-requisites to become a great researcher in the future. This changed my "envy" of my competitors' productivity.
Furthermore, don't look ahead and make guesses about your chances to land a job in the future. You cannot predict the future, and hence you shouldn't worry that much about it right now. You can do that when your thesis is about done. My job prospects are still very limited, but I have created a new job that didn't exist before.
Also, we are talking about your education here, not the resources of your department or supervisor.
I would advice you to do a game theory solution. I would keep grinding the halls of science, but apply for a job that you find really, really interesting from time to time. If you suddenly land a great job opportunity, your advisor will understand that you got an offer you cannot refuse. If that happens, drop out. If not, graduate and be really proud of your accomplishment.
Finally, this is advice I give to all grad students. A thesis should be done, not perfect.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: As others have said, you have no obligation to pursue or want to pursue an academic career after your PhD. Frankly I think that your supervisor has been *extremely* unethical by attaching that condition to your continuing in the program. So if I were you I would not be worried in the slightest about concealing your post PhD plans from him/her. It is absolutely none of their business what you plan to do after your PhD. It sounds to me (based only on what you said) that your supervisor is only in it for his own benefit - he wants to be able to say on his CV that he supervised someone who has gone on to great things in academia and possibly wants to benefit from future collaboration with his student. That is what is unethical in this situation. He should be first and foremost concerned with helping you to complete if that is what you want to do - regardless of your post degree intentions.
Having said all that, my tentative suggestion is to make whatever decision is best for you. If that means continuing and trying to complete, then tell your supervisor what he wants to hear regarding your plans, work hard to complete and then when you complete, go and do whatever you want and ignore anything that you may have said to your supervisor. I guess that you may want some letters of reference from him, so if necessary put in a few token academic job applications so you get a reference and then you can apply for whatever you want at that point.
I say this as someone who has supervised 2 PhDs to completion and is currently supervising 2 more. I would never dream of imposing ridiculous
conditions on my students. It is hard enough to complete a PhD without having to deal with a selfish supervisor. Look after yourself in this situation first and foremost.
Upvotes: 0
|
2017/10/24
| 1,466
| 6,330
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<issue_start>username_0: I was offered a post doc position in a top level university about 2 months ago, which I have already accepted.
However, I was recently called for an interview in another equally prestigious university for another postdoc position which I applied to before getting the previous position offered.
The second position is, in my view, much better than the first one in many senses (I like the country more, a substantially higher salary, closer to my home town), however I am worried that if I decline the first offer (which I already accepted) now, the supervisor from the first university will get annoyed and that will carry repercussions in my future career and my image to the scientific community.
I have heard that many people do these things (declining offers already accepted) for academic positions, but that this is seen as much worse for postdocs positions. However, I think that everyone would agree that the second offer is a substantially better option, even the supervisor from the first university.
Should I give up the position I already accepted in order to pursue the better option?<issue_comment>username_1: To come right to the point: after accepting the first offer, you should have withdrawn all your other applications. When you were contacted for the second interview, it was not enough to *inform them* that you had already accepted an offer -- you should have informed them of this *and therefore declined the interview*. (I find it strange though that this second institution was happy to interview someone who told them they had already accepted another offer. I wonder if there was some kind of miscommunication / misunderstanding here.) In academia, accepting an offer means committing to show up to that job for at least one semester (which is the atomic unit of most academic jobs). In my circles at least, the minimum length of time to spend in an accepted academic position and "leave honorably" is one academic year.
>
> I have heard that many people do these things (declining offers already accepted) for academic positions, but that this is seen much worse for postdocs positions.
>
>
>
Yes, it happens somewhat frequently. Like a lot of negative human behavior, that it happens frequently does not excuse it. I don't necessarily agree that it is seen as worse for postdocs; it really depends on the situation. I would argue that all other things being equal, getting reneged on by a temporary employee is not as bad as getting reneged on by a (relatively) permanent employee.
>
> However, I think that everyone would agree that the second offer is substantially a better option, even the supervisor from the first university.
>
>
>
Better *for you*. But would the supervisor from the first university think it is better for her? What happens to her if you renege -- will she have the time and opportunity to hire someone else? If she can't hire anyone, will that have negative repercussions on her work and the work of her affiliates and students?
The way to find out the answers to these questions is to **ask**. I strongly suggest contacting your supervisor as soon as possible. Explain your situation and perspective, including why the second position would be substantially more desirable to you for personal reasons. Then ask what repercussions there would be if you weren't able to show up for the first position. If there would be severely negative consequences for your supervisor, I think you should stick with the job you committed to. Otherwise you may *suggest* to the supervisor, with maximum politeness, that you would like to take the second job instead of the first, and see if she will give you her blessing.
Good luck.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Of course the answer of <NAME> is correct, and you should have made some different decisions in the past. Most of all, you should have asked for more time to make your choice.
At the moment you have a choice between doing what's best for your "reputation", and your personal preferences. This is a decision only you can make, but in my opinion many academics would be better off mentally if they looked out for their personal well-being a bit more.
However, making a choice based on the information you supplied here might not be the best idea, because there's a lot more information out there you could get in a short time.
Call up your supervisor and tell them you'd feel very unhappy about not having the opportunity to pursue the second position, that you might prefer based on personal reasons. Ask whether they can postpone hiring you. Perhaps they'll be supportive and you can go to the other interview, or they might tell you that you accepted the position and expect you to be there when you agreed. (If they get really angry this would actually be a good time to bail on the position)
I don't know how far along you are regarding signing contract etc., and what kind of grant you'd be working on (can it be postponed, etc.). This would be something you should know, or should find out.
I'm sure that talking to your new supervisor would solve many potential issues, but I really don't agree with (edit: or actually, just with the priorities of) <NAME> about sticking with the job when there are negative consequences. This is about some time, a new hiring process or some grant money for your supervisor, but for you this is about one to three years of your life.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I'm not talking about ethical issues here.
People do this all the time, i.e. rejected an accepted offer, but only at the early stage in the career, e.g. PhD application ([I did that](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/93775/professor-to-whom-i-broke-my-promise-is-now-a-collaborator-what-to-say)). It is easy since you are just a random guy, and easy to be forgotten.
If you have done enough to be accepted in a top level university, it will not be easy for you to be forgotten. Academia is very small, if the two groups you are/was applying to work in the same research area, it is very likely that the two advisors know each other.
If you develop a reputation of rejecting a already accepted offer, there may be serious consequence in the future, without the rejected advisor doing anything to damage your career.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/10/24
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<issue_start>username_0: I've finished my PhD in pure mathematics in late 2013 in the US (2 published papers, 1 preprint), and after almost 4 years of postdoc in the subjects of pure math (1 year-unproductive), medical imaging and computer vision (3 years- 3 papers), I'm joining a research position in industry in France. I've done 3 years of postdoc in France (and currently here) and 1 in the US.
I'll be working alongside a professor of statistics in France who's a consultant for my company, and the company also encourages publications (after they get patent etc.). Besides, I'm collaborating with two people from academia and industry, and in 2-3 years or so, I hope to have 2-3 more publications.
My goal is to defend my habilitation in statistics/machine learning (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habilitation>) in 3-4 years from now, as I'm very interested to have a joint academic-industrial position in the future. To elaborate, I'd like to hold a professor position in academia and also a researcher/research consultant position in industry. I'm happy to indirectly supervise PhD students alongside someone else but not directly. And somewhat shamelessly, I'd like to have a second income from academia on top of industry. I'm not a EU or US citizen, by the way.
My question is: is it possible for me to defend my habilitation in France when I'm not a part of French academia? Normally, I've seen only academics do that.
Thanks in advance!<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, you may obtain an *habilitation* as a non-academic, but in fact you may not need one, see below.
An *habilitation* is a diploma. You would need to register in the doctoral school of a University, so the right person to ask is the director of the doctoral school. I know at least one person who obtained an HDR while working for a company.
However, it is not a simple matter.
For example, the [HDR procedure in Mathematics-Computer Science in Bordeaux](https://ed-mi.u-bordeaux.fr/ADT-HDR/Demarches-HDR) has five steps before the defense:
1. File an application. Note that there are prerequisites, such as **mandatory** training in directing thesis work.
2. Evaluation of the application by the doctoral school.
3. Evaluation of the application by the University Academic Council
4. Formal response. If the response is positive, the candidate must complete their HDR within two years.
5. Registration as an HDR candidate and constitution of an examining committee.
Once awarded, and HDR confers the right to be **sole advisor** of a doctoral candidate. It is a sufficient but not necessary condition for applying for a professorship: **formally, the prerequisite is a [*qualification aux fonctions*](https://www.galaxie.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/ensup/cand_qualification_droit_commun.htm)** which may be accorded to non-academics ([Appendix 11](https://www.galaxie.enseignementsup-recherche.gouv.fr/ensup/qualification/Annexe%2011.pdf)).
Note that **a scientist working in industry may co-direct** a doctoral student, if at least one of the other director(s) (there may be two others) has an HDR. I don't have my draft of the *décret* on hand, but if I recall correctly it is not necessary that the scientist have an HDR.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The [academic system in France](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_France) can be confusing:
* In general, the first stage of an an academic career is "Maître de conférences", equivalent to assistant/associate professor. Anybody with a PhD can apply, provided they pass the "qualification aux fonctions de maître de conférence". At this level the academic can already supervise PhD students, but there must be a co-supervisor who obtained their HDR (it's common for the HDR supervisor to play a merely administrative role in the PhD).
* The second stage is "Professeur des universités"; equivalent to full professor. Usually academics pass the HDR diploma before applying, and they must pass the "qualification aux fonctions de professeur des universités".
Interestingly, one of the criteria to successfully pass an HDR is to have supervised PhD students (actually to have "co-supervised"). Usually it is also required to have a solid experience in teaching, preferably including administrative duties (e.g. director of studies). Research-wise, the academics I have seen passing an HDR have usually published dozens of papers, some of these with a high citation count.
It's true that industry profiles are encouraged nowadays in academia, but I think it would be difficult for somebody with little teaching experience and a modest publication record to pass the HDR... let alone to obtain a position as "Professeur des universités" (the HDR doesn't give you any position). Additionally, I don't think you could combine the position (and the salary!) with an industry job: as far as I know you can get a sabbatical leave to go to industry for a while, but then you don't get paid on the academia side.
However I would suggest other ways to achieve your goal:
* Teaching: many institutions hire industry professionals to teach specific courses (this is called "vacations"). It might not pay a lot but it gives you some teaching experience and contacts in academia.
* The [Cifre PhD funding scheme](http://www.anrt.asso.fr/fr/cifre-7843) [fr] allows a company to hire a PhD student who works part-time in the company while preparing their PhD. The Minister of Higher Education provides a substantial amount of the PhD grant, making it financially interesting for the company. The PhD student has an academic supervisor and an industry co-supervisor: being the industry co-supervisor means that you get the PhD supervision experience and you can co-author more papers with your student.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/24
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<issue_start>username_0: For 1 year and half I did my master thesis in one laboratory, where although I learned a lot, it was mostly alone, having very reduced supervision and not having a project parallel to any of the PhD students. Finally by the time I delivered my thesis I learnt that I got accepted with a internship in a international institute (application that I did all by myself). My master supervisors were not happy as they wanted me to keep going with experiments to publish a paper. I did what I could before I left for the internship, even taught a new master students with the techniques I implemented. Also I transformed my thesis as much as possible in an article, still requiring just a few more experiments. Now, one year and half later, having I already done 2 internships and started a very good PhD position in another country and scientific area, they still nag me with questions about the article. They did not contribute with any more experiments for the article and only one of the author corrected once the manuscript, only actually correcting the grammar and formatting. At this point I quitted the article but clearly they still did not. I am indecisive if I should:
a) just stop replying,
b) sent an email explaining that I want to focus on my PhD now and so I have no longer interest in the article
c) if I send the raw data and tell them to do whatever they want as long as I have the name somewhere and I can read one of the last versions.
The problem with c) is that although is the most "polite", I know they will keep nagging me and I will have a lot of work to prepare all the raw data (which include tons of images) to send them and most probably they will never actually publish it. With the other hypothesis the issue is that I do not want to have bad professional relationships. It is also important to refer that my thesis was presented in a poster in an international conference so it will not really bring much more scientific knowledge to publish it.<issue_comment>username_1: I would choose b) if I don't have much time to spare.
Work on every paper incurs an opportunity cost. Time spent at one place cannot be spent at another. If you have many exciting projects that need the time that you cannot afford to spend elsewhere, b) is what I would perceive to be the best option.
If however I have lots of time to spare, and no other project to work on, I would pick c). A publication increase is always a good thing in this case.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: There are many aspects to consider in this question. Fromn what I read from your first paragraph, you did not feel that you recieved the support you needed or expected while you are working in this research group - and that you spent so much time explaioning it tells me, you are at least a bit upset or disappointed.
Now, someone who disappointed you want's you do do something you would not do by yourself - and it would cost you some of your valuable time and you are not seeing a benefit from it. Even more: They increase your stress level by sending you e-mails and nagging you.
From this point of view, a) is no option in my opinion, since you never draw a finish line under this highly emotional issue, and it will pop up once in a while and you will feel bad. You seem to be a person who cares about the social environment and it would be disturbed - and this disturbes you.
If you choose b), you would be much clearer and you could even talk about it to the people of the other lab if you meet them in person. Everyone in science has little time, so it is a good reason for not writing the paper. If you want to be polite, just tell them in a neutral way about your decision, if you want to given them an opportunity to improve their behaviour, you could try to tell them that you just don't want to support them since they did not support oyu and you feel that they just took advantage of you and you got little in return. This would make it more difficult if you meet them in the future, but might relieve you. If I were you, I would not do it, but I wanted to point out the sub-option.
c) might be a good compromise, but as you said: They will not finish it since it is too much work to dig into someone elses research work organization. You could do b) and offer c) in your mail and see, if they want the data at all. Maybe that's a compromise.
As others mentioned, there is an optiond d) which is writing that publication! Publications are the scientific currency and having one more never hurts. Of course, there is this time issue and the currrent PhD is more important then your masters stuff, but maybe there is some relation between both? Maybe some side aspects which make the publication interesting even in your current direction of research? If you can spend the time, I would try to finish it. Maybe you can offer them that you'd supervise another student remotely, who might do the remaining experiments.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> c) if I send the raw data
>
>
>
When you say this I tend to think that maybe having the raw data is the reason why they write you...I don't like the fact that you left with the data honestly, it's not professional and perhaps even not legal. Have you considered that?
Anyway, I don't think option c) is viable. I get the impression that you are *de facto* the leading person in this project, for practical and historical reasons. It's a pity to leave this unfinished, so just make the extra effort and publish this, you'll have one more publication in your CV, avoid wasting good material, and finalise the collaboration optimally even in face of the difficulties.
If, instead, you have lost interest in this OR you have changed scientific field and this is not important anymore OR you are not interested in future collaboration with these people, then your option b) sounds a reasonable and polite answer to me. This might or might not deteriorate your relations with the previous collaborators, hard to say from here, it depends on their personality and perspective on the problem...you are the only one who can judge that.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/24
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<issue_start>username_0: I am currently in my first year at a funded Ph.D. program. I have a graduate teaching assistantship in the form of teaching three introductory biology labs (1 credit per) plus the other responsibilities of being an instructor. I also have a six credit (tuition waiver) course load and a stipend.
Prior to coming to this program, I declined an offer from another funded program. It was due to financial reasons such as making a big move to the city and whatnot. I was a fresh undergraduate out of college and I was not ready for that move. I am in the position to make this move now and the offer is much better than my current program.
I have many different quarrels with this current program. There is a lack of structure and much of what I expected at a Ph.D. level course/program was not met. I dislike the current field I am in and I don’t believe I would be happy doing this for the next 4 years. I did not have intentions of leaving prior to starting here, but as I mentioned things here are not as what I expected. Through discussion with the head of the department I declined, I was able to get my declined admission deferred to next fall. In February, I will hear if I receive funding again.
Now my issue is that I am currently in a lab rotation with my prospective advisor and I have not told anyone that I will be leaving. I am afraid that if I tell anyone that I plan to leave after the year, I will be looked down upon and it would affect my courses for the year. I want to withdraw from the lab rotation because the program I will be going to does not have any use for such a course. However, I am worried that if I tell my advisor why I am withdrawing, it will impact me negatively. In the off chance I do not receive funding, I will most likely be staying in this program and if they know I wanted to leave and didn’t because of funding, I fear I will be looked down upon.
1. How unethical is it to continue this year and finish up without mentioning any of my intentions to leave the program for another?
2. If I do withdraw from the lab rotation, should I mention why I am doing so or just mention that I was not expecting the course work to be so intense (which is true due to my teaching taking up so much time, I am behind).
3. How unethical is it to use my 6 credit tuition waiver to take courses in the spring that would hopefully transfer to my other program?
My contract runs 9 months so I can’t just leave.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> How unethical is it to continue this year and finish up without
> mentioning any of my intentions to leave the program for another?
>
>
>
It is not at all unethical to continue until you know for certain. I see this as a situation where you are considering your options. You would LIKE to leave, but you are also considering staying if you have no funding at the second program. I certainly don't think you have any obligation to mention your decision until you hear about funding. In February, your current program will still have the opportunity to give away your funding to a new student/another student, so you are not harming anyone by waiting to speak up.
>
> If I do withdraw from the lab rotation, should I mention why I am
> doing so or just mention that I was not expecting the course work to
> be so intense (which is true due to my teaching taking up so much
> time, I am behind).
>
>
>
I don't think you should withdraw. If you stay, this would be your advisor. And if you don't get funding, you may stay. So you should make sure you have a good backup plan with this advisor at your current school.
>
> How unethical is it to use my 6 credit tuition waiver to take courses
> in the spring that would hopefully transfer to my other program?
>
>
>
You will likely need to decide on spring courses before you decide if you should stay. If possible, choose courses that would prepare you for either path. If not possible, I don't see a problem with using the waiver you have earned through your teaching in a way that would be of most use to you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Stay as long as you want and leave whenever you want. No one in academia cares about anyone else, so don't hinder yourself on anyone else's account. Especially since it is your life versus a whole department. Trust me, if you had failed to find a lab because of lack of funding, they wouldn't hesitate to kick you out at all. So leave and waste their money as much as you want/can, cause they probably don't care about you either.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/24
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<issue_start>username_0: It's a specific question about academic norms in Canada.
I am not Canadian, but I personally find students chatting while the lecturer is talking is highly impolite, disturbing, and unrespectful to the lecturer. If I am lecturing, it would definitely make me upset if I notice audience is not paying attention to my lecture. I either would take it as my lecture is boring, or something similar.
However, since I am not Canadian, my rule might not apply in this specific cultural background. Would this be considered rude in general in Canada? How's the kids educated here in Canada?
Also, if this is indeed considered rude, how should I, as a part of audience, resolve this nicely and cleanly?
If you think the situations in the States are similar, I would also like to hear about that as well.
---
Update:
Though I didn't mention, I meant situation in post secondary institutions, mainly universities, and majorly undergraduate lectures.<issue_comment>username_1: I think these are just Canadian kids who are just being rude--sometimes younger students will test what they can get away with. I cannot imagine any situation where treating the lecturer like a TV would be acceptable. Tell them you're trying to listen to the lecture and not to them.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I think it's rude in any culture. However since your update says its university I've found that these lectures are mainly the responsibility of the students. If they decide not to pay attention then they aren't getting the maximum out of their paid tuition. The professor might be more interested in continuing the lecture without disrupting it so that the students who pay attention get the full knowledge instead of wasting time on people who apparently aren't interested
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/24
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<issue_start>username_0: Does a PhD student and first author choose the journal or their supervisor?
This is in the case where negotiations have failed.
Who should get the final say or keeps this right?<issue_comment>username_1: All authors have to agree to the publication of a paper, and any author can veto signing away the copyright. So, keep negotiating :)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Things you should consider:
1. Your supervisor has much more experience in submitting papers than you do. It is considerably more likely that they have a good idea where is best to submit your paper than you do.
2. Almost all journals will be charging a sum of money for publication. What is the source of this money? Who is in control of it? Most likely, it is money coming from funds controlled by your supervisor and not by you. This gives them greater leverage.
3. Delay in publication due to squabbles over where to publish are likely to harm you more than your supervisor. They, presumably, have multiple papers to their name and probably multiple students producing papers that they will appear on. This is, also presumably, one of your first papers and one you will need to get published to either graduate or land yourself a good job in academia after your PhD.
All these points count against you. You have the right, of course, to fight for the paper to be submitted to the journal of your preference but you should consider whether this is really a battle worth fighting. In my opinion, it is likely you will be better served by choosing a different hill to die on.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/24
| 434
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<issue_start>username_0: ZbMATH sent an article for post-publication review. As of a little more than a month ago, I worked at the same department in the same university as one of the authors. We have not cooperated on a paper, but have otherwise interacted.
Should I decline to review the paper due to this conflict of interest (as I would do with a peer review for e.g. a journal article), or do zbMATH reviews have more lax standards for conflicts of interest? **The reviews are post-publication, and for a review database and not a journal, and furthermore they are not anonymous, so they are quite different from journal peer reviews.**
The review guidelines of zbMATH did not mention conflicts of interest.<issue_comment>username_1: ZbMath is like Math Reviews in concept. It publishes summaries of already published articles, to help those perusing the literature to find articles of interest. These summaries are, generally speaking, not evaluative, rather informative (in some cases the published reviews are simply quotations from the article's abstract) and they are signed. Since there is no evaluation, there is not much likelihood of conflict of interest. A reviewer could downplay an important paper by writing a short succinct review, or exaggerate the importance of a minor paper by writing a long review, and one perhaps occasionally encounters things like this, but neither really does much damage, except perhaps to deflate or inflate an ego.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I posed the question to the editorial staff at zbMATH and got the following response:
>
> We think that being employed at the same institution as one of the authors is not per se an instance of conflict of interest for a reviewer. However, if you personally feel uncomfortable with reviewing the particular paper assigned to you, just let us know, and we'll ask another reviewer.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2
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2017/10/24
| 4,349
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm currently attending university online (at a notable public institution, not a crappy school—I feel compelled to mention this because one typically expects quality from good institutions). Unfortunately, my instructor didn't put much effort into designing the course.
Essentially, though there are a few YouTube videos made by him and his colleagues, the rest of the course basically consists of:
1) The e-book that we read weekly
2) Other YouTube videos that he's linked
3) Wikipedia articles
I've already brought this to his attention in a professional manner (he didn't get upset), but things obviously won't change during this academic semester, as he's also busy teaching other courses. His reasoning is that in the digital age, since information is so freely available, his job is essentially to help guide us in finding the right information.
I disagree. What's frustrating is the fact that students are paying tuition to have an instructor tell them "Hey, here are some free videos literally anyone can find online, and some Wikipedia articles any competent student can read on their own. Go nuts." Because when you're paying tuition, the implication is that you're gaining special privilege and access to resources and knowledge that are otherwise unavailable to ordinary people/students. A student makes a choice when deciding what school he wishes to attend. In doing so, he gives up the opportunity to attend another school. If all schools just offered the same quality and degree of education, there wouldn't be any competition or a means of qualifying how good one school is compared to another.
I find it unprofessional of an instructor to do something like this. I don't want to strain my relationship with this instructor, but I also don't feel like I can let this go because the course is quite fundamental to the major I'm pursuing, and it's really upsetting that it's in this condition.
---
What should I do? Should I just let it pass and move on, or should I bring this to the attention of someone else? He also happens to be high up in the corresponding department, so there aren't many people above his status. I don't want to go over his head, but I feel like if I email him again about this, it'll seem like I'm just pestering him.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Because when you're paying tuition, the implication is that you're gaining special privilege and access to resources and knowledge that are otherwise unavailable to ordinary people/students.
>
>
>
Not really, and it certainly doesn't mean that the access you have to *all* resources is restricted. Lots of professors post their course materials on publicly accessible websites because they feel that they should be freely available.
If you feel that the *quality* of the course is subpar, then you have every right to complain higher up. But the course isn't subpar just because you're not getting something that other people aren't.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Most information is freely available in one form or another. Most of what you pay for in school is getting access to people and resources. The fact that the instructor has directed you to open resources shouldn't reflect poorly on their judgement as long as they really are high-quality resources.
Most credible institutions require their professors to provide a syllabus on the first day of classes, and then give you a 2-4 week grace period to drop courses. If you really don't feel like the course is worth your money, then don't pay for it.
Even if you took this class as a traditional (not-online) student, chances are that not a lot would change.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: As a student, you are paying for the tuition (teaching). Teaching is an activity designed to help you learn and acquire new skills.
Teaching materials (books, slides, video lectures) can be good, bad or ugly, but they are only a (smaller) part of the whole picture. They are not an activity. Arguably, they matter less.
What matters more, in my opinion, is the opportunity to obtain constructive *feedback* from your tutors. Not the grade for your submissions, but actual analysis of your work, explaining its strength and weaknesses and providing you with some ideas on how to improve and what to work on. Not a general piece of information, but something unique and produced specifically for you.
I have rarely seen online courses where students have enough personal attention and receive more than just a few lines of personal feedback. Honestly, the situation with many traditionally run courses is largely the same. Being massively oversubscribed and under-staffed, many Departments are not able to provide students with sensible feedback on their work. As a (pathetic) attempt to compensate, they sometimes claim that they provide *exclusive* teaching materials, which, however, tend often to not really be any better than standard textbooks.
My suggestion is: don't be obsessed with materials you are provided with, but look at whether you're receiving enough attention and personal guidance from your tutors. If you're not getting enough feedback - it is probably time to raise your concerns or maybe even look elsewhere.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_4: The problem seems to be a disagreement between you and the lecturer over what your payment covers. I can't tell for sure on the information you give who is right, but if I had to make a call I would bet that they are right, since that seems more likely in general.
What you should do is get someone you trust who is far enough from the situation to be reasonably independent, and ask them to look at the material advertising the course that you could access before signing up. Is the lecturer's behaviour out of line with was advertised? If so, you would have an argument to take up with the administration (not the lecturer directly). If not, then you need to accept that you went in with the wrong expectations, and consider what you want to do about that (eg change course).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: AFAIK, you pay for the piece of paper from the university that grants your degree. How you get there is sometimes with an awesome instructor and sometimes with an AWFUL one.
If I had considered that I was **paying** for the **classes** then sometimes I would have been happy but mostly I would have been rather displeased with that situation. There was one mandatory class for my degree that had about 5 people show up to an average class and the rest (80+ people) only came for exams because the instructor was just. that. bad.
Another time we had a quiz on some material that was taught, and after the quiz people were **still** discussing the material on the quiz was supposed to be worked out (no one knew!). Again, because the instructor was just that bad.
TL;DR: change your perspective. You pay for the paper the degree is printed on. Not for the classes themselves. They are simply necessary to get that very expensive piece of paper. Expect roughly a 60/40 of bad/good professors.
Also, bear in mind that most professors are not professors because they want to **teach**. The teach because it is required as a side effect of doing research at the university.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: Perhaps the issue here is that the "lecture" time could be more productively used as a Q&A session.
You say :
>
> The instructor is actually very helpful during our one-on-one sessions (though unfortunately, he only holds them once a week for just 25 minutes). It's just I wish the course were in a better shape. I would've loved to have listened to, say, an hour-long lecture from him, someone with a PhD and years of experience in the field, than some self-proclaimed expert on YouTube.
>
>
>
and :
>
> His actual involvement in the course is answering questions via email and helping us during office hours (which is essentially a 25-minute session only once a week). Aside from that, class time is, I kid you not, just spent reading the book (which itself is quite poorly written, and contains mistakes) and watching YouTube videos.
>
>
>
Well this suggests the problem is not the instructor.
Lecture material often is poorly written (let's not kid ourselves) and mistakes are quite common in lectures, so a more "customized" lecture experience probably would not solve those issues. And lecturers are not always very good at speaking, so a video may be *better* than many people get.
It's a simple fact that you are expected to learn more yourself than simply at lectures. So I wonder if the correct approach is to get together with your classmates and discuss asking for the lecture to be replaced by a Q&A period, while students look at the video and read the notes ahead of time ?
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: As a professor, I spend a large amount of time reviewing and choosing reading materials so that students can learn efficiently. Then I spend time organizing the order in which students will study these materials, planning how I will interact with students in class to coordinate with readings, planning assignments to go with the readings, etc. Time lecturing, leading discussions, answering questions, etc., are only a small part of teaching. The rest is hidden from students. (Grading and providing feedback on students' work takes up a lot of time, too.) As it happens, most of the materials that I curate for students cost money. I would probably spend more time choosing materials if I had to use only free materials. There are good free materials for some purposes, but they vary more (it's the internet, you know, so there's a lot of junk along with the good stuff); with free materials you'd have to spend more time filtering out the bad ones or working around flaws. Publishing houses and editors spend a lot of time curating good resources and helping authors to make them better, so there's a reason to expect less variation and higher quality in non-free teaching materials, on average.
So if the materials in your course are poor, that would be bad, but if they're not, but they're freely available, so what? That doesn't mean the instructors aren't helping you learn by choosing those materials and assigning them. If the instructors aren't providing enough in addition to the selected materials, that's another issue, but that's not what the question was about, as I understand it.
(There are some comments on other questions that make similar points, but I felt this should be an answer. It's actually something I feel strongly about. Think about how long it would take you to learn something if you just had to poke through videos or web pages on your own, or had to spend a lot of time trying books in a library or buying them online, only to find that this one is too hard and that one's on a different subject and this other one is trivially easy, and that one over there is kind of OK, but doesn't really communicate the material in a way that's best for you, or this one has only two chapters or two minutes that are useful, .... You could do it, maybe, but it would take a long time. The point of good instructor is to make your learning more efficient than it would be if you had to do it on your own.)
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_8: You're mistaking the value of the medium vs the value of the lectures themselves.
You mentioned YouTube and Wikipedia, and have the mistaken idea that they're free. Sure, they're free to access, but they're not random YouTube videos or random Wikipedia articles. They are specifically tailored to the course and relevant.
You haven't raised issues with actual academic problems with the course. Have you had a professor that do not know the subject they are teaching? (Example: A DBA was teaching a Java course) Have you had a professor that plagiarizes tests, and they contain material not covered in the course? These are real problems.
YouTube and Wikipedia are free to access. The discovery and organization of the material is not free. Just because a photocopy costs 5 cents, it doesn't mean what is being photocopied is worth only 5 cent. It could be a photocopy of an extremely valuable formula.
Bottom line. Evaluate the worth of the content. Don't get caught up with the medium of delivery.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_9: 1. You are paying for an educational pedigree that states you're such and such breed of book smart.
2. An easy A is an easy A.
3. It is the age of information. For example, M.I.T. lectures are free to watch and learn from. The chance of being acknowledged for your proficient knowledge in a subject, aka a degree, is what you're spending your money on. A fair argument can be made if you had a hard professor who challenged your thinking but you failed the class. Did you waste your money?
4. Life rarely gives you a break. Do you really want to look a gift horse in the mouth?
5. If you are not liking the class then switch it, or bring it to the news for a fluff exposure piece, or go talk to your financial advisor for proper procedures. Then, yell at the Dean for the indignity, if you must.
6. How much is this course worth to you creditwise vs timewise vs moneywise? What is the impact of this course to you (pros and cons)?
7. Personally, I'd take the easy A. And if I needed some skill I could not learn from the class, I'd take the extra time I have to learn them on my own since it is an easy class.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: How have the course materials being audited for quality?
Consider both your personal evaluation of the utility of the materials, and those of your peers, and then consider the formal process that exists, for the teaching establishment, regarding the auditing/setting of standards for educational materials on this course.
This will give some context as to whether expert opinion has gone into the material selection, if there is a process to validate this, is there a process of consensus on this, and some actual feedback on utility from those using the materials.
Furthermore, you could skim the materials used in similar courses, in other "respected" teaching establishments, and see if they match. Additionally, many materials have reviews and those can be helpful to examine. I have completed a lot of online courses (admittedly free Coursera ones) and Princeton,Harvard etc all use (and list) YouTube materials for their courses.
This, i think, will help position your feelings, with respect to the course, in terms of a broader quality argument.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_11: This is one to check what the original marketing materials for the course promised, bearing in mind that they may be different to your interpretation of what appropriate teaching is.
Without that information, you're paying mainly for the materials you need to learn and the final accreditation that you're reached the academic standards necessary. And, you're probably paying a premium based on the pedigree of the university.
Now, in the UK where I work, there is no guarantee of a link between the name value of a university and the quality of its teaching. My experience is that less-known universities often have higher quality teaching. There are many reasons for this, but having less name value, they have to try harder. They are also likely to attract students below the top tier, so have to concentrate more on ensuring that the teaching materials are suitable for all levels of learners. And, the academics are likely to have a more teaching oriented career path, as opposed to one that concentrates on research.
Often, if you're working with a very well-known professor, they are also likely to be in great demand, and not working in a role where they're expected to concentrate on teaching. In some cases, you're lucky if you see that professor at all, as opposed to a load of grad students delivering classes.
Again, this will all depend what the original promises made were. I've written a lot of course marketing materials and if would be rate to promise contact with a particular professor, as this makes too many assumptions about how that professor's career will evolve (they may take another position, for instance).
Finally, there's nothing wrong with writing a course based on curating materials. It can be quite a job to find the best ones, organise them and write the links between them. It's not that different to academic practices of the past where a professor would issues assigned reading, in the form of academic papers or textbook chapters, to the class.
There are lots of online courses structured that way, both paid and free.
There is a danger if those materials change, as they are not owned by the course. For instance, YouTube videos can be taken down and Wikipedia pages edited by third parties. So long as the teaching team monitor that and have a backup plan in place, the general principle of course curation sounds acceptable to me.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_12: The best (youtube) videos are often wastly superior to most lecturers (sic). The problem is that finding the right video is a nightmare, especially if you are not familliar with the subject. So if the videos picked for you are relevant and accurate, and you get personal feedback time, you are indeed getting world class service.
In fact I have been trying to get the university to consider moving lectures to this kind of format. With the change that video lectures are paired with hands on exercises, with course assistant present. The benefits are considerable, as you can now invest in the material in a different way and feedback becomes your primary focus. However mostly this means that the videos need to be scripted as if they were tv shows, which is harder to do. Bootstrapping this skill, and getting material done pays itself back in no time. And yes if all you teach is available on youtube fine, use that if license permits.
The days of talking head lectures are over. After all Internet was founded to make information flow faster, better and more efficiently. Yet, we are surprised when it does just that.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_13: ### Dont judge a book by its cover
You are judging the value the instructor can offer **ONLY** based on the source of the course videos.
Instead assess the value you can derive out of the course based on other factors also as described in other answers such as one-on-one time you get with the instructor, his credentials, value of the certificate you are offered on completion etc.
You also need to consider the value in terms of infrastructure made available for practice.
Given that its almost a week and you havent accepted any of the answers, I assume you are finding it difficult to let it pass and move on. If so, does it interfere with your learning process? It would be in your own best interest to talk to the instructor a second time about it.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm an undergraduate senior seeking to continue on into academia, and one of the avenues I'm pursuing to accomplish this is through an NSF GRFP proposal. I spent well over a hundred hours agonizing over every word of this, and I'm happy to have three professors that I've done research with who agreed to write my letter of recs.
The deadline for these letters is just a week away, and over the course of the past three weeks, one of my professors stopped responding to my emails, as he is prone to do on occasion when he gets busy. In the past, I had a negative experience where a careless professor forgot to submit a letter on time and this led to my sophomore study abroad proposal being returned without review. In this context, I sent the following email to his secretary (names redacted):
>
> Hi [Secretary],
>
>
> I wanted to inquire about an issue I'm having with Prof. [professor]
> at the moment. I asked him a number of weeks ago to write me a letter
> of recommendation for my NSF proposal (due November 2nd), to which he
> kindly agreed. He asked me for various things, including my transcript
> and statement of purpose, which I provided. Unfortunately, since then,
> I haven't been able to contact him in any way. I've sent him three
> emails over the past two weeks with no response. It is extremely
> important to me that this letter actually gets sent in; to put it
> bluntly, it's my *future* that's on the line here. I have in the past
> encountered the terrible experience of having a professor miss a
> similarly non-negotiable deadline, and I suffered from the loss of
> that opportunity as a result. I would greatly appreciate it if you
> could gently remind him of the deadline and ask him to confirm that he
> did indeed receive all of the application materials I sent him. If he
> needs anything else from me, I am more than happy to send it to him.
>
>
> Thank you very much,
>
>
> [Me]
>
>
>
Of course, the first thing she does is forwards this email directly to my professor, even though it was never written with his eyes in mind. I'm now worried that my professor (with whom I otherwise have a good relationship) will think less of me and write a poorer letter of rec on my behalf. I was wondering how academics would feel if they were put in a similar spot, and if I ought to be proactive in rectifying the situation, or if I should just let sleeping dogs lie.
A Socially Anxious Student<issue_comment>username_1: Always assume that someone might read correspondence you write to their assistant or secretary. However, your email is polite and reasonable (although I would have skipped the "blunt" part).
I would expect them to respond by writing the letter as soon as possible or contacting you if they are unable to do so. If neither of these happens call the secretary or visit in person. It'll be fine.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: My first question is what you thought **would** happen? In my experience, many secretaries would handle it exactly in this way - your email is fairly unspecific in what you thought the secretary would do ("remind him about this" - he/she did by forwarding your mail, and at the same time probably wondering why you did not send it directly to him). If you thought that the secretary would take responsibility for hunting down the recommendation letter for you, I think this is an unreasonable assumption. The secretary is the professor's assistant, not yours. In the olden times this may have included managing the professor's work backlog, but nowadays most people prefer doing this themselves and just having the secretary arrange meetings etc.
>
> even though it was never written with his eyes in mind.
>
>
>
Tip for the future: never write something to staff where you would be embarrassed if the boss saw it, *especially* if you don't know the person well. However, I see little in this email that would offend me, other than maybe the implication that you thought I could not be approached directly about this. But of course other people get offended by other things.
>
> I was wondering how academics would feel if they were put in a similar spot, and if I ought to be proactive in rectifying the situation, or if I should just let sleeping dogs lie.
>
>
>
I am for "letting sleeping dogs lie". Very likely there really isn't a situation to address, and if there is you can still tackle it once it comes up.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: Always assume, at all times, that the people you interact and work with will take the path of least resistance to solve any problem you present them with.
In other words, if you're writing an email to a coworker asking them to remind another coworker to do something, then just assume that, no matter what else was said in the email, it will be forwarded whole cloth to the person in question. It only takes a couple seconds to forward an email, but it takes significantly longer to write a new email from scratch and both will satisfy the requirement in their mind, no matter how insensitive the original email might have been.
A little exercise I use with every work email I send: "Would anyone be greatly offended if they read this and they weren't supposed to read it?" If yes, then reword it or go tell them in person and in private.
I've seen this happen 20 times across a very long career, sometimes resulting in huge backlashes and sometimes not. In your case, the wording is very mild. I wouldn't be offended at all if I saw this email in my inbox from one of my students/employees. In fact, I would be more irritated at myself and apologetic that I didn't act sooner.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: If I was a secretary with dozens of unread emails every morning, I would probably do a glance-only first swipe of them (what I and some colleagues call "diagonal reading").
And if I glanced over your email, and read something like this:
>
> *"Hi blahblah **Prof X** blahblah **write me recommendation** blahblah **not able to contact him** blahblah **extremely important this letter gets sent in** blahblah"*
>
>
>
I would immediately stop reading and just forward the email to the prof., which is what you seem to be asking for, and exactly what the secretary did.
Next time:
* be less chatty and more specific about what you want;
* *please* make use of line breaks and paragraphs to break your emails into:
Greeting
Introducing yourself (when needed)
Current Situation
Effects of not solving the situation
Requested action
Thanks
This would make grasping of the important concepts easier for people that are in a hurry. Your email would be clearer if it looked like this:
>
> Dear Secretary,
>
>
> I'm Me, a former student of Prof. Professor. We have an ongoing issue right now, maybe you could help me?
>
>
> Professor agreed to write a recommendation letter for my NSF proposal. I provided all the information he asked me to, including transcript and statement of purpose, so everything should be good to go.
>
> Unfortunately, I haven't received the recommendation letter yet. I've tried contacting him by email several times over the last weeks, with no response.
>
>
> The deadline for the recommendation letter is November 2nd.
>
> It is very important that we don't miss that deadline, my future depends on it. I have in the past encountered the terrible experience of having someone miss a similarly non-negotiable deadline, and I suffered from the loss of that opportunity as a result.
>
>
> Could you please check with him if he already wrote the recommendation letter, or remind him to do so before November 1st so as to meet the deadline?
>
> If he needs anything else from me, I am more than happy to send it to him.
>
>
> I greatly appreciate your help.
>
> Thank you very much,
>
>
> Me
>
>
>
Even when "diagonal reading", human eyes tend to focus on the beginning and end of paragraphs and lines. So, by putting your most important points in there, it is less likely that they would be overlooked.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I've said this before and I'll say it again - phone. If you have this secretary's number, or even his number, phone it. He won't begrduge you for being proactive in the situation.
I have done this before when chasing a reference after waiting a few weeks with a deadline approaching. I phoned the supervisor in question and she provided it within 24 hours.
Definitely be proactive. It's more likely to gain respect from him/them rather than thinking you're some kind of academic irritant for getting what you need.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I know of a full professor who doesn't list any of his publications on his website. He just gives name, title, email address and phone number.
Nothing more, literally.
When I search for his work internally through our library he has plenty of published work.
What are some typical reasons why he wouldn't want to list his papers online, especially in the publish or perish culture of academia?
I notice some other full professors do this too, nothing but a name, email and phone number is on their school website. No advertising their work at all.<issue_comment>username_1: There are several reasons why this would be the case. The most prominent of which is simply they don't have the time to do it. Most institutions have departmental and faculty websites which contain such information (depending on how much the University/institute keeps up to date with it) and is managed by someone other than the professor.
Sometimes, the role of updating the website is relegated to lab members (postdocs/students/assistants) which may be people who don't know how to build or edit websites or aren't reliably updating them.
For example, I've been given reign over our lab's personal website (we have an official institutional one) but I have no idea how to code html or any other web-based programming. When trying to get personal statements or papers of note from lab members, very little will people actually reply with these details making the website partially filled out.
If you really care about the publications from a professor, look them up *wherever your primary resource for articles is* There's no hiding on there and I would be highly skeptical about it being an issue of 'wanting to hide their work'.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Institutions often set up a basic web page for each faculty member with exactly the information you mention. It is then up to the faculty member to embellish. Or not, as the case may be. Reasons for not embellishing include having more important things to do, *i.e.* lack of time, and disinterest in working with the web when one could be researching or writing.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I want to address another point in your question:
>
> What are some typical reasons why he wouldn't want to list his papers online, especially in the publish or perish culture of academia?
>
>
> I notice some other full professors do this too, nothing but a name, email and phone number is on their school website. No advertising their work at all.
>
>
>
Personal webpages are, generally speaking, *not* the primary way that professors "advertise" their work. If I have a paper that I've written and I want to make people aware of it, I'll probably go to a conference or two and talk about it. In my field (physics), I can also post it to arXiv, which a large fraction of people in my research specialty are looking at on any given day. Academia.edu has become somewhat useful for discovering other interesting work in my research specialty as well. A personal web page might be useful for me to promote my "brand" as a public speaker, but it's not where I would expect someone to go to learn about my work, nor would I automatically go to someone else's personal web page to learn about their work.
Similarly, the "publish or perish" culture isn't really affected by personal webpages. When a professor applies for a grant or a promotion, you can be sure that they list every single one of their publications on the CV that they send to the evaluating body. The evaluating body will not, as a general rule, start looking at materials that the applicant hasn't submitted; they generally don't have the time or inclination to go beyond what's in the applicant's portfolio. A professor's success is not determined by what's on their personal webpage.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: **Because once they are tenured, they don't need to.**
The important point in your question is that you are speaking about **full professors.** Your observation will probably be completely different, if considering post-doctoral researchers and assistant professors.
The point is: In academia, personal web pages are basically a means for self-advertising. This is, of course, completely legitimate. It is just that not everybody likes to do this.
As a young researcher seeking a career in the "publish or perish culture of academia", there is basically no choice: You have to advertise yourself and your work all the time. So you maintain a detailed personal web page.
Once you have reached a safe position (formally by being tenured, informally by being known in your community), you have the choice if you want to continue investing time and energy into a web page. Some decide it is not / no longer worth it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Often, the prime way of publishing is through a journal or conference managed by large institutions. In the process of submitting your work, you will still too often be asked to give away the copyright to your work to these institutions. Sometimes you are then not allowed to publish the work individually as well.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: I think it's not so much "don't want to" as "don't bother to".
And some of my colleagues "of a certain age" are still disdainful about the internet, and disdainful about learning how to write basic HTML and put documents on-line. Some of this may be a hold-over from a time in which computers were thought of exclusively as devices to do computations, rather than to communicate. Further, some mathematicians were/are disdainful of computational mathematics... And I've had people (now mostly retired) very directly say to me that "maintaining web pages is not part of the job of a mathematician". (I'm pretty sure that these people had ulterior motives for claiming this, but, still, they were willing to say it!)
And it does still appear to be the case that no amount of on-line stuff can substitute (in mathematics, in the U.S.) for traditional journal papers (even if they are hidden behind pay-walls), so, again, some people simply don't bother. Even *listing* things might be construed as pointless, if all that matters for some purposes is impressing one's department head, dean, and funding agencies.
It is also true that (perhaps motivated by security or economy concerns) many universities are changing to a "cloud-based" web-page model, which makes access much more complicated (from my viewpoint) as opposed to the straightforward (from my viewpoint) access via a unix/linux-style file-system allowing simple movement of files from one's home directory, for example, or via "scp", and remote access via "ssh". Indeed, it has taken significant effort to at least temporarily prevent this kind of change in my department, for faculty web-pages, and it was irresistible for departmental and grad-student pages. I'd wager that before I retire, it will change for the worse... Then it would become much less simple to update and change things.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm sorry if this has a very obvious answer, but I've looked around and haven't been able to find one.
I set up my GoogleScholar Profile and added my publications to it without a problem. So far, so good.
However, most of them are linking to publisher websites that people won't be able to access. Is there any way to change this so that the links point to, for instance, my institutional repository instead?
Clarification: The links are definitely there under the different "versions," but I'd like to have them be the FIRST link.<issue_comment>username_1: The answer would be both Yes and No.
**Yes --** If your university repository articles are (also) indexed in Google Scholar, then these are absolutely citable. Now, when viewers click a particular article from your page--say "*An article on the behavior of rat after cutting its tail*"--they should be able to see two versions of the same article like the following:
[v1] An article on the behavior of rat after cutting its tail [publisher page]
[v2] An article on the behavior of rat after cutting its tail [pdf-univ. link]
**No --** If your university repository is not indexed by Google Scholar.
You can check this by searching an article from your univ. repository in Google Scholar.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: As username_1's answer states, not all databases/websites are indexed by Google Scholar. Two open access ones that are are [arXiv](https://arxiv.org) and the [Open Science Repository](http://www.open-science-repository.com). You can also use [OpenDOAR](http://www.opendoar.org/find.php) to find open access repositories that would be suitable for your work.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I just wanted to see what people think about a possible plagiarism issue. I found a new article which, as far as I can tell, uses data first shown in an older publication from the same group but with a different first author. This may be irrelevant but I thought I'd mention it anyways; this new article's only novelty is to analyze the old data with a model developed in another group.
To the point: this new article has many (more than 8) sentences taken from the older article from the same research group. These sentences describe the experimental setup. It's clearly the same setup as the older article.
Is this plagiarism? I've been taught that it is but I've talked to another academic who says it's not since there are only a limited number of ways that methods can be explained.<issue_comment>username_1: Does the new article cite the older article, or otherwise address the older article? If not, I would say it's almost certainly plagiarism. If the author's of the new paper did, in fact, quote the older paper, and not give it an [in text citation](https://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/747/02/), they could be considered plagiarists, but are more likely just sloppy writers.
I think that the 'other academic', you referenced, is probably incorrect. Their statement is true to some degree, but I cannot think of a single instance, except for a definition or law, where there is only a single way to phrase a statement like you described.
If you don't think my answer was clear enough, I'd recommend running the paper through a [plagiarism checker.](https://www.quetext.com/) Many schools do this, and they are often the final word in discussions like this.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Plagiarism is presented to students as a binary concept: either you're doing it or you're not, and you'd better not, because if you do it there are clearly defined repercussions meted out by a clearly defined group of people, the *academic honesty personnel* at the university.
In post-student academia, the truth is that plagiarism functions more as a continuum. Instead of one set of rules that all the world's academic members agree upon, there are less precise (though no less deeply held) *cultural norms* that *most* of the world's academic members mostly agree upon. There is also no good analogue in the "real" academic world of "academic honesty personnel": instead, academia is largely self-policing.
So in your case, instead of asking "Is it plagiarism?" you should be asking "Is this an academic best practice? If not, how bad is it? Is it *actionably* bad?"
In the case at hand:
>
> [T]his new article has many (more than 8) sentences taken from the older article from the same research group. These sentences describe the experimental setup. It's clearly the same setup as the older article.
>
>
>
My view on this is: it's far from being bad enough to merit any outside corrective action. Because the word "plagiarism" sounds very serious and we in academia have a stake in keeping it that way, I would not use that word in this instance. (And if you do, your colleagues / superiors / affiliates may think you're overreacting.)
Three key points:
* Plagiarism is defined as using the ideas and/or distinctive language *of someone else*. I gather from your description that the two papers were written by the same group. (You say "with a different first author". I don't see the relevance of that -- all the authors of the paper are all the authors of the paper when it comes to issues of academic integrity and citation.) Recycling your own work is a different academic crime, often called "self-plagiarism," but I discourage people from using the term "plagiarism" to describe it: it gives the wrong idea.
* You say that they cite their older paper. That's a key point in their favor -- it means they are not trying to *fraudulently* pass off old work as being new. One can even argue that the paper went through the refereeing process and the referees and the editors apparently had no issue with the repetition. (That doesn't necessarily make it okay, but it provides some useful perspective.)
* The essential currency of academic work is intellectual novelty, but that does not mean that *everything* that appears in an academic work is or should be intellectually novel. There is a certain amount of routine, procedural stuff that needs to be there, but that most expert readers will quickly pass their eyes over.
I hope you notice that at no point did I claim that the authors have followed best practices here. I do think it's lazy to lift multiple sentences and whole paragraphs from a previous work. In my opinion, even if something is completely routine and what you write is going to read the same way as what many other people have read before: okay, then you can type up a new, uncopied version quickly and easily. Also, as a reader, when you catch someone copying *anything*, your opinion of them and the novelty of their work goes down a bit.
I will end with this: I remember once, some years ago, reading a paper of a certain student of one Professor A and having the feeling that the paper was morally similar to a paper of Professor A's that I had glanced at before. When I compared the two papers side by side, I found that not only was the intellectual content closely analogous, but the student had evidently written the introduction to his paper by starting with the introduction to Professor A's paper and making close to the minimum possible amount of change necessary for the same text to introduce his own paper. I did not seriously consider pursuing a plagiarism charge on the student...but it left me with a negative impression of his creativity, independence and work ethic. From what you say about the two papers, the main issue is not that some routine procedural passages were copied, but really that the second paper is rather derivative on the first -- not fraudulently so, but in a way that makes the second paper not that interesting to you. That you think this about the authors' work is, I think, the most appropriate negative consequence of their actions.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Experimental and methodology sections are increasingly being recognized as "exceptions" from plagiarism, for reasons of practical necessity. For instance, I use the same basic technique to study different problems in engineering and material science. One of the sentences in my methodology section is:
>
> We use the SHAKE algorithm to constrain the bonds in water molecules [citation].
>
>
>
There are only so many ways to write this statement, and at the same time, I can't ignore this information, because it would imply a change in method. Is it plagiarism for me to reuse the same wording as in an earlier paper? If it is, I'm in big trouble. Similarly, if I were an experimental group, how many ways are there to say:
>
> We used chemical X from vendor Y as received.
>
>
>
For this reason—because often methodologies are very similar to previous methodologies within a research group–many journals now do not consider such so-called "self-plagiarism" of the methodology section to be a problem.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I worked on a research project earlier this year. It has recently been submitted for publication and is currently under review. I am working on my resume and cover letter at the moment as well as applying to graduate schools. This is one of the biggest projects I have worked on in my undergrad and thus I will definitely be including it in my applications.
We were told not to circulate this paper, but I was allowed to present a **very** small part of the data at a conference. There are many diseases/conditions being studied in the project and I presented two of them at a conference.
Although I know that it is definitely not acceptable to circulate an unpublished paper, I am wondering if it would be okay to state a brief synopsis of what the project was about? For example:
>
> This project was a meta-analysis that looked to see if there was a relationship between X and Y.
>
>
>
In addition, would it be acceptable to mention the journal that it was submitted to?<issue_comment>username_1: You can certainly give information about an unpublished paper in your CV, including a synopsis. Do mention, however, that the paper is currently under review (that will also explain why a reader of your CV cannot find it on the webpage of the journal yet).
It is best to mention to which journal it was submitted. This will frame the field and your ambitions for the reader of your CV.
>
> Although I know that it is definitely not acceptable to circulate an unpublished paper...
>
>
>
Have a look at the copyright transfer (you can find that on the webpage of the journal or the publisher). It should clearly indicate what is possible, and what is not. Typically, you will be able to distribute a version of your paper that does not contain any editing by the journal. Sometimes you also can distribute a version that contains copy-editing and markup of the journal. Sometimes you need to add some text, e.g. referring to the journal.
If the copyright transfer text is unclear, and you still would want to distribute the article, contact the editor.
Also make sure that your co-authors are aware and agree on any of the above actions.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Whoever told you not to circulate the paper is the person to ask. If you were specifically asked not to do so, the author could consider it a breach of trust to mention the ideas/results without clarifying the extent to which you can make claims about the project. Maybe they do not mind a general overview, only the paper, but this is something you need to find out from them.
"I will definitely be including it in my applications" is a problematic sentence under these auspices. It is not a good idea to mention the journal, either. Say, it's a top-tier journal. Anyone can submit a paper, but at this stage it is not accepted yet.
In addition, you probably should get more detailed advice from a trusted mentor on how to develop your application.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: Next January, I will start as an assistant professor in a respected university. My field of work is civil engineering, and I have diplomas (Masters, PhD) in the engineering studies (Hydraulics, Geotechnical, Construction, ...). What I lack, however, is an experience in the field since I have devoted my time to academia.
I am clueless as to how I could establish ties with the industry: consulting firms, labs, ... Many professors in my field are expert consultants, and are renowned in the community of engineers, even though their main activity is research.<issue_comment>username_1: One way, based on my experience, is to form connections through your students' internships. This gets you an "in" with the company, so that you can network and potentially collaborate.
For example, my advisor got invited to give talks at two of the companies I interned at. He collaborated on projects with both companies and even received funding from one of them.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: This is at core a question about networking, so the standard advice on that applies: meet as many people as possible, show interest in what they're working on, ask for introductions, and actively look for ways your expertise might benefit them. Be proactive and discard shyness.
To expand on Austin's great answer, you can search yourself for internships with related companies and bring them to the attention of students who might be interested. Many students are interested in internships, but don't really know where to start. If you have trouble finding related internships, you might consider cold contacting larger companies to help *create* internships--make a business case for why they should want to do it, then help them set it up.
You can also work with the career office at your university and get involved with recent grads looking for work. Connect with former students (on LinkedIn for example) and network through them both to help later students also find work, and to connect with companies you're interested in.
Additionally most major professional fields have meetups in major cities and professional organizations. Go to places like Meetup.com for meetups and google for professional organizations with conferences you can join. Get on as many mailing lists as you can, so that you can attend as many events as possible. Short of that, look for entrepreneurial and startup organizations where you can meet people with novel engineering problems.
You can also look for people to contact on the author lists for published patents or research papers from labs working on things you're interested in. Cold contacting people is scary and has a lower success rate per contact attempt than networking, but it *can* work. The pro is that it's something you can make progress on at any time whereas networking can only be done at meetups and such where people are available.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Good answers so far (+1 to both). I would also suggest to leverage any interactions with your undergraduate students on their capstone / senior design project in those cases where the students seek out an external client.
At my institution, some students work on solving a problem for industrial clients that are located nearby, and I have gotten to know folks in these companies through co-advising student teams.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: First, Congratulations!
Second, I see you are in Canada.
The first thing you should do is join your local Canadian Society of Civil Engineering chapter. Become a member, and attend their events (this may include dinner meetings, speakers, tours, etc.). Talk to people: start with "Hi, I'm Dr. X and a new professor in Civil Engineering at the U of X, where do you work, what do you do?" Get to know the local executive of the CSCE, offer to do a talk about what you do.
Attend the CSCE conferences. There are many practitioners there who are presenting on their most technical and most research-y work. Get to know them, they might like to collaborate.
Next, make sure you are on the mailing list for the local chapter of your provincial engineering association. Go to their events. Offer to do a talk for them (at lunch meetings, annual events, etc.). They also likely host professional development workshops, another great way to meet practitioners.
At these events and though your colleges and students, find out which consulting firms do projects that are closest to your research area. Find people that work there at local engineering events. Great ways to get to know a firm as a researcher is "Hey, I am teaching a class on (insert topic here) do you have any interesting case studies I could use to illustrate (insert concept here)."
Finally, (as Mad jack says) in engineering programs in Canadian universities, students often must complete a capstone design project. Find out how your department handles that, and if you will be involved. Perhaps volunteer to mentor a group. Then at local meetings you can say "next year I will be mentoring some fourth years students doing a capstone project in (insert discipline here), do you guys have anything interesting coming up that would be suitable for a fourth year group to tackle?" Then make sure your students do a damn good job.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: I'm in the UK, so I don't know how it works in other countries. Over here though, we have various sources of government funding which give an incentive for academic institutions to work with industry. Funding is particularly geared to research into things which aren't currently widespread in industry.
The [Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund](https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/industrial-strategy-challenge-fund-joint-research-and-innovation) invests in a few key areas. Civil engineering isn't really applicable to them, but other areas are.
More generally, [Innovate UK](https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/innovate-uk) has a raft of projects it's looking for applicants for, or you can apply for funding for your research if you think you fit their criteria.
And for European funding (which British academics can't get now - deep joy) there are [Research Councils](http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/international/funding/eurofunding/) which fund research from EU budgets.
As an academic though, one of your problems is going to be showing that you know how to apply your theory to a practical problem. Industry doesn't care about theory, it cares about building things, and your "respected" colleagues have earned respect by understanding this. I'm sorry to say though that industry generally regards academics as ivory-tower amateurs - and that opinion is generally justified.
A personal example. One piece of opthalmic test kit my company produces was closely tied to research from two academics on "deskilling" the screening test they were taking. We worked closely with them, and assumed the tests they had designed were valid (we're software engineers after all, not opthalmologists). It was only when customers around the world brought up some problems that we had to go back to first principles. We found their entire methodology was so fatally flawed that any conclusions they wanted to draw from the data were completely invalid. Put simply, these senior professors who'd been important academics in their field for 40 years had no understanding of how to run an experiment.
In another case, we bought technology for improving the response of a nanopositioning system. The theory was (and is) compelling, and the academic concerned had data which backed up the theory. It was only when we integrated this technology into our systems and tried to reproduce his methods that we found none of his reports used the same circuit diagram twice, and the circuits he'd used didn't match the transfer functions in his reports, and even then we couldn't reproduce his results. We've been working with another university to try to figure out how to apply this technology properly, because it does look to have potential if it's done properly. So far we've had three postgraduate students look at it, under the guidance of a professor of control theory. None of them has had any kind of clue about how to run an experiment either, and we've had very limited useful data from them.
Can you do better than that? If you can, you have a chance. If you can't, then honestly you should quit your job and get some experience, because you're a hazard to the careers of the people you're supposed to be teaching.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/25
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<issue_start>username_0: I just completed my MFA in Film this August, 2017. Now I am freelancing and not associated with an academic institution. May I still use my graduate university's letterhead when applying to faculty positions? I don't have any other nice looking letterhead with a logo, unless I make it up.<issue_comment>username_1: No you may not. The use of an official letterhead implies not only a current affiliation with the university, but it some countries and contexts also implies that the correspondence is for official purposes. Each university has it's own rules and policies, but I would be shocked if your university would consider this acceptable, and both universities that I have attended have specific guidance to not do this. **In general, you do not have the right to use that letterhead simply because you attended the university, and using it in that fashion is inappropriate** because you are representing yourself as having a professional position that you don't have.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: In short, you are using a letterhead if you are "speaking for" the institution whose name is on the letter head. This would, for example, be the case if you're an administrator writing to one of the suppliers of the school cafeteria, or if you're a professor writing a letter of recommendation for a former student.
In your case, you are writing for yourself. You do not have an official role in the university, nor are you speaking on its behalf. Don't use the university's letterhead.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Comment posted as answer: I'd encourage you to contact your school, especially the career services office if there is one. When reviewing job application letters during hiring, I often see some institute-issued alumni letterheads. Maybe your university/institute has something similar. It's in their interest to see you become employed, so ask them how they can help you to best showcase your academic background. The worst you can get is a "no."
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: My recommendation would be to create your own letterhead. As a freelancer, you need your own brand identity anyway. And, working in a creative field, I imagine that anyone you contact would expect you to have the skills to make a letterhead.
The letterhead of the university will be copyrighted and will not have your contact information in. It's very unlikely that you will permission to use it, or that this will be granted even if you ask for it.
As a further example, in universities where I have worked, letterheads have been carefully protected even for staff. Only a small group of staff would have access to them and the would record how they were used. For instance, if I needed to write a reference letter for a student, I would not be able to directly print it onto headed paper. This would need to go through an assigned administrator.
Now, in practice, of course I could very easily have scanned in the end result and created my own letterhead, but that just wouldn't have been acceptable. If a student were to have done this, the matter would not have been taken lightly.
The closest suggestion I can make, if you do want to include a visual representation of the university on your letter, would be to see if you can get permission to include their logo. This will be less controversial than the full letterhead, but it might also be protected.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/25
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<issue_start>username_0: On this website (and on the Internet in general), it looks to be in vogue for physicists and mathematicians to move into biological fields to apply their mathematical knowledge and also the general methodology to biological problems. However, there's very little discussion on biologists moving into mathematical or physics fields. I am roughly two years away from taking an undergraduate degree and am torn very much between my love for biology and mathematics and consider it likely that I might end up in academia.
Is it feasible for someone who studied biology to move into a math field? Is it possible, but rare? Would the possibility of doing a joint degree, or a biology degree with a higher amount of math content, sway this at all? Or are such people better off doing a pure math degree and then moving into a biological field later on?<issue_comment>username_1: "Math" means many things - just at the start, that can mean something like applied math vs. pure math, for which this answer has very different tracks to it.
I'd say it breaks into two potential tracks:
Track One: "I want to be a mathematician" - you want to move in this direction, and either do math for its own sake, or math as it's applied to a wide number of different things. Here, in my experience, the answer is "it's possible, but hard". There will be expectations about your coursework background that you may not have been able to do without effectively double-majoring, but it's not impossible.
Track Two: "I want to be a very mathy biologist". As you've noted, the "in vogue" way to do this is to move from math to biology, but the other way is certainly possible. There are a number of labs that would fall under the heading of "Mathematical Biology" that accept biology majors into their ranks, and if you're willing to put in the work, there's no reason you couldn't build a very strong background in math in the process, while keeping the value of having subject-matter expertise (something that is undervalued, IMO).
I took the latter track, and have ended up moving from an undergraduate background in laboratory microbiology to something that very much fits the description of "mathematical biology".
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The good (or possibly bad) news is that you don't actually need all that much mathematics to work in mathematical biology. On the other hand, if you think you might want to eventually do academic work in pure mathematics, a background only in mathematical biology will probably be insufficient.
I think the main reason that the usual direction is math -> math bio rather than bio -> math bio is psychological: more people with a math-heavy background are willing to learn the necessary biology than the other way around.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: There are a giant range of fields that use elements of math and biology. This could be quantitative biology, mathematical biology, systems biology, biophysics, bioinformatics, bioengineering, etc. All of these have slightly different cultures and questions they're interested in, and you might enjoy any of them. *There are programs with undergraduate degrees in many of these hybrid fields, which could suit you*.
username_1's answer shows that you can start in either direction and end up in a combination. But my recommendation would be, if you are interested in working in academia in a position that combines mathematics and biology, it might be easier to **ensure your undergraduate major has at least some mathematical elements, i.e. choose either mathematics or a hybrid major with math/physics/engineering.**
One reason is (possibly unfair) stereotypes about biologists and mathematicians. The stereotype about mathematicians + physicists is that they don't *care* about the biological details. But the stereotype about biologists is that they don't *understand* the mathematics. This makes it harder for people with a biology background to be hired in a mathematically-driven group. (Harder - but not impossible!)
The less cynical reason to start with at least some mathematics is about depth vs breadth. Biology as a subject has colossal breadth, which can be wonderful! But it means that one great topic (say ecology) is not necessarily a prerequisite for another (cell biology). But on the mathematics side, if you want to use partial differential equations to model a biological system, you probably need calculus, linear algebra, ordinary differential equations, etc. first! I think, therefore, the track from high-school-level skills to research-level skills in mathematical biology is longer in mathematics than it is in biology.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: The other answers address what is possible if you want to work in an applied mathematics field like mathematical biology. But I do want to point out that it is virtually impossible to go to graduate school in pure mathematics without a degree in mathematics. I am aware of a couple of people who did this, but they were pretty exceptional and still had the equivalent of a strong undergraduate mathematics education by the time they started grad school. I've served on graduate admissions many times (in pure mathematics at a couple of different private research universities), and I cannot recall ever seriously considering admitting someone who was not a math major (and even people who were applied math majors were at a severe disadvantage, though a couple were admitted).
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/26
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<issue_start>username_0: A little background info,
I'm currently working as a lab technician in a drug lab which focuses on clinical chemistry and toxicology. I wish to eventually, within a few years tops, go back for my upper level degrees. I didn't have any close relationships with professors of mine as an undergrad, and as a result, I'm currently lacking possible grad school recommendations.
Would anyone recommend using recommendations from chemists, with PhD's, who work in the industry as beneficial grad school recommendations? They both serve as my employers/ bosses, and I'm 99.99% they would give high recommendations if asked. However, would these even help me on my applications?
Also, if anyone has any possible actions I could take that would help me strengthen a grad school application, that are possible with the time window mentioned above, 2-3 years, that would be very much appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: Assuming you're applying for Ph.D. programs, the basic question admission committees usually need to answer is "Is X capable of becoming a good researcher?" If your supervisors, both of whom have Ph.D.'s, can answer that question successfully, then there's no reason not to use them—particularly if they know your work more closely than someone who only taught you in courses.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In addition to username_1's good answer, I would add, **don't worry.**
* Going back to graduate school after a few years in industry is normal.
* Not having close academic contacts for references in such a situation is normal, too.
* Being successful in industry lab work in your field is good, relevant experience. In some ways, it puts you ahead of someone with a purely academic background who may have never held a "real" job. Being able to just bear down and get the work done is a big part of success in any research degree.
>
> any possible actions I could take that would help me strengthen a grad
> school application
>
>
>
If there were any way you could get involved in more research now, that would be a plus. A couple of examples:
* Is your employer partnering with any academic researchers on projects? If so, can you get involved somehow?
* Are you involved in any work that will be written up as peer-reviewed publications (or could be)? Can you participate in this?
If you have a good relationship with one or both of your bosses, I would talk to them about your interest in being involved in more academic research, and see if there are any such opportunities.
Also, it's typically worth exploring whether your employer will support you getting a higher degree. Sometimes they may pay for it, in return for you working for them for a few years.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/26
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<issue_start>username_0: I currently am a sophomore in a US college. I have been accepted into a semester-long undergraduate research group. Officially, we have a faculty advisor as well as graduate student mentors. In practice, we mostly only meet with our graduate student mentors.
The problem is that, from the first day, one of my teammates deliberately ignores me in every group meeting. I do not know why, but they talked to all other teammates except me. Every time I tried to interact with or discuss with them, they skipped me and pretended to that they did not hear what I said.
(I said 'deliberately ignores' because there were occasions when only I and the person in question were present, and the person still refused to communicate with me. However, the person engagingly talk to everyone else. )
My other teammates are not talkative at all. In a meeting, they are the only person who casually led the conversation and left me out of the conversation. I feel ostracized and more and more mentally bullied.
The situation makes me feel extremely unhappy right now. I am quite certain I did not do anything inappropriate to them because the issue arose from the first time we met. For now, I feel out of place and think that I might not belong to this place.
What can I do for now, besides quitting?
One option I am thinking is to approach graduate student mentors. However, I am holding back from doing so because it seems that I am the only person who has this problem. Also, since our mentors are also present during the meeting, I have a feeling that they already knew the problem exists.
For clarification, I had an issue with only one teammate and not the others, and the issue is with that person refusing to communicate with me, even when only two of us were present.<issue_comment>username_1: Based on the updates, there are a few things I can offer in terms of advice. The first is that given it's a short amount of time remaining on your term, stick it out. Especially if this is going to impact your college credits/marks/etc. Sure, it's a crappy situation but try to make the best out of it as not to impact your marks or the progress of your degree.
Once completed, don't return to the research group. Take the opportunity now to find research groups within your institution that are nicer and more willing to host a student because it sounds like the current group sees students as a hindrance rather than as a collaborator or colleague.
There are avenues you can take to make complaints about bullying in the workplace, such as speaking to professors (not unless they're the one involved in bullying) or going to a human resources division. However, this may not be in your best interests to do anything 'formal' at this stage of your career given you aren't committed to this lab group on a fixed term contract as an official job. I would be talking to the student mentor you mentioned in the comment about your experience.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Keep your nerve.
This will likely not be the last time in your life people will treat you badly, so learning to cope with it will come in handy for the future. Concentrate on your work, listen, absorb and, apart from that, imagine you have been stranded on a lonely island. 2 months is not short, but it's not too long either.
**Important**: Keep your friendships and social connections outside of the group alive.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Are you different in race/gender/nationality/stature from other participants? Any disabilities? This sounds like your teammate has no concept how he can sensibly deal with you being part of the course, like if someone enrolled a house cat. It doesn't help if the cat does its parts of the experiments diligently.
This is a problem of the person dealing with the reality of you participating in that course, consciously or subconsciously. It's *their* impediment. Don't make it yours. Don't feel forced into behaving in patterns matching their preconceptions. "They did not fit in here and chose to leave": that's not the verdict you want others to arrive at for *you*.
Whatever the reason for this kind of behavior, stressing out over it would make you fit its purpose.
Keep your cool. Keep the door open for the other party reverting to normal behavior but don't depend on it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: **Be careful in ascribing ill intent to others.**
You sound quite confident that this other group member is intentionally excluding you: "deliberately ignores me", "mentally bullied", etc. I don't want to diminish how you feel, in this difficult situation. However, be careful in assuming that the person is intentionally excluding you.
Interacting with other people is not easy for many. I know this personally--my shyness was often considered rudeness by others, though I didn't intend that.
This student may be insecure, lack self-confidence, or feel awkward in starting conversations. This can be particularly hard across different cultural backgrounds, with different expectations for communication.
I'm not trying to excuse the student's behavior, which is clearly not good, and has an impact on you. I would, however, try to view the situation as generously as you possibly can. It's a good rule to assume that everyone around you is acting in good faith, and act on this basis as far as is possible.
In this case, I would keep trying to make a contribution to the conversation.
**Do seek advice from a mentor or faculty member.**
I would raise the issue that you are finding it challenging to participate in the group, because this one member seems to be ignoring you.
The mentor or advisor may be able to make changes to help let everyone participate (for example, change the format to give everyone a turn to speak). They also might be able to give you advice about how to approach the issue. At the very least, hopefully they can give you some encouragement.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I've experienced something similar, yet I am American and faced being ignored by a majority international student research group; they seem to self-segregate themselves in our group.
Knowing that my opportunity to learn the ropes in research through a great group leader / professor, I ignored the fact that I was being ignored, I stopped asking them for input. I focused solely on learning from the professor and I gave input when needed to the rest of the group. I earned another research position with the professor the next semester and then no longer had to deal with the people that ignored me.
So, go after the research and be aggressive and proactive. If your graduate mentors are helpful, seek them out for more guidance. And yeah, the professor and grad mentors probably are already aware of the situation and group dynamics that are perhaps not fair for you, so don't worry too much.
Lastly, I disagree with the tone and the message in CaptainEmac's answer. He or she suggests *tolerating* any sort of bullying and just coping by keeping one's friends around. What a ridiculous piece of advice. It's like if a woman gets raped, tell her to cope with it by keeping her friends around. Sounds absurd, doesn't it?
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: Go to your graduate mentor who is present during your meetings. Tell them that you feel like this person specifically ignores you, but that you aren't sure if your impression is accurate. Ask them if they have also observed that, or possibly ask if they can pay attention to the interaction between the two of you during the next group meeting and see if they observe the same thing that you have. Then ask them what to do--either if they say they do not observe the same thing, you can talk to them about how you came to your impression and figure out where you went wrong, or if they do observe the same thing then they can tell you what to do about it.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Do you work well with other members of the group? How do you get along with the instructors? This seems like a pretty cool experience for you, other than *this guy*.
As time progresses and you act normal but he is a jerk, you will definitely look like the good guy. Just make sure that you do not look like the non-communicative one by always saying what is professionally relevant in class (then he looks like a jerk) and always using email to communicate about doing group work.
If he does not reply, complain to the instructors that he does not participate in group work.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: Have you considered confronting the person? Perhaps with, "Have I done something to upset you, X?"
If they ignore *that*, then you know for sure they're actually ignoring you.
If they say something like "No, not really," you have the opportunity to point out that they don't communicate with you. "Oh, you just don't talk to me much compared to everyone else, so I was concerned."
If they say "yes," then you may be able to address the root cause of the issue.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Talk to your grad students. It's part of their job to help resolve personnel problems, especially when said problems could potentially sabotage their research. That possibility alone should be enough of a motivation for them to take your concerns seriously. Asking the PI to get involved is more of a last-resort situation (excepting emergencies or anything relating to funding); it sends the message that group members, undergrads and grads included, aren't doing their jobs. You don't want that.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_8: I understand it is one of your team mates and not the Mentor/Professor that is upsetting you. My first question is why it is important for you that this particular person should pay attention to you? In many cultures, direct eye-contact or engaging another may not be perceived in the same way you take for granted. I recommend approaching the personin your most friendly way with NO preconceived ideas as to why he/she is not engaging you. You may be surprised to find that they are wondering the same thing about you! In any case reaching out in with your best self is the way forward.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/10/26
| 445
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<issue_start>username_0: It is very common for researchers to share published articles upon individual requests, and many copyright transfer statements explicitly allow this.
In the case that the copyright transfer statement does not explicitly allow sharing the published article in any form, is it allowed to share a published article upon request? So suppose that the copyright statement is completely mute on the topic, it simply transfers all copyright aspects to the publisher, except for intellectual property etc. In that case, as the author of the article, is it even forbidden to mail a version to a fellow researcher, or a co-author of the article?
Does this also hold for the pre-print version? For an early draft?<issue_comment>username_1: I recently dealt with a similar issue. I contacted the journal and received permission to share the final version and post on departmental and personal websites since I no longer had the preprint due to a separate issue (I was asked to put the journal name and DOI prominently on first page).
Now, I negotiate terms of copyright agreement and adjust before signing.
Most places have no issues with you sharing the preprint but you can always get their written permission if you're concerned.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Sending a published article to a colleague, or to someone else who has requested it, or even to a co-author, almost certainly qualifies as distribution, which is one of the six rights reserved to the copyright holder under US law. So yes, *technically* it would be illegal. There is a fair use "exemption" that could be relevant in some cases, but that varies depending on the specific circumstances.
Whether this also applies to a preprint or to an earlier draft depends on whether those things are included in the copyright transfer agreement.
Of course, as mentioned in the comments, it's unlikely that a journal publisher would care enough to actually make a court case out of a researcher sharing just a few copies of a paper. Honestly, it's unlikely they'll even find out.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/10/26
| 1,262
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a student in Mathematics. There is a field I'm interested in (possibly enough to make it my main research area) which is not studied in my city. I've read a lecture notes on this topic a few months ago and sent the author a list of typos/inaccuracies I'd found. He responded in a positive way. When I was looking him up I found out he is terminally ill which, besides being extremely tragic, prevented me from asking for his guidance.
Since then I brought him up in a conversation a few times and people told me that it is very important for someone with terminal illness to know they are appreciated. I am thinking about requesting some help with my study of the field from him. However, I believe, the author was a great professor and mathematician so he probably has a lot still going on and I shouldn't bother him. Thus, my first question is: **is it okay to ask him for help in this situation?**.
If the answer is yes, **what should I ask of him?**. For example, would it be appropriate to inquire if he knows a colleague who could potentially become my adviser? Or perhaps I can ask about current research? I already used the opportunity to ask for some literature in the first letter.
To state it more clearly, is there a favour/question I can ask that is
1. Appropriate for the level of contact we had;
2. Easy for him to do and hopefully would make him feel appreciated;
3. Would be helpful for my own studies/career?
The last (and least) issue: in his email he thanked me for the list of typos and said that because of illness it would take him some time to implement the changes. It's been two months and the text is still in the first version. **Should I offer assistance with this?**<issue_comment>username_1: I think it would be perfectly fine to ask him for help, just as you would from someone that is not terminally ill. <NAME> (a famous professor) made every effort to conceal the fact that he was terminally ill from melanoma from most of his colleagues, until this was no longer possible. (Not everyone may take the same approach, but it seems that he is not abandoning academic pursuits entirely, since he was at least willing to try to act on the list of typos you gave.)
However, I think it would be best to confine yourself to a list of questions that can be quickly and easily answered. He probably has a lot going on (even without his illness), and I would ask a lengthy question only if he were the only expert in this area.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: **Edit:** note that my original answer below addresses OP’s original version of the question, which has now been edited.
To address the current version of the question: yes, it is okay to ask for help, but your motivation should be wanting to get help, not artificially creating feelings of “being appreciated”. If you want to let someone know they are appreciated, just tell them that that’s the case. And if you don’t know what questions you should ask, to me that is a sign that there isn’t really anything that you particularly need help with, so the best thing to do is to not ask any questions.
Finally, the fact that you know the professor is ill shouldn’t change anything about the nature of the questions you should ask him. Just ask what you want to know, whether it’s an easy or difficult question to answer. I am confident that if the professor finds the question too burdensome to answer given his illness, he will either not respond or will simply tell you that he is unable to help.
---
**My original answer:**
Maybe I’m misunderstanding your intent, but the way your question is phrased (particularly your statement “*my main goal here is to make the professor feel appreciated*” and the slightly absurd list of hypothetical questions you are thinking of asking the professor) I get the impression that you’re thinking of inventing a *fake* request for help, that is, a question whose answer doesn’t actually interest you very much, out of the belief that the professor will feel “appreciated” when receiving the question.
If this interpretation is correct, my strong advice would be: **no, it’s not okay, so don’t do it**. The reason is that this would be dishonest (and somewhat transparently so, for some of the questions you proposed - not to mention that you’re publicly posting your plan here using your real name...). I can’t claim to know what it feels like to be terminally ill, but as a general rule people don’t appreciate other people being dishonest with them, so I think your question could end up having quite a different effect than what you intend.
Here’s an alternative suggestion however: if you want the professor to feel appreciated, why not simply tell him that you appreciate him (assuming that’s correct)? And certainly I think it’s okay to offer to help him in any way you can — again, assuming the offer is genuine and you intend to follow up in case he takes you up on it. It’s also okay to ask him a question if you genuinely want to know the answer, but you should be asking it *because* you want to know the answer. Please don’t invent questions solely for the purpose of making someone feel appreciated; I find that idea patronizing, offensive, and highly misguided, despite the fact that the intentions behind it are good.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]
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2017/10/26
| 1,577
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<issue_start>username_0: My professor and I walk to and from for every class I have with her, I am a female senior student and my professor is in her 30's. I've gotten to know her really well, we even had a random dinner together. I go to her office hours everyday and share a coffee or cookie. I go to her for many incidents, including a man who has been harassing her and me. She has a partner who she mentions all the time and she even tells me about her family situations back home. We've had several meetings with the University officials and discuss them afterwards. We email constantly, I consider her a friend or a mentor.
**I'm curious to know where the boundaries are between my Professor and me (student)? What is the difference between a Mentor and Friend for professors and does it apply to me?**<issue_comment>username_1: In my opinion professors are normal people and can have friends as everyone else, **as long as it does not affect your grades and how you are treated in the classroom**. I used to give classes where I taught my friend who I started studies at the same university with (he took a few gap years...). In the classroom and when grading exams and homeworks I treated him exactly as other students.
There is also a possibility that your institution's code of conduct has regulations pertaining to this situation. Nevertheless, they should be more of concern for your professor than you.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: A level is friendship is fine. There's a difficult dividing line for the friendship may prevent the professor from being impartial.
From my own perspective, I'm interested in my students and want them to do well. I'm also keen to know how they're getting on with their studies and their preparation for employment. That automatically brings with it a level of friendliness.
In many cases, I also have a duty as a personal tutor. Part of that means keeping an interest in a student's welfare and helping to put support in place when necessary (it doesn't necessarily mean that I'm an expert in this support, but it does mean knowing who to refer students on to for it).
In many cases, it's much better to talk over a coffee.
A student might find me eating lunch in the canteen and that might be the best time for the time they feel comfortable talking to me. To me, that's generally fine too.
And I certainly know of professors who go above and beyond the call of duty to keep in contact with students when they're worried about them, for instance when there may be mental health issues involved. That can be the right thing to do in some situations.
Likewise, I've often gone out of my way to support students who want to push themselves academically or explore their options. I want students to do well, so if that means staying late to talk through ideas, sometimes best done with the aid of a beer, that's fine too. Likewise, I've encouraged students to join extra-curricular activities that might benefit them (such as tech communities), some of which I attend, so there can be some social crossover there too.
There are definitely former students who considered me as a mentor (and, I still stay in contact with many of them - some still consider me a mentor even years after they graduated).
I still remember when I started university, the very first meeting between a small group of us and a tutor involved him pouring a large glass of whiskey for everyone in the room (probably an expensive whiskey, but I wouldn't have known the difference). And, there were a lot of social events which, if you didn't take part in them, the tutors would have been worried about you. So, culturally, a certain level of friendship would be both expected and encouraged.
Now, that doesn't completely answer the original question regarding where the dividing line is.
For the example given, this does sound like a very close relationship. The danger would be if other students think that the friendship has crossed the line, or that they feel that they are missing out on a similar level of contact.
If the professor is happy and able to teach and assess you impartially, that's fine. But if the way her time is being monopolised (for instance taking up her office hours every day) means that she's not able to concentrate on her other duties, you might want to cut back, if only to be fair to her.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I am friendly with my students, but I keep boundaries, even if I would like some of them as friends.
Yes, you can say you treat them the same when grading etc, but this can lead to **problems of appearance, for you *and* them**, and also disappointment in the student if they don't get that there can't be any special treatment (even if they understand it on a rational level, it may not be that way emotionally).
This is especially so with students in my department (ie these students are likely to take my classes, or be subject of discussions during department meetings etc).
I see mentoring more of a professional thing, though the mentoring can include non-subject-matter topics too, such as how to successfully network, navigate political and administrative hurdles, advice on interpersonal conduct. A friendship is personal.
Once a student graduates, it becomes a different context and I am, and have been, in contact with former graduates without feeling any compunction about it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Yes, it's fine. It is also a great way to get references, since they are more familiar with you beyond your grades, they can give better recommendations.
As a grad student, I went drinking with many of my professors.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Good question, since there can be problems in a situation like yours, but this sounds OK to me.
I met one of my closest friends 40 years ago when I was in my 30's and he was a student of mine; we became friends right away. I was friends with with my undergraduate teacher and PhD thesis advisor, though that didn't happen until after I'd finished my degree.
I hope you're as lucky.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: Well, [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marty_McFly) befriended a 60+-year-old professor when he was a 14-year-old High School student, and subsequently went on wild adventure with him. That turned out to be pretty popular and socially accepted. (Watch comedian <NAME> make fun of this friendship [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKwMnnuN7-g).) There are few limits or boundaries to human friendships.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/27
| 1,583
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a new lecturer. Part of my course (one lecture) teaches the origins of our scientific understanding of the solar system. I talk about the ancient Greeks, the preservation of their work by eastern scholars, the Renaissance, Copernicus, Kepler, De Brahe, Galileo, Newton, etc. Much like how I was taught, and also following the course text (that I inherited).
In some student feedback I have been accused of giving the impression that everything was discovered or worked out by white European men. It's made me feel very lazy. I want to improve and avoid giving this impression. But firstly, how should I respond?<issue_comment>username_1: The comment by Eppicurt is correct: in this case, history *is* dominated by the discoveries made by white European men. This fact cannot and should not be ignored.
To address this fact however, you can state at the beginning of the lecture course (or at another relevant point) that, while science in the 17th/18th/19th centuries was dominated by European men, it is no longer so homogeneous and there is much work done to increase diversity in science (which is a good thing).
It might be worth setting the students a small exercise to research the work of a female or non-white scientist and then discuss their findings as a group. This may help the students understand how the history of science and scientists has changed (in my opinion for the better) over the past few years.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> [I want to] avoid giving the impression [...] that everything was discovered or worked out by white european men.
>
>
>
I'm not a science historian, so I can't really say if the impression is actually right or wrong. It seems counter-intuitive, however, that a small local fraction of the earth's population should have "worked out" science alone. That's puzzling enough to examine this assumption.
>
> I want to improve.
>
>
>
This is a great example for how questions from students can trigger a researcher to advance their own research and understanding. I'm sure there's a huge literature on [non-western science history](https://hssonline.org/resources/teaching/teaching_nonwestern/teaching_nonwesternintroduction/). Knock yourself out.
>
> But firstly, how should I respond
>
>
>
By admitting that you know little about non-western science history, and that, naturally, your previous knowledge and specialization have shaped the syllabus of your course. After asking colleagues and/or doing your own literature search (it doesn't have to go into any depth), you may feel confident enough to give some pointers to your students who want to read up on non-western origins of science. The main point here is to acknowledge your perspective (and you already did that) rather than to claim a "neutral" viewpoint based on unexamined assumptions.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: *"When everybody else is colonized/enslaved/segregated/not allowed to be educated by you..., your scientific discoveries tend to progress faster."*
I think the way to avoid this "impression" is to provide an accurate historical account as to how Europeans scientific discoveries came into dominance and provide examples of scientific discovery made by non-white or non-Europeans scientists.
---
As mentioned in the comment by Obie 2.0, during the pre-colonial period, discoveries in medicine and mathematics were more advanced in the Arab world, and many key results were independently discovered in India and China. For example, many modern mathematicians have ancestry with Arab mathematicians such as Ibn al-Haytham (even though many will usually claim a better-known, white European man such as Gauss or Laplace as their ancestor). As another example, the Pascal triangle was discovered and documented centuries before Pascal.
The rise of European science was intimately linked with colonialism. Again using the math genealogy example, there is a clear surge in the number of descendants by mathematicians in the 18th, 19th and the early 20th century, at the heights of European colonialism, during which over 90% of the continent were directly affected by European colonialism. The whole continent of Africa, Australia, the Americas, India and various parts of China were directly under European control, and it has largely remained this way. I think it is pretty easy to imagine why, for instance, no famous Native American or African mathematician emerged during this time, and in the centuries after. By the way, much of these technological discoveries were used for things like warfare, espionage, surveillance, social control, resource extraction, deforestation, etc., instead of humanitarian purposes.
---
This, however, does not preclude significant modern discoveries made by non-white or non-European scientists. They can be found everywhere, particularly in mathematics and medicine. A recent [article](https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bugbitten/2017/10/27/multidrug-resistant-malaria-could-threaten-recent-control-gains/) in my field mentions <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Youyou>, whose discovery saved millions of lives. Just because she is not mentioned as much as <NAME> or <NAME> doesn't render her work any less important and groundbreaking.
It should be clear now, even with this brief exposition, why European scientific discoveries dominates how we think about scientific discoveries. Does it make sense to only mention the achievements, while simultaneously hide the reason as to why those achievements were made by a particular subset of people?
For a modern example, sure, <NAME> "the Woz" made great discoveries in the field of computer hardware, but this is during the time black people cannot go to school, so is it really surprising that a white European male made those discoveries instead of other people? It seems to be that we are not being intellectually honest when uttering the phrase "all modern science was discovered by the white man".
As a multilingual person, I know that many discoveries by French and German scientists are not well publicized in the Anglophone community, I regularly edit WIkipedia articles of dead links of non-English European scientists and mathematicians. I can only imagine how poorly represented are people of color in the Western, English-speaking spheres.
To avoid European bias in teaching, we must clearly address the European bias in how history is presented.
Upvotes: 3
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2017/10/27
| 1,549
| 6,351
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<issue_start>username_0: A famous quote by <NAME>, former US Secretary of Education, is as follows:
>
> We are currently preparing students for jobs that don’t yet exist, using technologies that haven’t been invented, in order to solve problems we don’t even know are problems yet.
>
>
>
I have seen this quoted in hundreds of places, but never a full reference. I'd like to use this quote in an article that must adhere to APA referencing - does anyone know of the first place this quote appears?<issue_comment>username_1: The comment by Eppicurt is correct: in this case, history *is* dominated by the discoveries made by white European men. This fact cannot and should not be ignored.
To address this fact however, you can state at the beginning of the lecture course (or at another relevant point) that, while science in the 17th/18th/19th centuries was dominated by European men, it is no longer so homogeneous and there is much work done to increase diversity in science (which is a good thing).
It might be worth setting the students a small exercise to research the work of a female or non-white scientist and then discuss their findings as a group. This may help the students understand how the history of science and scientists has changed (in my opinion for the better) over the past few years.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> [I want to] avoid giving the impression [...] that everything was discovered or worked out by white european men.
>
>
>
I'm not a science historian, so I can't really say if the impression is actually right or wrong. It seems counter-intuitive, however, that a small local fraction of the earth's population should have "worked out" science alone. That's puzzling enough to examine this assumption.
>
> I want to improve.
>
>
>
This is a great example for how questions from students can trigger a researcher to advance their own research and understanding. I'm sure there's a huge literature on [non-western science history](https://hssonline.org/resources/teaching/teaching_nonwestern/teaching_nonwesternintroduction/). Knock yourself out.
>
> But firstly, how should I respond
>
>
>
By admitting that you know little about non-western science history, and that, naturally, your previous knowledge and specialization have shaped the syllabus of your course. After asking colleagues and/or doing your own literature search (it doesn't have to go into any depth), you may feel confident enough to give some pointers to your students who want to read up on non-western origins of science. The main point here is to acknowledge your perspective (and you already did that) rather than to claim a "neutral" viewpoint based on unexamined assumptions.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: *"When everybody else is colonized/enslaved/segregated/not allowed to be educated by you..., your scientific discoveries tend to progress faster."*
I think the way to avoid this "impression" is to provide an accurate historical account as to how Europeans scientific discoveries came into dominance and provide examples of scientific discovery made by non-white or non-Europeans scientists.
---
As mentioned in the comment by Obie 2.0, during the pre-colonial period, discoveries in medicine and mathematics were more advanced in the Arab world, and many key results were independently discovered in India and China. For example, many modern mathematicians have ancestry with Arab mathematicians such as Ibn al-Haytham (even though many will usually claim a better-known, white European man such as Gauss or Laplace as their ancestor). As another example, the Pascal triangle was discovered and documented centuries before Pascal.
The rise of European science was intimately linked with colonialism. Again using the math genealogy example, there is a clear surge in the number of descendants by mathematicians in the 18th, 19th and the early 20th century, at the heights of European colonialism, during which over 90% of the continent were directly affected by European colonialism. The whole continent of Africa, Australia, the Americas, India and various parts of China were directly under European control, and it has largely remained this way. I think it is pretty easy to imagine why, for instance, no famous Native American or African mathematician emerged during this time, and in the centuries after. By the way, much of these technological discoveries were used for things like warfare, espionage, surveillance, social control, resource extraction, deforestation, etc., instead of humanitarian purposes.
---
This, however, does not preclude significant modern discoveries made by non-white or non-European scientists. They can be found everywhere, particularly in mathematics and medicine. A recent [article](https://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bugbitten/2017/10/27/multidrug-resistant-malaria-could-threaten-recent-control-gains/) in my field mentions <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tu_Youyou>, whose discovery saved millions of lives. Just because she is not mentioned as much as <NAME> or <NAME> doesn't render her work any less important and groundbreaking.
It should be clear now, even with this brief exposition, why European scientific discoveries dominates how we think about scientific discoveries. Does it make sense to only mention the achievements, while simultaneously hide the reason as to why those achievements were made by a particular subset of people?
For a modern example, sure, <NAME> "the Woz" made great discoveries in the field of computer hardware, but this is during the time black people cannot go to school, so is it really surprising that a white European male made those discoveries instead of other people? It seems to be that we are not being intellectually honest when uttering the phrase "all modern science was discovered by the white man".
As a multilingual person, I know that many discoveries by French and German scientists are not well publicized in the Anglophone community, I regularly edit WIkipedia articles of dead links of non-English European scientists and mathematicians. I can only imagine how poorly represented are people of color in the Western, English-speaking spheres.
To avoid European bias in teaching, we must clearly address the European bias in how history is presented.
Upvotes: 3
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2017/10/27
| 2,535
| 10,794
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<issue_start>username_0: I just rememebered a case when I was still in school: we had to write an essay about a specific topic and one guy put big parts of his essay on Wikipedia before handing it in. When the teacher checked for plagiarism she indeed found big parts of his text in the Wikipedia article and thus accused him of plagiarism.
How would that situation be with journal papers (or other "official" ways of publishing)?
Can I reuse part(s) of texts I wrote myself but that are available publicly/online like on Wikipedia, my Blog, university homepage, etc.?
(Maybe consider that pseudonyms are used on Wikipedia, Blogs, etc.)<issue_comment>username_1: Plagiarism essentially covers illicit appropriation of credit and its benefits (and possibly depriving the author of them; this particularly includes omission of the original author's credits).
In your case, what is described in the brackets is not relevant, as whoever "lifted" the text from the internet is the author themselves. The only problem can arise when credit is claimed twice: e.g. the work has been separately prepared for one journal article/exam and later is re-used for another for double credit.
I think it is not ideal to publish a piece of coursework solution before submitting it (for precisely the reason OP lists), but it is not plagiarism *provided it has not been used to gain credit for original work anywhere else*. Some teachers permit resubmission of work executed for a prior opportunity by the same author in the sense that it is the authors' work itself; in which case, also, it is not plagiarism, because the re-use has been deemed by the teacher to be legitimate.
TL;DR: **For the purposes of the present question, plagiarism is the attempt to gain illicit credit for a task requiring original work by copying an existing text (from others or oneself).**
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: **Don't reuse material you have contributed to Wikipedia (or other sources where you aren't clearly attributed).**
It's too difficult to establish that you are the source of the Wikipedia material (and in some cases impossible). Some authors are anonymous or use pseudonyms. In addition, content on Wikipedia often can't be straightforwardly attributed to one author, due to the community process of creating and revising text.
A further problem is that most Wikipedia content is [under a license](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights) that allows redistribution "if and only if the copied version is made available on the same terms to others and acknowledgment of the authors of the Wikipedia article used is included". In many cases this will not be compatible with the terms of a journal you wish to publish in.
Wikipedia is very commonly used and very easy to find, and if someone does find it, it raises unnecessary ethical concerns. Even if you believe that there is no actual problem and you are able to provide evidence of that, it is simply best to avoid any suspicion of wrongdoing on this. Someone might get the wrong impression, and you might not have a chance to correct it (for example, what if a hiring committee finds it and assumes you have plagiarised, discarding your application?).
Therefore, I would simply avoid this. Even though in some cases it would be technically allowable, it would raise too many possible concrens. If you need content similar to what you have previously written up on Wikipedia, just rewrite it.
**Reusing material from other sources like blogs is less clear.**
There isn't an absolute ethical rule against republishing your own material. However, claiming something it is new when it is actually recycled typically *is* a problem. This is sometimes called "self-plagiarism" (though that term is controversial). [Wikipedia has more detail on this.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plagiarism#Self-plagiarism)
Journals typically expect your paper submission to be previously unpublished work. However, whether previously publishing something informally on a blog falls afoul of this requirement is a gray area, and probably dependent on individual journal policies.
If you want to reuse some material from a blog or similar source, be sure you know the policy of the journal you are publishing. Contacting an editor would be a good idea if you aren't sure.
In some cases you may be able to reference your blog post, though whether that is considered an acceptable source to cite will also probably be journal-dependent.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think this is an interesting question that depends on separating three concepts that sometimes get intertwined:
1. plagiarism
2. copyright
3. legality
Plagiarism refers to using something without properly indicating its source.
Copyright refers to having the right to use material elsewhere.
Legality refers to whether you're violating a law or committing a crime by doing something.
If you've posted something anywhere (and especially to an openly editable place like wikipedia or SE), then there's possible issues with reusing it on each of the fronts.
With respect to plagiarism, what matters is if the prior posting counts as "published" or "submitted" for the purposes of the item in question. (The former being the standard for journals and books; the latter being the standard for classes -- though I suspect most classes would care if you submitted something you already had published).
For copyright, you may not have the legal right to use something in its entirety even if you're the one who wrote it. This would depend on which copy rights your retained from your first publication. If it's SE, for instance, you're under [Creative Commons](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/12527/do-i-have-to-worry-about-copyright-issues-for-code-posted-on-stack-overflow). Wikipedia seems to have their own thing (I'm not a lawyer and can't entirely parse [their policy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights)).
Finally, none of this means that you're doing anything criminal, but if you were publishing for money, you could have liability if you violate the copyright.
Two confusing issues are that copyrights can speak as if they create citation obligations (they don't) and act as if their violation is a crime, but at least in the US [its only a crime when done for profit](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_Copyright_Law_in_the_United_States).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: If you quote your source than it is not plagiarism, for example According to <NAME> "Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence". You can also paraphrase and site your source, plagiarism is the practice of using someone else writings or work and trying to say it's yours without giving them credit according to Dictionary.com. Also I would avoid any and all wiki's when writing papers;however, most credible wiki pages site sources at the bottom of the page, you can often find the original article that the information came from,allowing you to go right to the source. Using paraphrasing will often get you past a plagiarism checker, although teachers read so many papers that they often know when they have heard something before and expect you to site where the information came from.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: Self-plagiarism is a thing. I was unaware of this until a few years ago when I decided to return to school and complete my bachelors. The plagiarism guidelines from my school specifically called out using previously published (or submitted in the case of a class) work, even if the work is yours, as plagiarism. However, this didn't mean that you couldn't use your previous work. The solution was to quote and properly site your previous work as a reference. I expect that this would be acceptable in your case as well.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: There are four views on plagiarism here.
The first is the broad view. Here, plagiarism simply means taking someone else's work and passing it off as your own. In that sense, this is not plagiarism.
In a formal academic context, there are three additional perspectives of which you should be aware.
The first is that plagiarism can further extend to failing to properly attribute a reference, even if you don't claim it as your own work. Using a statistic or a simple, "I read somewhere" without the corresponding citation can be seen as a form a plagiarism because, while you didn't try to pass the work off as your own, you still failed to cite the source and deprived them of due credit for their work. In this case, it does not matter that you are your own source, because without the citation the reader has no way to know this.
The second is that plagiarism can extend to re-using your own material on successive assignments. Personally, while I can understand this as a policy violation, especially for undergraduates, I don't feel this should be called plagiarism. Nevertheless, in academic context this is often called and treated as a plagiarism, because you failed in the practice of the objectives of the assignment. From the instructor's point of view, in failing to cite yourself, they feel like you tried to deceive them by hiding that you did not do original work for this assignment. And even if you do cite yourself, what kind of paper just has one citation to another paper which it copies word for word? It is seen as academically dishonest, even it's not quite "pure" plagiarism, and speaks to personal integrity.
The final perspective on plagiarism is to falsify a source or research. This is similar to your situation in that if it were okay to put information on wikipedia yourself and then immediately cite it in your own paper, you would be able to create a circular source of authority, with no real citation or reference behind it. You cite Wikipedia, but wikipedia is just your own words. This *might* be credible in the real sense, but it breaks the proper attribution chain, making research down the road impossible to verify. Moreover, it's seen as an attempt to artificially inflate an argument by adding a meaningless citation, which is again about misplacing credit for the work.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: Many publications insist that they be the *first* place where your work is published. It may not actually matter if it is plagiarism if it violate's the journal's policies on that count.
And, yes, as others pointed out, there is such a thing as self-plagiarism.
When it comes to plagiarism, context matters a lot. For instance, it matters if the overlap between your publication and the Wikipedia page is only one paragraph in a 100-page book, vs. whether it's 90% overlap.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: Actually I am making my PhD studies that is in the field of Computer Science and its algorithms related. There is one part in which for proving my ideas I have to program a web related extensive set of tests, but currently I really do not have time to program it. I have met a friend that is following an undergraduate degree in CS and he has been working in web development and programming for almost two years.
The question is if it would be ethical to tell him to program some parts that I need for make the testing. I was thinking to include him as a co-author in some papers that I am planning to do based on my current research, because I consider is the right thing to do. Would that be fair?
Thanks<issue_comment>username_1: That's probably a question best asked of your PhD adviser -- if you want your friend to become a co-author, your adviser will have to know about that friend's contributions anyway.
In any case, if your friend contributes significantly to the work, it's not a question of "being nice" when you think about making him a co-author: he contributed intellectually to the work, so he needs to be a co-author.
Whether that is "fair" is a different question and depends on what your friend hopes to get out of it. If he's interested in getting publications, then he may consider it fair. If he is only interested in graduating and then getting a job in industry, he may not be interested in publications and might consider money to be a better way to compensate him for the work.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There is no problem with an undergrad collaborating on research, if he or she has something to contribute.
However, having your friend unofficially help out on the side might be. It might appear you are trying to get someone else to do your work, for example.
The fact that you are asking the internet implies that you haven't discussed this with your supervisor. You should do so, and then everything will be above board.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: One of my profs in college has (after years of students asking him to do so) put forth a syllabus with all the material for the class he is teaching.
With the help of 3 students from previous years (who did most of the writing), he made a neat 90 page syllabus covering what is taught during lectures.
My year is the first year that'll benefit from this as it was finished early September 2017 (currently in October 2017). However, as is to be expected, some typos still exist, and some little mistakes in formulas do too. I read through it and compiled a Word doc containing all the typos and mistakes I could find and was wondering if it would be badly received if I sent him an email with those. He has asked his students to tell him if they found mistakes, so I know I should probably let him know about those, but I'm not sure as to whether fixing typos will be seen as arrogant or even remotely relevant, since I'm probably the only one getting triggered by them because of my OCD.
Thanks !<issue_comment>username_1: I can only speak for myself, and I'm just a postdoc.
I would be indifferent if someone pointed out one or two typos; on the one hand that's helpful, on the other a bit pedantic.
However, if I received a "Word doc containing all the typos and mistakes [you] could find" in a 90 page document, I would be delighted and grateful.
As an aside, I'm currently working through a textbook to brush up my statistics skills. I'm trying to collect the mistakes that I stumble upon in order to send them to the author once I've finished the book, so he can correct them in the next edition.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If you did this unsolicited, it might possibly be poorly received (though even then most people would be grateful, as long as you approached the issue in a polite manner).
However, given that the professor actually asked for this, I don't think you need to worry at all. You have done a great service, really.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I would talk to them in private and, if they don't know about your ocd, let it come up during the conversation as you explain why you made the effort - they are sure to ask...
I once spent a whole weekend doing a massive differentiation based proof to see the result was as stated ( you've seen those in maths / engineering where it says : it can be shown that xyz from abc). Well the proof as shown was incorrect so after doing it several times and getting it checked I took it to the Prof and said I thought I was making an error and could he check it.
Next lecture I nearly fell of my chair when he started with "the proof you were given last week has an error in it, been like that for 5 years, anyway the correct proof is now available thanks to" and gave my name... Not asked for, not expected but a real surprise as he had not warned me either...
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I cannot speak for all professors, of course, but I'm my case I'd be delighted and I'm fairly sure that such would be the reaction of most professors.
Over the last two years I have circulated some lecture notes among my students and a few other persons, and I'm really frustrated by the lack of feedback on typos (or anything else, for that matter).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Yes, you should send the errata. (But, as others said, use a format that the authors can definitely read without going extra steps. PDF or text, for example; not docx.)
I have been recording errors in notes, books, papers and even forum posts since forever (I tend to read things very thoroughly, sentence by sentence, as my mind is otherwise tempted to skip the actually important parts and dwell on the easy bits; the list of errata comes out of this rather naturally). Most of the time, as long as I've discovered any mathematical errors (as opposed to just typos), I've notified the authors, and the notification has been either received positively (authors thank and often correct the errors) or ignored (i.e., no reply). In my experience, it gets ignored the more often the older the work in question is; after all a paper you have written 15 years ago could just as well be a paper by a different author to you. But if the work is recent or even currently in class use, then the authors are likely to be thankful and highly responsive. (Out of maybe fifty authors I've contacted, only 1-2 have been defensive, and one of these two was outside of academia.)
Mathematics isn't *quite* like open-source software where bug reports and community patches are actively encouraged, but it's getting closer (unsurprisingly, given the noticeable social overlap). That said, as an algebraic combinatorialist I am probably closer to computer science than the average mathematician.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: You need to stay firm , send him the doc state that's it's unaceptable for a university profesor have typos in any text he sends his students and offer to corect/mantain the document in exchange for creds
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_7: As a professor *I always welcome suggestions for improvement like these*, as long as they are presented politely and respectfully.
If your professor has already made the effort to write down and publish his class notes then your should expect him to welcome whatever helps him improve the material. This is real work and any help is welcome (after writing, rewriting, reading and re-reading, it becomes harder and harder to pick up your own errors).
In addition, I would like to suggest that academia is a place where *you should be more concerned about truth* (and therefore quality of class notes) than personal feelings, be it of professors or of students. What matters is that the quality of education keeps improving and *you can help make that happen.*
Having an OCD student willing to do that work for you is a godsent for a professor, so go ahead and expect him to thank you for it!
(of course if he reacts negatively just let it go: that would only reveal a flaw in character...)
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a first-year PhD student. After about months into my program, my adviser has asked me to look for another lab. I have had no luck so far with other labs in my department. He told me as my background is not similar to his research work, I cannot succeed in this area. He told me to look for a lab which matches with my background and interest. I have funding for this semester but so far have no guarantees for the future.
I have talked to the graduate adviser, and they said there are no options for departmental funding.
Given this situation, what could be my best option? I can’t even earn a master’s degree without funding, and from what I’ve heard, transferring to another university would be tough since they may not view my case favorably.<issue_comment>username_1: I would urge you to not lose hope and keep an open mind about your research interests. If your field is more applied than theoretical, it is very much possible to find advisers from other departments who might be doing the same flavour of work. Contact everyone you can! Talk to other students and see if any of their advisers has funding.
As far as teaching assistantships go, often times departments take applications from students outside their own (this is true particularly for departments that get plenty of research money, example, some engineering ones). Don't hesitate to reach out to the staff in those departments!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You really only have two choices. Either you convince your advisor to advise you and finish up or you need to find a new advisor.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I doing a PhD in a research group where there are 4-5 PhD student and 1-2 Postdocs. Given the nature of the research projects, more than one person ends up working on one project and sometimes people work on multiple projects simultaneously.
I am assigned to work on a project where a postdoc is supposed to help me. Recently, a deadline arose and we had to submit a project in two weeks which was extremely tight. I am the principle person working on the design, but given the tight deadline, my advisor asked the postdoc to help complete the design. The design consisted of two parts which were simulations and drawing. I was working on the simulations which were time-consuming. I asked the postdoc to learn how to use the tool needed to draw the design and then teach it to me quickly at before the time of submission so that I do not have to go through the user guide as time was tight. He refused just after the meeting where my advisor asked him to help me saying that he will not draw anything. In the meeting, he seemed fine with helping me.
Given that I was very eager for this project to succeed, I pushed myself and completed everything on my own with no help. I submitted the design successfully.
Now I am considering telling my advisor what happened. This person is blatantly avoiding work and try to dump everything on me. This pattern of behavior has occurred more than once before. We are understaffed in this project and I cannot carry it on my own. At least three students are needed and now it seems that I am on my own.
My question is: What would be the best way to tell my advisor about this postdoc? I do not want him to get the impression that I am whiny, but I believe this is an issue needs to be addressed and that a more professional behavior is expected from the postdoc. What things should I avoid in explaining this problem? Is telling him about the issue going to help with anything?<issue_comment>username_1: Try this: "<NAME>, I'm glad we met the deadline, but I think I should tell you that I ended up doing all the work myself. I had asked Bill to get up to speed on the drawing tool so that he could jump-start me when the time came, but he didn't. Perhaps next time, you could ask us to develop a plan for partitioning work, which you would then approve."
You've let him know what happened. More importantly, you've suggested a way to prevent such problems in the future. It's a solution that doesn't require much of the professor's time, either. (And, if the "approved plan" doesn't work, at that future time you could suggest progress reports from each team member.)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: **You should tell your advisor.**
This postdoc's behavior is having an impact on you, and you have every right to raise it with your boss. In addition, this probably won't just affect you but the whole lab (if not now, then eventually).
Working really hard to compensate (and not saying anything) just covers up the problem. It probably won't be sustainable if this continues.
The key to raise this in a productive way is not to do it in a spirit of complaining or attacking the other person but simply to state factually the issue and its impact. Impact on you personally is a fair point to raise, but the impact on the whole lab's productivity and success is the most winning argument.
For example, you might say something like this:
>
> I found it really hard to complete this task, because my colleague wasn't willing to help out with the drawings. I ended up doing the whole thing myself, and I'm worried that we won't be able to complete the project if things keep going this way.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The way you describe this situation sounds fairly strange and unusual to me. I have seen plenty of professor - postdoc - PhD student collaborations, but never in the way that the PhD student was supposed to be the intellectual leader assigning tasks (such as learning to draw something) to the postdoc.
I think it is at least possible that you are misunderstanding the situation - when I was a postdoc and professors told me to help a student, the intended meaning *always* was that I should supervise and guide them, not carry out manual labor for them. Is it possible that you misinterpreted the assigned roles? Before you raise a stink about this, you better make very sure that your advisor really intended the postdoc to help in the way you wanted to use her/him, otherwise you complaining can easily do more harm to you than to her/him.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a tenured professor at a national public university. I was just on a two-year leave of absence (to do a startup) and I'm now returning to the university. I was just informed I'm going to have to teach a class on X. I protested that I don't even know what X is, but my chair said "sorry, we have no one else to teach it."
I am tempted to just refuse to teach the class, both for my own sake and the sake of the students. I've scoured the faculty handbook, but it says nothing about teaching assignments.
I'm sure this varies by institution, but what's your perception? Does a faculty member have any discretion in what he/she teaches?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Does a faculty member have any discretion in what he/she teaches?
>
>
>
Informally/unofficially: yes, they should have some say in it -- it would be weird for them not to be at least asked about their preferences. Formally/officially: how could they? If five or ten or thirty or one hundred faculty members each insist that they *must teach Y* and/or *cannot teach X* then with very high probability there will be no way to make everyone happy. Scheduling classes for a university department is a huge pain in the butt no matter what. (I have never done it myself and would never do it...because it's a huge pain in the butt. However, my current job of Graduate Coordinator is laterally adjacent to this position and close enough for me to see how difficult it is.) If you don't give department figures at least some amount of authority over the faculty members on matters pertaining to the department as a whole, then there is an ever present threat of devolving into anarchy.
More crisply: be careful. Outright refusing to do one of their core job responsibilities is the best way for a tenured faculty member to get in serious trouble, up to and including getting fired. Based on my own practical experience, it would be a bit over the top for someone to get fired after having pulled this *once*, but the point is that you'd be standing on shaky ground. Moreover, outright refusal is not a very helpful position:
>
> both for my own sake and the sake of the students.
>
>
>
I just said that doing this is probably not in your own best interest. Moreover, how is it in the interest of the students? If you really just refuse, then what happens? I guess the chair books you to teach the class anyway and you don't show up...this is not helping anyone.
So what should you do? **Talk further to the chair and other faculty.** The chair is trying to solve an administrative problem: find someone to teach X. As with most academic administrators, he is doing it under severe constraints: apparently no one else has an open teaching slot. So he has found the best "local solution" to the problem: assign Professor Fixee to do it. You should have at least one in-person conversation with the chair and go over the following two points:
1) Help him understand why his proposed solution is a bad one.
He doesn't seem to be looking at the fact that you have no knowledge of subject X whatsoever. Maybe he thinks you're exaggerating to get out of an undesirable teaching assignment. You have to let him know the truth and explore some of the implications of this with him. (By the way, could it be that you are not actually uniquely unqualified to teach subject X -- maybe nobody else knows any more than you? Maybe their one expert in subject X left suddenly? It's possible...)
2) Help him "widen the problem-solving window" to include other solutions, and take on some of the effort in solving the problem yourself.
Let's assume you are literally the worst person in the department to teach subject X. So who is actually more qualified to teach it? (*You* do the work in figuring that out.) Okay, so why are these people not teaching it -- presumably they are already loaded up with teaching assignments or other professional obligations. Can you arrange a swap with one of these faculty members? If so, do it and present that to the chair as a solution.
**TL;DR**: If you go to an administrative figure and say "Sorry, what you've asked me to do just won't work; please fix it," their answer is much more likely to be negative than if you say, "What you've asked me to do has some serious drawbacks; I'd like to propose that we do *this* instead." In my experience when two faculty members come to the relevant faculty administrator and say "We'd like to swap classes X and Y" the answer is usually yes. Why not? It creates no new problems for them to solve.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Oh dear. This is definitely a tricky situation, and I would advise you to proceed with the utmost caution. Let me start with an anecdote to illustrate how such situations can escalate into a very unpleasant series of events.
>
> Once upon a time, in a university far, far away, the following events happened:
>
>
> 1. In a department D, the department chair C assigned a senior professor P a class X, that professor P believed he was not qualified to teach.
> 2. P informed C of the problem and asked to be relieved of the assignment and to be assigned a different class instead.
> 3. C refused P's request, citing as the reason "as a faculty member of department D, you should be qualified to teach any of the core material, including class X, if you spend an adequate amount of time preparing for the assignment".
> 4. Not knowing what else to do, P made private arrangements for his postdoc Q, who was familiar with the material of class X, to give the lectures in class X, with P remaining nominally as the course instructor, and Q not being paid for his work and not having any official authorization to be involved in instruction of the class.
> 5. C found out about this, and P got in very serious trouble.
>
>
>
---
Now, to address what you wrote:
>
> Does a faculty member have any discretion in what he/she teaches?
>
>
>
No. In every university I am familiar with, the department chair (or their delegate, e.g., a vice chair or a committee) makes decisions about teaching assignments, and faculty are required to teach what they are assigned. At my institution, "failure to meet the responsibilities of instruction" is a violation of the faculty code of conduct and can result in disciplinary action and other bad consequences (including, in severe cases, termination of employment).
With that said, a competent chair will certainly at least consider advice and suggestions from faculty on such matters.
>
> I protested that I don't even know what X is
>
>
>
Forgive my cheekiness, but if you don't know what X is, can you credibly claim to "know nothing about" X? What I mean (based on a literal interpretation of your statement, which I can't say for sure is the right interpretation) is, isn't there a chance that when you find out what X is you'll realize that you actually do know something about it? For example, if I were assigned to teach database design, my first reaction would be to make the correct statement that I don't know what database design is; however, I suspect that if I did look into it, I might discover that it does relate to some things that I know, so that the statement "I know nothing about database design" is not completely true.
The reason I mention this is to point out that if I were the department chair, I might be more inclined to listen to someone with a request like yours if they showed me that they had made some effort to learn what X is, and make an estimate of the amount of effort it would take them to teach the class effectively, before making the request. Saying "I don't even know what X is" sounds like a knee-jerk, panic-induced reaction, so I may be more inclined to dismiss such a request and counsel the person making it to simply do the work of preparing for the assignment adequately. After all, we have all taught subjects on topics that we weren't 100% (or in some cases even 50%) familiar with at one point or another, and learning more about a subject you're assigned to teach is considered part of the normal work of an academic.
>
> what's your perception?
>
>
>
Based on the above analysis, I would make the following suggestions:
1. **Question your assumptions.** Maybe you are used to teaching subjects close to your expertise that you are very familiar with, so by comparison, subject X feels like something you "know nothing about". However, being a professor does not entitle you to teach only subjects you're an expert on. It is quite reasonable that once in a while you will be assigned to teach a subject you are not an expert on, or even one you know only a little about and may need to do some hard work to reach a sufficient mastery of before you can teach it well. Obviously I can't say if your assessment that you know nothing about X is correct or not, but certainly I would advise you to do some due diligence on the subject and think hard about whether your extreme "know-nothing" assessment is really a reasonable one, before taking any further action.
2. **Talk again to the department chair.** If after step 1 you still think that the chair's decision is gravely in error, go and talk to him/her again. Maybe the previous discussion happened over email, so talking in person might have better results. Come prepared with a thorough analysis of why you are the wrong person to teach the class. As <NAME> suggests, maybe come prepared with an alternate plan of who can teach the class instead of you.
3. **Recruit allies.** Before or after talking to the chair, talk to some of your other colleagues, both to get a sanity check on whether your perception is correct, and to get their support in case they agree with you. Having support from a few of your colleagues (especially ones who are influential or well-respected within the department) might make the chair view things differently.
4. **Consider formal action.** I wouldn't recommend this, but if all else fails and you still believe the assignment imposes an undue and unreasonable burden on you, most institutions would have mechanisms such as a formal grievance procedure you can file against the chair. This would make particular sense in a situation where you feel the chair gave you the assignment out of spite or bias. From your description of the situation it sounds to me like you wouldn't have a winning case, but I don't know enough to say for sure, so it's something to think about and/or consult other experienced colleagues who can consider the details of the situation.
5. **WHATEVER HAPPENS, DO NOT UNILATERALLY REFUSE TO TEACH THE COURSE.** If you can't get the decision overturned using legitimate means available to you (as described above), under no circumstance should you take matters into your own hands and fail to perform the assignment (as the person in the anecdote did, with bad consequences). Instead, in that unfortunate scenario I suggest taking the following steps:
a. Make a *reasonable, good-faith* effort to learn the material of the class as well as anyone with your background should be expected to do in a *reasonable* amount of time (where "reasonable" is probably more than *you* think you should have to spend learning the material of a class you are assigned to teach, but less than a person who truly "knows nothing about X" would need in order to teach the class as well as an expert in the subject).
b. Show up for all the lectures and teach the class (and perform all other duties related to teaching the class) to the best of your abilities given the reasonable effort you've made preparing.
c. Document in writing your expressions of disapproval of the chair's decision to assign you the class. This puts any ultimate responsibility for the decision on the chair, if and when students complain that they are being offered inadequate instruction in the class from someone who doesn't know the material well enough. It should also allow you to sleep well at night - ultimately this will prove that you did everything you could to protect the students' interests as well as your own.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Yes, you have discretion on what you teach just as you have discretion over whether you continue to work there or not. If the University wants to have teachers teach subjects they don't know, then either they are making it a challenge for you to learn it, or they have no educational standard.
When you got your Doctorate of Philosophy, YOU became the authority. The term connotes (if not *denotes*) that there *is no higher authority*. Perhaps the chair is suggesting that you don't know your field well enough, or perhaps they're being cheap -- you have to figure which one that is and hold *them* to a standard you believe in.
If they're not willing to be held to such a standard, then go talk to the Dean. Go to the Provost if you have to. If, by the end of your exploration, it turns out that they don't meet your expectations of quality, get out and save yourself a lot of disappointments.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: As many people have pointed out, you are more than capable of studying the course material, if it is in any way related to your area of expertise, and learning enough about it to teach undergraduates. (Undergraduates with poor instructors teach each other the course material all the time, for example.)
One thing that will help you is to stick fairly closely to the official textbook for the course, perhaps also studying a few other standard textbooks for perspective, so that the students have the ability to make up for any areas you are weaker in. And if students ask background questions you can't answer, it's OK to say "this is my first time teaching this class and I don't have all the answers, but I will look into that and let you know at the next class."
Nobody else seems to have pointed out what seems to be an important factor: Returning from a two-year leave of absence, you are presumably at the bottom of the pecking order when making class assignments; professors also presumably have dibs on teaching the course they taught last semester if they enjoyed it and got good student evaluations. Other class assignments were probably also made, officially or unofficially, while you were away from the university. You are simply the last available resource to fill out the course schedule before the university has to resort to hiring temps, who may be even less effective instructors than you.
However, whatever the outcome, do **NOT** take it out on the students. I once took a junior-level CS class taught by a research professor with more tenure than the Dean. He made it very clear in a thousand ways that he considered our class and its material beneath him.
-o- At that time students very carefully managed their schedules to only take one programming class per semester. He decided our class would be more interesting with programming hardware simulations. In a language he had written himself, for which there were no outside resources.
-o- In spite of clear University guidelines specifying otherwise, he refused to tell the class how much various assignments were worth, saying we wouldn't work hard enough on things that were weighted lower.
-o- Rather than publish the date of the midterm in advance, again as clearly required by University regulations, he announced at the lightly-attended class the Wednesday afternoon before Thanksgiving, hours after the dorms had already been locked up for the break, that the midterm would be given the Monday after Thanksgiving. 25% of the material on the midterm was based on new material, not in the class syllabus, introduced at that single class.
Again, this was a research professor who brought millions of dollars a year to the University. Students who complained were told that nothing could be done.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I would recommend reading "Teaching What You Don't Know" by <NAME>. Within a few pages you'll see how this is a very common situation for many professors and teachers of all levels. The book will guide on how to proceed with good strategies for teaching what you don't know and how to enjoy it.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I submitted an article to a journal several months ago, and after two rounds of revisions, I have received an email from the editor with whom I've been corresponding, in which they said that the referee is *"satisfied with the latest version"*, and therefore *"I have recommended acceptance"*. Moreover, the editor said that I would receive information soon on uploading the final version of my paper to the journal.
What I'd like to understand is if this is enough to consider my article accepted, so that on my CV, I can list it as *"accepted at \_\_\_"* or *"to appear in \_\_\_"*.
In the question *[When to label paper as "accepted" on your publication list?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/60377/80661)*, the top answer recommends to list an article as "accepted" when one has received the "final acceptance letter", but I suppose I'm not sure whether the email that I received would count as such.<issue_comment>username_1: At this point, you can safely say that the paper has been accepted. You would not be told about uploading a final version unless the paper is in fact accepted.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I recommend asking your question directly to the editor. You can ethically list the paper as accepted precisely if they say that you can, so asking should clear it up entirely.
Perhaps you are worried that asking the question will come off as "pushy" or that it could possibly jeopardize the acceptance of the paper. But that's not the way the process works -- even if an editor was unprofessional enough to have their decision swayed by an inquiry (and while I have seen lots of things go wrong in the publication process, I have never seen that), this is an especially implausible scenario: after recommending acceptance, the editor would then have a lot of work to do to justify reversing their recommendation, and this reversal would likely make them look bad to the rest of the editorial board. So there is no harm in asking.
By the way, I was in the same situation once: the language that I got was cloudy enough so that I really couldn't tell whether the paper had been accepted yet. I had a grant application due, and I wanted to list the paper as accepted, so I wrote back to ask if I could do so. They told me I could.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I came across this question today, and I want to briefly share one of my experiences. It is an opposite to the answer of @username_1, and to the final paragraph of @PeteL.Clark's answer:
Once (c.2016), I submitted a paper to a specialist, but pretty mainstream, mathematics journal, and after a round of revisions I got an email from the handling editor saying, roughly, "I have recommended this for acceptance, can you please send me your .tex files etc.", which I promptly did. A few weeks later I got an email from the editor saying that the other editors didn't like the paper (giving specific reasons), so it was being rejected. This is basically the same situation in the question, but with a different outcome.
On the flip side, I recently had an editor tell me that this "informally-accept-then-reject" is extremely rare in their journal (which is different-but-similar to the above journal), so informal acceptance is almost-guaranteed acceptance.
The point is that editors (usually) act as a team. If they recommend a paper for acceptance then often this means that they are recommending it to the other editors, but there is no guarantee that the other editors will agree. Of course, every journal works differently so contacting them, as in @PeteL.Clark's answer, is the best thing to do. I just wanted to counter-balance to optimistic replies with something more negative :-)
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a TA currently grading a set of 80 midterms for an engineering math course for fourth-year engineer undergrads. The test had four questions, each question had around four parts.
Of course, typically a student can make a wide variety of different types of errors on the exam. But what I have noticed in this exam is that some of these errors are not necessarily conceptual, yet we are basically taking all the points away for these "minor errors" (per instructor's grading scheme).
**For instance,**
* For a question with several parts. A student copied one of his own
(correct) answers from the previous part incorrectly.
* A student wrote down all the steps correctly, until the last step
where he had to evaluate the expression at a number and the mistake
was forgetting a negative sign.
* After a long derivation, a student substitute formula incorrectly (forgot a square root in the formula, ahem, Gaussian). Everything else completely correct.
There was a litter of other minor errors. Now, these students are in their final year of engineering school, so I think I can give them the benefit of the doubt that they wouldn't make silly mistakes such as writing "0 - 1 = 1" or copy things down wrong in a non-time-constrained setting, which is the situation they will most likely face when they graduate and work in industry.
Is there a way to provide feedback for a student if he or she makes silly mistakes on the exam? I do not think that giving them a zero for writing a minus sign incorrectly is a good way of either providing feedback or preventing the same mistake from happening again in their (long) lives.<issue_comment>username_1: I've used a different color ink to distinguish feedback which does not contribute to the grade this time but which might in the future. One of the general problems with an educational system which uses grades punitively as "feedback" is that completely non-punitive feedback is almost always ignored.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I believe I may be more severe in grading than some other instructors. I usually find so-called "silly" mistakes to be indicative of serious underlying issues, and I usually take off around 1/3 of the points for a whole problem. Here are two justifications:
One, this is part of the lesson: you simply can't afford "silly" mistakes. Especially in an engineering discipline, if you switch a sign or move a decimal point and fail to check for that, you'll wind up building a self-destructive and possibly life-threatening mechanism. See many stories of major projects (buildings, spacecraft, etc.) blowing up due to such errors.
Two, there is a question of efficient use of the instructor/grader's time. If there is a long problem and a "silly" mistake occurs near the first line, then it seems egregious to expect the grader to follow through a unique train of logic from faulty initial assumptions, in order to award partial credit. As an instructor, I tend to have a solution sheet and score up to the point where the logic goes off the rails, then stop. (If the other steps are absolutely self-evident, then more grade may be awarded, but this is not assured.) This way I can grade the tests for any one course section within an hour. If this labor is handed off to TA's who don't have authority to set their own protocols, then grading may wind up taking many hours, and this inefficiency may be hidden from the people with responsibility to manage the process.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: First, notice that students will typically be able to tell which of their mistakes were silly and which more significant. So for silly mistakes you don't need to write feedback other than to circle where they went wrong, and indicate the number of points taken off (or granted).
For a more serious mistake you can write more detailed feedback. Sometimes feedback here isn't necessary, either, other than to write, "see solution."
Second, you can figure out what types of errors and what frequency of errors you want to bring the grade down from A to B, from A to C, etc., and decide how many points to remove based on that.
More importantly: what's a well written exam like? Example: I'm asking them to solve this eigenvalue-eigenvector problem. If the student has a vague idea what is being sought, I want him to get one point. If he sets things up well but doesn't know what to do next, he gets two points. If he follows through well but for whatever reason didn't quite get to the perfectly correct punch line, he'll get 3 points. Perfect, complete answer: 4 points. (This is just an example of the point distribution. You might end up with a different scoring structure.) In short, the scoring should be integral to the exam design from the beginning.
Most importantly: as a TA, you should be getting special guidance from the professor for grading a midterm exam.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: This is mainly at the teacher's choice, in practice. Some deduct, say, zero or 5% of the grade for a silly arithmetic mistake (which I recommend); some deduct much more --- to the limit of those who look at the final result only and deduct 100% if it doesn't match the official solution (which I don't recommend).
It may be difficult to give an objective evaluation because in some cases a mistake at the beginning can turn an exercise into a completely different one, much easier or harder. If there is more than one person grading, you should discuss it with the rest of the group.
As a mathematician, an interesting point to consider is that not all silly mistakes are equal. In some cases, a student should realize they have made a mistake with some sanity checks at the end. Examples: if you have shown that a certain event has probability -3.72 to happen, it is clear that there is something wrong. If your symmetric matrix has non-real eigenvalues, you should notice it (if you were taught that it is impossible). More subtly, the eigenvalues you have computed may fail the trace test (sum of eigenvalues = sum of diagonal entries of the matrix); a smart student would make that check at the end as well.
In my view, submitting an answer with mistakes that fail obvious sanity checks deserves a more substantial deduction: maybe student A and student B both flipped a sign, but while student A got a perfectly plausible solution, student B really should have realized that. It's part of their job to check that the solution they find is reasonable. Especially in this age when computers do most of the work in practice, noticing when a computed solution is patently wrong is arguably more important than computing it in the first place.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: The appropriate feedback on an error depends on how obvious it is to the student and how severe it is to the answer. It is usual to penalise "silly mistakes" on examinations, both for diagnostic reasons and to create an incentive for students to improve their work. In cases where there is annotated feedback, the degree of gentleness/harshness is generally calibrated by considering what stage of the degree the student is in, and the corresponding expectations.
For "silly errors" (spelling/grammar errors, calculation mistakes, transposition errors, copying errors, etc.) it is usually sufficient just to circle the error (I use red pen) to alert the student to the problem. The error should be penalised appropriately, with consideration given to the totality of the question. In most cases like this the student will be able to self-diagnose the error without any textual statement explaining it; they will see what they did wrong and why they lost marks, so there is no real need for an explanation. For larger errors, or errors on more subtle aspects of the material, one might circle the error and then provide an accompanying textual explanation. In some cases you might also annotate the number of marks that were lost for the error.
As to your proposal to give students the "benefit of the doubt", and avoid penalisation, that sounds silly to me. Firstly, there is no "doubt" for which to give benefit --- they made an error and it should be penalised as such. Secondly, marking examinations necessarily entails a judgment of work under time-constrained conditions; the mark is *supposed to* reflect the quality of the student's work on the exam, not your premonition of how they might do in practice if they were working without a time constraint. And finally, because they are in their final year it is *all the more important* that they are becoming more accurate in their working and purging "silly errors" from their work. Hell, some lecturers would probably go further than just circling errors at this final stage of the degree, and start writing some more blunt messages that alert them to the fact that it is unacceptable to make "silly" calculation errors in the profession --- "Wrong; your bridge just fell down and killed three people."
As one final point, if you mark work regularly, it is useful to make up some *custom rubber stamps* for common feedback you want to give on your exams. When I mark assingments/exams I often penalise an initial error but then treat that error as a premise for the remainder of the question, so that even if the final answer is wrong, it doesn't get penalised a second time. I have a little stamp made up that says "Error carries through: No further mark deducted" for this purpose. I also sometimes point out an error that is too minor (or below the level of expectation for the course) to warrant a marking penalty. I have another stamp that says "Error: No mark deducted" for this purpose. This saves me getting carpel tunnel syndrome from writing the same things out over and over again on exams.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/28
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<issue_start>username_0: Given the premise of any form of testing is the evaluation of one's knowledge in comparison to the population (i.e. class) as a whole and a set body of knowledge (i.e. syllabus).
How does one approach the issue of answering conceptual questions that are completely groundless in a multiple choice format? I know that as an essay format, one can take positions and point out the flaws in the prompt. But in a format where there is (in theory) always a correct answer, what options does one have?
The following are poor examples, but it summarizes the question succinctly.
>
> Vaccines cause autism. Studies have shown that Vaccine causes autism.
> When 100 people were surveyed by University X, 98% agreed that V = A.
>
>
>
Question: What causes Autism?
A: Vaccines
B: Genetics
C: Baseball
>
> The world is flat. If one were to travel too far in any direction, they will fall off the earth.
>
>
>
Question: What will happen if you travel too far East?
A: You will end up on the other side
B: You will fall off
C: Nothing will Happen
Does one exclude the knowledge that they have gained from learning in the greater world and operate within the "confines" of the question, or do they reject the confines and operate on what is and proven at the present?
---
I asked a friend of mine this question, he/she responded that I had to approach the problem as a logic problem within 'closed system', meaning not to infer any additional knowledge outside the realm of the question.
If one were to approach the problem with the intent of seeking to maximize one's grade, i.e. the choice that will generate a point, then the answer is evident from the examples provided.
If one were to approach the problem with the intent of seeking to answer with the correct answer, i.e. the choice that most accurately reflects a person's belief (or that of society as a whole), then the answer is evident from the examples provided.
But what if the question is political or advocates a hateful rhetoric that is only believed by the question-maker (and therefore the grade-maker)?
If a personal belief is in opposition to the greater whole (i.e. An abolitionist in the South before the US Civil War, learning about social structure) what is the 'correct' answer?
Does the 'closed-system' extend to the class as a whole, irrespective of the outside world, and one's personal beliefs seconded to the beliefs of the grade-maker?
What is the overriding prerogative? Maximizing one's beliefs or grade?<issue_comment>username_1: I've used a different color ink to distinguish feedback which does not contribute to the grade this time but which might in the future. One of the general problems with an educational system which uses grades punitively as "feedback" is that completely non-punitive feedback is almost always ignored.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I believe I may be more severe in grading than some other instructors. I usually find so-called "silly" mistakes to be indicative of serious underlying issues, and I usually take off around 1/3 of the points for a whole problem. Here are two justifications:
One, this is part of the lesson: you simply can't afford "silly" mistakes. Especially in an engineering discipline, if you switch a sign or move a decimal point and fail to check for that, you'll wind up building a self-destructive and possibly life-threatening mechanism. See many stories of major projects (buildings, spacecraft, etc.) blowing up due to such errors.
Two, there is a question of efficient use of the instructor/grader's time. If there is a long problem and a "silly" mistake occurs near the first line, then it seems egregious to expect the grader to follow through a unique train of logic from faulty initial assumptions, in order to award partial credit. As an instructor, I tend to have a solution sheet and score up to the point where the logic goes off the rails, then stop. (If the other steps are absolutely self-evident, then more grade may be awarded, but this is not assured.) This way I can grade the tests for any one course section within an hour. If this labor is handed off to TA's who don't have authority to set their own protocols, then grading may wind up taking many hours, and this inefficiency may be hidden from the people with responsibility to manage the process.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: First, notice that students will typically be able to tell which of their mistakes were silly and which more significant. So for silly mistakes you don't need to write feedback other than to circle where they went wrong, and indicate the number of points taken off (or granted).
For a more serious mistake you can write more detailed feedback. Sometimes feedback here isn't necessary, either, other than to write, "see solution."
Second, you can figure out what types of errors and what frequency of errors you want to bring the grade down from A to B, from A to C, etc., and decide how many points to remove based on that.
More importantly: what's a well written exam like? Example: I'm asking them to solve this eigenvalue-eigenvector problem. If the student has a vague idea what is being sought, I want him to get one point. If he sets things up well but doesn't know what to do next, he gets two points. If he follows through well but for whatever reason didn't quite get to the perfectly correct punch line, he'll get 3 points. Perfect, complete answer: 4 points. (This is just an example of the point distribution. You might end up with a different scoring structure.) In short, the scoring should be integral to the exam design from the beginning.
Most importantly: as a TA, you should be getting special guidance from the professor for grading a midterm exam.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: This is mainly at the teacher's choice, in practice. Some deduct, say, zero or 5% of the grade for a silly arithmetic mistake (which I recommend); some deduct much more --- to the limit of those who look at the final result only and deduct 100% if it doesn't match the official solution (which I don't recommend).
It may be difficult to give an objective evaluation because in some cases a mistake at the beginning can turn an exercise into a completely different one, much easier or harder. If there is more than one person grading, you should discuss it with the rest of the group.
As a mathematician, an interesting point to consider is that not all silly mistakes are equal. In some cases, a student should realize they have made a mistake with some sanity checks at the end. Examples: if you have shown that a certain event has probability -3.72 to happen, it is clear that there is something wrong. If your symmetric matrix has non-real eigenvalues, you should notice it (if you were taught that it is impossible). More subtly, the eigenvalues you have computed may fail the trace test (sum of eigenvalues = sum of diagonal entries of the matrix); a smart student would make that check at the end as well.
In my view, submitting an answer with mistakes that fail obvious sanity checks deserves a more substantial deduction: maybe student A and student B both flipped a sign, but while student A got a perfectly plausible solution, student B really should have realized that. It's part of their job to check that the solution they find is reasonable. Especially in this age when computers do most of the work in practice, noticing when a computed solution is patently wrong is arguably more important than computing it in the first place.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: The appropriate feedback on an error depends on how obvious it is to the student and how severe it is to the answer. It is usual to penalise "silly mistakes" on examinations, both for diagnostic reasons and to create an incentive for students to improve their work. In cases where there is annotated feedback, the degree of gentleness/harshness is generally calibrated by considering what stage of the degree the student is in, and the corresponding expectations.
For "silly errors" (spelling/grammar errors, calculation mistakes, transposition errors, copying errors, etc.) it is usually sufficient just to circle the error (I use red pen) to alert the student to the problem. The error should be penalised appropriately, with consideration given to the totality of the question. In most cases like this the student will be able to self-diagnose the error without any textual statement explaining it; they will see what they did wrong and why they lost marks, so there is no real need for an explanation. For larger errors, or errors on more subtle aspects of the material, one might circle the error and then provide an accompanying textual explanation. In some cases you might also annotate the number of marks that were lost for the error.
As to your proposal to give students the "benefit of the doubt", and avoid penalisation, that sounds silly to me. Firstly, there is no "doubt" for which to give benefit --- they made an error and it should be penalised as such. Secondly, marking examinations necessarily entails a judgment of work under time-constrained conditions; the mark is *supposed to* reflect the quality of the student's work on the exam, not your premonition of how they might do in practice if they were working without a time constraint. And finally, because they are in their final year it is *all the more important* that they are becoming more accurate in their working and purging "silly errors" from their work. Hell, some lecturers would probably go further than just circling errors at this final stage of the degree, and start writing some more blunt messages that alert them to the fact that it is unacceptable to make "silly" calculation errors in the profession --- "Wrong; your bridge just fell down and killed three people."
As one final point, if you mark work regularly, it is useful to make up some *custom rubber stamps* for common feedback you want to give on your exams. When I mark assingments/exams I often penalise an initial error but then treat that error as a premise for the remainder of the question, so that even if the final answer is wrong, it doesn't get penalised a second time. I have a little stamp made up that says "Error carries through: No further mark deducted" for this purpose. I also sometimes point out an error that is too minor (or below the level of expectation for the course) to warrant a marking penalty. I have another stamp that says "Error: No mark deducted" for this purpose. This saves me getting carpel tunnel syndrome from writing the same things out over and over again on exams.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/28
| 342
| 1,448
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<issue_start>username_0: Title says all! I can't seem to find any answers pertaining to my question on google, and so I'm wondering if anyone here could share their thoughts/knowledge. Your help is much appreciated :)<issue_comment>username_1: I can imagine that this may be theoretcally possible in some jurisdictions. I suspect that this is rare.
However, if you need legal advice, go get yourself a lawyer. Do not trust the advice of a random person on the internet.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: It depends on the examination regulations.
**Some** examination regulations allow an awarded degree to be revoked in case of general misconduct, even if it is not related to the degree itself. It appears reasonable that such policy would also apply to a severe adacemic offense conducted during the undergraduate studies.
For the **other** examination regulation that do not include this policy, there is no legal basis for revoking the degree for an offense that is not related to the thesis.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: If the offense committed as an undergraduate was severe enough as to cause the undergraduate degree to be revoked, then it is possible to affect graduate enrollment under the guise of "fraudulent admission." (You shouldn't have been admitted because you knew you had committed an offense which would make you inadmissible, and therefore you are ineligible to enroll in the graduate program.)
Upvotes: 2
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2017/10/28
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing a paper where the proofs involve more than one field of mathematics. Call them fields X and Y for simplification. This is not very unusual, but I think it may confuse the editor in the following sense:
There are several motivations for the paper coming from both fields X and Y. However, all technically hard parts in the proofs belong to field X.
So, in my opinion, it would be best to get at least 2 referees, at least one of them from field X (but another one from field Y would be great, at least to give comments regarding the motivation).
While I am not the first one to write about the problem my paper attacks, it is still a rather new problem, and an editor possibly will not have the right "feeling" about what kind of expertise is required for working on this problem.
Even more confusing: Previous work on this problem has been done through field Z, which is certainly not my approach (people from field Z will have to struggle quite a bit with the technical parts of my paper, as I had to struggle with reading their work).
My contribution in this paper is "generalization, theory building, solving some open problems stated by others, stating new open problems". But there is another contribution - I give new motivation which applies also to previous work (not done by me), but went unnoticed.
I would like to communicate to the editor the information regarding what kind of mathematicians I think should review my paper (when I submit it). However, I am afraid it may come out as very rude: Not only I am telling him how to do his work, I am telling him how to judge my own work! Yet, if I were the editor (I am young and not an editor anywhere), I think I would appreciate the information that "this is how the author thinks I should do my work".
Should I communicate any of this information to the editor? What part of it? If coming out as rude was not be an issue at all, I would send a list of possible reviewers explaining why they are good for the job in my opinion.<issue_comment>username_1: This certainly sounds like it could be communicated through a cover letter. This does not guarantee that your comments are actually being *read* by the associate editor, though - at least in my field, cover letters are uncommon enough for journal papers that I typically don't even check if there is one if I get a paper to handle. However, it is unclear to me what practical other ways you have to communicate with a handling editor where you don't know yet who it will be.
That said, you *never* have a guarantee that the editor will take your input on reviewers into account. Personally, I tend to be fairly sceptical about "suggested reviewers" or anything that approaches this - maybe I am too suspicious, but whenever authors suggest a reviewer, especially when not explicitly asked to do so, I immediately assume that this reviewer will be in some way positively biased, even if no conflict is obvious from the outside.
So my summary is - sure, (briefly) explain your reasoning in the cover letter, but don't get your hopes up too much that this will change substantially how your manuscript will be handled.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: In biophysics, many journals actually ask authors to provide suggestions for reviewers. If you have not done so already, have a look at the submission system and the author guidelines to see if this is the case for your journal.
Otherwise you may be able to choose the editor, so choose the one that you think understands your paper and has the right reviewer network to choose from.
In any case: make it clear in the key words and abstract of your paper what it is about. The editor will use these to choose the reviewers.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: First, you need to write a good introduction to your paper, explaining all of the issues you have stated in the question. After all, if you are worried the editor will be confused about these issues, you should also be worried that readers of your paper will be confused (unless your aim is to only have readers who are in your subsubsubsubfield who already know these issues). State early in the introduction what kinds of technical expertise your reader will need. State that you are providing a new motivation to old problems. State that you do not use field Z at all.
Editors generally do read a few paragraphs into the introduction, so that should take care of some of the worry.
Second, when you are choosing a journal, try to choose one with an editor who is familiar with this area of work and will be able to look at your paper and choose the right reviewers. Ideally, the editor is someone who has at least seen you talk about your work (perhaps not this particular work but something related) at a conference or someone whose prior work is important to the paper.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: Just include a covering letter that suggests that, although the paper uses both X and Y, it would probably be better to find reviewers who are X-theorists who know some Y, rather than Y-theorists who know some X. Z doesn't seem very relevant to reviewer choice, but you could mention early in the introduction (or perhaps even in the abstract, if it's significant enough) that you don't use any Z theory.
Some journals invite authors to suggest particular reviewers to use or avoid. If you're submitting to a journal that does that, you could use that section of the submission form to make this suggestion, instead of a covering letter.
Upvotes: -1
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2017/10/28
| 3,084
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<issue_start>username_0: One of my professors is bullying me, so I filed a complaint with the Dean of the graduate school. He said, "While the investigation is in progress, you are not to attend class." He said that I was still responsible for passing the class and completing all assignments and taking all exams, but to not attend the class. I have a midterm in a week and this week, the study guide is being handed out. How I am suppose to pass this class? If I fail, I will lose all of my financial aid and will not be able to continue my education. I do not know what to do. The Dean also told me not to discuss my situation with anyone except him and he meant that I cannot even discuss this situation with family and friends and not to have any contact with the professor, including email contact. So, how do I turn in my papers?
Update: I had a friend go to class to pick up the study guide and the professor had absolutely no idea why I was not attending class. In other words, the Dean never spoke with him.<issue_comment>username_1: The answer to the title question is, unfortunately, that the Dean of your graduate school is in a much better position to know whether he can prevent you from attending class than we are: we don't know what the school is, and we don't know any of the details of what sounds like an ugly situation. This is not the sort of question that you can rely on the internet to answer.
Having said that, given only what you've said, the Dean's directive sounds outrageous. A student's right to attend class should only be forfeited by serious negative behavior on the part of the student. Reporting negative behavior *of the instructor* should not remotely qualify. Moreover, a student who may not attend class should be withdrawn from the course...because the alternative does not make much sense. In this case, if your withdrawal is necessary then you should be excused of any negative consequences of it.
I am at a loss to make any specific recommendations to you. Frankly, as you depict it the Dean's behavior is so outrageous that I have to wonder about the further details of your story, including the nature of the bullying, but a sufficiently full accounting of your story would involve divulging too much personal information on the internet, so I am *not* fishing for more information here. On the off chance that the Dean is simply behaving very strangely, it could not hurt to follow up with other university officials: e.g. your own academic advisor, an ombudsperson, the human resources department and/or the registrar.
Finally, 99% of the time, using the American legal system to resolve academic disputes is the wrong thing to do. But (depending in part on the nature of the bullying) your case might be in the 1%. Your issue -- namely that your institution is handling your allegations of interpersonal workplace misconduct in a way that seems inappropriately punitive to you -- is not an inherently academic one. So you might look into exploring that further.
Good luck.
**Added**: @tonysdg's comment of looking into withdrawal is a good one. I wouldn't *only* do this, but if withdrawing from the course saves you from failing and losing your financial aid, then it would give you some breathing room at least.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: First, I think it would be helpful to get to the bottom of why the dean is behaving this way.
One theory I can think of is that the dean may be intentionally putting obstacles in your path, perhaps hoping that you will drop the complaint and save him the headache of dealing with it. Perhaps he doesn’t believe your complaint, or is friends with the professor and wants to believe your complaint is false or exaggerated, or simply thinks protecting his institution’s interests requires him to automatically defend any faculty member and make life difficult for any student complaining against them.
Alternatively, he may be worried that the situation is so delicate that any interaction between you and the professor is risky and could lead to bad things happening to you, which would lead to more trouble for his institution, so such interaction must be avoided at all costs, and the only way to avoid it (other than removing the professor from teaching to class, which he may not feel comfortable/allowed to do while the accusations are still being investigated) is to instruct you not to attend class.
The first scenario, where the dean is actively opposing you out of spite or bad faith, is more problematic than the second, where his intentions may be decent but he has simply made a bad call. (Actually the decision to separate you from the professor may not be terrible given the situation, but he hasn’t thought out the implications of you not attending class - it is essential that he provide you with a way to mitigate the harm this would do to your studies.) But in any case I assume you have better insight into the dean’s motivations based on your interactions with him.
So what should you do? You need someone who knows the system and its rules and can advocate for you. Normally I would recommend going to someone from the administration, but here it’s the administration that is mistreating you. Fortunately, many institutions have third party groups and resources protecting students’ interests and/or offering impartial advice. Two I can think of are:
* the university ombuds office/person
* the student union
My suggestion is to go talk to one or both of those, tell them the details of the situation and ask for help.
The bottom line is that being told to successfully complete a class under a professor who is bullying you without being allowed to attend class does not sound to me like a reasonable or acceptable way to address a complaint by a student, so you are quite right to be concerned. Good luck!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: My best guess given the very limited information that you've provided is that the dean is trying to CYA by preventing any contact between you and the professor to forestall any possibility that you might be able to file a retaliation lawsuit. You could go to the provost, but if this is the way things are done there it probably won't be much help.
Unless there's more information you've omittted, this sounds like a very hostile situation and they are on the defensive. Document absolutely every interaction with these people and get legal advice from someone who specializes in higher ed law before doing anything else. And do whatever you can to stay in good academic standing--that is the first thing hostile departments attack because it's very difficult for students to fight it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Strictly talking, yes, a school can (and must) forbid access to an student **in some very concrete situations**: the student has a contagious illness; the student is making violent and public actions that prevents the normal behavior of the class; ... .
However, you say the ban has been triggered by a bullying complain from you. This is far, very far, from previous scenarios. You are the possible victim of a bad behavior from teacher, you can not be punished in any way.
Moreover, the ban to talk with any one is absolutely illegal. You have the right to talk with anyone, the right to find the best advice, etc.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: 1. **Talk to your parents and to your friends immediately.** At the very least, you'll need a witness on your side the next time you speak with the dean. Of course, if you're afraid your parents or your friends would trigger a confrontation with the professor or if you're afraid that they'll make things worse, then choose appropriately. That being said, if you trust your family and friends, tell all of them. If someone in your family refers you a good lawyer, that's even better. If the dean is upset when you bring a family member/friend, or your own lawyer. Don't worry about it. If he's upset about that, he's definitely going to be super upset when he finds out that you're not going to back down and not make things convenient for him.
2. If you can't find a good lawyer through your family and friends network. Go to the nearest law library, do a Lexis-Nexus search on lawsuits against your University, against your particular school/department, and against you particular Professor or dean. If a law library with free Lexis-Nexus access is too far, just do a google search and look for news stories that reference lawsuits related to your school. Then, contact those lawyers that have sued your school. However, if this takes too long, or if you don't find a good lawyer that way, you can always go to the default step 3.
3. Call your local state bar association and ask for a referral. They should be able to tell you what kind of lawyer you need (I assume you'll need a lawyer that specializes in religious discrimination, but I could be wrong. I'm just a layman myself, I am not a lawyer). The first 30 minutes of a consultation are free. Do not get a lawyer who has graduated from your current university. Some alumni have strong social ties with their school. I know this is silly, but it's probably best to avoid alumni from your University, or avoid lawyers that have too many potential ties with your professor or your dean, whether academic ties or religious. Of course, if they've graduated from the same university and also sued their alma mater repeatedly, then that should be fine.
That being said, once you find a good lawyer who's not afraid to sue the school. His first instinct should not be to sue. His first instinct should be to call the dean and to find an amicable resolution to your problems.
Also, you may need to offer the deal to the dean that you'll never again contradict or correct publicly (or even privately) that professor if you can come to an agreement that guarantees that you will be treated with cordial indifference during class and treated fairly during exams and assignments, or that guarantees at least that your financial aid doesn't get affected by not having enough letter-graded units for the current term.
And by treated fairly during exams and assignments, I mean that another professor should take over the responsibility for grading your own assignments and exams. And that the original professor shouldn't try to introduce religious translations into his assignments and exam questions as a final way of getting back at you.
And finally, you should look at review sites for lecturers and find out if this professor or the dean have done anything similar to other students. Plus, you should put out feelers to your school friends to see if they might know someone who knows someone who was also mistreated by those two people.
Just keep this off from social media. If a social media campaign is needed, let your legal counsel decide if/when it's necessary and let him supervise it himself.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: What do your university's policy and procedures say? They should be available online. Unless they call for this, the dean's instructions smack of retaliation.
Retaliation is hard to prove. I suggest a follow-up email to the dean. Here is some starting point text (even if you choose to follow this suggested strategy, you'd of course need to edit and make it your own):
>
> Thank you very much for meeting with me yesterday. I want to make sure I understood your instructions. I was a bit nervous during our appointment and I'm not sure I took everything in properly.
>
>
> When you said I should stop going to class, were you giving me that as a suggestion? Or is that a required part of the grievance process? Can you send me a copy of the university's grievance policy and procedures, so I can understand the process better?
>
>
> I feel confused about the attendance part. I want to do as well as I can in this class, and I feel that attending class is crucial for optimal learning.
>
>
> If you're saying I *must* stop attending, then I'll need instructions on how to turn in homework and a delayed exam. Also, I'll need an Incomplete, because the end of the semester is only x days away, and I'll have to do extra work on my own to make up for the missed classes.
>
>
>
Question: do you feel that the bullying was discriminatory? In other words, do you think the professor singled you out because of something like race, sex, color, religion, age, disability, protected veteran status, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, etc.? And if your answer is yes, then comes a question that's at least as important: Do you have any convincing evidence? If so, the route you chose might not be the optimal route; you might want to follow the university's civil rights grievance procedure instead. (I strongly advise you to read your university's online documents about grievances of both types. Do ask questions here and on campus if there are parts you don't understand.)
**IMPORTANT**
Please change your userid here to something unrelated to your name or identifying features.
Upvotes: 0
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2017/10/29
| 3,487
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently talked with my advisor and several other professors from the same field about student–teacher interaction in class. Several of them said they had noticed that men participated in class and interacted with them significantly more than women, and that they thought this is a problem because:
* Classes work better when students participate and there’s a dialogue
* If students do not ask questions, they (professors) have no way to know whether the students are actually learning.
* It is easier to recognize/get to know/appreciate a student, and therefore eventually write him/her a good recommendation letter or invite him/her to work with you if you notice said student in class.
All this got me thinking: is this a real phenomenon and if yes, why is it an issue? I think perhaps, it’s also a matter of perception: at some point in the conversation my advisor said he considered I was very quiet in class too, and I’ve never perceived myself as such.<issue_comment>username_1: Your question is broad, but I will respond to this part:
"(professors) have no way to know whether the students are actually learning"
Yes, this is an issue, and it can be fixed by using formal assessments before and after the course to determine what students learn.
There are certainly important interactions between gender and class participation, but they would depend on your local culture and how your classroom is run.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The point is that in an ideal world we would like people's academic and later career success to be determined solely by their intrinsic talent and by how hard they work. Unfortunately other factors that ought to be irrelevant get in the way and also end up having an effect. One of many examples is the particular issue you mentioned, which is the fact that someone who is very shy and never asks questions is likely to hurt their success in various ways.
Now, this is true irrespective of gender, but it becomes a gender issue if/when/to the extent that (in a particular setting or context) female students may find it more difficult or intimidating to ask questions than male students, with the effect that they end up (statistically, as a group - obviously this does not necessarily apply to any individual student) unfairly disadvantaged in similar ways to how shy students in general are disadvantaged. I can't say from personal experience whether that's true, but I've certainly read many testimonials (that seemed credible to me) to that effect: a female in a classroom or workplace that is almost exclusively male (and often hostile to women in subtle ways that are hard to gauge or quantify) may find it more difficult to make her voice heard effectively than her male colleagues do. I don't know about you, but it sure sounds like an "issue" to me.
Hope this clarifies things. And please listen to your adviser's advice to speak up more in class. That sounds like good advice regardless of whether you are male or female.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: (This is purely anecdotal but) I do think that within some contexts there is a major issue in terms of gender representation in class participation. This however isn't due to some biological difference, its because of the context and environment. Take STEM for example. It can often be quite daunting or difficult to speak out to ask questions (requiring clarification can be seen as weakness) and in an industry that is so heavily dominated by males (less than 20% female in engineering at my uni I believe) it can make it hard for women to participate as it brings a lot of, sometimes unwanted, attention to themselves. The possibility that they may make a mistake or appear confused presents another opportunity for a false and harmful stereotype that men are superior to women in the field to be perpetuated and so I think women sometimes refrain from participating to avoid this.
This obviously is a little more case specific, and I feel that in other subjects/industries, women are better represented and participate at a higher capacity.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: One part of the difference is not that **women** are different in their willingness to ask questions, but anyone **visibly different** is. I was an undergrad in a class of 44. There were 4 women: two of one visible ethnicity, and two of another. My hair was a different colour and length than the other woman of my ethnicity. This meant **everyone** knew who we were. If we were late, asked a question that showed we hadn't been listening, or did anything else, everyone knew who did that. In contrast there were 5 or 6 white guys with short dark hair and football player builds who wore leather class jackets and sat at the back. There were 5 or 6 guys of several other ethnicities, and 5 or 6 nerdy glasses-wearing white guys with bad fashion sense. I got some of them confused sometimes. They all had somewhere to hide. They could blurt something out without much consequence.
If you would like more people to participate in your class, make sure you don't punish "bad" participation at all. It may be fun to be the person who answers a question with *"I see somebody skipped the pre class reading"* and then just turn away, but it ensures a large chunk of the class will not ask that sort of question again, and those who do will use up class time with defensive speeches about how they were reading the blah and blah "and on page (flip flip yes here it is, 73) it says (read sentence) and so I was wondering whether "permanent" is really appropriate here" and so on.
You can also call on students who don't ask many questions, asking them questions. My PhD supervisor did this constantly. Like 5-10 times an hour. "... and so if we reduce this completely, the result is ... Mrs Gregory?" (he was such a formal guy, called us all Mr and Mrs) and if I was following I would say the next line in the work, and if I wasn't I would say "I don't know" and he would call on someone else. This kind of approach keeps people engaged (you never know when you'll be called on) and gives everyone practice speaking up in class. (Plus it teaches you when to say "I don't know" - and he never had a problem with us not knowing.)
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: >
> Is this a real phenomenon?
>
>
>
**Yes.** Gender differences in classroom participation have been noted and explored by sociologists probably since the moment women were admitted into college classrooms with men. Five seconds with google gave me [this article](https://www.jstor.org/stable/3648264?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents) whose introduction gives an overview of the research into this question going back to at least the '70s.
>
> Why is it an issue?
>
>
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Because classroom participation is associated with higher grades/achievements. I'm not in the field so I can't tell you about the state of the evidence for causality here, but there's several reasons to think that there is at least a partial causal relationship (such as what you said about recommendation letters), and that if women were able to engage in the classroom in the same way as men, this would improve their grades. (Note that this isn't quite the same thing as just talking more: there are some complicating factors, such as women being perceived as talking too much/dominating the conversation as soon as 30% of speaking time is used by women. If women 'just speak up more' they get different results than when men do.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Another reason why overparticipation by male students and underparticipation by female students is generally not healthy is that participation by women can have many positive effects on the science being done in the class or the department. (Substitute your endeavor for the word "science" if you wish.)
---
There are lots of reasons girls' participation drops off (which I think starts to occur noticeably in approximately 6th grade).
1 The boys are all falling over themselves showing off their prowess
solving messy algebraic equations that have a lot of fractions with
large denominators. What a waste of time, if I've got the procedure
down already. [Notice, the positive effect on the class this point
of view would have (if truly listened to)?]
2 Validating the teacher's need for certain types of responses from students should not be my responsibility. I'm here for my own
education, not to stroke the teacher.
3 I can be more productive, for example getting through the homework assignment during class, if I don't waste my time doing show-offy
things like certain annoying male classmates.
4 Is it really necessary for all the word problems to be about rocket trajectories and heat-seeking particles? Hey, could we have
a little variety here?
5 I like math, but I can't see myself teaching a math class, because most, or all, of my math teachers starting in *nth* grade have been
men.
6 When we do group work, the boy(s) in the group always dominate(s) the discussion, and arrogantly tries to takes all the credit for what our group did. This is embarrassing. I will try to disappear into the woodwork now.
7 My (male) teacher admired my earrings last week, and this made me extremely uncomfortable. I will do my best to be quiet and disappear into the woodwork. It makes me uncomfortable when he looks at me or calls my name.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: I can share my part of experiences in this regard. It is pretty common to observe what you have observed. I have a class size of 60 (an elective course) and I am the lecturer.
In one of the lecture hour, I have a problem (in Computer Science) on the board to be solved many students. I was feeling that the class is not interactive. So, I made a set of subgroups in which each group contained 5-6 students. The ratio of female students to male students is too low (say 3:10).
The interaction between me and my students really improved because of this classroom experiment.
Overall, these are my observation:
1. Many female students do not participate because the ratio is skewed.
2. There is no active student group, in the sense that the course might not be of interest. Then, it is the responsibility of the lecturer to make it interesting.
3. Asking easy questions first and then increasing the hardness of questions with time. Giving everyone to speak. So, here questions with the very easy answer would help the students to speak up.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: There is a [TED talk](https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are/transcript) that touches on this. In the talk, Dr Cuddy describes how the level of cortisol can change how comfortable you are taking risks. Folk with more cortisol experience more fear of social embarrassment and are more cautious. In particular, in a group setting they will try and avoid drawing attention to themselves, and will ask fewer questions. Regarding non-contributions in groups;
>
> I notice a couple of things about this. One, you're not going to be surprised. It seems to be related to gender. So women are much more likely to do this kind of thing than men.
>
>
>
Normally the "biological difference" argument is nonsense, but here I think it at least part of the truth.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: >
> is [participation by gender in class] a real phenomenon?
>
>
>
[A research study](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360131506001229) on this showed that it varies by the type of environment - they looked at the web classes versus in person classes. This still doesn't consider many other possible factors:
* What's the make-up of the class (equal gender ratio) and how does this relate to who talks more?
* What's the topic of the class and does this relate to who talks more?
* When we say that men are more talkative in person classes, are we talking about **ALL** of the men, or a select few. IE: my own observation in 50+ classes I've been in suggests its always the same few men who are talkative, while the majority say nothing. But a sample size of 50? Statistically irrelevant.
* Is the talking relevant to the topic? Does it indicate misunderstanding? Is it actually moving the class forward? IE: a person who asks a lot of questions may not understand; people may participate less if they understand more, such as a person never asking a question because he understands everything and doesn't need to. [Women are excelling in school more than men](https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2014/09/why-girls-get-better-grades-than-boys-do/380318/), so if we assume women participate less than men, does that mean they're not learning? The data doesn't support that at all.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_10: I was a part time elective teacher at a private school for a few years. (These were all high school kids either in their freshmen or sophomore years; I taught Health/Safety and Driver's education, and between those two classes, I've probably only taught Health/Safety class maybe once or twice -ever- in a given school quarter).
With that said, here's my two cents on your question:
1. I've always avoided trying to derive any particular trend correlating between gender/participation. I've seen my shares of kids (of any gender) who do well in my classes, and quite a few (again, of any gender) who do poorly.
2. As far as I know, towawrds the middle of the school session (as I'd be running 8 week courses in either subject), kids do get quite rowdy prior to the midterms, and once again upon the eve of finals. In the summertime, this is where I'd generally see the female students act louder in class. Males, too.
Again it depends on what types of kids would be enrolled in class.
3. Now who gets the prize for most disruptive? BOTH.
4. Maybe one other instance where I've seen one gender out-particpate the other is when I'd have a higher male to female ratio in attendance (i've had classes as little as 10-15 students before and all but like 3 were male). In which case any of the females would not nearly be as active.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I was wondering if ECTS Credits are based on performance. For example, I know a course is say 5 ects credits, are those 5 credits awarded to a passing grade or is it based on performance and only a part of those credits are awarded depending on your grades?<issue_comment>username_1: You get all of them if you pass. In contrast to the US there's also less of a grade inflation so it's pretty common to have an average somewhere between a B and C which would mean most students would need much more courses if ECTS would inly be awarded partially.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The credits refer to the quantity of studying. 60 ECTS credits makes up one year of study. To complete a degree, you need a fixed number of credits, ie you must pass a certain number of modules (or equivalent). The grade of the degree you are awarded is determined by how well you do in those courses.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: As the previous answers indicate, ECTS credits are award in full for each passing grade (what exactly constitutes a passing grade differs from country to country).
I can think of at least a couple of important reasons why this is so:
1. If you would somehow get more ECTS for doing better in a course, students who get the equivalent of "all As" would actually be able to graduate with less knowledge (i.e., after doing less courses) than students who barely pass a lot more courses. This would construct a weird incentive system, where students who graduate with few courses and good grades may in some contexts appear weaker than a student with terrible grades.
2. Grades would become *very* important then, making grade rubbing an even larger problem. Discussions akin to "with this B I can't graduate this year" would become commonplace, and nobody wants that.
3. On a related note, students would lose the ability to plan their studies. You may *think* that you can graduate this year, but only after getting all grades in you know if you have the required amount of ECTS to do so. It may turn out that one course was harder than expected, and you needed to do an extra course. Yes, in theory this is also true nowadays where failing a course can leave you unable to graduate against your expectations, but the danger of unexpectedly failing a course is much lower than simply having a worse grade than expected.
4. There would be even larger incentives for students to select easy over challenging courses.
There are further important aspects for curriculum design etc., but I think even the ones I listed are already sufficient to argue why ECTS are granted in full.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I have published a paper in *Journal of Chemical Education* by my supervisor. This is about a teaching approach for an undergraduate course. The paper was peer-reviewed and we spent more time on it than a research paper.
In my CV (I am applying for a faculty position), the list of publications is normally peer-reviewed research articles. Can I add this paper to the same list or it is better to create a separate section in my CV?
My worry is that this may undermine the entire list that some of other papers are not based on cutting-edge research.<issue_comment>username_1: It is very simple: everything that is published is a publication. However, some authors choose to only list peer-reviewed publications. In both cases your educational paper qualifies.
Of course you are free to list certain types of publications in separate sections on your CV if you think it is better. How that is viewed depends on the person reading the CV. For what it's worth: in my opinion any list of publications has papers that are better than others even if it is all original research. There is no reason to list it separately.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: An easy resolution is, you can organize your publications in two categories. Enlist the regular "cutting-edge" research papers first, and later on, add a separate heading: *Other Publications*, in which you can refer to these variety as *Undergraduate Research Publication(s)*. The latter category will only be a bonus as far as the research profile is concerned, since it indicates that you were into mini-research even before getting to grad school. That is definitely a plus-point, or even at worst, mentioning this doesn't seem to have any negative point for sure.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: While this may seem unfair intuitively, I want to know whether if it is **fair** for a professor to have an extra question for specific students in the class.
A little background: In a calculus class, 3 out of a 16 ish students have taken calculus before at their high school, but the university requires them to take a similar class as per the university's rules. The professor **knew** that they had calculus, and so, during a quiz, he assigned them an extra question, and everyone else didn't have that question on their paper.
Now, it **wasn't** an extra credit problem, yet, it was graded as a normal problem.
So my question is, can the professor exclude those specific group of students and assign them an extra problem on a test or a quiz?<issue_comment>username_1: Whether is it ethical or not is completely dependent on certain university rules. Probably a discussion with the Dean (Instruction or Academic Studies) should help to clarify this fact.
There are few points to take care. If a few students had an advantage because they already had calculus in their high school, and now they are being tested on (probably) harder problems than what others are getting is "not fair".
Did they agree to be tested on the extra set of problems? How did the professor know about their previous high school course? What if few students didn't disclose the fact that they already had the course earlier.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: The goal of any kind of assessment in teaching is to check if each student has met the learning objectives of the teaching activity, and the test should therefore have essentially the same questions of the same level of difficulty for all students. Otherwise, we would ask more of certain students in order for them to have met the learning objectives.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: Here are some guidelines and rules regarding the use of footnotes for different journals in Earth Science and IT:
>
> Footnotes are used only for author affiliations and tables. Incorporate all other footnoted information into text.
>
>
>
Source: <http://publications.agu.org/author-resource-center/text-requirements/>
>
> Footnotes should be used sparingly. Number them consecutively throughout the article. Many word processors build footnotes into the text, and this feature may be used. Should this not be the case, indicate the position of footnotes in the text and present the footnotes themselves separately at the end of the article.
>
>
>
Source: <https://www.elsevier.com/journals/information-and-computation/0890-5401/guide-for-authors> or <https://www.elsevier.com/journals/journal-of-volcanology-and-geothermal-research/0377-0273/guide-for-authors>
I am wondering what the reasoning is behind making people avoid using footnotes. Can I not, in some cases, create more readable text by adding some kind of tangential information in a footnote rather than incorporating it into the text?<issue_comment>username_1: If you don't stop/discourage researchers from adding footnotes, you will end up with articles with huge amounts of footnotes. As you are doing research you will learn a lot about a specific topic, and most of that will not end up in the final article. The temptation is to add that to footnotes. However, a good article is one that has a very specific aim and does only that. So you should resist that temptation. Such rules are there to help you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The no-footnote rule isn't universal in academia, but it is present in many other formal writing styles (journalism, dictionaries, narratives). In these cases the reader's attention is focused on the main text, and she can either ignore or investigate any external references. You ask whether a text with footnotes is not more "readable"; while it may contain more information, carefully sorted, those references disturb narrative flow.
In response to <NAME>'s comment on another answer, explanatory or contextual text in footnotes does represent a slippery slope, in the sense that no-one would object to a single footnote. However, I question whether it is a fallacy: lots of footnotes can really get in the way of the presentation. Some works have so much footnote text that a reader hoping to absorb the whole work is forced to constantly flip back and forth to the Notes section. When footnotes are presented on the same page as the main text, they can even dominate the page layout. H.H. Bancroft's *Histories* cite lots of great primary sources, but are difficult to actually read and process because of the thousands of narrative dead ends in the footnotes. Perhaps some brains are more comfortable with that than others.
The footnote ban seeks to focus the reader on a single sequence of prose without a lot of dipping back and forth. Yes, this means strictly taxonomizing your content into "relevant" and "tangential" bits, and omitting the latter. I wasn't comfortable with this rule when I was forced to adopt it by a style guide like the one you cite, but I appreciate it now.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: Usually when I'm applying an exam on my students, right before giving them the questions sheet, I tell them not to cheat. I usually warn them that I will not be inspecting their every move, but I will be watchful to make sure that no communication, electronic device or consulting will be done/used.
To complement this, I always make very mean and bad comments about cheating. Stuff like "your diploma will always be tainted if you go through the University by cheating, I'd rather use it to clean my soles" or "you had all the opportunities to ask questions, consult me, the textbooks, Youtube videos, lecture notes, class monitors and myself and the other teachers before this exam. I was always honest with you and expect the same thing in return and nothing else. If you're having personal problems that are affecting your studies, there are other ways to try to circunvent it instead of cheating". I once even said (with a class that I had some liberty to say so) that, by cheating, I wanted them to look at the mirror, every day of their lives, and face how much an intellectual failure they've become.
Now, I try to make it clear that those are jokes. But I'm sure that they get that these jokes had a truth behind it. My question is: are there ethical reasons not to do so? My point is, if I can't resource to my students' conscience to be honest, then I can't resort to anything, since I can't possibly outsmart 75 or so students every time I'm applying an exam if they want to be creative at cheating.<issue_comment>username_1: **Treat ethics seriously.** Students should be aware that their actions do have consequences, and should be held responsible for their deeds and misdeeds. Jokes are inappropriate, and references about "cleaning your soles" with cheating-tainted diplomas are probably a little too hyperbolic.
That said, you can certainly give a warning to your students not to cheat on the exam. In some places, you *must* give such a warning as part of the exam instructions!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Summary
=======
If you do not have to include a pre-exam warning, **do not include a warning**.
If you have to include a pre-exam warning, do so. But keep it **short, clear and to the point**.
Take this seriously
===================
Exams are incredibly stressful for everyone, including the students who did everything right, so **humour, anything else that might be misinterpreted\*, or anything else not necessary for the exam, has no place in this environment**.
So, building on [username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/53/username_1)’s comment to “treat ethics seriously” (both in the exam and elsewhere), I would say: **Treat every part of the exam seriously.**
That was the big *ethical* issue. Now, there’s the issue of you undermining your own message. Since the topic of your message is ethics, this is kind of an ethical issue too. It’s not clear from your question how seriously you take this, and perhaps it’s not clear to your students either if you either tell jokes or say serious things and label them as jokes.
Consider the good student’s point of view
=========================================
Imagine you have spent the last few months trying to master the course material. And it’s all come down to the next few hours. You’re as nervous as you’ve ever been, but trying to stay calm, focus on getting the exam done and get out of there. You have no interest in what the other students are doing.
Would you like to listen to a lecture about ethics, or anything else that shouldn’t need to be covered in the exam venue? Especially if someone is telling you it’s really important, but it contains maybe-jokes-maybe-really-serious-statements and you don’t really know what’s going on?
Consider the cheater’s point of view
====================================
If you’re not prepared for the exam (except that you are prepared to cheat), a pre-exam ethics lecture won’t change that. What good do you think it will do?
Start early
===========
The right time to communicate all relevant university policies, including those relating to academic integrity, is at the very start of the course.
Footnote
========
\* Except, of course, if it is part of an exam question and finding the correct interpretation is part of the examinable material.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Echoing other answers and comments... at least in U.S. culture, any exaggeration tends to make the idea ridiculous and not serious.
Specifically, any comments (serious or joking) that make "exams" seem like a game, thus without moral/ethical attachments, are counter-productive.
Yes, to the extent possible, make cheating impossible... but/and recognize that without grossly draconian measures it is not possible to control people to the degree necessary to defeat militant cheating. And the saddest aspect would be that those draconian measures would abuse the many people who behave honorably.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: The general idea of communicating expectations on cheating is a good idea, but I see several problems with your particular expressions. Firstly, at least part of what you say is ambiguous --- the oral statement "use it to clean my soles" could just as easily be heard as "use it to clean my souls", so are you saying that the degree would then be so worthless that you clean the soles of your shoes with it, or are you saying that you wish to use the diploma program to "clean the souls" of your students? Moreover, by making hyperbolic statements and then treating these in a half-joking manner, it might not be clear to students whether these are serious issues or not.
I have sometimes given pep-talks to my students in relation to cheating, though usually at the start of the semester rather than immediately prior to an exam. The main things I try to get across to them are the following:
* In addition to learning technical skills and subject matter for a degree, it is desirable to use university as a time to develop *good character*. Circumstances where you experience stress and anxiety are times when you can develop good coping skills, and develop the strength of character required to avoid unethical shortcuts (if that has not already been developed earlier in life). I tell them that it is better to fail an exam, or even a full course, and keep their integrity in tact. Failed courses can be repeated, but it is highly destructive to get into the habit of taking unethical shortcuts when presented with challenges.
* As a practical matter, if students cheat on my assessments then *they will be caught* and I will take disciplinary action against them under the university rules. If that happens it will be a horrible process for them and *it will be a big deal*. I have taught in several semesters where I have caught students breaking the rules (e.g., copying assignments or cheating on exams) and the penalties have ranged from reduced or zero marks on an assignment, right up to formal academic misconduct hearings with the Head of Department. In the latter case, I have seen students break down crying at the damage their actions will do to their degree and career. It is not a pleasant situation for anyone involved, but if you cheat *those are consequences that can occur*.
Most (but not all) of the cheating I have seen has been copying of assignments rather than cheating during exams, so I also explain to the students that there are a number of things they do when copying assignments that they will not notice, but which are extremely obvious to me. I want students to understand that I am pretty good at spotting cheating and I take it seriously.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: You should teach academic honesty and ethics at the beginning of your course. Do not wait until the exam is about to start.
Instead of appealing to students' emotions, explain to them how honest conduct will help them achieve their goals.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I think that many students interpret an approach to cheating that relies on moral appeals as an implicit admission that the system and the actual measures taken to stop cheating are too weak and cannot be relied upon, which can actually be an incentive to cheat. For this reason I always try to be very factual on cheating. I state the consequences and that we do whatever we can to find the cheats out. I think that that has to be enough (plus of course making a good attempt to find them out, and a strict approach toward those who are found out).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: **I would recommend making it clear how severe the consequences are.**
Many freshmen might not realize that cheating in academia is a much more serious thing compared to what they might have been used to during their mandatory education.
In high school they might have many smaller tests every semester instead of one exam, and getting caught might only give them a bad grade for one insignificant test, not significantly hindering their chances of passing the class. They might grow up in the mindset that it's worth the risk. Or even that it's fun and exciting, bragging to each other about the techniques they used, and not even thinking about feeling ashamed of having resorted to cheating.
Students coming from different countries and cultures might also have a different mindset about cheating. Especially in countries with a very high level of corruption, cheating can be seen not as something despicable and unethical, but rather as a way to fight against an unjust system. They might also have gotten used to much less severe consequences of getting caught.
Therefore it's important to make it clear to them not only that they are no longer children and will be treated as adults, but also the grave consequences of cheating: failing the whole year (not just one test), or getting expelled, ruining their chance of getting the degree they wanted.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a junior faculty member and as part of my work I have to supervise students. I am required by the University to have one-on-one meetings with them every week to check their progress and give feedback. I usually have these meetings in my office like all the other staff.
One piece of advice I have received from senior colleagues and online fora is to always keep my door open during the meetings to minimise the risk of being falsely accused of misconduct (in particular harassment). This could happen for instance with a student trying to hurt me or the university for failing a course.
I understand that the probability of this happening (being falsely accused by a student) is very small. Yet, the advice of keeping the door open during meetings is standard in academia, which means a probability must exist (albeit very small) - or, the universities think so.
**Question: Is there any other advice, common practice, or university policies for precautions to be taken - along the lines mentioned above (open door) - to minimise the risk of being falsely accused of misconduct by a student (with the focus on false harassment accusations) during private meetings?**
I reject in advance any answers that might discriminate or bias against any group of students based on their gender, origin, or background history. Also, I would prefer to avoid solutions that include audio-visual recording, as this is not usual in my university.
For context, I am a male professor having meetings with students of all sexes. My main concern though are meetings with female students (due to past experience of a friend being falsely accused by one of his female students, with severe effects to his professional and personal life).
**Note:** My original question was misinterpreted leading to debates concerning what I actually asked. You can retrieve the original question in the edit history for context on some of the answers.<issue_comment>username_1: Frankly, it is not clear to me why you are so concerned about being falsely accused of sexual harassment. Yes, there is a chance of this happening, but the chance is very small, even compared to other equally or more grave things that are largely out of your control (serious health problems, accidents, and so forth).
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> Lately, maybe because of the news, I am afraid that if I displease one of the students (for example fail her) she might accuse me of harassment to hurt me or force the University into a deal.
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How often does a student fabricate a sexual harassment claim against a faculty member who has behaved entirely professionally? Such a student has a lot to lose as well.
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> No matter how it ends up, it will have serious consequences on my life (personal and professional).
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I don't really agree. Such allegations are treated confidentially at first, and if they are totally without merit they need not go public. I speak here from direct experience with the process for dealing with harassment allegations at my university. I have reported (as required) secondhand information about possible harassment by faculty members at my university, and these investigations were indeed kept confidential and the faculty members remain in good standing at the university.
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> It happened to a colleague (different university) and it practically destroyed his career and marriage; even though he was finally cleared.
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I'm sorry to hear that; maybe that's what's setting you off. I don't know your colleague's situation at all, so I can't speak to it. I do however respectfully disagree with your claim that any false claim of harassment by a student will come close to destroying one's personal life. There are many public examples of marriages that survived sexual harassment. Moreover, there are people in my life whom I would not believe guilty of sexual misconduct based on any amount of circumstantial evidence. I think a lot of people feel this way about their spouses.
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> I thought of rejecting any female students (you can select the students to accept), but I could never discriminate like that. I thought of hiding a camera in my office, but that could go badly if it's detected (and it's illegal). Asking only the female students to meet me at the library or public space would seem very odd and discriminating. Asking all students to do the same would be difficult to me.
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I agree that with the possible exception of the last, these are terrible ideas. (Really, you thought of putting a hidden camera in your office *to protect yourself* from claims of sexual harassment?) The last idea is not inherently bad, but...how is it different to have students meet in a library than to meet in your office with the door kept open?
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> How do you protect yourself from this? How can I not discriminate, be a good educator, but protect myself and my family? Am I being paranoid (probably)? I am uncomfortable asking senior academics in my department about this.
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"Paranoid" is a little strong, but I don't really understand where your worries are coming from. Nor do I understand why you are reluctant to talk to your colleagues about this. You seem to be slightly "hung up" on something here.
Anyway, here is my strategy for avoiding allegations of sexual harassment. The first two points are key, and the third is optional but helpful. Here we go:
1) **Never sexually harass your students.** Don't even come close -- have a clear-eyed view of what the boundary of acceptable behavior would be and make sure that you stay two steps away from that boundary. Especially, maintain a very strong sense of what is acceptable physical contact with a student. (Handshaking: okay. Tapping someone on their clothed arm or shoulder to get their attention: probably okay, but monitor while you do it to make sure that it is being received that way. Almost anything else: as a rule, don't do it.)
2) **Make sure that your interaction with students looks to all observers like you are a steadfast subscriber to point 1) above**. So, yes: keep your office door open whenever students are in your office. Feel free to make a point that you are doing so. Make a point of not talking about romantic relationships with your students -- either theirs or yours -- except possibly in ways that are so passing and innocent that they actually reinforce that you know where the boundaries lie.
3) **Actually be ahead of the male-academic curve when it comes to knowledge and sensitivity about such issues.**
In your case, I caught a few minor things that suggest that you have some room for improvement on the latter point.
* Most of all, being fearful of being falsely accused of sexual harassment suggests a certain lack of empathy with your female students. I am aware that pointing that out is not directly helpful, but I do hope you can attain a better state in the fullness of time.
* For every female student who falsely accuses their male faculty member of sexual harassment, how many female students are truly sexually harassed, or borderline sexually harassed, or not *harassed* but treated differently from the male students in a way that makes them feel uncomfortable? In my experience, if you include all of the above the ratio is something like 1:100 or more. If you can come off as legitimately sympathetic to these issues, then (apart from other benefits!) you make yourself a much less appealing target for students to make up stories. And having other students step in and say "On the contrary, Professor A is one of the good ones..." will certainly help to defuse things if it comes to that.
* "Some of the students are girls." Do you mean that they are under 18? If you do mean that, say that. It is no longer considered appropriate to refer to adult women as "girls." Probably you would not refer to your male students as "boys," and by the way, you shouldn't.
* "I understand that the same accusation could come from a male student. My 80s small town bias doesn't allow me to consider that possibility." What the what?!? First of all your statement is literally contradictory: you are evidently considering the possibility. Second of all: what are you trying to say -- that you're more backward / less progressive than other people in your position might be? You are giving an excuse that excuses nothing and that could be quite off-putting to many other academics. So don't say things like that.
**Added**: [Here](https://www.aau.edu/key-issues/aau-climate-survey-sexual-assault-and-sexual-misconduct-2015) are some statistics on the prevalence of sexual harassment in American universities. I can't find statistics on prevalence of false accusations of sexual harassment against American faculty members (and doubt such exist), but in my best judgment it somewhere between **two and three orders of magnitude** more likely that a female student gets sexually harassed by someone in the university than makes up a claim of being sexually harassed by a faculty member. Several people have suggested that such statistics are not relevant to the OP. I respectfully disagree: as others have said, a rational approach to this problem is to quantify the risk and ask what tradeoffs the OP is willing to incur to lessen it. Knowing that female students and faculty routinely occur a risk hundreds of times greater is something to take into account when making these considerations.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_2: If you read the news lately more closely, you will see that almost no one believed the past individual accounts of harassment, and it took about a dozen simultaneous accusations for anyone to even begin to take it seriously. So even if it comes to that, the scale is still utterly weighed in your favor. The best thing you could do, IMO, is educate yourself more about how sexual harassment plays out. Try to put yourself in the place of your female students, rather than reflexively identifying with harassers just because you share a gender with them.
Right now, you are treating your female students like some bomb that might go off at any moment. That is no way to be an advisor. Knowing the patterns will let you both:
* rest more easily in the knowledge of where the boundaries are, and that you are not crossing them
* recognize when others *are* crossing them, and not make excuses for those of your colleagues that actually do harass their students.
The boundaries are not even all that gender-specific. For instance, do not talk about sexual or romantic feelings in the office. Since you are heterosexual (I assume from your post), this would likely take very different forms for male and female students, but it is equally inappropriate to bond with your male students by talking about who you find attractive than it is to expound on your marital problems with your female students. Watch yourself in moderation in both situations, rather than walking on eggshells around only half your students.
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Edit: based on the comments, let me expand this answer some more. The reality is, **one sufficiently motivated person of any gender can make your life hell**. This is simply a fact of life, and it is ultimately impossible to guard against every avenue of attack. Any student with a grievance might just as well file a report that you have falsified data. (In fact, my institution has recently revised their grievance procedures following a report of research misconduct that was deemed frivolous after investigation. I am sure the professor in this case also suffered. You can find news articles if you are so inclined.)
Focusing on the *one* variant that is more likely to come from female students has disparate effects on some of your students. *This is discrimination.* Since you note in your question that you would prefer not to opt to discriminate against female students just to assuage your fears (a commendable position that I wish more people would take), but it is impossible to find some way to hush up any accusation immediately (for obvious reasons this is also undesirable), the way to deal with this is to **become more comfortable with the situation**. Just like women learn to live their lives with the constant threat of being sexually harassed, and somehow still manage to interact with men normally, you can learn to live with the possibility of being accused of harassment.
How do you do this?
* Step one, and this is why "don't harass anyone" keeps showing up in the answers, is to make sure your behavior is above reproach. If you are afraid someone will think your house is too dirty, put some extra effort into cleaning, for your own peace of mind. (This can also include always treating your students fairly in matters of grading etc. It is harder to make up an accusation against someone you respect than against someone you hate.)
* Step two, make sure your standards are in line with everyone else's. Read a forum where people talk about housekeeping, and learn how many days in a row it is normal to use a towel before putting it in the wash.
* Step three, get involved in the process. I'm giving up on the analogy now: read up on past accusations, join the equal opportunities commission, or volunteer to assist in an investigation, etc. Learn more about what happens after an accusation, which types of evidence are used, what the standards of proof are, etc. Get familiar with how *your* institution deals with grievances. This will let you have strategies in place for how to deal with an accusation if it does happen, and return some feeling of control of the situation to you, rather than just being afraid that your life will be over at that point.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: While it is nice that the other people show consideration for all women who are harassed, they do not seem to fully appreciate the position of the many men who are falsely accused. Someone in another answer claims the ratio is 1:100, there is no statistics for that in academia, but in the field I am aware of (family law) the percent of women fabricating accusations against their husbands is around 50%.
While the OP might be seen as paranoid, people who think that do not understand how devastating is to be falsely accused (or to know someone who has been falsely accused), and this is much more common than people often assume. In many cases men are assumed guilty until proven innocent.
I am not saying this to scare the OP, on the contrary, I think it is important that he feels people understand he is not paranoid. However, we also need to be realistic, and while, as I said, it is true that men who have been falsely accused have felt devastating consequences, it is also very unlikely for this to happen in your situation.
The best analogy I can make is this: think of air travel. If your plane crashes, your chances of survival are almost zero, and if you know someone who died in a plane accident, you might be afraid of flying. Understandable, and everyone should be understanding and sympathetic of how you feel, you are not paranoid if you are afraid of flying. However, flying is also quite safe, in the sense that driving is actually more dangerous, and so are many other activities.
Be aware of the dangers, but don't stop flying, you cannot take the train from New York to London. In your job, you need to understand you need to be relaxed, and feel comfortable with both men and women. Do keep that door open, the same way you will fasten your seat belt, and understand that the probability of being falsely accused is quite low.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: I am not sure if my experiences are common, but as a faculty member in a psychology department I have had a number of *unique* and uncomfortable experiences with female students. I have described the two most egregious cases [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/72697/929) and [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/8194/929). As for an answer, I want to start with an excerpt from [this answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/98178/929) since I think it is so good
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> 1) Never sexually harass your students. Don't even come close -- have a clear-eyed view of what the boundary of acceptable behavior would be and make sure that you stay two stops on the side of that boundary. Especially, maintain a very strong sense of what is acceptable physical contact with a student. (Handshaking: okay. Tapping someone on their clothed arm or shoulder to get their attention: probably okay, but monitor while you do it to make sure that it is being received that way. Almost anything else: as a rule, don't do it.)
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In addition, it is important to think about your behavior. I advise always keeping your door open, and remaining on opposite sides of the desk/table when appropriate. You need to be mindful of physical contact with students (cf. [What physical contact, if any, is acceptable between a supervisor and a student?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/28676/929)) and what you say to them.
Apart from actually not harassing your students, I advise you to document any awkward interactions you have with students. If you accidently (remember rule 1) inappropriately interact with a student (e.g., physical contact or an odd turn of phrase), regardless of if was you or the student that did/said it, you need to tell someone. Similarly, if a student gets unusually upset about a grade, or anything else, you want to document it. I suggest email so there is a written record. I always told my department chair, but the director of teaching or a faculty mentor could also work. I would advise always telling the same person, so they have some context.
In cases where you know the situation could be difficult or where students have been difficult in the past, you my want to have another faculty member join your meeting. You obviously cannot do this for all meetings (e.g., having a faculty member sit in on all your office hours would not work), it would be fine scheduled meetings with problematic students and difficult situations (e.g., failing a student or academic misconduct).
It is also worth noting that sometimes students want privacy (maybe you are discussing grades or a medical condition). If a student wants to shut my door for privacy, I am fine with it, barring a past history or an obvious difficult situation. If anything uncomfortable happens after the door was shut, or if you are feeling the slightest bit concerned/paranoid, you should document what happened.
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> Dear Department Chair,
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> I met today with <NAME> to discuss her medical condition. She requested and shut my door while meeting. At one point she briefly came around my desk and showed me the rash on her arm. It was a little odd and in the future I will make sure students know to respect our personal space. I don't foresee any issues, but wanted to keep you in the loop.
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Upvotes: 8 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: Law enforcement usually cannot press charges unless there is preponderance of evidence such as injury, witness(es) testimony(s), past crimes such as the accused being a registered sexual offender, or evidence that the victim showed that they were in some real danger. If they were a minor, then the rules may change, depending on your local laws, but normally there's more leniency for those who want to press charges when there's a minor involved because not even an attorney is required to press charges according to this Florida Statute 784.
There are some fallacies in your assumptions, most of which already pointed out.
Always document your interaction with your fellow students, such as the amount of time spent with a student. Whether it's a handwritten or typed log documenting the amount of time you spent with a student for the day. Phone call logs or even your Internet history states what you did at what time to counter-argue against someone who may think of accusing you.
Do you have an office? Tutor in an area with the door open and visible glass. Is there a camera nearby it? All the better for you. Take advantage of your office space. That's why it's built that way: to help prevent civil liabilities against school employees such as yourself.
Of course, since you work in a public institution, I assume, that means whatever evidence supports you may be used against you if the accused wants any evidence. But with what I stated about being open to all of your students by tutoring in an open area in front of others whether they are passing by or waiting in line, then there may be witnesses who support you no matter what.
I'm sure you were presented with a type of teacher-student agreement or contract when you were hired. It is an agreement that you will not engage or seek personal relationships with your pupils and you will be held to that standard. I, for example, cannot engage in a personal relationship with my clients and if I was discovered just meeting them outside the workplace for a drink at the pub and it was proven that we met at my job, then I could definitely be terminated or worse, charged with a crime, depending, of course. So, no matter how you tell it: if they give you their phone number, e-mail, whatever and then can prove they did so and you accepted it, then that's it.
Don't assume the worst, but always be secure. Good luck to you.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_6: Maybe handle it like many male doctors do when performing gynecologic examinations: Always keep another person in the room. You could handle this by simply not isolating yourselves in your office, but rather meet somewhere open? It might be kind of an extreme, but..
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_7: A teacher I know defends himself so, that he *never talks with female students without external observers*.
He prefers talking them where also other people are present. If the student comes into his room, then he opens the door, so others can see (and, later, testify) what is or is not happened.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: Perhaps think of this the same way you think of avoiding being run over as a pedestrian.
There are obvious precautions you should definitely take, such as looking both ways before crossing a road, and keeping your interactions with your students strictly professional, no touching, no dating students, no sex-related remarks.
There are a series of further pedestrian precautions you can take, such as only crossing at light controlled intersections, not walking at times when drunk drivers are especially likely, working up to never walking outside your home or buildings at all. Each further reduces the risk at an increasing convenience cost.
Similarly, there are a series of further accusation-preventing precautions you can take, discussed in other answers. The equivalent of never walking outside buildings is to not take any job that requires one-on-one meetings with students some of whom will be women.
Life is a constant series of trade-offs between risk and reward, in which you have to decide how much risk you are prepared to take to get things you want in life. If you want a job that involves meeting one-on-one with students, and want the convenience of using your own office rather than going to a busy public location, there is going to be a non-zero risk.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_9: I will answer only one question out of many; for the other questions, see other answers.
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**No.**
Some female student might wish to take revenge for having failed in an exam, especially if her failure in the exam led to a major failure in her whole life planning. Now, your responsibility for this failure might be even justified, since absolute perfection in grading every single student is impossible. You might have erred somewhere. So, the female student might wish to incur as much harm to you as possible. The ways she might incur harm to you are endless, starting with love letters such that your spouse sees them, adding Viagra to the beans in the open-kitchen coffee machine before a meeting with you and accusing you of harrasment, or actually taking a gun to the campus and shooting you! (It is a rare situation, but it did happen on my memory: life is much richer than we think.)
As you see, you cannot protect yourself against all that; it's probably not worth even trying to. If you are really concerned, contact the legal department of your insitution and get a legal advice. And continue with the open-door policy during meetings with women. (You may also keep the doors open while having meetings with male students - not because of potential accusations, but because you might be afraid of physical violence.) And, if you have not learnt it so far, "[don't steal rolls](http://www.planetpdf.com/planetpdf/pdfs/free_ebooks/Anna_Karenina_NT.pdf)", which should go without saying. All that is easy to do, simplifies your life, and complicates the life of those trying to harm you.
Now, returning to whether you are being paranoid: no, since you don't blame women per se. You are afraid, perhaps phobic, but not paranoid.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: The OPs clarification:
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> Assume there is a person that might want to hurt their educator for failing them by spreading lies or accusing them of something they didn't do (harassment during 1-1 meetings). How can that educator protect themselves (best practices, measures, etc.)?
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changes the question somewhat. It's not about **the one student in X** (whatever X is) who is willing to risk mutual destruction to satisfy a grievance. In this case, I agree with username_4 regarding general precautions. I would also be **selective in which students to accept**. There is nothing bad about it if done on an individual basis (instead of based on the sex of the person). After all, you need to work with the student and if the interaction does not work out, it's unlikely you'll both get something good out of it.
But **your clarification sounds like there is a student out to get you**. In that case, it might be helpful to talk with trusted colleagues who also know the student (about your difficulties with the student). It might even be time for legal support — someone who knows academia and knows how to deal with these cases. Also, "always be recording" might be helpful here (again: talk to a lawyer first).
In general I have found that conflicts with students (e.g. about grades) can be **mediated** if done correctly (needs a neutral and skilled mediator). However, this might not work for all students.
One issue I haven't found in the answers so far is **a worst-case scenario plan for the unlikely but possible case of a false accusation happening**. I find that with rare but devastating events, having a plan on how to deal with such a situation might help. You are unlikely to think clearly **if** that event occurs.
A website I have seen long ago (page no longer exists) listed a few tips in case of a wrongful accusation (albeit directed at students). Among others:
* not to talk with others about it (save close family or attorney; never ever talk about it on social media; you never know how it might be used against you),
* keeping your cool (influences perception)
* seeking independent counsel (the university might decide to protect its reputation)
* not use the university eMail/phone system (again: the university might not be neutral)
* be wary of pretext calls (friend calling you and trying to get you to admit guilt; just decline to answer any questions and hang up)
* be wary of physical danger (person who accuses you might instigate violence)
* never talk to the police if accused (let the attorney deal with it)
* getting to know the procedures on how the university deals with it (esp. to know your rights)
* recording anything that you are legally allowed to record (state laws! consult attorney)
* document-document-document — and keep everything organized
* adhere religiously to no-contact orders (even if the students wants you to call back or wants to meet)
* and the like.
Hopefully you never need it, but a worst-case plan might be helpful.
**Talking about helpful, a comment about the question and some of the reactions here:**
I think a false accusation is one of the worst things that can happen to a person. It can destroy a person's life, can socially isolate them, can drive them to suicide, and can undermine the basic trust in the legal system.
And yep, sexual misconduct/harassment/assault happens. A few people — male and female — are criminal assholes, no question about it, esp. in positions of power. But there also are a few people — male and female — who will use any method to get at someone. There is a phase in conflicts where even devastating personal losses are accepted just to get at the other person. It's not rational but deeply human. And in some cases, this can involve wrongful accusations.
Which sucks, given that most people in academia just want to do a good job — do good research and teach good courses — and these things make life unnecessarily difficult.
With this in mind, I wonder how some answers would read if you **gender swap it** (useful test to see biases). If the question had been about a female professor being afraid of possible physical violence from male students. After all, a wrongful accusation is essentially assaulting a person via a proxy, and over a longer time period. Here the proxy is the legal system, and sometimes also the court of public opinion (which sometimes comes with actual violence, not to mention violence in prisons).
In this swapped case, essentially saying: it's rare, bad things do not happen to good people, don't invite it, just be professional, and what's really important are cases of Y ... just does not cut it. It would probably be called "victim blaming" and "derailment". Yes, being professional is good advice, but it doesn't work if the student is not. Humans aren't always professional, or even rational.
So, with the question asked here I think it's best to ... well, assume the best: the OP just wants to do a good job and cases of false accusations just scare the shit out of many people. No matter how rare they are. And as useful as statistics are (which would have to be about false accusations), a person has **only one life** and the consequences **are** devastating. Even if the probability is low, if the consequences are serious enough it pays to prepare for such an event. That's why we have insurances.
So, kudos to the OP for asking the question and dealing with the reactions.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_11: If you really want to nip false allegations in the bud, put a camera in plain sight. Announce at the start of each meeting that you are recording the meeting to prevent any potential issues from arising (you can even be candid about your fears here).
Record all of the meetings, not just those that are worrisome to you. Archive them for as long as you are worried. A low resolution webcam won't come close to filling a $100 hard drive anytime in the next 10 years.
Be sure to label the files well in case your fears manifest themselves and you need to show the meeting to your administration.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: >
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If there is no actual cause for such a claimed harassment from your side, such an accusation can always happen quite independent of any actions you can take. Inventing a cause is probably not such a big obstacle for someone determined to accuse you falsely of sexual harassment. For example the accuser could state that the harassment happened outside of office hours when you met in private.
Therefore I conclude that this is a general risk of a teaching/research career and quite unavoidable.
You could minimize it by not giving bad marks, not letting anyone fail, avoiding to teach female students or going full surveillance, but all these strategies have their own severe drawbacks prohibiting their use while ultimately not eliminating the risk that someone still might accuse you of harassment no matter what.
You can just hope you never, ever get into such a situation. Whether it's true or false, it's really bad for all affected persons. I know that in general the burden is on the accuser to prove the harassment, which should be difficult even with office hours and one-to-one meetings, but the social implications often do not wait for the legal processing of the case.
It probably applies to anyone of any profession and may be more likely the more people are dependent on you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_13: If there is an actual chance that you would fail a student, then seek out resources to help the student academically. That's the right thing to do, and it's the right think to focus on, rather than fantasies of how the student might want to take revenge.
Your concern seems irrational. Statistically, which is more common?
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If you're not sure, then I recommend you do some reading on recent activism around Title IX.
If you spend a significant amount of time worrying about this, then you may want to check whether you have any additional intrusive thoughts beyond this one. If so, you might benefit from a treatment called Exposure and Response Prevention. Ideally you would be able to stand back and notice yourself having an irrational, perhaps outrageous thought, and just watch it go by, as you might watch an interesting cloud float by overhead.
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Here are some specific observations to back up my conjecture that you *might* be spending "a significant amount of time worrying about this":
* You wrote, "Am I being paranoid (probably)?"
* Several participants quoted and addressed this question in their answers, and you did not remove this line from the original question, and you did not jump in below their answers to try to convince them they had misunderstood you.
* A participant wrote, "You are afraid, perhaps phobic, but not paranoid." This suggests that I'm not the only one who wondered as I did.
* You wrote, "I will try to lighten up; I am a stressful person by nature."
* Your title and focus were "How to avoid being accused of harassment by a student," not "How to avoid giving the appearance of harassment," or "How to avoid making a sensitive student uncomfortable."
I wondered if you were making yourself just a bit miserable about this. All over this page, you basically say, "Well, yes, ... hmm, no...." Look, IF there is an element of phobia here, the only person suffering from it is you. You get to decide whether this is limiting your enjoyment of life or not, and if so, whether you want to do anything about it. If I were in the set of people close to you, and I confronted you with my conjecture, that could make things uncomfortable for you. But the beauty of the internet is that you are free to consider my conjecture, or not; you are free to consider it, and reject it; you are free to accept it, and then put your head in the sand and leave things the way they are.
There are two aspects to my answer. One is motivated by a sincere interest in sharing information about what you could do about it if you conclude that your worry has wandered outside of the realm of *healthy fear*.
The other is indeed about gender issues.
There are students who have been traumatized by previous experiences, and there are professors who spend a reasonable amount of energy avoiding causing discomfort to such students. I wonder, would such considerations make you less reluctant to hold some of your office hours in a public place, such as the library, as you were considering doing?
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I have had an idea for a year or two to write a book relating to the research I do. My specific field (in the mathematical sciences) is somewhat niche and no book currently exists that aggregates the big results into one place. Currently, all of the research is spread across multiple papers, journals and conferences.
I want to write a book about this topic so that future researchers can access basic definitions and results without having to hunt down individual papers. I don't want to write the book for fame/fortune since I recognize it would never be popular with more general audiences. I want to write it to improve my knowledge of the topic, to create a useful resource for others and (getting personal) to fulfill my dream of writing a book.
I have some original research on the topic and most of my current work revolves around the topic as well. But I've heard many people say that PhD candidates should focus on research instead of other pursuits like book-writing. Should I pursue this, or should I focus on research and leave the book for the future?<issue_comment>username_1: I think it's a very good idea to develop files/manuscript collecting important standard results in one place. To go to the additional trouble (which is much more than one might imagine) of publishing a book with that content, apart from vanity presses, would not be worthwhile for a young academic. Indeed, unless you can do a for-some-reason amazing job of organizing things, since you're not an established expert, have (presumably) no name-recognition, etc., good publishers would not see much reason to publish your book.
But you can assemble a PDF document and put it on-line. And you can revise it as you mature into your subject. Revision is much harder with physical books, or even official "e-books", because many publishers (especially better ones with an established base and style) re-typeset everything into their house style... so correcting typos is not a matter of correcting them in the TeX source, re-typesetting, and re-posting online. :)
EDIT: to clarify the last sentence: Yes, TeX is the current professional standard for mathematicians composing technical documents. It's a mark-up language created by <NAME>, and donated to the community, in the late 1980s. (There are also WYSISWYG editors.) The older process of typesetting from TeX source documents created a "DVI file", device-independent file, from which postscript files were usually created, although there were DVI readers also. Nowadays, the usual output is PDFs. Further, although years ago it would take several minutes to re-run the typesetting after making changes in the TeX source, nowadays re-typesetting a 30-page document takes an imperceptible time, perhaps a second or two at most. And there are of course various ways of packaging the re-typesetting (as well as creating the TeX source file) in IDEs and so on.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Of course **talk to your advisor about it.** Perhaps he will be one of those who says concentrate on your Ph.D. thesis and work the book afterward. Or perhaps he will tell you it is a great idea. He knows (much better than we do) what is involved in your particular case.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: You should consult your advisor, as how this would be perceived varies by field, and they will have a better notion of your progress than we do. And an undertaking like writing a book will inherently impact your progress - your advisor should absolutely know about it.
>
> But I've heard many people say that PhD candidates should focus on
> research instead of other pursuits like book-writing.
>
>
>
I would also consider talking to any faculty in your department who *have* published a good as to the amount of work involved. In my experience talking to colleagues, it's substantially more work than any of them thought, even after writing.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Well, if ever there was a case when the classic "talk to your advisor" advice was applicable, this is such a case. So, obviously, **talk to your advisor**.
That being said, since you are in a mathematical science, I think I can predict with a high degree of confidence that if your advisor has any sense he/she will tell you that writing a book can only serve to distract you from your PhD research, and to engage in such a project would be damaging (potentially, fatal) to your prospects of success in finishing your PhD. In short, **no, it's not appropriate**.
The point is that both doing a PhD in a mathematical science and writing a book are very difficult and ambitious endeavors. A significant proportion of the people who undertake either one of those things do not end up achieving them. And yet, you seem to think that you can do both at the same time. Do you see the problem here?
The only time when writing a book would make sense would be either: (a) after you are an established academic with a proven track record and a tenured (or at least tenure-track, but on a clear path to tenure) position, or: (b) if writing the book was an activity that was synergistic with your normal research work to such a high extent (say, 80% or more overlap) that achieving success in your normal research *and* writing the book were two simultaneous goals that were realistically achievable with a similar probability to succeeding in just one of those goals. Based on your description it doesn't sound like that's the case here, but I can't say for sure based on the information you've provided.
Two more thoughts on this:
1. I really like <NAME>'s suggestion to collect your thoughts on your research area as organically evolving PDF notes that you make available online. I see this approach as much more beneficial to your normal thesis work and much less likely to derail your research. And maybe those notes can someday evolve into book-quality material, but what's the rush? Let them ripen like good wine; indeed, many world-class textbooks were created using just such a process.
2. Another benefit to waiting until you are more established until writing your book is that by that point you will be a much better writer, and will have a much higher chance of writing a book that other people will actually want to read. But, regardless, even if you already are a great writer, writing a book would still very probably be a bad idea for the reasons I explained above.
Upvotes: 4
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<issue_start>username_0: This question is about structure of scientific texts. This can be master thesis or published journal article.
The *Disucssion* section: Is there a **reasonable** rule why the discussion of results comes before the discussion of methods?
I often see this in published articles and I argue about that with my professor. But no one gave me a reason for this - not even a bad reason.
In *my opinion* the order should be different: Discussion of the methods first and then the discussion about results. The reason is that I need to see the results and their value/weight in the light of the methods they are obtained.
I am asking here because I am naive and optimistic and think there is a reason why all journals and professionals do it that way. I don't want to modify their opinion. I just want to know why they do.<issue_comment>username_1: In short: the assumption that the discussion of results always comes before the discussion of methods is wrong. There are no rules.
The purpose of a separate results and discussion section is to keep facts clearly separated from opinions/interpretation. What happens inside the discussion section depends on your writing style and the content/goal of the paper.
For example
* if your paper presents new methods there is no difference between the discussion of results and the discussion of methods
* if the uncertainty in the measurement methods may have affected the results, methods and results are discussed at the same time
A possible reason to discuss results first might be that readers are most interested in the results. Unless your paper is about the method itself an expert in the field probably knows the methods already. But as said, there are no rules.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In many cases, the methods are not especially surprising. Often, an experienced researcher would be able to guess more or less the general method just based on the question, and only needs to check the methods section if they want to know specific details.
When speed-reading papers to see if they are worth looking into more deeply, it's common to read introduction, results and discussion only. Pushing the methods towards the back (or even to an online-only expanded version like Nature does) accommodates this. Nobody but the most interested reader will slog through a boring description of exactly how many times an hour you pipetted which brand of solution where. The discussion will hopefully raise the relevant points of how the methods influenced the results already.
An in-depth reader would go over the paper several times, so at that point the order of the methods and results section will matter little - they will flip back and forth to compare specific points.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: Before publication, if a new edition of a source is released, should I try and find the new edition or keep a citation based on the old?<issue_comment>username_1: Cite the edition of the book you used, as new editions may contain the same text, paragraph or example but on a different page.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I mainly agree with [the first answer by SolarMike](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/98210/73521), but be aware of the content/information that you cite in this old edition and how old your edition is. The state of the art might change due to new developments in your field and this will be included in the edition. If you, for example, then criticise the book for not including X or Y, but it is done in the most recent edition, this would have been an easy mistake to avoid.
Regarding the year of the edition, sometimes, valuable editings are made for the newest edition of a book. It might be interesting for you to check these - just that you are aware of. For instance, the author changes this specific argument that you use due to criticisms of the first edition (or puts in an extended chapter or so).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: **You should cite the exact source of any information you use**. If you are pulling your information from a 200-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica, you cite the 200-year-old Encyclopedia Britannica.
However, it is good practice to write based on the current state of knowledge. If the 2010 Encyclopedia Britannica has more up-to-date information, you should *use that more recent information*, which will drive you to cite the more recent edition. That doesn't mean you need to wait for a new Britannica to publish, but if a new one does appear before you go to print, you may want to spot check it for relevant updates.
(In most fields you probably shouldn't be basing any writing off an encyclopedia, but it's an easy example to think about).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: There are of course cases where you might want to deliberately cite an older edition. For example, if it contained information that has been removed from newer editions; or if you want cite erroneous information "Until recently it was widely believed that.... This belief appears to derive from ....". Or you might want to cite Fowler 1st ed as evidence of what was considered acceptable English usage at the time it was published. Or you might believe that earlier editors got something right and later editors got it wrong.
I can also imagine cases where you want to cite an earlier edition simply because it is much more widely available, or because you cannot get hold of a later edition despite best efforts.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I applied for a tenure-track assistant professorship position in computer science (CS) in the US. The particular opening announcement was broad, non-specific to the subarea. In my application, I emphasized the subarea X. After applying, I inofficially found out that the CS department doesn't hire in the area X, but hires in a nearby area Y, for which I could also produce a different but still valid application. Technically, I cannot change my application documents any more or withdraw my application through the website of the hiring department. The best I could do is submit a new application using a new e-mail address. This might raise concerns on the side of the reviewing faculty, or, on the contrary, it might be considered pretty normal. Any advice on whether to submit a new application? Pro/contra arguments are welcome.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Technically, I cannot change my application documents any more or withdraw my application through the website of the hiring department.
>
>
>
Says who? Did you talk to a real live person about this? It's quite possible they can accept an "overwritten" re-application even if the public web interface, or what-not, doesn't support this.
>
> The best I could do is submit a new application using a new e-mail address.
>
>
>
Not so. You can write a letter, explaining how you understand that the department's hiring focus is Y rather than X, while your earlier application emphasized X, and asking the application reviewers to consider an enclosed summary of your activities and plans regarding Y.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Actually, submitting again with a new email might possibly be interpreted as improper, even fraudulent. Instead, contact someone in the department that is hiring and ask for advice. Do it in person, if possible, and do it soon. Let them know that you can revise your application (offline, apparently), changing the focus. Be sure to let them know that believe that you are qualified outside the narrow scope you emphasized in your original application. They will judge, of course.
Depending on the scale of things, they may or may not be willing to let you do this, but being upfront and honest with them is better than trying to "game" a possibly flawed online application system.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: So for one of my computer science classes, we have a WhatsApp chat among all students in the class to network and help each other out with questions regarding homework, or if we have any confusion on assignments. It's a given that we can get help on these types of assignments.
But exams are proctored online, and getting help on them is strictly forbidden. However, some students in the chat have posted to the WhatsApp chat during their proctored exams, posting photos of the exams, the questions, and receiving help from others during their exams.
Why would I care about this? So normally, when a student cheats on an exam, it would have no effect on another student because the two overall students' grades are unrelated. However, the exams are curved. So these students that cheated on the exams \*\*not only have an unfair advantage, \*\* but they also put other students at a disadvantage. Them doing exceptionally better than they would have has the potentiality to reduce other students grades by up to 10-15% of what it would be. So if Student A would normally get a 65 because they don't know the content, they now get a 89, thus, throwing off the entire curve. However, student B who actually DID try his hardest and studied got an 74. Their grade would have been higher with the curve, but student A cheating disrupted the curve. As a result, student B gets an 79, where they would've had an 84 without the several cheaters with almost perfect exam scores at the top.
Personally, I hate to be 'that girl' that reports someone else like a snitch... But I worked so hard in this class. I studied for 6 hours every day before this exam, and got an 83... and these people admit in chat that they would probably fail if they didn't use WhatsApp (have it screenshotted-saying that exactly). So I worked so hard and got an 83. They cheated and got a solid 90, doing no studying, no hard work on their own part. They work full time, so they complain they don't have time. But how is that my fault, or the fault of the other students that the cheater makes different life choices, or chooses to put less time into school, and we as a result should suffer? That's my rationale for wanting to report them. I play fair, so why should we suffer because they don't?<issue_comment>username_1: The answer to the title question is:
Always
(barring some sort of really bizarre circumstances that I am not able to think of right now).
The specifics of the situations does not make me change my answer in this case.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: To add to the other answer:
Always- **unless you don't want to risk retaking the exam yourself.**
A couple of years ago, during a class-wide final coursework assessment for German, everyone had to write out their pre-prepared essays from memory.
(This was the old-GCSE exam in the UK, I guess an international equivalent would be an end-of-year exam in 'freshman' year).
I was among a mere handful of the class that had bothered to memorise their scripts in advance. On the day, we were allowed dictionaries on our desks, and 10 words on a sheet of paper as an aide memoir. However, about 55% of the class had brought their draft scripts in, and were **copying directly from them.**
Although this angered me, I figured that the drafts they'd written in advance still weren't good enough to merit a higher grade than they deserved, so I let it be.
About a week later, someone's parents complained to the school about the "unfair advantage" (ironically, the person who'd reported it had been one of the ones who cheated), and **the school made the whole class resit the exam.**
At this stage I'd already began to forget most of my script, so I had to put effort into memorising it again.
After the resit, a few of the cheaters' grades went down, but, as predicted, a few of the already-low grades remained relatively unchanged.
My new grade was only eight marks lower than the first had been, but that was enough to bring it down to an A rather than an A\* (A+).
Your situation seems quite different, so I'd encourage you to report it, just try and keep the knowledge fresh in your mind, just in case you need to resit.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: There is absolutely no reason for you to hate being “that girl”. You need to understand that the mindset that being a “snitch” is a negative thing is a result of cultural conditioning that you have been subjected to. Probably historically there were good reasons for societies to associate negative feelings with snitching (e.g., resisting an evil king or dictator who makes stupid rules, and his cronies who reward people who snitch out citizens who violate those rules). Unfortunately today in modern democratic societies we are stuck with that anachronistic mindset even though the reasons for it are no longer even a little bit applicable.
So, you need to rethink your assumptions about what it means to be a snitch. In the context of your situation, complaining about the cheating will be doing a huge service not just to yourself but also to your honest peers, to your university and its reputation, to future employers of graduates of your university, and ultimately (although they are unlikely to see things that way) to the cheating students themselves, who will be taught a valuable lesson at a point in their lives when the stakes for dishonest behavior are still relatively low. I know it’s easier to say this advice than to follow it, but there is no reason for you to feel any guilt or other negative emotions about reporting the cheating. Whatever consequences are visited on the cheating students, they brought them on themselves and fully deserve them.
The only word of caution is that you must take great care to maintain your anonymity, to avoid social ostracism or other negative consequences for your complaint, which are a very real danger.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Some people cheating is unlikely to significantly sway the curve one way or other. By reporting this you will affect someone much more negatively than how they affected you. Also, if it ever gets out that you were the "snitch", you will incur a significant social standing hit and may very well be excluded from any future whatsapp groups for example.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm writing two academic papers currently, and have discovered the point where things get absurd and I need something that is lighter and more enjoyable - the kind of feeling that spawned The Journal Of Irreproducible Results.
As a fan of the show Westworld, I'd enjoy producing a paper which uses it as a medium to examine how AI can be implemented to fit grand contexts like storylines, a large park with unpredictable interference, and the social interactions that humans consider normal. There are more than a dozen Ph.D thesis that use Star Trek extensively - but they are all in the humanities, and they tend to examine things like the show's allusions to ancient mythology and history (which were rife in the show), or cultural perceptions of the show. I do not know of any papers in the hard science that used Star Trek in any significant way to explain or illustrate concepts.
Westworld, however, is different. There are several scenes that display real issues in computer science, the problems that can be encountered, and potential solutions. The show also included a well-architected software framework that all the hosts work within, and an excellent division of responsibilities within the code. So, while Star Trek used fictional physics, the computer science in Westworld is realistic - the AI may be exaggerated, but the fundamental approaches and issues were real. This paper would be weekend work and I'd write it to distract myself from the toils of the more traditional papers. Spoilers follow.
So my question is: can a fictional world be the basis and foundation for a serious academic analysis? I would diversify the subject to include other examples, but I don't think there are any that are elucidated well enough.
A perfect example is in Season 1 episode 3, when a woodcutter wanders off because he was tampered with. The park was only alerted to the problem because the woodcutter's group hadn't moved for several days. Upon investigation, the humans found the woodcutter's camp and the rest of the crew bickering over who should cut some wood for the campfire so they could cook dinner. The lumberjack was the only host allowed to use the ax - which is registered as a deadly weapon and the other characters were not authorized to use it. The circular bickering among the group is very similar to *deadlock* - they are all waiting for a resource and requesting it from each other, but the entity that can provide the resource is unresponsive. The group had no handling for a condition where the woodcutter wandered off, even though it presumably had some form of handling for a situation where the woodcutter was killed (that problem would be solved by the role-based plotlines, which I would cover in another part of the paper, and these are an extremely consistent and well-illustrated part of the show.) I would argue that the bickering is an optimal way for AI to handle that situation. The only solution the AI could create on its own - to let someone else do the work - would violate the safety protocol which has god-level precedence. The solution for park management is to kill the woodcutter host (or at least terminate him in that storyline), so the role can be re-designated to another host, and that can be programmed into the group's storyline as an exception case.
The show has many aspects like this; I think it has enough to reverse-engineer the highest levels of the software framework and treat it as a case study. That architecture would be applicable to current or near-future video games that are built around a storyline such as Fallout, Witcher, and similar. Other sources have already noted things like markov chains on the control tablets in the show.
I would write the paper to the highest standard possible, especially regarding diagrams and with a focus on making it more understandable to a broader computer science audience than just AI or systems architecture researchers. The references section may even be larger than usable, as I would compare a number of existing frameworks to show how they could be applied in the show. And I would try to do it without killing the enjoyment of the show.<issue_comment>username_1: Yes. This could be published. It would be worthwhile to purse the Journal of Science Fiction or G|A|M|E Journal. Computer Science journals are less likely to take something of this nature.
You should write an abstract and "test the waters" with it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: You can write whatever you want. However, if you want to call it computer science, it had better teach us something about computation. Yes, a fictional world can be "the basis and foundation for a serious academic analysis" but literary analysis is literary analysis, not computer science.
You talk about using *Westworld* as a case study. How can it be that? It isn't a "case" because it doesn't exist. It's a work of fiction. The systems within it don't exist and aren't fully worked out. Using a work of fiction as a source of illustrative examples can be a useful device, as your example with the deadlocked work party almost1 shows but there's a big difference between using a fictional computer system as an example and making a detailed study of that fictional system.
Ultimately, anything that happens in a fictional world happens because the author of the fiction *wanted* it to happen. For example, you could use the woodcutter wandering off as evidence of a bug in his AI. Perhaps the author never intended that bug to be there but, at some point, realised that the bug was a consequence of some other thing. At that point, they had two choices: they could either rewrite the fiction to remove the cause of the bug, or they could have the thing wander off and write about the consequences. They *chose* to keep the bug because it made the plot more interesting. Likewise, they chose how severe the consequences would be. That's not how real-world systems work, and a real-life example of the problem you wish to illustrate would be much more convincing.
---
1 The problem is, it's not deadlock at all: it's resource starvation. Deadlock is a situation in which two or more processes cannot make progress because each needs resources held by one of the others. For example, consider two mechanics who each need a hammer and a wrench to carry out their task. The first mechanic picks up the hammer, the second mechanic picks up the wrench. The first mechanic says, "Please give me the wrench." The second says, "Sorry, I'm using it. I'll give it to you as soon as I've finished my task. Please give me the hammer." The first mechanic says, "Funny, I'm using the hammer. But I'll give it to you as soon as I'm done with it." *That* is a deadlock: neither mechanic can finish his task because each one is holding a resource that the other needs, and refusing to give it up. However, in your example, all of the processes are waiting on a single resource (firewood) that is unavailable.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Boiling down your question based on a comment you made:
>
> is it acceptable to use a pop culture element as the basis of the paper?
>
>
>
The answer to this is yes. And not just in an obscure journal - if it's a useful worked example, tells us something new about the field, suggests new directions, etc. there's no reason why it couldn't be. Indeed, I've published several papers using pop culture and an event within a fictional setting as a basis to think critically about my field.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: The open access journal [Scientific Reports](https://www.nature.com/srep/about/aims) *publishes original research* [*in all areas of the natural and clinical sciences*](https://www.nature.com/srep/browse-subjects). That's broad; it's a [mega journal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mega_journal). With such a broad scope, I initially thought it a predatory journal, but it's published by Nature, so it isn't. What are the (dis)advantages of publishing original research in such a "mega journal"?<issue_comment>username_1: The main factor here is the broad scope. It can really go both ways and could be either a pro or a con. The pro is that potentially a very large audience could be exposed to your work. The flip side to this is that because of the broad scope, people in any one field - and specifically those the field of your paper - will usually not regularly go through the papers in this journal (in contrast to a specialized journal). So you may have a case where you are trading off exposure to people in your field for broader exposure to other fields - but of course this can vary for any specific paper.
Another pro of a broad journal is that it may fit interdisciplinary papers that do not otherwise fit in specialized journals. A potential con would be that there is less chance of getting an editor that is an expert in the topic of your paper.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In my opinion there are almost no disadvantages here compared to similar well received and indexed journals.
The usual argument would be that people who read this journal aren't from this field, so it might not be as interesting to them and people within that field might rather read the specialized journals and might miss it so you get less exposure.
I think this might have been true several years ago or even more some 30+ years ago. However, today there are so many publications every week, even within specialized subfields, that it's basically impossible to read all the journals relevant to your field or even just the biggest ones. Most people I know (including leading researchers) have given up on reading certain journals. What people do instead is creating alerts for certain subjects and frequently share intersting new articles which means as long as the journal falls into the index they use they will find it anyways.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a math professor. I get asked to write a number of recommendation letters to graduate schools where my honest view of the candidate is "this student would fall somewhere in the bottom 25-50% of their student body. I expect there will be dozens of applicants of similar quality and I have no reason to favor this one except that I have a good personal relationship with him or her."
Logically, this candidate deserves to go as much as any of the dozen similar people in the pool, but I feel that a letter which said the above would be a real disservice to them. Should I refuse to write them? Describe their accomplishments and pointedly ignore that (if my estimates are right) they don't particularly make them stand out?<issue_comment>username_1: I've only been a student, so take this with a grain of salt.
Be honest to them about their abilities and your perception of them before you write a letter for them. Grad school is not a small commitment. See my answer [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/83058/17476) also, for an answer to a related question. An excerpt which I feel is very relevant:
>
> Be very honest. **You have information that they don't have that will
> be useful for them.** I would rather you tell them what you know and have
> them make the decision for themselves, rather than let them keep doing
> what they're doing and seeing them fail.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You may respond as follows to these flocks of mediocre students:
>
> I wouldn't be the best person to write a recommendation letter for you, because (a) my standards are so absurdly high that I can only write a strong recommendation letter for about x% of the students in our department, and (b) I believe that our department doesn't give a solid preparation for grad school to many of our students.
>
>
> Please don't let this discourage you from approaching other members of the department. I am an anomaly.
>
>
> Similarly, please don't let this response discourage you from going to grad school.
>
>
> I wish you all the best with your future endeavors, and best of luck with your grad applications.
>
>
>
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I've been working on a project with a graduate student in my lab for the past month and a half. I spend about 20 hours a week on the project.
I implemented a part of our algorithm, wrote part of the paper, revised the paper, tested/debugged the scripts we use for data collection, and produced some figures used in the paper.
Would it be appropriate for me to ask the graduate student for coauthorship? Do my contributions seem deserving of a coauthorship?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes. Implementing part of the algorithm, running it and producing the figures, and especially writing a significant portion of the text of the paper, are all contributions that should count for a listing in the authors.
We can't exactly know whether your contribution to each of these were "significant" without seeing the paper, but it is very likely. So, ask.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Yes! To expand on the previous answer - I work in health sciences but a quick google for a computer science related journal and it's criterion for authorship indicated the rules are very much the same - from the 'instructions to authors' page for the journal 'Bioinformatics':
>
> Authorship credit should be based on substantial contribution to
> **conception and design, execution, or analysis and interpretation of
> data.** All authors should be involved in **drafting the article** or
> revising it critically for important intellectual content, and must
> have read and approved the final version of the manuscript.
>
>
>
Link - <https://academic.oup.com/bioinformatics/pages/instructions_for_authors>
Sounds like you've checked several of those boxes! If you want to be 100% sure about your case to put forward to the graduate student, identify the journal they're hoping to submit to so you can reference that authorship criterion, but I am pretty sure it will be along the lines of those mentioned above.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am doing my thesis-based master’s in computer engineering and am required to program a tool in C++ as a part of my research. I am quite impressed by the help offered on the Code Review website and am considering posting a big chunk of my code for suggestions and improvement. However, I am also worried that someone may plagiarize the idea contained in my posted code. This, in turn, might affect the credibility of my work.
I believe one solution is to post a minimal, verifiable and complete example for the code I want suggestions for. **However, I am interested in knowing if it is possible to post my code as is and not be worried about it getting copied.**<issue_comment>username_1: In code reviews, you kind of need to know what the goal of the program is, otherwise the people looking at your code are essentially just 'human linters'. So depending on the type of feedback you want, you might have to explain a bit what your code is doing.
So the core issue would be that you are explaining your idea, and someone else can run with it. Well, it's the internet, if you make it public there is no way of knowing what people are going to do with it. You could indeed just ask for simple code verification (syntax, naming, obvious errors) but without context they can't verify if your code does what you think it does (helpful part of a code review).
If your degree isn't purely in software engineering, they might not really care if your tool is written in an 'optimal way' though. Best bet would be to keep it offline then, or ask some friends whom you trust to review your code (through private github gists for example).
One other solution would be to read up on some material regarding code quality. Code Complete2 is a good start. Other than that, check out C++ code on github from larger projects (Unreal Engine for example). If you find it valuable to write good code, this will help you more in the long run ;-)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The moment you post something on the internet, you should be willing to live with the consequences of people running away with it. Code Review is no different in this regard.
Yes, there are rules in academia against plagiarism. Yes, Stack Exchange has a Copyright Policy ([here, paragraph 15](https://stackexchange.com/legal)). But there'll always be people around breaking the rules, so none of those will guarantee people won't run with your idea.
Whether or not it will impact the novelty of your idea, I'd suppose that depends on who gets his piece published faster. As long as yours is published before that of any rogue plagiarists, I don't see a problem.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Take into account that it will take time to re-do your work even if someone does run with your idea (unless you are posting the source code of the complete application). I would suggest waiting until you are close to submitting or have submitted a paper - at that point any copycat would have no chance of catching up with you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: In addition to all the good answers you received so far, I should also point out that in general people's fear of being unethically scooped is vastly exaggerated. I would imagine that there really isn't a community of people scouring the Web for master's thesis level research that they can find and then, with considerable time disadvantage to the original author, copy. I say "with considerable time disadvantage" because even if somebody finds your work, they still need to reverse engineer a lot of what you already have and know to get to a publishable thesis or paper from your code alone. Unless you consider letting your work sit for half a year it seems unlikely that a copycat will end up publishing quicker than you, the original author.
Yes, being scooped sucks, but it usually does not happen because somebody stole your code, or even your idea. Scooping happens because there are multiple independent teams working worldwide on almost any mainstream research topic, and there usually only are a finite number of ways to attack any given problem given the current state of literature. Situations where two teams are working with similar approaches on similar problems are bound to come up.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_5: Posting code on the Internet is somewhat like posting a preprint¹. Everybody can see it, use it, and be inspired by it, and that’s fine if they reference you as the source of this, but of course somebody can also come along and claim that they had the same idea independently and rush a publication before you (which would constitute plagiarism if they hadn’t). Even if the latter happens, you can still refer to your time-stamped post/publication to establish priority and to get at least a piece of the credit cake.
There is one major difference though: In fields where preprint servers such as the Arxiv are properly established, plagiarisers may not be very credible when they claim that they were did not know of your prior publication. Being oblivious to something posted on Code Review, on the other hand is always a plausible claim – unless the plagiariser left a trail interacting with your post.
Some other factors to consider:
* How much of your result is contained in your code? At least for my work, any piece of code reasonably fitting into a Code Review question at most gives you a hint of the bigger picture. If the same applies to you, it is extremely unlikely that somebody sees your code, recognises its relevance, and rebuilds the rest of your work around it.
* How easy is it to rebuild your work from your code? For example, if you spend a considerable time figuring out the value of some parameter (and do not give it in your example or modify it), somebody else would have to reiterate everything leading to your parameter. Also consider that if a considerable amount of creativity, research skill, and subject knowledge are required to rebuild your work, somebody able to do this can also produce original research with less effort and risk.
* How narrow is your field? If only a small community can appreciate and plausibly reproduce your work, it also needs somebody from this community to recognise and plagiarise your work from your code.
* How relevant is your result? Given that we are talking about a master’s thesis, it is unlikely to be very big. Of course, it’s not impossible, but you can judge yourself from the feedback you should have received from your supervisor. The less attractive your result, the less likely it is for somebody to take efforts and risks in plagiarising it. Again, most researchers probably have better things to do, e.g., performing their own research.
¹ Also see [this question of mine](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17145/7734) regarding the plagiarism of pre-prints.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: An issue which I don't believe has been mentioned yet is plagiarism detction software systems. Those are generally pretty blunt tools and it's not uncommon for them to flag earlier drafts of a student's own work if posted online somwhere they know to look.
If your work will be passed through such software you should have been told, and you should read the policies applied to you carefully. Most institutions will carry out a manual review after the software flags your work as copied, and if that review is done properly you will have the chance to point out that the work online is yours. But you may still need to be able to prove that, especially if you post under a pseudonym.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: If you want a think-tank in a private room, where the discussion and knowledge is closed to the members and all of them accept a confidential agreement, this is not the place.
I don´t know if any site like that exists, but it could be very interesting as a research grid platform.
In any case, if someone fix a mistake in your code, or include any minimal improvement, you have to accept that you are not the exclusive owner of the work due to the contributors.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: First of all **: Does your university requires you to license the program for you masters under the university's ownership or some specific license?**
If not, (that is you are the owner of your work), why not publish it on Github under the desired license of your choice.**#**
This way you can prove the credibility/first authorship of the program prima facie and subsequently seek the improvements/contributions from the community.
If the program turns out to be quite useful and gains significant traction , then this might prove to be a shining badge on your resume.
**#** Since you are doing masters, I assume you will be making foray into industry at some point sooner or later and for your program to gain traction in industry(read:a shining resume) it must have a permissive license, so if you want a simple license choices instead of researching yourself(or **much better consulting a lawyer**) you can choose between LGPL vs Apache vs zLib .
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: Simply put, there is no way to prevent someone from grabbing your code and using it in any way they care to, including claiming it as their own. Licenses and legalese are only important to people who care about licenses and legalese. You can put all the copyright notices and license terms into your code that you wish, and it will do nothing to stop someone from copying your code and using it if it's publicly available. You would have to
1. Find that someone has used your code,
2. Bring a legal action in court seeking that this person be enjoined from using your code,
3. Wait until your case finally gets a place on the court's probably-very-crowded docket,
4. Prevail in your legal action,
5. Get the court to issue an injunction instructing the party who has used your code to stop using your code, and
6. If the party does *not* stop using your code, go through steps 1 through 5 again, and again, and again, until a court finally gets pissed off enough about their orders being ignored (the court won't give a dang about your code - they will care very much, though, if their orders are ignored) that they finally do something like toss the enjoined party into jail for contempt of court or something similar.
If you decide to go this route, make sure you have a large pile of money with which to pay your lawyers.
The alternative is to keep your code under wraps, do your best job with it, and don't let anyone see it until your thesis is published - after which you still won't be able to stop people from using it.
Best of luck.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: If your concern is credibility, then posting your code to the internet in a forum such as Stack Exchange can be used to prove ownership. There is a complete edit history including timestamps. So it is third-party verifiable, untamperable, with an independent and transparent chain-of-custody and publicly accessible. That is rock solid proof of possession as of the timestamp.
Also, you own the copyright to your code the moment you write it.
So the internet post could help prove it's yours if there is ever a dispute.
Upvotes: 2
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| 2,773
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<issue_start>username_0: During my PhD studies, I published a journal article (one of total four) in a prestigious journal of my field. I gave my codes to my PhD supervisor, but he messed up things in the lab and lost it (I also didn’t care and lost, for I am pursuing different directions).
Two years after publication, my PhD advisor wanted to commercialize my PhD work and wanted me to develop the codes again without willing to credit me for my efforts. I found his emails harassing, malicious and blackmailing and stopped responding him by directing his emails to spam folder.
Out of desperation, he himself developed some codes and submitted a corrigendum in which he clearly tried to push an agenda to suit his commercialization efforts (I know what I am talking, believe me on this). This included falsifying earlier findings just because he didn’t understand my work and cannot implement it and thus, presented an alternate algorithm which clearly is inferior. From my experience with that algorithm, I know from his description of implementation in the corrigendum that the results he presented are clearly made-up.
My PhD advisor has basically faked results in a corrigendum to suit his commercialization efforts.
What are my options ?
1. Can I convey it to the journal ? (I have already conveyed to the journal that this corrigendum is submitted without my approval.)
2. Can I offer my ex advisor to re-implement but giving me the due credit?
What should I do?<issue_comment>username_1: In code reviews, you kind of need to know what the goal of the program is, otherwise the people looking at your code are essentially just 'human linters'. So depending on the type of feedback you want, you might have to explain a bit what your code is doing.
So the core issue would be that you are explaining your idea, and someone else can run with it. Well, it's the internet, if you make it public there is no way of knowing what people are going to do with it. You could indeed just ask for simple code verification (syntax, naming, obvious errors) but without context they can't verify if your code does what you think it does (helpful part of a code review).
If your degree isn't purely in software engineering, they might not really care if your tool is written in an 'optimal way' though. Best bet would be to keep it offline then, or ask some friends whom you trust to review your code (through private github gists for example).
One other solution would be to read up on some material regarding code quality. Code Complete2 is a good start. Other than that, check out C++ code on github from larger projects (Unreal Engine for example). If you find it valuable to write good code, this will help you more in the long run ;-)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The moment you post something on the internet, you should be willing to live with the consequences of people running away with it. Code Review is no different in this regard.
Yes, there are rules in academia against plagiarism. Yes, Stack Exchange has a Copyright Policy ([here, paragraph 15](https://stackexchange.com/legal)). But there'll always be people around breaking the rules, so none of those will guarantee people won't run with your idea.
Whether or not it will impact the novelty of your idea, I'd suppose that depends on who gets his piece published faster. As long as yours is published before that of any rogue plagiarists, I don't see a problem.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Take into account that it will take time to re-do your work even if someone does run with your idea (unless you are posting the source code of the complete application). I would suggest waiting until you are close to submitting or have submitted a paper - at that point any copycat would have no chance of catching up with you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: In addition to all the good answers you received so far, I should also point out that in general people's fear of being unethically scooped is vastly exaggerated. I would imagine that there really isn't a community of people scouring the Web for master's thesis level research that they can find and then, with considerable time disadvantage to the original author, copy. I say "with considerable time disadvantage" because even if somebody finds your work, they still need to reverse engineer a lot of what you already have and know to get to a publishable thesis or paper from your code alone. Unless you consider letting your work sit for half a year it seems unlikely that a copycat will end up publishing quicker than you, the original author.
Yes, being scooped sucks, but it usually does not happen because somebody stole your code, or even your idea. Scooping happens because there are multiple independent teams working worldwide on almost any mainstream research topic, and there usually only are a finite number of ways to attack any given problem given the current state of literature. Situations where two teams are working with similar approaches on similar problems are bound to come up.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_5: Posting code on the Internet is somewhat like posting a preprint¹. Everybody can see it, use it, and be inspired by it, and that’s fine if they reference you as the source of this, but of course somebody can also come along and claim that they had the same idea independently and rush a publication before you (which would constitute plagiarism if they hadn’t). Even if the latter happens, you can still refer to your time-stamped post/publication to establish priority and to get at least a piece of the credit cake.
There is one major difference though: In fields where preprint servers such as the Arxiv are properly established, plagiarisers may not be very credible when they claim that they were did not know of your prior publication. Being oblivious to something posted on Code Review, on the other hand is always a plausible claim – unless the plagiariser left a trail interacting with your post.
Some other factors to consider:
* How much of your result is contained in your code? At least for my work, any piece of code reasonably fitting into a Code Review question at most gives you a hint of the bigger picture. If the same applies to you, it is extremely unlikely that somebody sees your code, recognises its relevance, and rebuilds the rest of your work around it.
* How easy is it to rebuild your work from your code? For example, if you spend a considerable time figuring out the value of some parameter (and do not give it in your example or modify it), somebody else would have to reiterate everything leading to your parameter. Also consider that if a considerable amount of creativity, research skill, and subject knowledge are required to rebuild your work, somebody able to do this can also produce original research with less effort and risk.
* How narrow is your field? If only a small community can appreciate and plausibly reproduce your work, it also needs somebody from this community to recognise and plagiarise your work from your code.
* How relevant is your result? Given that we are talking about a master’s thesis, it is unlikely to be very big. Of course, it’s not impossible, but you can judge yourself from the feedback you should have received from your supervisor. The less attractive your result, the less likely it is for somebody to take efforts and risks in plagiarising it. Again, most researchers probably have better things to do, e.g., performing their own research.
¹ Also see [this question of mine](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/17145/7734) regarding the plagiarism of pre-prints.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: An issue which I don't believe has been mentioned yet is plagiarism detction software systems. Those are generally pretty blunt tools and it's not uncommon for them to flag earlier drafts of a student's own work if posted online somwhere they know to look.
If your work will be passed through such software you should have been told, and you should read the policies applied to you carefully. Most institutions will carry out a manual review after the software flags your work as copied, and if that review is done properly you will have the chance to point out that the work online is yours. But you may still need to be able to prove that, especially if you post under a pseudonym.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: If you want a think-tank in a private room, where the discussion and knowledge is closed to the members and all of them accept a confidential agreement, this is not the place.
I don´t know if any site like that exists, but it could be very interesting as a research grid platform.
In any case, if someone fix a mistake in your code, or include any minimal improvement, you have to accept that you are not the exclusive owner of the work due to the contributors.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: First of all **: Does your university requires you to license the program for you masters under the university's ownership or some specific license?**
If not, (that is you are the owner of your work), why not publish it on Github under the desired license of your choice.**#**
This way you can prove the credibility/first authorship of the program prima facie and subsequently seek the improvements/contributions from the community.
If the program turns out to be quite useful and gains significant traction , then this might prove to be a shining badge on your resume.
**#** Since you are doing masters, I assume you will be making foray into industry at some point sooner or later and for your program to gain traction in industry(read:a shining resume) it must have a permissive license, so if you want a simple license choices instead of researching yourself(or **much better consulting a lawyer**) you can choose between LGPL vs Apache vs zLib .
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: Simply put, there is no way to prevent someone from grabbing your code and using it in any way they care to, including claiming it as their own. Licenses and legalese are only important to people who care about licenses and legalese. You can put all the copyright notices and license terms into your code that you wish, and it will do nothing to stop someone from copying your code and using it if it's publicly available. You would have to
1. Find that someone has used your code,
2. Bring a legal action in court seeking that this person be enjoined from using your code,
3. Wait until your case finally gets a place on the court's probably-very-crowded docket,
4. Prevail in your legal action,
5. Get the court to issue an injunction instructing the party who has used your code to stop using your code, and
6. If the party does *not* stop using your code, go through steps 1 through 5 again, and again, and again, until a court finally gets pissed off enough about their orders being ignored (the court won't give a dang about your code - they will care very much, though, if their orders are ignored) that they finally do something like toss the enjoined party into jail for contempt of court or something similar.
If you decide to go this route, make sure you have a large pile of money with which to pay your lawyers.
The alternative is to keep your code under wraps, do your best job with it, and don't let anyone see it until your thesis is published - after which you still won't be able to stop people from using it.
Best of luck.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: If your concern is credibility, then posting your code to the internet in a forum such as Stack Exchange can be used to prove ownership. There is a complete edit history including timestamps. So it is third-party verifiable, untamperable, with an independent and transparent chain-of-custody and publicly accessible. That is rock solid proof of possession as of the timestamp.
Also, you own the copyright to your code the moment you write it.
So the internet post could help prove it's yours if there is ever a dispute.
Upvotes: 2
|
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| 998
| 3,844
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<issue_start>username_0: While teaching in the blackboard, I find it difficult to represent a vector/matrix/tensor. In latex, we represent `$\mathbf{x}$`. But, how do we represent it while writing in chalk? Is it okay to write an underlined variable `$\underline{x}$` instead? What is the usual practice?
I think, avoiding the bold text might confuse the students.<issue_comment>username_1: This might depend on your country and subject.
In Germany vectors are usually written as $\vec{x}$ (i.e. with an arrow above the letter), matrices and tensors as capital letters. It has been done like this in all school classes I've ever attended and in most university lectures. If I remember correctly, some professors used underlining for matrices instead (not sure about vectors, perhaps also underlining).
As long as you use a consistent representation it shouldn't be a problem for the students. But the best approach might be to just ask them what they are used to. You could also get the information about what is usual in your place/subject by asking other teachers, looking at lecture notes or sample solutions for exercises and tests, etc.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: That very field dependent (and probably also depends on country, city, course,…). Here's my answer:
* For **mathematicians**, I do not make any distinction, but follow the convention that vectors get lower case letters, while matrices are upper case. Some mathematicians get get confused for a few weeks, but get used to it pretty quick.
* For **physicists**, I sometimes use $\vec x$ for vectors and upper case for matrices. Usually that is fine, but note that the word "vector" has a [different meaning in physics, than in math](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vector_(mathematics_and_physics)). If $\vec x$ is too complicated for you, you could also use $\bar x$ or $\underline x$ for vectors. For **engineers**, I would probably do the same.
* If I would teach **tensor calculus**, I would probably use one underline for vectors two for matrices and three for three-tensors. (But I never did teach this, so I can not confirm if this is really practical…). Another possibility for tensor calculus is to write $(a\_{ijk})$ for a three tensor (similarly $(x\_k)$ is a vector $(a\_{ij})$ is a matrix and $(a\_{i\_1,i\_2,\dots, i\_k})$ is k-tensor.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The following are the notations I've seen most along the years (I don't think there's a winner).
Vectors:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/EhNh6.jpg)
Matrices:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/99oY7.jpg)
In my experience, unadorned symbols are preferred by mathematicians; the arrow is preferred by physicists; and bar and underbar (and double underbar for matrices) are preferred by engineers.
Even though I don't have to write many vectors and matrices (in my classes I deal mainly with scalar quantities), I usually employ underbarred symbols for four reasons:
1. Of course, I'm an engineer!
2. A bar is faster to draw then an arrow.
3. My handwriting is awful, and I think that simpler symbols improve readability; at the same time, though, I don't want to abandon the categorization of quantities through different symbols.
4. The interpretation of underbar is frequently that of bold, and I prefer bold symbols for vectors over symbols with an arrow.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: Another common convention (at least in my field) is :
* Uppercase for matrices: $A$, $B$, $C$.
* Lowercase for vectors: $v$, $w$.
* Greek lowercase for scalars: $\alpha$, $\lambda$.
* Sometimes, calligraphic for tensors (as in: things with three or more indices): $\mathcal{A}$.
If you use this convention, there is no need for bold/italic/bars/arrows.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I've just "published" some Datasets as the Mendeley Data repositories. After pressing the "Publish" button I was surprised with message that my dataset(s) are "in the moderation" process that I wasn't well aware of in advance (my bad).
Now, I'm puzzled how long it takes usually for Mendeley Data staff to approve a dataset/repository for being published on-line? Does someone has any experience with the service?
I planned to submit an article (linking to these dataset) today, but it seems I'll have to wait for the dataset moderation first.<issue_comment>username_1: username_2 moderated and accepted all 6 datasets, in between 2 and 3\* days since submission.
* I can't say when exactly it was as I received no email confirmation and I've checked last time the status of datasets 2 days after submission. Also, looking on the username_2 UI, I can't find any clue about when it was approved.
However, 3 days is very good in my opinion :)
Hope this info will help someone else :).
Live long and prosper!
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: We hope to moderate datasets within 1-2 working days. We check that the dataset contains data files and not articles or spam.
If you have any questions, contact our team directly at <EMAIL>
Best Regards,
Kate
Engagement Manager
username_2
Upvotes: 2
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| 504
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<issue_start>username_0: I was invited to review a paper in which the journal's Editor-in-Chief is a co-author. I do not mind, but raised the question that this peer-review is no longer blind. The co-author can see who wrote the reports.
I do not say the editor takes advantage of his position, but the peer-review is not actually the same.<issue_comment>username_1: In such cases, the editor-in-chief should recuse himself from having anything to do with the review process. This gives the associate or deputy editor for the given paper essentially full control of the process. (In general, I don't think the editor-in-chief is aware of exactly who is assigned to which manuscript.)
One would hope that the editor-in-chief would know the quality and standards required to publish a paper in her own journal; however, should the paper fail to meet those requirements, you should, of course, call that out in the review.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I've reviewed a paper by section editors in their own journal. I can't speak to common practice, but for this particular paper, in this particular journal, the practice was to simply assign the paper to the editor of a different section. My assumption is that confidentiality was maintained. I imagine the handling for an editor-in-chief would be similar, and that the paper would go to a section editor who would handle everything.
In this particular instance, I can't say I was real happy with the outcome. There was a major mistake of interpretation of the manuscript. The other two reviewers simply missed it (don't get me started about referees who choose to do no work!!), and just about recommended acceptance with no revisions, and my recommendation was much more harsh . The author acknowledged the error and rewrote the results and discussion-- changing the paper from "Earlier investigators found 'A', but using this new method, we find the exact opposite of 'A'" to "We find 'A', just like everyone else", making it a much less important contribution. I felt that if the author were not a section editor, the paper would not have been accepted to that high profile of a journal. I don't think I'd referee under those circumstances again.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/11/01
| 1,590
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<issue_start>username_0: When preparing a presentation, I usually avoid putting a lot of text and then read the slides. To me, the best presentation contains very good figures with presenter explaining them, and not reading what is already written. Thus, I prefer using little to no text and use only figures if possible.
While I was helping a group of collegues for their project presentation, they mentioned that there is a visually impaired student in the classroom. Although I encouraged them to present the topic using figures and drawings (the topic was very suitable for this), I wonder now whether it is the best practice.
Moreover, I realized that this might also be the case during a conference talk, for which we do not have the prior knowledge of the presence of a visually impaired person.
So, my question is for the ones who have visual disability, who know such people, or who had similar experience. What is the best way to prepare a presentation? What to think and what not to overthink?<issue_comment>username_1: From experience with someone who is visually impaired (but not blind): don't worry and go ahead as usual. Ask the visually impaired person what works best for them, if that is feasible. The person might want to use his/her own computer to look at your presentation, sit aside with at a special screen, or whatever works for them. One thing that would help in many cases is to use the mouse pointer instead of a laser pointer, since the former would be visible on the extra screen.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: From conversations with my wife, who is blind, you don't want to overthink this too much. Most of the things you can do to help the visually impaired will help everyone in the audience.
For starters, I'd suggest sending out the slide deck beforehand if at all possible, since this helps everyone be prepared. You should also make sure any figures have some sort of caption or title on them with a brief description of what's being shown. This will help anyone using a screen-reader to follow along.
The major thing that will help is making sure that you're giving general descriptions of the charts and figures, as well as the takeaway from those figures. This is good practice in general, since it ensures that your audience understands what you're trying to show with a figure and is invaluable to someone with low vision because it allows them to better understand the information being presented.
The true goal is to ensure that someone with only an audio recording of your presentation, no slides at all, can follow along to a reasonable extent. A couple of things may be missed, but the overall meaning should be apparent.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Figures and drawings with little text is best practice for presentations *generally*. Audiences can't really listen AND read full sentences at the same time, so you only want to use text in the form of signs and labels. The rest of the content should be either in your talk or in a handout available *after* the presentation (so they're not distracted by it during the presentation).
As for accommodating impairment, for colorblindness specifically check out this article: <http://stephanieevergreen.com/handling-colorblindness/> (<NAME> is an expert on presentations in general and I highly recommend reading more of her material)
Most other impairments are either near impossible to account for, or the person with the impairment will accommodate themselves because they have to for everything else anyway.
One caveat is when you have a regular attendee with an impairment that's specifically asked for help being accommodated. In such a case try to get a good understanding of what they specifically can and can't see and do your best from there. I don't think I'd go to the extent of running all my slides by them, but if you understand the disability well enough you shouldn't need to anyway.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: One approach is to read out *precisely* what is on the slides, word-by-word, image-by-image (with explanation) and prepare the slides accordingly. I'm not saying I'd welcome it in general, since it typically sounds really monotonous to the nonimpaired. But, if you do wish to get the message accross to the visually impaired listeners *exactly*, it is a good idea.
Another approach — again, assuming you do care about the visually impaired a lot — is to prepare a single, long HTML file instead of PDF slides and scroll it during your presentation. At least HTML 4.01 allows for nice gimmicks for the visually impaired, taking Braille devices and screen readers into consideration. HTML is definitely superior to PDF in this regard: e.g., when I look at text extractors for PDF or at optical character recognition tools, their low quality can make me cry.
Yet a third approach is to *use as few visuals as possible*. This requires good preparation on the side of the speaker. In general, this approach is the best one assuming it fits your contents. (Don't mention a talk on image processing here.)
(In general, if you don't know whether there will be visually impared listeners or not, you may ask about it in advance. Upon getting a positive answer, ask what they can/cannot read. This has been emphasized in the other answers a lot; I'm not going into details here.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Where I am, when a student asks for an official accommodation via Student Services the instructor is given exact details for what the student needs based on the types of materials used. I put all of my stuff in our course management system, I've had several visually impaired students and they asked for nothing extra - just the utilities on the computer to zoom text etc sufficed.
Most academic institutions and school boards will have some sort of "disability resources" office/person whose job is to make sure any accommodation is provided per the ADA or other relevant law (Americans With Disabilities Act - similar legislation applies in other countries)
If you are presenting in a situation where that isn't typical (open lecture, conference, etc) then I would provide some way for folks to get your slides online at the start of your presentation, so they can use whatever technology they have to access it in a manner that fits their needs as you give your presentation. Provide both a short URL for users to manually enter and a QR code or other commonly used scannable "pointer".
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: This is a partial answer, adding something I didn't see in the other answers.
Be careful not to pack each slide too densely. A typical slide layout shouldn't have more than approximately five lines of text. If it has more, then split it up.
This will push you to choose nice, big fonts.
This fits in with what @username_2 wrote, "Most of the things you can do to help the visually impaired will help everyone in the audience." Overly dense slides aren't fun for anyone.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: **Background:** I understand that academics have different styles of working, but in the same field, I would have thought that the outputs of senior academics should be comparable (and according to their extra responsibilities).
For example, the Editor-in-Chief of *Nano Energy* (impact factor 12.343) is the director of a research center. Until now in 2017, he has published 69 papers in high-impact journals (all with impact factors higher than 10). Many distinguished professors in the same field publish about 20 papers per year (in a wider range of journals) without executive or editorial responsibilities.
Note that my question is not about this specific person as there are many examples of academics who are publishing far more than is typical for the field.
Questions
* How is an academic able to publish so many papers in a given year (e.g., 50+)?
* Does this imply the academic is a genius? Or are there other factors at play?<issue_comment>username_1: If you look at big names in science, you'll see their name at the end of a ton of papers (in many disciplines like chemistry and biology, standards can be different elsewhere) and this is why: providing the money and the lab space gives "senior authorship". Usually they review the drafts coming out of their labs/collaborations, along with guiding students/postdocs at the idea stages (which is considered worthy of authorship by NIH/NSF and journal standards). People with big labs get to put their name on the end of every paper generated from not only their lab, but from their lab's collaborations and whatever their grants funded.
Of course, some people are just crazy productive, but it's more likely that someone with tons of papers is getting a lot of them through their large labs.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: They have large groups and a lot of cooperation. It adds up quickly if you got 25 people, maybe even postdocs, working together with you and everyone puts out 2 papers a year, which isn't that much in some fields. Especially if you have a lot of cooperation so your group does only a part of the work you can push out a lot of high quality work in short amounts of time.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: ### Distribution of Productivity is Non-normal
In many industries and fields, metrics of success often follow something like a power distribution. Examples include incomes of sports professionals, sales of writers and musicians, publication output and citation counts of academics (see some of the work by Aguinis and colleagues on star performers).
### Causes
**Success leads to more resources:** In general, the world rewards the best and most capable in a field. This occurs though giving more exposure in high impact journals and so on. It also occurs where success leads to more resources (e.g., grant money; collaborators willing to put you on a paper; better collaborators; better PhD students; more time to do research; etc.).
**Ability is non-linearly related to productivity**: In addition, writing journal articles for high impact journals takes substantial expertise. There are many academics who never publish in high impact journals, presumably because their research skills, available data, or whatever are just not at that level. In contrast, other researchers are able to consistently produce output at that level. I'd also note that this is not a fixed characteristic. People do learn and improve. But ultimately, high level skills and persistence are required to consistently publish in top-tier journals.
### Publication Metrics
In general, whenever you compare the publication of one academic to another, there are a number of things to consider:
* **Quality of publications:** The impact factor is a crude approximation in first instance but average impact factor becomes more informative when average over an academics portfolio of publications.
* **Field-specific performance norms:** Some fields publish more or less, and related to the next points, some fields have more co-authors per paper, which makes it easier to get many papers.
* **Number of co-authors per paper:** Some authors publish with few co-authors; some publish with many. A fairer comparison will often be obtained by dividing each publication by number of co-authors, and summing this fractionated total.
* **Weighting by contribution to paper:** In general, with more co-authors, any one person's contribution is less. In many fields, the first author makes the main contribution. Thus, one quick way of fractionating, is to get a count of number of first author papers only. Thus, if someone is the head of a big group, which get their name on many things, this often won't transfer to first author papers.
Types of prolific authors
=========================
In my experience in psychology, I have seen various strategies for prolific publishing (e.g., 30, 40, 50 or more papers per year):
* The **many mid-tier papers strategy**: There are some academics in psychology who pursue a strategy of publishing a large number of papers in mid-tier journals. These journals often have an okay impact factor. They might be Q2 or low Q1 on Scimago. Often these articles are a bit more incremental. The journals do have standards, but they are often relatively quick to publish in. In some cases, such authors frequently publish in a small number of journals that seem to like their fast-style. Such authors also often join the editorial board. In general, I find these academics are often fairly capable, but perhaps lack the depth of insight to publish at top-tier journals.
* **Big group strategy:** Another common strategy is to be part of a big research group. Often it is the head of such group that gets on a lot of papers. But it's also possible for methodologists to get on a large number of papers. And more generally, you can often find groups of academics at institutions who work together. Most papers have many authors (e.g., 10 to 20 authors). In even more extreme cases, you can see some mega-collaborations (well known in physics, but occurring in other spaces) that span multiple institutions.
<NAME>., & <NAME>. (2014). Star performers in twenty‐first century organizations. Personnel Psychology, 67(2), 313-350.
<http://www.hermanaguinis.com/PPsych2014.pdf>
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: According to my long experience in academic research, it is possible that you can accumulate a large number of papers at the end of the year by including your name on every paper, whether you have a genuine contribution or not, where the latter is the dominant tendency in academia. I’ve been in China for more than 10 years and I have seen tons of cases for fake Chinese professors who spend the whole year sending emails and begging other people (students, postdoc, ... etc) to include their names on papers even without having a quick look at the papers... This is, of course, a nonethical approach to science... In China this is quite common everywhere where most academic people don’t care about ethics.... the most important thing is the number of papers... Look at any conference (e.g., IEEE proceeding) and see how many papers coming from China... You will get amazed at the first glance but wait ... mostly useless and rubbish papers..... Moreover, Networking and Connection are important in that direction where many Chinese academic people manage to publish their papers in peer-reviewed journals through connections with editors and chief-in-editors where they are in most cases Chinese... I know many cases where reviewers directly keep in touch with authors, promising them to give positive feedback (no matter the solidity of work) on their submitted papers which is, in turn, will be beneficial for both... mutual benefit between comrades... This is the truth about academic life nowadays... On the other hand, exceptional cases are there everywhere (genuine researchers).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: *This community wiki answer was created from answers-in-comments.*
The other answers explain mechanisms by which "normal" academics can have very high paper counts. But there are also some (very unusual) instances of people who are just insanely productive (and not just putting their names on papers where their proteges do all the work). For instance, [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saharon_Shelah); another example is [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonhard_Euler), who wrote over 800 (singly authored!) papers. To put it in better perspective: "The historian of science <NAME> has estimated that in a listing of all of the mathematics, physics, mechanics, astronomy, and navigation work produced during the 18th Century, a full 25% would have been written by <NAME>." Truly mindboggling.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: Is there a (text)book on how academia or science works? What I'm looking for is not anecdotes and tips, but actual insights presented systematically, like any textbooks in every disciplines. This book should provide connections between [varieties in academia](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/a/1212/14341), and how the root of seeking new knowledge shaping the varieties as they are now. I think this can be categorized as an application of sociology.
Some questions I want to know:
* How does a new theory spreads out and be accepted?
* Can it answer everything?
* How do governments fund researches?
* [to be added]
Meta discussion: [How to make the question asking for books on academia/science not a shopping list?](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/3859/14341)<issue_comment>username_1: The study of the higher education and academia is a huge area of research, and I must admit, I am no expert in it. While some publications are opinion-based, as [<NAME>](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/20058/massimo-ortolano) notes in his comment, there is a growing number of research-based works on academia developed within different disciplinary frameworks, which includes those developed within the framework of academic sociology, as you mention in your question.
Among the trailblazing works in the sociology of academia were the publications by [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_K._Merton#Sociology_of_science), and also
<NAME>, *The Intellectual and Social Organization of the Sciences* (1984), and <NAME>, *Homo Academicus* (1984), focusing on French academia.
Among the recent notable books in this field, I can cite <NAME>, *How Professors Think: Inside the Curious World of Academic Judgment* (2010), based on a study of US grant peer review panels, and
<NAME>, *Inside Graduate Admissions: Merit, Diversity, and Faculty Gatekeeping* (2016), based on participant observations about a number of graduate admission committees at US universities. Tracing the differences between the branches (varieties) of academia and explaining them is a major theme in both these books. But there are many more.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Thanks @username_1 for your link to Merton, I found a good pointer to everything about science itself: [Science studies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_studies). One of the introductory books I found is [<NAME>, Science Studies: An Advanced Introduction](https://nyupress.org/books/9780814735640/). Here is its introduction:
>
> Science Studies is the first comprehensive survey of the field, combining a concise overview of key concepts with an original and integrated framework. In the process of bringing disparate fields together under one tent, <NAME> realizes the full promise of science studies, long uncomfortably squeezed into traditional disciplines. He provides a clear discussion of the issues and misunderstandings that have arisen in these interdisciplinary conversations. His survey is up-to-date and includes recent developments in philosophy, sociology, anthropology, history, cultural studies, and feminist studies.
>
>
> By moving from the discipline-bound blinders of a sociology, history, philosophy, or anthropology of science to a transdisciplinary field, science studies, Hess argues, will be able to provide crucial conceptual tools for public discussions about the role of science and technology in a democratic society.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Not really a book, but as a start one can visit the [Category:Academia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Academia) in Wikipedia, trace through the links they are interested, and look at the references if necessary.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Take a look at [Tomorrow's Professor: Preparing for Academic Careers in Science and Engineering](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0780311361)
The book is focused on STEM professors, but most of the research and advice is probably cross-discipline. It's probably the best book about what you're in for as a graduate student, postdoc, and tenure-track professor.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing an academic CV for PhD applications. I have included the marks for each exam I did in my final year.
The marking scheme is slightly unusual: the threshold for the highest mark was 59 (normally around 70). I got (~10 marks) higher than 59 in a few papers and I want it to be clear that I was above the boundary, should I mention in the CV that the boundary was 59?<issue_comment>username_1: Some Universities use a "percentile" parameter to show your grade respect to the rest of students. Maybe you can ask for this metric or if possible calculate it by yourself.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: If the exams are listed in your transcript, then you do not need to repeat them in your CV. The reason is that they'll be better (and officially) explained on your transcript.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: We are writing a manuscript with 7 people. I am not sure what is a good tool to write a paper collaboratively. Other than overleaf or sharelatex which cost money.
What do you do if you have technology inclined collaborators?<issue_comment>username_1: Git! Or more generally, version control systems, if your co-authors are technically inclined enough to know/learn how to use one.
If not, probably... write the text in google docs first and designate someone who will do the formatting in the latter stages, and decide what to cut to make the page limit.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Use Google Docs or a Wiki (see <http://www.wikimatrix.org/> )
Agree on a detailed style guide. Agree on one voice. Decide on who should have the final say over edits. Know the requirements from your desired publisher, or journal. And decide on who should format everything. It will be more consistent if only one person does that part too.
To use the wiki matrix, start with the [choice wizard](http://www.wikimatrix.org/wizard.php), then refine your choice based on special features you might need, like MathML, file uploading, and/or a markup language that can easily be [exported](https://tex.stackexchange.com/questions/1420/how-to-convert-mediawiki-syntax-to-latex) to LaTeX.
To track changes, make the "Recent Changes" page of your wiki your home page, or turn on email notifications assuming you don't mind the deluge of emails.
Your manuscript may not look that great on a wiki, but that can be a benefit too. There is no point in obsessing over the formatting of the content until the content has mostly been finalized.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Short answer: it is a pain, unless you can all agree to use a single way of working, which is unlikely. I will describe my own workflow below in case it gives you ideas.
In my experience, each author wants to use their own tools. Depending on the field this is usually Word or LaTeX. In biophysics, almost nobody uses version control and most of the people I worked with are not willing to learn it.
I am not saying you should do what I do, or claiming that this is the single best way, but my workflow is as follows:
1. I write the paper as very basic LaTeX (almost plain text). I use version control.
2. I paste it into libreoffice and do some basic formatting (otherwise some co-authors will start "correcting" the formatting). I email everybody the draft of the paper.
3. Co-authors suggest changes, all at the same time. I ask them to highlight or track changes and, importantly, leave comments and tell me WHY they propose a change. You'd be surprised how many people make changes without letting you know why.
4. I manually merge the changes of all authors into my version of the paper, and deal with conflicts (if necessary by discussing via email with the co-authors in question).
5. Repeat from point 2 until done. For me, typically 2 or 3 iterations are enough but with difficult people this number can go up dramatically.
6. Convert paper to final format (decided by journal requirements). Make sure you do this only once, at the very end.
If this sounds complicated you are right. But to me this is the least complicated way unless everybody agrees to use the same software and version control (which is rare). Especially if reference management software is involved it can become a terrible mess when co-authors start to add/mess with references.
The main advantages of this method:
* There is a single current version of the paper and I (as first author) always have it.
* I can use version control, even if nobody else does.
* Everybody can use whatever tools they want.
I found that one person being in control of the writing and merging avoids endless discussions and ending up with multiple versions of the paper.
If people take too long to reply I send them an updated version with the others' corrections: this will show them that others have done their job and hopefully incite them to reply as well. Also, some of their potential comments may already have been addressed in the new version.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I routinely am a co-author on papers with 10-16 authors, as is the norm in my field (biology/molecular biology; I just counted, and in the past 12 months, about a dozen papers, I averaged 11.1 authors). The process I use is by no means ideal, but it is very much a standard in my fields.
With more than three or four authors, it's not expected that most will be heavily involved in the writing process. A "middle" author -- that is, one other than the last author (senior) and first author (who did the bulk of the work) -- typically gets a near-final draft and is asked for input on that. They'll often find a block in the Methods and the Results section commenting something like "JESSICA - please fill in details of mouse examinations" or something like that, and we expect a detailed couple paragraphs there, but the implication is that aside from their specialty, we're looking for typos and minor changes and not much more.
(If a middle author has serious concerns, of course we pay attention. But if the draft is accurate and reasonably well written, it's not expected that a middle author will offer major revisions.)
That means that you're really doing the bulk of the manuscript prep with two, or perhaps three, main writers, which makes life a lot easier; which is important, because what just about everyone does is pass Word documents back and forth and use "Track Changes". Sometimes we use shared folders (Dropbox equivalents); sometimes we use email. In either case we typically keep a list of drafts; one set of revisions come back, we save as "v3" and then "Accept revisions" and call that version "v4", and so on.
We never work simultaneously. One person makes all their comments, tells the next "Your turn", and waits until all those changes are made.
Eventually, usually after three or four passes, this turns into a draft that can go out to middle authors. Here, because we don't expect major changes, we typically do get simultaneous changes, and just incorporate them all together.
We often send to the couple of authors who we know are likely to make more changes first (Jessica is really good at identifying logical flow problems; James is British and has language eccentricities), incorporate changes from them, and after that send to the people who are likely to just catch typos.
Again, this is all using Word Track Changes, which I know has many problems, but it's a de facto lowest common denominator; everyone has it, everyone knows how to use it, it's easier than trying to teach one (or 11) people how to use Git or whatever. More computation-heavy fields probably use different approaches. When I'm a middle author on a paper, this is what I expect, and it's what I invariably get. It sounds like it should be a mess, but since it's what everyone is used to it generally goes pretty smoothly. It's been years since the logistics of working with co-authors has been an issue for me.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: In case you are working with LaTeX, there are two very good (free!) sites offering collaboration functionality: [Overleaf](http://www.overleaf.com) and [ShareLaTeX](http://www.sharelatex.com). In fact, they are in the process of merging their services. Overleaf apparently does not restrict the number of collaborators. Additionally, it features git support!
Both offer online compiling (no need for local installation). You can simultaneously edit your document with several authors at once and even track their cursor and what they type. It has a chat, comments and version history. Which one of them you are using will most likely not matter, they have a very similar feature list and will eventually become one.
**Downside**: One of you might have to purchase a paid subscription to have a higher number of collaborators. But usually you get a better deal when you are from a university or similar institution. Referral links (at least on ShareLaTeX) can also get you to a higher number of collaborators without paying, but you will need to send referral links to your co-authors.
I recently used ShareLaTeX to work with one co-author and it was really pleasing. I even use it for myself, just because I dislike most Tex editors.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: From my experience and to elaborate on @buzjwa's comment:
I have used overleaf to collaboratively write papers multiple times. As mentioned above, the free version allows an unlimited number of collaborators and even contribution without an account is possible (more on that below). And while overleaf is far from perfect, I have not yet found a better option, especially when cooperating with researchers form other fields.
After you created a free overleaf project you get (long and cryptic) links to read-only and read-write version of the document that you can pass out to contributors. Please note that the free version does not support protected repositories, so everyone who gets his hand on that link can view/ edit your document.
Additionally each overleaf project has a git repo that you can check out and a rich text mode. This allows people with different preferences to work together. (I for myself prefer working offline and pushing my changes with git.) One downside of this is that git implementation used does not support branches and tags.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a Ph.D. student of computer science and just have started working on a research problem. Some fellow Ph.D. students have mentioned the term *research visit.* For a professor, these things make sense, but as a Ph.D. student I am not getting what it means. There are some precise questions related to this below:
1. What does *research visit* mean?
2. What is the significance of it in Ph.D.?
3. What is the typical duration of a research visit?<issue_comment>username_1: You can be referring to two things, a visit to another institution (usually to give an invited talk) or you could mean a visiting student/researcher role:
1. Someone who visits a different institution for some prolonged period of time, usually to do research. You may even be able to register for classes.
2. It gives you the opportunity to work onsite with a different research group. You can think of it like an internship. Working onsite has a lot of benefits over working with a group remotely, such as direct access to lab equipment, data, participants, and your collaborators.
3. It can vary greatly, but I've seen it range from a summer to an entire year.
UC Berkeley has a page describing some benefits of [visiting student researchers](https://vspa.berkeley.edu/visiting-researcher-scholar).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: To me, a research visit means just that: you go somewhere for some period of time to do research, usually because you want to work together with a specific person or group. It means the same for PhD students as it does for professors. As username_1 mentions in his answer, it is common that the visitor will also give a seminar or colloquium talk.
For a PhD students such a research visit can have a couple of benefits. First, it allows you to meet other people in your field and work with them, thus expanding your network. This is important later on, when you are trying to find a postdoc or faculty position. More importantly, it can be beneficial to your research. It can be a great opportunity to work closely with experts in your field, for example on parts of you thesis your advisor knows less about.
As for duration, there is a wide range. In my field, mathematics, I would say up to about one or two weeks is fairly typical, but longer visits are not uncommon. Of course, for long visits funding becomes an issue, and it is usually necessary to attract external funding. There are various programs to fund such visits, for example as part of an exchange program. Sometimes for a longer visit you can get an "official" position at the university as a visiting student. I think this is typically more of an administrative thing, so that you for example can make use of the library.
Finally, it could also mean having a "visiting researcher" or "visiting professor" position. This usually means a longer term position, for example 1-2 years. In my field such positions are either basically postdoc positions (i.e., non tenure-track positions), or for people that are on sabbatical that visit another university for an extended period of time. Typically such positions also include some teaching duties.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a grad student and I do some tutoring on the side for money. It's a sweet gig and I do like helping people learn. However I have had plenty bad experiences tutoring. Usually the really bad things (people wanting me to cheat, not paying, etc.) usually are pretty obvious right away.
However what I have a hard time with are students who simply don't progress at all. Like don't study, come completely unprepared and are just frustrating and awful to deal with. It can take a few weeks to become apparent and honestly by that point I would feel guilty dropping them, especially if they're friendly.
How do I weed out students before it gets to that point? How do I find if a student will actually study, come prepared, etc. It's a waste of my time and their money to have me repeat definitions to them an hour a week, week after week.<issue_comment>username_1: **Run an introductory test**
You're looking for students that can manage their time and responsibilities. The only way to test that is by trial. Prepare a short questionnaire that would give you an impression of what the student knows. Send it to the student several days before your first meeting and ask to complete it before the meeting. Depending on how strict you want to be, do or do not remind the student about this test. If the student completes the test before the meeting, he's more likely to turn out a responsible adult. Apart from that, the test provides a starting point for your first meeting.
Note: in my culture, first meetings with tutors are usually unpaid and considered a trial period. It's easy to drop a student after a trial meeting if he didn't do the test and didn't seem hardworking during the meeting. If you already established a payment routine, it's harder to drop a student.
>
> It's a waste of my time and their money to have me repeat definitions to them an hour a week, week after week.
>
>
>
For a lateral approach to the problem, grad students who recently started tutoring sometimes only plan to tutor brilliant students, like themselves. Because of that, new tutors think that the job will be pleasant, thought-provoking and fascinating, so they set a lower hourly wage. However, an hour spent tutoring should be properly recompensed, even if it was dull to the tutor. I'll leave for you to judge if my experience applies to you, but don't hesitate to raise your hourly rate so that you don't feel like you're wasting your time.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Dealing with low-performing students is a necessary part of education, whether you're a tutor or a TA or a faculty member. In all these cases you can:
1. Set the expectation that learning is a self-directed exercise. You are there to guide students, but you can't learn the material for them. It's a good thing to be honest with your students about their lack of progress, and it's perfectly reasonable to tell your students that you will stop working with them if you don't see improvement.
2. Give reasonable and achievable assignments as take-home work. Learning does not only happen during your tutoring session (or class time). Set deadlines and stick to them. Failure to keep deadlines is a valid reason to end your tutoring relationship.
3. Don't let students say "I don't know how to do it." Make them be specific about their process and their own understanding. How did they approach the problem? Where did they get stuck? Why did they get stuck? What specific thing don't they understand? Failure to demonstrate that they have carefully thought through the work before coming to you for help is a valid reason to end the current tutoring session (or kick students out of office hours) and eventually end the tutoring relationship.
The basic concept here is that you have to set specific expectations with specific consequences for failing, and then follow through with your consequences. Hopefully they will improve. If they don't and they continually fail to meet your expectations then it will be clear to the student why you will no longer tutor them.
An example, since you cite definitions as a problem. Challenge them to memorize three key definitions of the subject you're studying. Tell them that you expect them to have memorized these definitions by your next meeting, and that if they haven't memorized them then you're turning around and going home. First thing when they show up next week give them a short quiz over the task you've asked them to do. If they succeed, tutor as normal. If they fail, set them the same challenge and tell them that you can't proceed until they accomplish your task-
then turn around and head home. If this goes on for a few weeks and they make absolutely zero progress then tell them it's time to find a new tutor.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Why? The good students don't need a tutor, but merely a life coach (or perhaps just a kick in the keester); they are more than capable of teaching themselves the material, once provided with motivation.
The true reward of tutoring, since the pay is often poor, can only be found from elevating the bad student, who truly requires assistance. Teach simple steps, easily learned by rote, and emphasize the memorized patterns. By this means even the weakest students can be elevated in accomplishment, and achieve a degree of understanding exceeding their start.
Ten years ago I had the opportunity of tutoring a young man, still articulate and very personable, who had suffered a bad head injury that impaired his ability to extend long term memory. It was clear that he had once been bright, but now was struggling to pass a Grade 8 math equivalency to get an apprenticeship. He had been abandoned by numerous tutors before me, who had simply dismissed him as an unteachable idiot; despite his new disability he most certainly was not that.
Week by week we repeated simple patterns for each type of question he would see, that would enable him to solve some problems and get part marks on all the rest by achieving progress towards the solution. I raised his mark from under 10% to over 45% by that means, though unfortunately not quite to the required 50%. Life moved me on after that term, however, and I was unable to finish the task at hand.
A couple of months ago I was sitting at my desk, at work, when I heard the call "Hey! Netherlands! Remember me?" Of course I did. (My name was gone from his long term memory, but not my face or favourite soccer team.) He had passed the exam on his next attempt, with the confidence and technique I had taught him, and gone on to apprentice as a copier repairman. What a pleasure it was to run into him, reminisce for a few minutes, and note his found succes, before life again took us in different directions.
My recommendation is to (of course) accept the money offered, but not to look to it for your measure of success as a tutor. Seek the rewards inherent in the tutoring itself for that, and take students as they arrive at your office door.
**Update** Repeating a comment of mine below:
The depth of understanding that a tutor acquires by teaching poor students, and by teaching them well, is in my humble opinion very difficult to obtain by other means.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: I've been there.
What I did was I set learning milestones for the student and test them regularly. I would raise my rate exponentially every time they fail. They will either put a lot more effort into it or drop out and stop wasting your time.
Obviously the details of this dynamic need to be put forth from the very beginning.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: Raise your rates. This will be a disincentive to parents and students are aren't really motivated. Student who don't improve when it's their fault and their parents will both blame you and look for someone "better" and/or who charges less. Anyone who actually sticks with you will at least be paying for your higher frustration level.
If you meet a good student, perhaps at a free introductory session, you could offer them a discount (which I think you can deduct on your taxes, also).
All that said, you might keep in mind that the worst students usually need the most help. Teaching and tutoring are at least as much, if not more, about relationships, not about explaining difficult concepts. If you're really in it to help struggling students learn, then part of that is figuring out how to help students *want* to learn.
On top of that, when all is said and done, a school year is really short. Classroom teachers don't get to pick their students, and for better or for worse they get a whole new crop the next year. With tutoring, you have the option to try to keep up with students over several years of school, or drop them and refer them to other tutors after the end of a year.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I have another suggestion. Before your first lesson, tell the student that if they don't do their preparation work for each lesson, there's nothing you can do to help them, and that if they haven't done their preparation one week, you won't tutor them for that week, you'll send them away after five or ten minutes and only charge them for that time. (Obviously, only do this if you can afford to travel for that long for a low fee.) That way, the student understands how badly they're wasting your time, and if they don't improve by the following week, you won't feel at all bad about dropping them.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: ### You weed them out by weeding them out
The simple answer here is that you weed them out exactly by doing that --- if you encounter a student you no longer wish to tutor, you cease tutoring them. You seem to be asking for advice on how to do a thing without feeling the feelings that you get by doing that thing. If you are reluctant to drop students because you feel guilty then you need to examine your premises; are students entitled to your time irrespective of your wish to teach them? You have a decision to make that we cannot make for you: either continue teaching students out of guilt and don't weed them out, or do weed them out.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: I see this is an old question, but I feel a lot of answers are aimed at people in official tutoring engagements (they mention "when students arrive at your office door"). While it is unlikely this will help the OP, I'd like to add another perspective and *offer a frame challenge*, which seems to be mentioned in some comments but not clearly in any of the answers.
To me, the situation looks more like the informal tutoring I was also doing (now, quite while ago) during my BSc and MSc. We had a student forum where we would post offers "Looking for / offering tutoring in A, B, C. Rates XYZ/hour. Contact through PM". If your motivations for doing these were anything alike mine (below), I would suggest **not trying to filter those students out**.
**Firstly**, I would clearly evaluate my motives for tutoring. For me, the *primary* reason was to make pocket money: I was very outgoing and liked the freedom of not having to watch my budget whenever I went out. The subsidised student food was cheap, but also very bad, and I liked being able to shop for groceries to prepare my own meals (yes, back in the day our subsidised food was cheaper even that that... and much, much worse than any student cooking I've ever tasted). I wanted to do that in a way that would benefit me as well, by keeping my knowledge fresh in topics of interest, but that was, well, *secondary*.
**Secondly**, if your tutoring priorities coincide with mine (pocket money first, intellectually challenging work if possible), I would suggest the following (if they do not, I would look through the other answers):
* Firstly, set a tutoring price that you are comfortable with. Don't undervalue your time. If you're better in some topics you tutor, charge more for those. And think of what you are willing to provide for that hourly prices (e.g. explaining theory or proofs, doing exercises, but *not* working on their project assignment)
* Explain clearly on your first session what you believe is the best way of teaching and learning. Listen to the response of the tutee, and settle for a strategy *you* find reasonable if at all possible.
* Keep in mind that everybody learns and understands differently: being able to explain the same thing in several different ways is what makes a great tutor.
* If they want to use your time together differently from what you propose, that is ultimately their choice as long as what they are asking is within the services you are willing to provide. You are *not* in an official, University teaching role. You are offering a service: one hour of your time for a certain amount of money, where you will demonstrate or explain a certain topic.
* Keeping above in your mind, *do not slack* on the quality of any of the "services" you are delivering. If somebody insists on flying over theory and focusing on exercises, explain the exercises to the best of your ability, and including all the theory necessary (as an added bonus, they might now ask you about that theory they weren't interested in a few minutes ago).
Here are some "lessons" I learned through my tutoring session:
* There are a lot of nice, affable people that are a pleasure to chat with, that have a very bad attitude towards learning, and you can't change that. In this kind of setting, that's not even your responsibility.
* Repeating the same thing over and over again is exhausting. Patience is key. It does help you retain knowledge and skills tremendously.
* Some people have very specific (mis)conceptions on how they prefer to study, and again, you can't change that. You are all young adults, responsible for your own decisions. Some will make mistakes, and some will learn from their mistakes, but for that to occur, they must be allowed to make the mistakes.
I remember a lad that insisted only ever doing practical exercises for different maths courses, *flat out refusing to go through any proofs and theorems*. Eventually, *I made it clear that I think this is not a good way to study, and his progress will be slower* than if he had a basic understanding of the theory behind it. He acknowledged my warnings, said he doesn't agree, I shrugged and said "well, your money", and we did a bunch of exercises. I clearly communicated that I believed he could get more value out of our sessions, and he clearly communicated that's not what he wants. It took him 2 or 3 years to pass that course -- and he liked working with me, kept coming back. Honestly, I did as well, he was a nice enough guy. He even got me a drink when he finally passed :)
* Working with less-than-motivated students is discouraging, hard, and exhausting. It makes you wonder why you're doing it in the first place. **But then you get that one student in 10, and they struggle, but they put effort in. You see their progress, more vividly than any exam scores could tell you. You help them turn their D into a B or an A by the end of the semester, and they make it all worth it.** (even today, more than 10 years later)
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I submitted few manuscripts to some journals during my PhD and moved to other institute for postdoc (full-time) in few months before. Now one manuscript has come for revision and other manuscripts may come soon. I have following many questions in my mind.
I am wondering is it ethical to spend some time to make revision of my old manuscripts in holidays/weekends in my house without using any resources from Institute?
Should I need to discuss this matter to my present supervisor or Institute?
Should I acknowledge my present Institute? Is it also necessary to change my affiliation?<issue_comment>username_1: Let's address your questions one by one.
>
> I am wondering is it ethical to spend some time to make revision of my old manuscripts in holidays/weekends in my house without using any resources from Institute?
>
>
>
What you do on your free time is entirely up to you: no job, boss, or conditions, can take that away from you...
(*Well, almost… as noted in comments, there can be clauses that limit your abilities to work on other projects, but I would think that the principal case in which it causes problem / conflicts of interest, is when that "side activity" is paid, which, I assume, is not your case.*)
>
> Should I need to discuss this matter to my present supervisor or Institute?
>
>
>
...yet, depending on the sensibilities and particular conditions of your employment, you may want to tell your supervisor. You don't have to make it super formal, as it is rather usual for a young post-doc to have ongoing work that follows publications made during the Ph.D. Just mention that you'll be working on some revisions *on your free time*, and that should be fine.
If your supervisor shows interest (*"Great, you should make a presentation"*, "*Tell me more*", "*What are the connections with our current project?*"), you can try to make fruitful connections, but that may not arise.
>
> Should I acknowledge my present Institute? Is it also necessary to change my affiliation?
>
>
>
I would think that this will depends on the country, institute, kind of supervisor, and many other aspects. Listing your former institution as the "main institute", and your current institute as your current address would probably be the safest option.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: ***This is one of those things about academia that likely varies across disciplines. The answer below pertains to norms in mathematics.*** (It might help if you provide more information about your discipline so people can give more accurate answers.)
In mathematics it is customary to sign any paper you write while employed at institution X as "[name of author], Institution X". The distinction between "personal time" and "work time" is essentially nonexistent in the context of paper authorship, nor is there any discussion of the physical location where the paper was written or whether work "resources" were used.
In your situation, as I said I would sign the paper with my name and current affiliation, and add in the acknowledgements a note along the lines of "Part of this work was done while the author was at Institution Y", where Y is the name of my old institution.
As for discussing your plans with your supervisor, yes, in mathematics it would be expected that you discuss such projects with them, at least to the same extent that they would generally expect you to discuss with them what you are working on (which is not necessarily a very high extent - postdoctoral researchers in mathematics are generally pretty free to work on what they want and there isn't a high expectation on the part of the supervisor that the researcher spend all their time on things that are directly useful to the supervisor). Again, the fact that the projects are continuations of things you started elsewhere or that you plan to work on them during time that you consider as "personal time" is immaterial to the question.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: If you do the revisions entirely in your free time without resources from your current job, then your official address should be the institute where you did the Ph.D. work. Your new address would be indicated as "current address." It would not be absolutely necessary to discuss the matter with your current supervisor, but it would be polite to do so.
If, on the other hand, you use work time or resources from your current job, then you should get your current supervisor's approval. I can't imagine a reasonable supervisor denying you this approval unless the revisions were so extensive and your work on your current project so urgent that you just can't spare any work time for the revisions. Assuming you get your supervisor's permission, you should either list your current institute as a second address (if the revisions were quite extensive, so that a substantial part of the paper resulted from work at your new address) or put a footnote on the first page indicating what part of the work was done at the new address (if that part was not so extensive).
I should add that I'm answering from the point of view of a mathematician in the U.S. (except for the part about "your work on your current project is so urgent ..." which is extremely unlikely in mathematics but can easily occur in a lab science where you're the one who keeps the lab functioning). Other fields and other countries might have different ideas of what's appropriate.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/11/03
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<issue_start>username_0: In most engineering papers, I see that the authors justify their research by displaying how well it performs against the state-of-the-art methods or algorithms, in a quantitative sense. To put it loosely, this is usually stated along the lines of "Our method is faster/better/cheaper than existing methods, and here are the charts and graphs to prove it".
However, what about papers that are putting forward a more visionary approach that would take time to justify using quantitative means? For example, it is conceivable that there is an idea that performs moderately well, but needs work by the entire community in order to reach its potential. It is also conceivable that this idea is a more fruitful one than existing lines of research.
Does a piece of research *have* to beat others in a measurable way in order to be publishable, or is there also a qualitative, holistic way that papers are evaluated?<issue_comment>username_1: In order to be publishable, a scientific work needs to provide evidence that it advances the state of human knowledge.
Direct quantitative comparison to the state of the art is a relatively straightforward way of doing this, but there are many other alternatives. For example, one might also provide mathematical proof of a difference in expected scaling or demonstrate a qualitative property that is not present in current systems.
The key in every case, however, is that there should be clear evidence provided of some sort of value that other investigators are likely to find to be of interest.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: "In most engineering papers, I see that the authors justify their research by displaying how well it performs against the state-of-the-art methods or algorithms, in a quantitative sense."
That's true for *most* papers. But a "visionary" paper represents an improvement in the "qualitative" sense.
An important part of engineering is "design." If you have come up with a new "configuration" of inputs, that could be original enough to be published. The fact that that "it would take time to justify using quantitative means" gives you an "excuse" not to publish quantitative results. But if your approach is sufficiently original, you would still be doing the community a service.
Upvotes: 1
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2017/11/03
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<issue_start>username_0: The following paper was published in *Annals of Medicine and Surgery*.
[How to approach supervisors for research opportunities](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S204908011600025X)
It has nothing to do with medicine or surgery.
How can one think of submitting a paper like that (to such a journal)? And how can one accept a paper like that?<issue_comment>username_1: From the journal webpage:
>
> Scope of the Journal
>
>
> * Audit Projects
> * Case Reports
> * Original Research
> * Reviews, Commentaries, Letters
> * AMS covers the whole of medicine and surgery - clinical and basic sciences
>
>
>
It would be an unusual article in a journal that only published research articles, but some have other types of entry as well, and this is one of them.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> It has nothing to do with Medicine or Surgery.
>
>
>
This will come as a surprise to the large number of medical students, medical and surgical interns, etc. who are interested in getting some experience in research, either to broaden their base of knowledge or with the mind to transition toward academic medicine.
>
> How can one think of submitting a paper like that (to such a journal)?
>
>
>
You think "Here is a pressing question some people in my field have encountered..." and, for something like this, you likely contact the editorial office to make sure it's of interest. Or you submit to a journal that has a consistent track record of publishing papers on the practice of their subject.
>
> How can one accept a paper like that?
>
>
>
Having been a reviewer on similar types of papers - once the editor has decided it may be of interest you read it over, make sure you think the content is accurate and it will be of interest, make any comments you might have, and submit your review. Other times, the review is internal.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> It has nothing to do with medicine or surgery.
>
>
>
I fully agree, and this should probably rule out a publication in a venue focusing on these topics.
However, the crucial detail here is probably that the journal in question includes a little more than these topics. According to the [Guide for Authors](https://www.elsevier.com/journals/annals-of-medicine-and-surgery/2049-0801/guide-for-authors):
>
> As a general medical and surgical journal, Annals of Medicine and Surgery covers all specialties, and is dedicated to publishing original research, review articles and more all offering significant contributions to knowledge in clinical surgery, experimental surgery, **surgical education** and history.
>
>
>
(highlighting by myself)
Arguably, the paper in question *is* covered by the topic of surgical (or otherwise) education.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: This is really very common, especially in high-impact journals that expect to have a broad readership. [Science](http://science.sciencemag.org) and [Nature](https://www.nature.com) routinely run editorials and news articles on many aspects of scientific and non-scientific culture. [PNAS](http://www.pnas.org/content/114/40/10514) includes little biographies of their members. Journal of Virology includes comments from its editor (for example, ["the change that is under way in scientific publishing"](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2772770/)). A 5-second skim of various medical journals turns up recent papers on [Racism in Medicine](http://www.annfammed.org/content/14/3/267.full) (Annals of Internal Medicine), [Staying Current in Medicine: Advice for New Doctors](https://knowledgeplus.nejm.org/blog/staying-current-in-medicine-advice-for-new-doctors/) (New England Journal of Medicine), and so on.
Many journals, especially but not only those published by Societies, see their role as serving their membership more broadly than simply stolidly publishing research. The "advice to a young doctor" theme, like the one the question refers to, is particularly common; [Pubmed](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=advice+to+young+doctor) lists several hundred.
In sum, this is absolutely normal and extremely common. If you read journals for more than a year or so you will see dozens of similarly-themed articles.
(Nature in particular notoriously used to run April Fools articles; I don't think they still do, particularly since a researcher claimed he had spent significant money following up on an April Fools article, since in his country he had never heard of the April Fools tradition.)
Upvotes: 4
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2017/11/03
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<issue_start>username_0: I came across an advertisement of an academic position (in Europe) that states explicitly:
>
> Application package should include:
>
> (1) a complete curriculum vitae (with a photo), (...)
>
>
>
I have never seen a photo on CV to be a requirement (although the fact that is included in parenthesis might implicitly mean that is optional?)
In any case I find it mildly strange.
Assuming that its is indeed a requirement, what is the rationale behind this? What are the benefits (for the person advertising the position) of doing so?
I am not asking what are the benefits for the applicant (for which there [is a related question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/30043/in-what-situations-would-it-be-appropriate-to-include-ones-photograph-in-a-cv)) but I am asking from the point of view of the person receiving the applications. Even though the position is located in Europe (Switzerland), feel free to answer for your own region!<issue_comment>username_1: >
> I have never seen a photo on CV to be a requirement (although the fact that is included in parenthesis might implicitly mean that is optional?)
>
>
>
My interaction with colleagues in Europe (especially Germany) seems to suggest that this is a relatively common requirement, or at least a default expectation for what is a "complete" CV that they may feel the need to specify due to an international applicant base.
>
> Assuming that its is indeed a requirement, what is the rationale behind this? What are the benefits (for the person advertising the position) of doing so?
>
>
>
I imagine many of the rationales boil down to "This is how it's done". Every justification I've ever seen is about making a "personal connection" and evaluating some soft factors based on the photo.
Whether this is a good idea or not is left as an exercise to the reader.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: This is not uncommon when you have a large pool of applicants, because makes it easier to identify you vs other candidates. It is likely that this approach has been adopted for all recruitment at this institution, in a one size fits all strategy rather than specifically for this post.
Some people remember faces better than names, so having both available serves both. For example:
If I have interviewed 8 people in one day and another 8 on the previous day and am discussing you with other members of the hiring committee who may have seen you in a different order then we don't have a conversation that starts "Was PsySp the guy with the pink hair?", we would just refer to the photo, then we would be on the same page.
Source: Several years ago I was involved in mass recruitment for entry level IT roles.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: In many countries (UK, US) it's very unusual and possibly illegal to request a photo on a CV and it's very rare that people put one spontaneously. In Switzerland however, it's still pretty much standard.
While there is growing criticism about the obvious bias issues associated with that practice, I'm not surprised to still see that requirement in Switzerland, even for academic institutions.
There are no real reasons for it other than a general slowness to recognize sources of bias in hiring in that region.
p.s. Switzerland is not part of the EU.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Consider not sending a photo, but be prepared to send one on request.
Here in the UK, it has been proven by sending identical CVs with different names (and I'll find you the links if you want) that female applicants are invited for interview less frequently than male applicants, and that ethnic-origin applicants are invited for interview less frequently than applicants with "traditional British" names.
With that in mind, many recruiters are extremely wary of anything which could look prejudicial to equal-opportunities hiring. Best practise in most places is to not include photos, questions about ethnic origin, questions about religion, and so on. Whether an interviewee gets hired is another matter, but at least the recruiter can demonstrate that their approach to inviting candidates for interview is relatively colour-blind.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Several countries in Europe do this, although it is becoming less common due to the obvious problems with bias, so you should not treat it as an extraordinary request. What will happen if you do not do it is hard to predict, but may range from nothing to your CV simply being binned.
My advice is to proceed as if failing to provide it will result in your application being binned. Most job openings have many more applicants than desired and simple criteria - such as failed to follow the application instructions - are a quick way to reduce the numbers. Anecdotally, when I was still in the UK, one of our professors was from Italy and had to be stopped from binning all the CVs without pictures as it was so completely the norm where he was from.
From a more cynical point of view: if you are white, and particularly if you are white and male, you likely have nothing to lose from including a photo.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: It's just a matter of cultural standard.
While including a photo may occur "mildly strange" to you (probably from a US background?) it is, for instance, in Germany as normal as stating your given name: You would just not hand in a CV without this information, even if (technically) it should not matter for the job.
The following is a quote from the ["CV Recommendations for Students applying for Internships in Germany"](http://www.steuben-schurz.org/cms/upload/downloads/usa-interns/Tips_on_how_to_write_a_German_Resume_and_Cover_Letter.pdf) from the Steuben-Schurz Gesellschaft. **No** emphasis added:
>
> STRUCTURE: **All** German resumes include a picture either in the upper left- or right-hand corner.
>
>
> ...
>
>
> Please include ALL of the following information.
>
>
> **1) Picture**
>
>
> All resumes must include a picture. This should be a face shot. Please make sure that this is a professional photo – a cropped picture of you at a party is not appropriate. Please scan the picture onto your resume before saving it as a PDF file.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: I live in Switzerland and in the last 6 Years I have send dozens of CVs, every single one with a picture. Some may not require it but it definitely is standard and if you don't send one it may look odd.
As for why, I don't really know. Its probably just the way it always been.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/11/03
| 560
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<issue_start>username_0: I am applying for Masters programs in the USA. Most programs require the applicant to waive their right to see their letters of recommendation, and the applicant is not supposed to ever see their LOR.
One of the profs who is writing letters for me accidentally sent me a copy of my LOR today. He was supposed to send me a copy of a letter granting me permission to use certain hardware in a lab, but accidentally sent me the wrong letter. I suspect that he had both saved in the same directory on his computer, and simply chose the wrong one.
The issue is that he has already sent this letter to some colleges. What is the correct thing to do in this situation?<issue_comment>username_1: You still need that hardware letter so I guess some uncomfortable situation may have to happen. Yet, I think some awkwardness can be avoided by focusing on the application. I'd suggest e-mailing him and tell him that it appears a wrong attachment was sent to you, and invite him to double check if the hardware approval letter was uploaded to the school application portal, follow by a polite ask for the actual approval document. End with a statement saying that you'll delete his previous e-mail and the attachment, and thank him for his help.
If you have not read it, then delete it. That'd be the best scenario. If you have read part of it by accident, notice that you have done nothing wrong. You simply waived the right to read it; you did not signed a contract to never read it. Yet, don't try to read all of it even it's not your fault, it isn't meant to be for you to read, and knowing the contents may affect you, even you think you can be completely objective.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I would do nothing, and you have nothing to worry about. The purpose for blinding the reviewee is to ensure that the reviewer can speak freely, confident that his/her words will not be read by you. In this case, the reviewer already expressed his/her thoughts and sent them out to the recipients; thus the review remains unbiased.
If you bring it up to that person, he/she may feel obligated to tell the recipient schools (or maybe not), which would have only negative (and unnecessary) consequences.
If you tell others, it will reflect poorly on your reviewer and you'll be put in an awkward situation of people asking about the content.
So, I would just do nothing other than delete the email.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: How do I know when to capitalize the words in a scientific paper's title? When I look on pubmed I see both styles. To be clear I am talking about the actual title of the paper, not a citation.<issue_comment>username_1: Essentially, the way to check is to look at if the particular journal to which you want to *submit* a paper uses [title case or sentence case](http://www.onlinegrammar.com.au/title-and-sentence-case/) for the capitalization of titles. I think a lot of it is publisher-specific. For example, in my field, I publish primarily in American Chemical Society journals, which use title case, and AIP/APS journals, which use sentence case.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It really doesn't matter. The copy-editors will fix that kind of thing for you.
If you really must know, look at the journal's author guide or examples of papers in the journal, on the journal's website.
Upvotes: 3
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2017/11/04
| 889
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<issue_start>username_0: If the supervisor does not actually write anything for or contribute to the paper, can a PhD student submit the paper as a single Author?
Would this be a faux pas and cause a strained relationship with the supervisor? I know they expect their name to be on all papers related to the PhD.
Also, does using their lab mean they have a right to have their name on the paper?<issue_comment>username_1: Generally speaking, providing funding/equipment/space does *not* warrant authorship. Authorship is granted based on intellectual contributions to the work. It is somewhat rare for a student to conduct research and author a paper in which his/her supervisor contributes nothing, but if that were true, you could make a case for single authorship. But, such a proposal can be a faux pas, if it suggests you do not appreciate or even acknowledge your mentor's input.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> If the supervisor does not actually write anything or contribute in
> the paper, can a PhD student write as a single Author?
>
>
>
Yes. If for no other reason than I did, which suggest its possible
>
> Would this be a faux pas and cause a strained relationship with the
> supervisor?
>
>
>
It depends on many, many factors. Is this a side-project that's been taking away from your actual work? Then it probably will. Have you talked to your supervisor and decided that it's the right way forward? Then it probably won't.
>
> I know they expect their name to be on all papers related to the PhD.
>
>
>
This is not universally true. While I expect to be an author on most of my graduate student's papers, that's because *I expect to have done work on most of them*. With an upper, and potentially likely bound of "all of them". But if a student wrote something independent, then no, I don't expect my name on it.
>
> Also, does using their lab mean they have a right to have their name
> on the paper?
>
>
>
It depends on what you mean by "using their lab". Generally speaking, just providing equipment isn't enough to warrant authorship, but if I did use someone's lab, I'd take a long look at the "did nothing" assumption and make sure it's true.
That's also potentially the source of a strained relationship - if you're using my space, equipment, and potentially reagents for a project I'm not participating in, I'd be less than thrilled unless it was discussed ahead of time.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Short answer:
Yes, if the supervisor has not contributed to the scientific work.
No, if the supervisor provided the specific question or direction of research.
And, yes, it may cause some resentment from the supervisor. Though this depends on the supervisor, the area, and the past work and relationship between you two. In your case, you explain precisely why it will cause such a resentment.
My conclusion then: unless you have an extremely strong reason not to, you should consider including the supervisor as it does not detract in any significant way your credit.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: At least at one math department in Finland, an article PhD thesis must include at least one single-authored article or preprint by the doctorand. Since people graduate from there, it follows that it must be possible to publish a paper without the supervisor's name.
This mostly certainly depends on the academical field in question.
Also, asking the supervisor if their name should be included sounds like a good choice. Presumably, they are a reasonable human being (you being their student), and will answer honestly and not take any offense on you asking.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/11/04
| 773
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm going to start my PhD in an English-speaking country. I would like to improve my English for research (fro writing and speaking). Could you let me know any good ways to do that?<issue_comment>username_1: As someone in the U.S. currently teaching a class of mostly international graduate students, I've noticed various specific skills non-native English speakers sometimes have trouble with:
1. Following spoken English, as during a lecture.
2. Speaking English comfortably enough to ask questions (or later go on a job interview)
3. Writing English, first for homework assignments and then eventually for papers.
Before you head to your graduate program, some ways you can work on these skills:
1. Try sitting in on a course given in English, preferably one given in your field and by a native English speaker. If you don't have a formal opportunity to do so at your university, then try free online courses with video content. [Coursera](https://www.coursera.org/), for example, has free course content (as long as you don't want credit for the course) from many big name American universities.
2. Participate in an English language practice group, to give yourself a chance to feel comfortable speaking before you are in the middle of a class wanting to ask a question.
3. If you choose to brush up on your language writing skills, focus more on grammar and punctuation than on technical writing. Almost none of my students show up good at technical writing, whether or not they are native English speakers, and I view it as part of my job to teach them. Grammar and punctuation, however, although they mostly seem like a distraction when I'm grading exams, can make a difference in whether your future papers or job applications are taken as seriously as they deserve to be.
Finally, a few suggestions for after you get to grad school:
1. If there is any chance you will ever want to use your English professionally, strongly consider living with a native English speaker, and do your best to find a peer group that is not just international students, especially not just those that speak your native tongue. Total immersion is a much faster way to learn English then just speaking it in class and my students who seek out chances to speak achieve greater mastery.
2. If your new school offers ESL (English as a second language) classes, take them.
3. When submitting papers or job applications (anything official that is leaving your school) take particular care to ask an English speaker to check your English (separately from any technical/content advice.)
4. Most importantly, if someone asks you to repeat something you say in English, don't apologise or let it fluster you; just repeat it calmly and as clearly as you can. Keep in mind most of us not only want to understand you, we're in awe of your bravery setting out on a new adventure in a new language.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Try to find Internet sources that explain the specific sounds and words in English that are difficult for speakers of your native language. For example I quite often use wordpanda dictionary for that purpose and read its blog [here](https://wordpanda.net/blog). You can also listen to ted talks and read the transcript and, of course, attend the speaking clubs and talk to native speakers! Good luck!
Upvotes: 0
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2017/11/04
| 825
| 3,665
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<issue_start>username_0: My first year undergraduate teammate has submitted our project work to multiple conferences. I want him to pull back the submission before reviewers take action against us. But he wants proof that conferences actually care about it and can detect self plagiarism and double submission.
This is in electronics, where conference proceedings count as publications.<issue_comment>username_1: Organizers of conferences with overlapping review periods sometimes exchange the submission information to detect cases of multiple submission. However, since doing so without the authors' agreement would be a breach of confidentiality, this can only be done ethically by conferences who announce this process in their call for papers (In my field, that is the case for several top conferences, including FSE 2019 and ICSE 2020).
There are several other ways how the duplicate submission would eventually be discovered. Let's say the paper has been submitted in parallel at two conferences called A and B.
1. There could be a shared reviewer for conferences A and B who notices the duplicate submission. In this case, the reviewer would probably contact the chairs of both conferences, leading to an immediate disqualification of the paper. Note that such a reviewer would not have to be a program committee member at both conferences: program committee members often delegate their workload to colleagues in order to reduce their workload.
2. If the paper is accepted at conference A, the paper is eventually published in A's proceedings. In this case, the reviewers from conference B might become aware of the submission of the paper to A. Consequently, they could contact the chairs of conference A to enforce its retraction.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Submitting without the approval of all authors is obviously wrong.
Putting that aside, what’s the problem with submitting to multiple conferences? Its not the same a dual publication of journal articles - a permanent citeable record.
I routinely submit work to two conferences - it’s in the remit of both, but there is virtually no overlap in attendance. Presenting work at multiple conferences improves visibility and networking.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: "Actually care about it": Read the conference's rules.
"Can detect": Irrelevant. Like many things in academic research, this is primarily honor system. If your teammate thinks that whether something is acceptable is determined by whether you can get away with it, they need a serious attitude adjustment.
By the way: do you have a faculty advisor on this project? They need to know about this. They would also be the best one to give you advice on the specific norms of conferences and publishing in your fields.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: As a reviewer I routinely search for the paper title, basic paper keywords, and/or the particular combination of authors' names in an academic search engine. This typically shows the close environment of peers, a sub-sub-area, so to say.
But not once or twice this has resulted in rather unexpected results, such as a very similar titled paper with paragraph-wise text overlap and an author subset/superset.
This greatly saves my work time, because in the above case I can immediately flag it as plagiarism, send my review with snarky remarks to the editor, and go back to whatever I did before reviewing. I have yet to encounter a *true* double submission, but my actions would bear a strong degree of similarity.
*(You notice by now some degree of irony here, but I really have seen such plagiarism cases as a reviewer.)*
Upvotes: 1
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2017/11/04
| 952
| 4,064
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a fresh medical graduate. I worked with a professor who harassed me sexually. Unfortunately, I was afraid to talk and also a little bit confused because I was an international visiting student at that time. I did a great job in his lab before he did that. He wrote for me a great letter of recommendation at that time. After he started to be unprofessional, I decided to leave his lab.
Since then, I was surprised that he published the preliminary results of the research as conference abstracts without putting my name as a co-author. However, he stated that I am an author in the recommendation letter, formulated the primary draft and helped in the lab experiments, data collection, and statistical analysis as well. I sent him an email to ask him about the papers’ progress but he did not reply.
My question is: Now I want to apply for a research fellowship and I am going to use his letter of recommendation. But he wrote my last name as my father's name, not the family name that I usually use in my applications. I do not feel comfortable to send him an email. I do not know if it will be a problem if there is a difference between my last name in the application and what he wrote. I also feel so bad when I found him published the papers in an international conference without mentioning my name and feel worse for not reporting him, deleting the message, and moving on to another lab.<issue_comment>username_1: I am sorry for your experience. Regarding the naming issue, I think that it is alright and no one will comment about it. You do not have to email that person again.
Regarding the publication, You should not be silent. It is an authorship dispute. If he published them in a peer-reviewed journal. Email the editor in chief all the documents, the LOR that indicate your role. You do not have to be silent if he stole your work. He is abuser and thief and that it should not be acceptable in academia. Stay safe and strong. You are not wrong. He is the jerk.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Sounds like he has behaved unprofessionally more than once. The sexual harassment needs taking to the top, as this should be seen as an abuse of his position. It may have happened with others, too, so authorities ought to be informed.
As far as the paper is concerned, he is falsely claiming it as his own work, so is being unprofessional here too. Again, go to the top, with proof. Also go to the people he has shown it to, and explain that maybe he has forgotten to include recognition of your involvement, again with proof. Again, this may not be the first time he has purloined other people's work.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This is a partial answer, intended to complement the other answers. This answer is specific to the U.S.
If I understood you correctly, the abusive professor sent you an incriminating email message, which you deleted. But I think all university email messages must be backed up somewhere. So, if you wish to report the incident(s), I think you can still do so, even if you didn't retain a copy.
Even if I imagine a worst case scenario, in which the university IT department is unable to retrieve the incriminating message(s), I can still think of ways it might be productive to report what happened. It might help prevent this individual from behaving this way with others. It might be constructive for you personally, since after a traumatic experience, it can be helpful to take action. Also, since many universities' Title IX procedures are new enough that it can be constructive to put the university through its Title IX paces. Finally, my wish for you is that by reading about your options, and perhaps deciding to file a complaint, you'll have more confidence as a woman doctor going forward, and in myriad ways (both explicit and subtle), will communicate this self-confidence to the women you encounter in your life -- medical students, pre-med students, colleagues, and patients.
Here is a resource that may be helpful: <https://www.knowyourix.org>.
Upvotes: 3
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2017/11/04
| 2,336
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm not sure what to tag this question as, and I don't know if it should be on [Law.SE](https://law.stackexchange.com).
If someone is being investigated for academic misconduct:
* accused of taking photos of tests and sharing it online, which is *explicitly disallowed by the professor*
* and during that investigation, there is no evidence of the tests on the person's cell/camera,
* but there is evidence of other crimes (completely unrelated to the university) on their cell/camera (e.g., video of this person bullying a child),
**can the university/investigators take any action?**
I think no, because the investigators were only to investigate academic misconduct and nothing else. But also yes, because they have evidence of improper behaviour.<issue_comment>username_1: University personnel will investigate whether the rules and norms of the university are being upheld. If an actual **crime** is suspected of having been committed, then in most cases they will contact the police or other authorities either in place of investigating or in parallel to their own investigation. For certain crimes they are legally obligated to do so.
>
> I think no because the investigators were only to investigate academic misconduct and nothing else
>
>
>
Just because *they* are only there to investigate academic misconduct does not mean that they cannot report nonacademic misconduct to someone else. If they found evidence of a literal crime, I don't know why they couldn't report it to the police. (I'm not sure exactly what "Bullying a child" means, but if e.g. this included physical or sexual abuse I would certainly expect them to report it to the authorities.)
I think you are asking whether there is any covenant of confidentiality when you turn over your phone to them. That's a legal question and I'm not a lawyer, but unless explicitly agreed upon in advance I don't know why there would be. If your partner accuses you of cheating on them, you deny it, and they say, "Well then show me your phone," and upon searching your phone they find a video of you stealing a car, then your partner can certainly report you to the police even though that was not what they were expecting to find. To my mind, having your phone searched by university personnel is more like having it searched by your partner than by the police. In particular, **university personnel cannot compel you to turn over your phone to them**. They can *ask* you to, and there might be negative consequences for you if you don't (just like with your partner), but that's not the same thing at all.
Furthermore: as far as I know, university personnel may act on information they find on your phone that is unrelated to the academic honesty issue in question but otherwise violates the university's code of conduct. For instance if they found a video of you making racial slurs at a campus event, then that's not illegal but is (I hope) against their code of conduct, and so far as I know they could act on that. However I do not know exactly where to draw the line. For instance, if in an internet dating app you use language that would be disrespectful and inappropriate in university discourse, then presumably that is not their concern...but if that language involved another university official it might become more their concern, perhaps. I'm really not sure.
Let me say finally that I've heard a few times on this site from students who have had their phones searched by university officials, but as a university official (faculty member) that's something that I have never done and would not think to do in almost any situation. For instance, if during an exam I saw a student looking at their phone, then I would call attention to it, have them put their cell phone away, and pursue an academic honesty case against them. But I would not ask to see their phone: since I tell students before the exam starts what they can and can't have out during the exam (in particular, no phones), looking at their phone during the exam is cheating no matter what, and the implication that they are breaking the rules to gain an unfair advantage is more than plausible whether I see what's on the phone or not. (And what am I going to do, scream at the student to drop their phone immediately and run over to apprehend it before they can close an app? This seems silly at best.) I wonder though whether in other parts of the world academic culture is different: in the United States (and Canada; I spent 2.5 years as a postdoc there) at least, the idea that people do not have to casually turn over their personal property is quite strong.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This probably depends where you are but in the U.S.:
1) You are probably *obligated* to report crimes involving a minor as most U.S. university employees are mandatory reporters (I don't know the ins and outs of this though and maybe there's some variation regarding procedures).
2) From a legal perspective (i.e. if you were a cop or other law official), yes. I'm not sure how not being one changes things.
In the U.S., evidence one was not searching for is still considered legal if it was encountered during the legal execution of one's duties. E.g. If a police officer has a warrant to search a house for a fugitive and that officer opens a closet door to find bricks of cocaine, the home owner can be charged with possession and the cocaine would constitute legal evidence even though it was not what the cop was looking for. (The caveat being that if said officer found evidence of illegal activity in a place it would be unreasonable to search for a fugitive - say a hatbox - that evidence would be thrown out in court. This is the landmark supreme court case Mapp v. Ohio)
3) From a moral perspective, I think the university/investigators are obligated to take some action. If the student voluntary handed over their phone I don't see how you would be in the wrong. It's one thing if you explicitly said you'd fail them if they didn't hand the phone over but I imagine they willingly handed it over to avoid more drama. It would be very weird if a U.S. college student didn't know they had the legal right to not give you their cell phone.
Why don't you just contact your university's legal department?
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: A few basic legal points that apply in every jurisdiction I know of (within the Anglosphere countries):
* **University powers and expectation of confidentiality:** As a student, your relationship to the university is contractual. The university derives its investigative powers from its contractual relationship with you. Aside from cases of campus police who have actual police powers (which exist at a few larger universities), the standard investigative powers of university staff are based solely on your contractual relationship to the university.
* University personnel cannot compel you to turn over your phone or other personal property during their investigation; they may make an inference from your failure to do so, but they do not have the power to confiscate your property.
* If you give your phone to the university for an investigation, there would be an implied expectation of confidentiality with respect to the material on your phone and you would have some legal rights in relation to that expectation of confidentiality. If the university discloses information it shouldn't, you may have a cause of action for [breach of confidence](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breach_of_confidence_in_English_law), breach of contract, etc.
* **Inadvertent discovery of alternative (non-criminal) rule breach:** If the university inadvertently comes across material that shows a different type of breach of their rules (that is not a crime) than the one they are investigating, this would give rise to a complicated argument over the proper scope of expectation of confidentiality when the phone was made available to them. You could mount an argument for breach of confidence in this circumstance; depending on the facts and circumstances it might or might not succeed. There is a complex set of case law on the proper scope of confidentiality in cases where an investigative body obtains information and inadvertently discovers other issues. This situation would require careful legal analysis and the result would probably depend on the specifics.
* **Inadvertent discovery of a crime:** If the university comes across material that shows an activity that is a crime in the course of their investigation, they can certainly report this to the police. Aside from some special cases such as lawyer-client privilege, religious-confessionals, etc., there is generally no legal recognition of any confidentiality restriction that can prevent a person from disclosing *evidence of a crime* to the police and other relevant government investigative bodies. In particular, if you have possession of a person's phone then you are legally entitled to report matieral on that phone that is evidence of a crime. This is such a broad power that it even applies *even if you have possession of the phone illegally* --- e.g., if a thief steals your phone and finds child-abuse material on it, there is no confidentiality restriction preventing them from reporting this to the police and then acting as a witness against you in a resulting prosecution.
* **Admissibility of evidence of a crime:** If university personnel were to find evidence of a crime on the phone then *prima facie* that would be admissible evidence in a resulting criminal prosecution. The only thing that might cause the evidence to be inadmissible is if the defendant could show that the discovery of the evidence came about through some unlawful search that can be considered to be an action of the government itself, such that it is considered to be ["fruit of the poisoned tree"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree). This could potentially occur in cases where campus police with actual police powers unlawfully obtain evidence from a phone.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/11/05
| 2,132
| 8,135
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<issue_start>username_0: I’m doing my PhD in Europe but I’m researching my opportunities for doing a postdoc in the US. There is a reasonable amount of job postings in my field, so I hope I’d have a decent chance of obtaining one. My concern, however, is purely financial. I have a wife and two children and am wondering whether such an endeavor is realistic or if it would put us on the brink of economic collapse.
I am for this reason interested in the experiences of others who pursued postdoc positions by relocating with a family.
* Despite the position being temporary, is it more common that partners find jobs, too? I imagine that because of hiring processes, it wouldn’t be strange if the partner started working mid-way through, at which point one may already know that another relocation is coming up in 1-2 years. For what it’s worth, my wife has a MSc in the same field as I’m in and there’s typically a large demand for people like us, so securing a job shouldn’t be too hard (barring the paperwork, which would probably be a major issue in itself).
* How do people do this, like *really*? At times I feel this is insurmountable, because AFAIK the typical postdoc salary is not enough to support an entire family. Yet, I’m far from the first PhD student with a family.<issue_comment>username_1: I've moved to Denmark (capital region) from Finland with family (one spouse, one child). A bit shorter distance and probably less of a cultural gap. I'm a postdoc.
Housing and everything else here is expensive, but we don't eat out or buy many things, so we are doing fine. Starting out would not have been possible without sufficient savings, since apartments typically require one to six months of rent as a deposit and pre-paid rent. Only I am earning money. Note that this depends heavily on the area to which you are locating, and on how careful your family is with spending their money.
My spouse is not currently employed, but she also does not have a high education. Your university is likely to offer some sort of help - around here the university offers some free courses for finding employment, for example.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I moved from France to the US to do a 1 year-post-doc in Computer Science, with my wife and our two children (3mo and 2yo at the time), so I guess my situation is very close to yours.
I was paid ~$50.000 / year, *didn't pay taxes the first year* (because of the [tax treaty between France and the US](https://www.irs.gov/businesses/international-businesses/france-tax-treaty-documents)), *didn't have a car*, and lived in a reasonably cheap community (cost of living index ~ 105, for instance, the rent was $800 / month for a very small flat, furnished and including internet, water, some other utilities. It didn't had a washing machine, for instance, so it was a bit rough with two children).
We were not rich, but it was completely doable. It was a bit risky, but we managed to live entirely on my salary, something we couldn't have done in France, so I would think that our situation was rather correct.
Here's what we learned:
* **Don't expect your partner to bring an income.** Day care is rare and costly (it really varies, but $500 / child / month seems to be a minimum for a "full day" care), and your partner probably won't have the right to work before a couple of months anyway. Getting a work permit while on a J2 requires to fill a [I-765](https://www.uscis.gov/i-765), pay ~$500, be patient (up to 3 months), and it comes with restrictions (you can't leave the country while your record is examined, if I remember correctly).
* **Moving is super expensive.** Plane ticket + buying basic housewares + rent deposit, etc. is really costly, especially if the dollar is high when you move. The [exchange rate](http://www.xe.com/currencycharts/?from=USD&to=EUR&view=1Y) can vary greatly, so that's difficult to assess. Of course, you'll be paid at the end of your first month of employment, so you'll have to have some provisions on top of that. Also, you won't be able to bring everything in three suitcase, so there will be some buying to do, and clothes, if the weather isn't the same as where you currently live.
* **People can be *really* supportive.** We were moving as a family, and *everyone*, from the PI to my future colleagues (that I never met) to our landlords and even neighbours, brought something, gave us basic silverware, etc. You have to be lucky, but Americans often are willing to help, and have a couple of extra stuff that they'd be willing to share with you.
* **Check your health care.** Your children might be sick due to the travel, the time change, etc. In fact, you should plan that *they will* be sick, and check how well you're covered *before* being employed / during the first month of employment. Our health care took a month to kick in, we had to pay for a basic care for our son, bim, $1.000 (yes, health is expensive here).
* **Papers everywhere.** Be organized, a new start requires a lot of papers. Moving in an another country is pretty much starting from scratch: you'll have to open a bank account, get a Social Security Number, get a phone, subscribe to Internet, fill in tons of paperwork for the embassy, your new employer, etc. It is doable, but can be really complex (since your situation will be more complex that the average American), so you have to be super organized.
Of course, it makes more sense to start such an adventure for a 2 years (or more) post-doc.
But moving with kids (in young age) is fun: they'll grasp the new culture super easily, they'll make friends, they'll help you to make friends, they'll make people chatty, and they will break any sense of isolation you could have by moving to a foreign country.
**Actual experience may vary: the USA is a vast country, and the salary range, as well as the cost of living, vary greatly. I'm not a super hero, but with the support of your family, you can make it. Tons of people did it in the past `;-)`**
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I moved from the UK to the US to do a 4-year-post-doc in Computer Science. After 2 years, I quitted. I just started a new job in industry a few months ago.
I was paid $80.000 at the first year, a bit more in the second year, but not too much. Roughly, I received $5000 month after tax (federal and state), and health insurance etc.
* I chose the cheapest insurance option. It was practically useless for me, because its in-network clinics were all in a different state, where the main campus of the university is located.
* I paid $2000 per month, excluded the bills, for an old one-bedroom flat, built in the 50s. There were risk of lead poisoning when staying in the flat. The agent asked me to sign an agreement that I would not sue them if this would occurred to me. One often can only rent a studio with this price (sky-rocket every year), but I wanted a flat since I had a kid at that time (2 now).
* I paid $1800 per month for the daycare of my toddler. In the second year, my son got bigger, so I only paid $1500 per month now.
* I spent the rest on food, car insurance, bills etc. We do not eat out. I bring food from home for lunch. We never go to cinema, never travel etc. We just maintain a basic life.
* I don't know how much I saved per month (if at all), but my balance
hasn't changed in 2 years.
I really loved my research. My postdoc advisor was kind and wonderful, driving me to find an apartment when I first came to the US, giving me advices about kid, daycare etc etc. My advisor were the most talented person I had chance to work with (ACM distinguished scientist); thank to their guidances, I was very productive, and published several good papers. I had 2 more years on my contract, but funding was never a problem in my old group, so I could stay as long as I wanted. However, I had to quit.
The reason was simple: I have a second child this year. The daycare cost for an infant starts from $2000. That meant I needed an addition $24000 *after tax* each year. Only a (boring) engineering job in industry can help me to cover this cost.
Upvotes: 3
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2017/11/05
| 486
| 2,035
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<issue_start>username_0: In the spirit of [this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/98364/photo-requirement-on-cv) question about photos on CVs, I'm wondering why applications to grad programs seem to universally ask for the applicant's date of birth, usually right next to the applicant's name.
This is in sharp contrast to the standard practice in "industry" (at least in the US), where no age-identifying information is requested until after you've been hired, and even then the information is restricted to HR.
A few discriminatory practices such as requiring date of birth on the CV or dissertation seem to be finally going the way of the dinosaur, but this obvious point of potential discrimination persists. Why?<issue_comment>username_1: This is primarily conjecture, but I think it's probably pretty close. I suspect that it is a combination of use as an identifier and use for scholarship/financial aid package determination.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Because age is the parameter to judge the experience of life and knowledge. To check your mentally able to opt the situation. For example when we go for nursery admission.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: For a grad program, age matters a little bit because of little space there is in many programs. This is true of some high profile majors like medicine though not particularly true to others like Law. Public universities are tasked with graduating people who will contribute to society given that their education is A) subsidized and B) very limited in space.
This is going to sound mean, but a 60 year attempting to enter med school is not going to be a good candidate because by the time they finish med school and residency, they are unlikely to work more than 10-15 years before health complications and/or death. But if you take a 25 year old, they will likely use that degree for about 40 years. Mind you, this is not true of all universities and certainly, private ones are not held to these unwritten rules so ymmv.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/11/06
| 422
| 1,851
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing an essay to apply for a summer research project and is supposed to write about 'general research topic that interests me' and 'area I would like to focus'. I'm kind of confused about these two terms. What's the difference?
For example, if I'm interested in computer science, where should I write it?
p.s. I have asked this question in English Language & Usage site but didn't get answer. So I suppose that these two words may only have difference in academic field?<issue_comment>username_1: A research area is what a research topic is placed into, but is much broader than the scope of the topic. For example a research area can be human physiology, computer science (as you mentioned) or even relate to a specific field within these broader terms such as cardiac electrophysiology or machine learning respectively.
A research topic would be a specific question, hypothesis or problem you wish to investigate and answer which is under the scope of your research area. That is to say, my research area is in neuroscience/neurophysiology and my research topic is investigating the mechanisms of neuronal communication, as an example.
You would want to say topics that interest you which relate to a certain problem that you may be aware of, whereas in the research area you would want to outline your inclinations towards a particular field of academia.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: While a topic is narrower than an area (for example, your area may be "solid state physics" and your topic "semiconductor tuning based on dopage"), it's probably true that for most people there is little difference between the two terms as far as colloquial usage is concerned.
In other words, don't obsess about the difference -- though, if you want, consider the "area" a broader term.
Upvotes: 2
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2017/11/06
| 1,208
| 4,542
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<issue_start>username_0: How do professors deal with loneliness? I feel that professors, specifically in the STEM fields, have to constantly project an image of seriousness to the public - an image that math and science are no. 1 in their lives. Any projection of any other feelings is discouraged, e.g. feelings of romance.
Professors earn a special social status in society, for better or worse, and this means that they are more intensely scrutinized and they have to adhere to extra morally restrictive standards. If one lands up in a small college town as a professor, there is virtually nobody that's a suitable dating partner or a suitable friend - other than one's colleagues. The college town will comprise mostly of students.
Am I on point with my assessment of the life of a professor in the STEM fields? If so, how does a professor deal with a relatively lonelier lifestyle than non-academics? The acquired social status of being an academic and scientific leader seems to come with an enormous cost.<issue_comment>username_1: I’m afraid you are misinformed. Professors (including in STEM) are ordinary humans and are entitled to the same set of feelings, emotions and lifestyle choices as other people are accorded by the rest of society. They certainly might suffer from loneliness, and deal with it in the same way that any other person might. But what you wrote about “*Any projection of any other feelings is discouraged, e.g. feelings of romance*”? Respectfullly, that notion is simply nonsense, and to the extent that it is a belief some people hold, it needs to die a swift, painless death.
As for the peculiarities of the situation a professor might end up in of being a professional, highly educated single person of a certain age range living in a small college town where there aren’t many other single people of the same age range and interests who may be suitable dating partners: well, again, that situation is by no means unique to college professors. Many people live in small towns with limited dating options. Somehow they manage, and for those who find this really intolerable, there’s always the option of trying to get a job in a bigger city or near one.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: A few years ago, while shopping at a supermarket, I bumped into a student of mine. He was aghast.
The next week he came to my office to take the exam, and we had the following piece of conversation:
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> Me: Hey, you're the one I met a the supermarket!
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> Student: Yes, at the beginning I was shocked, but then I thought: "*They* have
> to eat too!"
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> Me: Thank you for recognizing our human nature!
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So, let me tell you a secret, but please don't tell it around! Professors *are* human beings: they have friends and families; they love and hate; they have hobbies; they play games, sports and instruments; they go to the cinema, theaters and restaurants; and they *don't* do the professors 24/7.
Overall, professors are no lonelier than any other human being.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: Read [Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/B003V1WXKU) and cut with that nonsense that a professor (or even a Nobel laureate) has to be lone and deadly serious.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I don't know that this is any more true for professors/teachers than it is for priests, ministers, lawyers, physicians, politicians, etc. I'm not even sure it is really generally true for professors.
If it *is* true . . . well, you can always cultivate friendships and relationships with others in your profession, or with members of other professions in your locality. It is is a *really* small town, there are probably lawyers and a priest and some ministers without many in their profession to talk to. If you want a friend, try **being** one.
My suspicion is that this is not so much about "professors lead lonely lives" as it is about "I am lonely," or "I fear leading a lonely life." But this need not be so. You can learn to be more outgoing. You can become involved in something outside of work: a faith community, a food bank or Meals on Wheels, Toast Masters, a book discussion group, etc.
You are right that a professor must avoid the temptation of building close relationships with his or her students. And this can be tempting. The young are full of energy and possibility. But there are other types of energy and possibility in your town. You just have to consciously seek that out in somewhere OTHER than your students.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I have done a research paper with someone in industry, while doing a Phd. Is it important to include my supervisor name also in research paper. Will three names be a good thing or should i go with 2 names.<issue_comment>username_1: Authorship should be decided by who made intellectual contributions to the work, not by feelings that three is or is not a better number than two.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The [Vancouver Protocol](https://www.etikkom.no/en/ethical-guidelines-for-research/medical-and-health-research/the-vancouver-protocol/) is generally considered as the authoritative guideline for ethics in science publishing. Here it is stated:
"Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the concept, design, execution or interpretation of the research study. All those who have made significant contributions should be offered the opportunity to be listed as authors. Other individuals who have contributed to the study should be acknowledged, but not identified as authors. The sources of financial support for the project should be disclosed."
So:
If your supervisor did not make any contribution, she should not be included on the author list.
If your supervisor made a significant contribution, she should be offered authorship.
There is clearly a middle category here. In my field it is usually considered "nice" to offer a contributor who have made a contribution bordering significant, a chance to contribute enough to warrant authorship before the project is finished.
In any case, you should discuss the matter with your supervisor before publishing. You also ought to investigate whether your university has a course on publishing ethics, and consider taking it.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm teaching in a university where many different types of administrative software are used. Many seem a bit clunky and badly designed, but I'm only interested in those relating to teaching. Some of these, like Blackboard, are pretty poor in terms of usability, efficiency and reliability. However, the use of some of these software platforms are mandatory within certain parts of the university.
The university started asking senior staff and students their opinions about some of this teaching software. However, most of the teaching staff (especially TAs and Tutors) were overlooked in relation to such questions, which is unfortunate as the majority of student grading that takes place in the university, using this software, is done by this cohort. Senior members of staff who outsource administrative responsibilities to their TAs will likely see no reason to change the software that currently is in use. While more senior TAs will almost certainly complain about the problems faced when using this software to their professors, it is unlikely that many of these complaints will be passed on to anybody with any authority, and even if they are, the actual specifics of the complaint will likely be garbled when subject to such dissemination.
What sort of steps can members of staff who have issues with the purchase of such software take such that the institution can notice and potentially respond to these kind of issues (I am unsure even what department or people are responsible for such decisions, or how to even begin finding out!)<issue_comment>username_1: tl;dr: You need to organize/unionize as junior teachers, to deal with this collectively
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I would say this is more a question about organizational and power relations than about administrative software. As you've said:
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> Most of the teaching staff (especially TAs and Tutors) were overlooked ... [even though] ... the majority of student grading that takes place in the university ... is done by this cohort.
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and you also mention that this is the case despite *individual* complaints. You have not mentioned any *collective* action. Specifically, I assume the following has not happened:
* The junior faculty technical discussion form has deliberated, conducted surveys, and published an official position of the junior faculty regarding administrative software - possibly well in advance of the university having done anything about it, since TAs have been complaining for a while now. This position document lists and explains the problems with "Blackboard", and suggests concrete alternatives.
* The junior faculty liaison to the university's central teaching administration body has pointed out to the administrative official in charge of software selection that the consultation process has not so far included junior faculty/TAs.
* The junior faculty representative on the university teaching oversight committee has brought one of the relevant issues up for formal discussion: Administrative software in general, junior faculty dissatisfaction with the existing software solution ("Blackboard"), or exclusion of junior faculty from the consultative process.
* In negotiations regarding junior faculty employment conditions overall, the issue of suitable administration software has been brought up by the union negotiating team.
None of these happened because either there is no collective entity of the junior faculty (or just the TAs): No union, no intra-university official bodies, no officials (individuals or groups) with recognized official status and actual clout.
You should change that. Perhaps use this opportunity to gather some people disgruntled regarding the administration software issue to commit to some continued concerted activity in trying to form an initial body of the junior faculty, whose first order of business is addressing this issue and approaching management about it. Or rather, the first order of business would be to increase awareness of the issue among other junior faculty, arrange an assembly, have some speakers regarding the need to handle this collectively vis-a-vis university management or the administrative bodies, and so on. It is obviously important to have such an initiative develop into a permanent organizational entity which can go on to address other issues and reach the situation in which some, or all, of the above hypotheticals actually occur. Or better yet, a situation in which your collective presence is felt strongly enough that it would be obvious you must be consulted.
Notes:
* Even though I said "union", I wasn't talking about strikes, pay, formal labor disputes etc. Unions are not only for those things. At their core they are (or should be) a mechanism for reflection and action on the collective rather than the individual level when this is necessary/useful.
* You might decide (again, collectively) you want to set up an alternative software system in parallel, either for your convenience or for convincing the university to change its mind. This is obviously more likely to be possible when the resources of many people are pooled together.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: >
> The university started asking senior staff and students their opinions about some of this teaching software.
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>
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One thing you might do to figure out who, specifically, is behind this request. Did you see the e-mail by which this request was made? Whose name is on it?
In my opinion, it is fine to send an e-mail to this person and write something like the following:
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> Dear Dr. So-and-So,
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> I learned that the university is conducting a survey of its senior staff and students about Software X. I am a [your job title], so I was not included in the survey, but I use this software frequently and would welcome the chance to share my opinions. Could I please participate in the survey, and if so then how?
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> Thank you very much.
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Your message might be ignored, but it might not be. I have learned that some (not all university administrators are receptive to this sort of request.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I just started my PhD and this is my fourth week. I understand that as a PhD student, my main aim is to find a gap in the knowledge and then trace this gap by using scientific approaches that I might choose later.
My question is: **How can I find this gap?**
I can think of two options:
1. **Reading**, which is the ideal option and we all know that. However, it might be frustrating to read a lot because maybe you
will get lost in the final stage due to information overload.
2. Just **jump to the conclusion of any paper in your field and see if they provide any recommendations about a potential gap** and choose it as your hypothesis or the starting point for formulating your question.<issue_comment>username_1: 1. Ask the advisor.
2. If he/she is helpful, follow their advice.
3. If he/she is not helpful, either
* change the advisor (which is preferred) or else
* find an **interesting** and **open** problem in your field (in some areas such as mathematics, searching for "open problem" or similar in recent publications, including literature reviews, might help). The problem should be such that that you should be able to solve it within the time allocated for your PhD studies, including writing your dissertation. Then, ask the advisor again whether the problem is suitable for your thesis. How to proceed from there would be a different question.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Reading available literature in your field is the best place to start finding what has not been researched in the recommendation portion of research dissertations.This should point you in finding a gap.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Something which worked quite well for me (in maths, that is), was combining several (sub)topics of your field. At the beginning of your PhD might be the last moment where you have enough freedom (in terms of time) to look at different areas you know nothing about. So try to gain some breadth of knowledge.
Even by the end of your PhD, you will probably not know as much as the experts on topic A or on topic B. However you can be one of the few with both good knowledge about A and about B and thus the only one to realise, how to apply some method from A to something from B in a novel way.
In other words, instead of only looking at the cutting edge, the gap of knowledge you need might just be a gap between two subareas.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: As someone coming out the other side, I'm not going to give you two answers. The easy answer is to just ask your advisor and have them give you a project. I've seen plenty of people try this and the problem is that if it doesn't really grab your interest then grad school will be a grueling frustrating boring experience.
The alternative is the far better solution, at least in my opinion. That is simply, don't look for it. As counter-intuitive as that sounds. Most programs don't expect you to have your project figured out the first semester or even the first year in many cases. Take that time to really dig into the parts of your field that interest you. Really dig deep and learn all you can learn. As you learn you'll have questions. If you're doing it right, they'll be the kind of questions that keep you up at night. You really need those answers to satisfy your mind. Go look for those answers. When you come to the question that is vexing you and you can't find the answer and nobody around knows where it is, then you've found your gap in the knowledge. Only this time it will consume your mind and you will be able to think of nothing else. And grad school will feel like this beautiful opportunity to have all of these resources behind you while you try to answer your question. It will almost be fun. It will be rewarding. And it will keep your interest. And when you get done, you won't just have the degree, but you'll also have all the other stuff that can come with it when you really do it right.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: There is some good advice in the earlier answers. To find the most suitable one you must know yourself of course: For some people it works to not focus too much (as username_4 suggests: just read and let your curiosity do the magic), others can be given a question and take it from there all alone (the supervisor must have the topic all sorted out), while others need something introductory to get their hands on before they get any sense of orientation (often that's an assignment at grad school). It is ideal if you have all options, but usually one doesn't.
Therefore, beyond the already good answers (including your own), I have the following to add, which may be especially useful if your university has no comprehensive grad course in your field or if your supervisor is not very helpful (and in the understanding that it is not always easy to change supervisors or universities): Attend a relevant summer school (or winter school) early in your studies and don't hesitate to ask the lecturers the same question, i.e., about hot topics in their fields. This is not to say that you will get specific topics from them necessarily (they have their own students), but you are bound to get some direction. Be prepared to 1) first show them what you have been doing (anything: masters thesis, what you read that interested you...) 2) sit back and hear them brainstorm (some are exceptionally good at that) and 3) understand maybe 1/10 of it.
Such schools often offer hands-on experience too (e.g., in physics you get to use somebody's computer program and see science at work) and for many people that's very illuminating.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I would not suggest starting by looking for gaps at all for a few reasons.
Some gaps are left gaps for a reason. Some are not relevant enough to be bothered with, some have not enough data to work with, some lack technology to work with. In any case, even if you find a gap, the follow up question will be why do you want to spend time and resources trying to fill in that gap? That is a pretty hard question to answer.
Instead, try to start by finding a problem. Look for a problem that is relevant, that is worth solving, that is even conceptually solvable. And the most important thing, look for a problem that you are passionate about because you are about to spend a good chunk of your life trying to solve it and will probably fail for the most part. So every bit of success you have should be meaningful for you and for others who are affected by this problem.
Once you found the problem you want to help solve, then you can look for gaps within that narrow area. That should be a piece of cake because chances are you will bump right into them and later find yourself surrounded by them.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_7: if you feel your advisor is not helpful, then change advisor.
The advisor should tell you at least the area to look for (the topic) as well as a sound hypothesis (that may not be extremely fine tuned but can be a starting point). Very rarely the advisor will actually give you a discovery.
Your role as a PhD student is to make a discovery, this will happen when you will put the results of your experiments (made to address the initial hypothesis) in the context of the current knowledge (which you have to acquire by reading, going to seminar, ask more experience people, etc...)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: This might bespecific to your discipline, but I think you do have a misconception about what your aim as a PhD student should be. The aim is to do research and provide new insights into your field based on scientific methods.
To me, the fact that you have started a PhD position without a topic is a bad sign. Your supervisor should either have given you some ideas or asked you what you want to do research on when you applied. Imo if neither of those has happened you should seriously reconsider whether he is suitable supervisor to your (or anyone else).
Now given that you are in this position anyway and you might not agree with my opinion here, I would give you the following advice.
1. If you are searching through literature for problems to solve, try finding out if review papers are common in your discipline. Those usually are very long papers which give a great overview over a field once there has been substantial progress and if there are known experts around. These are to my experience more likely to make you aware of open questions and unsolved problems than other types of papers.
2. If you are working in social sciences it might also be helpful to search your own head. What I mean is: Why are you interested in this field? Which open questions do you have? What did people fail to explain or prove to you during your studies?
3. Again for literature review I would focus on more recent problems and publications. Often you will find that you can use methods old methods and apply them to a new field which they have not been explored in. This gives you a quick start into a topic and once you start doing research on your own more interesting questions might pop up.
If you have done all this and figured out a general area of interest, **go talk to your supervisor**. You should do this either way. Again he does not necessarily have to come up with a very explicit suggestion, but anything that gets you to start working on a topic where he - or some of his close colleagues - have a good level of expertise might open exciting questions for you to work on along the way.
The same could also happen if you start collaborating on something with another PhD student or postdoc. I really advise against pure literature review for the search. Personally I couldnt keep that up for more than 2 weeks straight.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: Recently, I submitted a paper to a maths journal (which is a decent journal with a solid editorial board). It was eventually accepted after making some revisions suggested by the referees, at which point I uploaded my final submission. This final submission was then edited by a copy editor at the journal; as well as the usual cosmetic changes in ensuring that my papered adhered to the cosmetic style of the journal, the copy editor also made several grammatical changes. I then was given an opportunity to read through this edited version and suggest any final corrections before my paper is uploaded to the journal's website.
This, of course, is all fairly standard practice. However, many of the grammatical changes made by the copy editor were incorrect. Of course, I noted this in my comments, so I hope these changes will be reverted before the paper is published.
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> It is appropriate for me to take further action in notifying the journal (e.g. a member of the editorial board) that a copy editor is repeatedly introducing errors?
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This of course seems a little petty. On the other hand, these same grammatical errors occur repeatedly throughout papers in this journal (at least in recent papers published online), and I'm sure that I'm not the only reader who finds these mistakes irritating.
---
In case anyone is curious about the errors, the most common mistake is that the copy editor repeatedly replaced with a comma my usage of a semicolon before an independent clause, especially such a clause in the imperative mood: an example would be something like "This can be proved via the method of Gauss, see [1]". Other such comma splices were introduced - all by replacing semicolons with commas.
Additional grammatical mistakes were introduced that were clearly incorrect: for example, I perhaps overuse the phrase "Note that", and this was pruned on a couple of occasions by the copy editor, but in more than one case, the rest of the sentence wasn't edited to ensure that it still made sense.<issue_comment>username_1: I can't give you a yes / no answer, but I can say what's likely to happen if you choose to complain.
If you choose to complain to the **publisher**: chances are they'll ask for some examples of poor copyediting and form their own opinion. If they agree with you, they might change the copyeditor (if it's outsourced) or provide him or her with the negative review and pointers (if it's an in-house employee). If they don't agree with you then probably nothing will happen other than giving you a vague "we are aware of the issue" response.
If you choose to complain to a **member of the editorial board** then:
1. It's possible the editor will say "this is none of my business, approach the publisher", or forward to the publisher "I received this complaint, what do you think" (in which case, see the second paragraph).
2. It's also possible (but in my opinion less likely) that the editor will take things seriously, in which case he or she will contact the publisher. Again, see second paragraph, except this time the publisher is also dealing with an unhappy editorial board member and so would be more inclined to make changes.
Finally if you choose to **just make your corrections** then your corrections get implemented and everyone just moves on to the next paper.
Having said all that, I gotta say, I don't see any difference between "This can be proved via the method of Gauss, see [1]" and "This can be proved via the method of Gauss; see [1]". Both simply say that the reader can find the proof in reference 1. It looks to me like an unnecessary correction, but it isn't *per se* wrong. I checked with another editor and he found both OK too. If you can confidently say that one of them is wrong, you have a level of English mastery that most other native speakers aren't even aware of.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Publishers typically have a house "style" to which they adhere. Therefore, minor corrections that otherwise do not change the meaning are likely not an issue.
However, if the edit were to change the *meaning* of a part of your article, or represents an unintended error, then you should *definitely* protest. I have only once had to make a complaint to a publisher, but that was because they introduced significant errors in the *mathematics* in my paper, completely changing the meaning of the paper. In such cases, you should *definitely* notify someone about the problem, because they are significant enough to warrant a corrigendum if they weren't fixed at the proof stage.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: "In this case that..." is clearly incorrect. The copyeditor is correct in thinking that "Note that" is usually superfluous. I'm guessing that here the copyeditor was simply sloppy.
Regarding your Gauss example, I think both the comma and semicolon are incorrect. "See [1]" is a parenthetical remark and a citation, so it should be in parentheses, no?
But you're right, the comma before "see" is quite incorrect. As you say, in English a comma can't separate two independent clauses.
At least 90% of copyediting is bound by clear rules. Perhaps 5% of changes are optional, and the remaining 5% are left to the editor's discretion because no style manual covers the question. I've never encountered a house style that broke hard-and-fast rules of the English language, so this doesn't seem like a problem with house style but rather the copyeditor's competence.
I think it would be appropriate to contact the journal about this problem. The copyeditor is paid to do a task competently. If that's not what's happening, the journal should know about it. I wouldn't want my article to be published in worse shape than when I submitted it. That will reflect poorly on you, not the copyeditor.
Upvotes: 0
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