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2020/07/24
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a student of a M.Sc. in Economics.
For reasons that are really beyond my control, a week ago I was asked to write a one-page draft of my Master's thesis topic, so that I can be assigned to a supervisor. The draft must be handed in by July 31st. This notification came out of the blue for me (and my classmates), so we don't really have anything in mind so far.
Of course, I have thought about the potential topic of my Master's thesis before. However, I haven't been able to come up with a subject that is "satisfying" yet. So far, I have mostly encountered topics in which I don't feel like I could give a significant contribution.
On the other hand, I am still quite excited about the topic of my Bachelor's thesis (which I wrote about a year ago). I remember being kind of "proud" of this thesis, mostly because it stemmed from my original idea. I used a methodology that I found "creative" to investigate some classical questions related to International Economics. I recently read my thesis again and found that there is much room for improvement. With the experience I have gained in the last year of studies, I feel like I could research this topic in much more depth.
Do you think I could choose this topic (or a strictly related one) also for my Master's thesis? I fear this could be regarded as a "lazy" choice by someone who would review my academic curriculum in the future. Is it possible to write both your Bachelor's and your Master's thesis on similar topics?
Thank you in advance for your help.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't, personally, have any problem with the concept provided that you can clearly explain how the future work goes beyond the past work in some meaningful way. At the MS level it may not need to be earth-shattering, but it should be "meaningful".
The problem, however, is that even if your professors agree with me, they will be the ones to decide whether what you say is meaningful enough to let you go ahead. So, a bit risky. But if it is all you've got then you can try it. But I'd suggest that you keep looking for alternatives in the time left to you.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't see any problem studying the same subject. You could consider it an extension of your Bachelor's thesis. As a reviewer I would welcome such a proposal, as long as the one-pager is well written and has clear statements of the problems you want to solve.
I even suggest you think about what you could have done differently in your Bachelor thesis and include it in your proposal.
Remember that you are submitting a project proposal and, during the course of your masters research, you might change your mind and decide to pursue another direction.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: If the topic of both your bachelor's and master's thesis is the same, the master's thesis should be a far deeper exploration of the topic. My Master's thesis was a continuation of the same project that I began during my undergaduate degree with guidance from the same PI. At the end of my bachelor's degree, I felt I had only scratched the surface of the topic.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: In the end staying in the same topic is neither a necessarily good nor bad choice. If there is still room for improvement or even better to answer alternative questions then continuing in the same area can be a decent choice: You already know parts of the literature, you know relevant outlets and researchers - and you feel happy and confident with the topic.
However, you should make sure that your thesis is substantially different from your Bachelor thesis. So ideally you do not try to fix the same issues or questions, but rather find something related to work on. Because in the end you want to avoid that people wonder whether you just "warmed up" something that worked before again and are not able to do something "novel". While this might be less relevant if you plan to leave academia after your Master's degree, it could come back to you if you plan to stay ...
Upvotes: 1
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2020/07/24
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<issue_start>username_0: I was wondering what paygrade (Stufe) I am likely to get for a position advertized as TVL-13 (100%), knowing that I have a 3-year PhD experience from a EU (non-German) university.
The postition's title is Wissenschaftliche Mitarbeiter in German but Research Engineer in English. Also, if we consider the kind of tasks/responsibilities involved in the position, it involves working in a EU project, which is something I did during the years of my PhD.
All similar posts (linked below) seem to be referring to the case where the PhD work has been conducted in a German university. So, I wanted to check if that wasn't the case, would chances of getting a higher grade be reduced or not?
I don't know if this is relevant, but unlike question (3), I paid taxes during my PhD.
Closely-related questions:
(1) [Post-doc Salary in Germany](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/62010/post-doc-salary-in-germany)
(2) [Criteria of experience recognition for “TV-L 13” position](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/84643/criteria-of-experience-recognition-for-tv-l-13-position)
(3) [Does PhD work experience (scholarship was tax free) count in Postdoc Salary contract (TVL-13) in Germany](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/132774/does-phd-work-experience-scholarship-was-tax-free-count-in-postdoc-salary-cont)
Less closely-related posts:
(4) [What is the difference between TV-L E13 and TV-L E14 positions? Is it negotiable?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/134088/what-is-the-difference-between-tv-l-e13-and-tv-l-e14-positions-is-it-negotiable)
(5) [German postdoc salaries (TV-L E14)](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42648/german-postdoc-salaries-tv-l-e14)<issue_comment>username_1: In the end that is something you can only clarify with your potential future employer. However, so far - from the little experience and insights I have - both options can occur: I know people who worked for the public administration before (which in the end is also paid according to the TV-L or TVöD) and started on Stufe (level) 1 - while others with just practical but related job experience started in a higher Stufe (level). So in the end it most likely depends on your institution and its flexibility - as well as your negotiation skills (and the availability of other applicants or the lack of such).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If the position is project funded, it may depend on the negotiation with the project leader. If it is a state funded position, then it should be up to the universities' policies. However given your experience, I think is unlikely that they only set you up for the first level/Stufe.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: I worked for three different universities in the same Bundesland (state) in Germany. Although they all followed the same general regulations, the interpretation was rather different.
* one considered my PhD (on a scholarship, so not employed) as relevant experience, one not.
* one said my Cambridge University (UK) degree was a Fachhochschulabschluss, one considered it as full university degree.
* one was willing to negotiate (not with me, but with the institute that I should work for), one was not.
So you need to talk to your future boss and to the university that wants to employ you.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2020/07/24
| 829
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<issue_start>username_0: So I was working with someone from a different University on a project and I have started to become very concerned about their mental and physical well-being.
The messages which they sent me a day before came across as paranoid, saying that he believed that one of his colleagues had hacked his laptop and was following all his activities, just for the purpose of knowing whether they had secretly been getting guidance from someone else to help him write his papers in order to bully him and harass him.
Today he stated that he was no longer able to continue working with me on the project because of this harassment from colleagues. Again, the messages were quite concerning: for example, talk of not having been able to sleep for 36 hours and fear of dying in 'terrible suffering', but furthermore that one of his colleagues is poisoning his food so that he is unable to sleep and that he is really scared of dying because of not being able to sleep.
My first thought was to write to his graduate school where he works as a postdoc and state that I am concerned about his mental health and make a suggestion that his workload be lightened and that he be given the opportunity to speak with a mental health professional. Also, that perhaps there could be some words had about the culture of 'banter' and 'jokes', since he obviously takes these jokes very badly although perhaps they are not intended to be harmful (to be clear, I am a student and have no power in enforcing this, it's just a suggestion I want to make).
However, I am not sure how best to phrase this email (or even exactly what I should say) without 'getting them into trouble' or making it look like 'I am telling on them' or giving away confidential information. Also, who should the email be sent to? Again, I don't want to make things worse, but I feel like this is genuinely concerning and that someone should say something to prevent the situation escalating.<issue_comment>username_1: In the end that is something you can only clarify with your potential future employer. However, so far - from the little experience and insights I have - both options can occur: I know people who worked for the public administration before (which in the end is also paid according to the TV-L or TVöD) and started on Stufe (level) 1 - while others with just practical but related job experience started in a higher Stufe (level). So in the end it most likely depends on your institution and its flexibility - as well as your negotiation skills (and the availability of other applicants or the lack of such).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If the position is project funded, it may depend on the negotiation with the project leader. If it is a state funded position, then it should be up to the universities' policies. However given your experience, I think is unlikely that they only set you up for the first level/Stufe.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: I worked for three different universities in the same Bundesland (state) in Germany. Although they all followed the same general regulations, the interpretation was rather different.
* one considered my PhD (on a scholarship, so not employed) as relevant experience, one not.
* one said my Cambridge University (UK) degree was a Fachhochschulabschluss, one considered it as full university degree.
* one was willing to negotiate (not with me, but with the institute that I should work for), one was not.
So you need to talk to your future boss and to the university that wants to employ you.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2020/07/25
| 436
| 1,569
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<issue_start>username_0: CVPR doesn't add workshop "short papers" into the proceedings, but they have uploaded all of it onto a github.io repo.
How do I cite this when it's not in proceedings?<issue_comment>username_1: If your paper is already into Google Scholar, it id easy, anyway, eventually, it will (if not yet). You can cite like the following example:
>
> <NAME>, et al. "Manipulation Data Collection and Annotation Tool for Media Forensics." *Proceedings of the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Workshops*. 2019.
>
>
>
Additionally, you can provide a download/view link along with it. The above citation will work for both short and long paper. So, the template is:
>
> <NAME>., <NAME>., Author T., "Paper Title." *Proceedings of the Conference Name Here Workshop*. 20YY. [Link]
>
>
>
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: **Clearly.**
The main purpose of a bibliography entry is to properly identify the work, with enough information that (at least in principle) your readers can find the work and read it for themselves. If the github.io repository doesn't suggest a citation format, make up something reasonable that serves that purpose. The precise formatting doesn't matter (or if it does, the editor will fix it for you). For example:
>
> [10] <NAME> and <NAME>. BADWOLF: A temporally agnostic relational
> database information system. Presented at the 13th Gallifreyan
> Workshop on Untempered Schismatics, Arcadia, December 2020.
> <https://torchwood.github.io/badworf.pdf>
>
>
>
Upvotes: 1
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2020/07/25
| 528
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm looking to apply to grad school once my wife finishes her PhD next year. She has a post-doc lined up in Canada and I'm thinking during that time would be a great time for me to finally start mine (PhD).
My issue is that I do not have any research experience and I'm about 4 years into industry as a practicing software engineer. I have a bachelors and masters in computer science and I'm currently about to publish a paper with my wife that is a mix of CS/Biology. Given that she is going to Canada, I'm wanting to try to get into University of Toronto, which seems highly ranked. What things can I do starting today to get into this school given my experience?<issue_comment>username_1: You may want to reach out to a professor ahead of time and inquire if they’re going to be accepting students during the period you wish to apply. It’s by no means a sure fire way to get in, because you could be beaten out by competition, but it’s a good start. Apart from that, you’d be best to get all of the documents together on time and submit it before the deadline. Maybe try to exploit your network, work on getting solid recommendation letters from past professors or people who can speak to your ability to do research.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I do not know about univ. of Toronto but in general, if you are full fee-paying student universities usually accept you as a PhD student more easily compared to the ones who rely on funding/scholarships.
Since your wife has already done (almost) her PhD I am sure you know about the requirements for application etc.
As mentioned in another answer getting in touch with the prospective supervisor is a good start. Try collaborating with your previous professors. Read the papers of the prospective supervisors and try to identify your research direction. Think of your PhD research proposal. I believe you would be required to give a PhD Qualifying exam. Why not start preparing for it?
Your paper with your wife might not be considered seriously unless you are the primary author. Are you? If not then try to work on another paper which you could be the primary author.
Best of luck! Univ. of Toronto is a great university.
Upvotes: 0
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2020/07/26
| 408
| 1,739
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<issue_start>username_0: I know that it is not compulsory to taking classes during the PhD (in Germany). But if I want to take some classes in subjects that I missed during my master program, is it possible to take some classes 2-3 in the related field that my PhD is in?
I want both take the exam and follow the course<issue_comment>username_1: It would depend on the department and the university's policies. You can check their website or mail the staff regarding it
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: Following the course will usually not be a problem, since lectures are generally public. Exceptions are, e.g., seminars with a limited number of places. Also, if the lecture hall happens to be too small (highly unlikely) for all the students, you may be expected to leave.
Check the examination regulations of the PhD program that you would enroll in. Sometimes acceptance for PhD studies can be conditional on taking a few extra courses, depending on what the "Promotionsausschuss" decides. If that *can* be the case, taking the exam should be no problem, as there needs to be some way to taking the exam in this case.
Getting some kind of certification that you took and passed the exam may be tricky, though. You *may* have to ask the respective lecturer for a letter stating that, as there are normally no official transcripts for PhD studies.
As already written in a comment, you should check with your advisor if she/he would not oppose taking courses, though - at least if you are not on a scholarship. PhD studies typically works by getting employee status, and using normal employee working hours for such courses may not be welcome. But even on a scholarship, some advisors/supervisors may not like that.
Upvotes: 3
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2020/07/26
| 881
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<issue_start>username_0: I started my own research (sub) group in a STEM field some months ago at an EU university (bachelor/master/PhD system). Every student has to do a bachelor's thesis (6 weeks), research internships (total of 6 weeks), and a master's thesis (6 months). Since I believe that introducing students to actual research early is beneficial, I use these to let students work on part of my own research. This also allows me to care more about their work.
However, almost no female students show interest in doing their research projects in my group. I don't think it's because of me as person, since in the past almost 75% of students I supervised were women, most of them approaching me with the desire to work with me. However, I switched from an experimental research focus to a theoretical one and I require students to have some basic understanding of programming, since it's necessary for the research I'm doing now. I strongly suspect that this is the factor that leads to this problem.
Given the short time of many of those internships I don't see it as an option to teach these skills in that time in addition to the other necessary skills I have to convey. The university has coding courses and even special courses only for women, however, they don't seem to be very popular.
Any good ideas how I could motivate female students to pick up a basic knowledge in programming (either in the university provided courses or "on their own") and not being scared off by this requirement?<issue_comment>username_1: You may simply need to remove the programming requirement. If you believe that’s what the deterrent is then by removing it, and assuming you are correct, you will see more female applicants. Now, simply because you remove it to encourage applicants does not mean you have to hire them if all you’re concerned about is getting their applications. You can directly test your hypothesis by removing it from the application and if someone comes along with experience, you can safely hire them. But, assuming you’re interested in having women in your lab, it might require additional effort on your part to get them introduced to programming. Is it more laborious on your end? Yes. But you can also be up front that if they don’t have that experience, you will expect them to put in more time to learn via YouTube, StackOverflow, etc to get caught up to speed.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: * Teach computation throughout the undergraduate curriculum. All your students need to know it anyway. Examples: <https://www.compadre.org/PICUP/webdocs/About.cfm>
* Ensure all students know why your research is worthwhile. If the cause of your problem is stereotypes, relating the work to students' values is a way to overcome that.
* Educate your students about bias.
* Inform your students about minority role models. Don't know any? Here's one <https://research.seas.ucla.edu/carter/>.
* Develop a reputation for being a good mentor.
There are no magic instantaneous fixes.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I find this idea of applying for theses somewhat unusual. In my experience, they're typically student-generate projects, which would keep interest higher.
With regard to the specifics of this post, there's some argument that women [tend to apply less often](https://hbr.org/2014/08/why-women-dont-apply-for-jobs-unless-theyre-100-qualified) to jobs they aren't 100% qualified to, compared to men.
If "rudimentary" programming skills are all that are needed, I'd make sure that's what the listing actually says, instead of listing "two years of experience with Python" that would be nice for *you* as the mentor, and not the student.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/07/26
| 1,444
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<issue_start>username_0: I am doing a postdoc with a principal investigator (PI) at an American university. Research is going great, with three publications in one year.
But the PI has serious issues. I would say he is a psychopath. I would have probably laughed in the past if someone would have used this description, but now it seems the best description and apparently he has the reputation to be this kind of person and a long list of postdocs who have suddenly left.
He lies endlessly, changes agreements we had (even behind my back, telling other scientists involved I would have agreed to things I did not agree to). If he does not get what he wants, even if it is unreasonable, he starts yelling. He has also been throwing around things in the office.
He also does not work scientifically, I don't know what he does. I have my own money, and he does not want me to leave because of that, but also does not treat me in any way well.
He also threatens me: If I leave, he will ruin my career. I have already an offer from another PI but am super scared that my current PI intervenes and I would lose my visa over that. Apparently he has intervened in the past when postdocs had offers such that offers were cancelled. How should I proceed? I am scared and can't focus, hate myself for that but can't handle the situation mentally. Feel like trapped. I love science and don't want to leave academia.<issue_comment>username_1: * Get an immigration lawyer. We can't give you legal advice.
* Leave. This PI is abusive.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: In my view you have three options: sit out, leave and stand up.
I share some thoughts about standing up. Your institution must have a behavioral integrity policy. You can talk to an ombudsperson or thrust person. You can do this anonymously. You are not the first and this is important information. Document the cases. Try to find and speak to your predecessors. What have they done in their situations and why? What was their outcome? What advise do you get from your ombudsperson or thrust person?
It takes a lot of courage to walk this route which in the end may lead to a formal complaint against this PI. There is no guarantee for success. Apparently this PI has been protected for a long time already on the expense of people with temporary contracts and lesser power. But it depends on history. You are not the first.
I cannot give you a single advice. If you can emotionally detach yourself, you can sit out your contract. But I understand you bring your own money. I fear he will not let you go easily anyhow. You are valuable to this PI bringing in research results and publications. You are feeding your PI.
If you can’t emotionally detach yourself, you should leave or stand up.
When leaving, do not be afraid that this PI may harm your reputation in science. Science is a huge place and your PI will have a reputation too. Trust me, PI’s loosing postdocs, PhD’s and students, not delivering results (publications and grants) are not taken that seriously. Especially when you can show your results.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Being in your shoes is extremely difficult. But from my related experiences the best option, in my opinion, is to leave this PI. The moment he throws something or yells, immediately raise a complaint with the university. Throwing something at someone with the intent to injure is a criminal offence. Your PI might very well lose his job. Yelling at you is tantamount to bullying you which directly affects your mental health.
It is the duty of your university to provide a safe environment for working. You mental and physical health is under threat. And it is a breach of your fundamental rights. Therefore, give a written complaint with precise and accurate wordings.
But even before that, do not let anyone abuse you or threaten you. The moment your PI does something unscientific challenge him on the face. Ask him such questions over email and demand email responses. Also tell him that his behaviour is causing you issues, again, over email. Build a strong case for yourself. You could think about cc-ing this email to other support structures in your university.
Get an immigration lawyer. You cannot let such people and universities bully you in the name of the visa. This is exploitation and unacceptable in the democratic free world.
Know your rights and under no circumstances let anyone breach it. You are a scientist, you are special, be proud of it and act like one. While you are doing this do not let your research get slowed down. I know it is difficult, but it is a must.
Do the right thing while being smart about it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: If you believe this person is abusive, the first step is to quietly discuss this with students/postdocs in the group or who are or were otherwise in contact with this person. If indeed this is not a singular issue, then you should quietly talk to either the chair/graduate chair/some faculty member to discuss the situation.
Please be sure to establish first that your observations are shared by others.
You will not get any mileage out of the claim he doesn’t do anything academically. The reality is that this person might be instrumental in getting funding for the group, without which the research endeavour is impossible. Moreover, suggesting that someone’s a liar should be done very carefully, as circumstances in research are subject to constant revisions. You need to establish facts not about lying or laziness but about abusive behaviour and/or bullying.
I do not have first hand experience of the type you describe, but I am aware of cases where abusive faculty members were sanctioned by the unit in one form or another, *v.g.* this person can no longer take students or postdocs until some remedial action has been completed.
While this may not be immediately useful in your case, this kind of sanction also came - in the cases I know - with some sort of anti-retaliation clauses, and other means of supporting the students/postdocs/technicians so they could switch elsewhere without penalty.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/07/26
| 598
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<issue_start>username_0: I have published my thesis to an international conference but it was not anything reputed. However, I do not have access to lab now. I have been asked to be a part of a **review-paper** writing team and a **book-chapter** writing team. I am not sure which will have greater impact during my admission in grad school and among researcher community.<issue_comment>username_1: My personal view is that the **review article** will hold more weight with an admissions committee, because it is more likely to be peer reviewed in a serious way. If the journal is well-respected, and particularly if the review is an "invited" one, then being part of the author list is a good way to say that your (or your group's) opinion on the topic of the review is something well-regarded and seen as important by your peers in your field.
However, one caveat is that if the book chapter was invited and the review article wasn't, then the book chapter is more or less a "done deal" in terms of acceptance and publication, while the review paper may or may not be accepted (or even considered) by the journal you submit it to. In that case, depending on your timeline, getting something published, no matter whether it's a book chapter or review article, would be the top priority to make sure you can claim it on your application.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This really depends on the field and the venue...
In my own field, book chapters are almost useless for your goals - they come in two flavors: those where already accomplished authors write reviews of a subject and are considered highly but are written by people who do not need an introduction, and those solicited by publishers looking for cheap content they can resell. There are other fields where book chapters are a pretty central part of publishing.
That said, review articles can be basically the same: those where established researchers convey their wisdom are highly respected, but typically the authors have sufficient credit already. In my area, an impact factor of 6-10 is pretty good, though also low for a journal that trades in the review arena: highly influential reviews in review journals get tens to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of citations, so those journals have inflated impact factors.
With the limited information you've provided, I'd assume the review article is better, if indeed the journal is *a good journal* and not somehow inflating an impact factor with false citations (not an uncommon thing). The more important advice I would offer is for you to **check the specific circumstances with an advisor you trust**. Your thesis advisor would be a good start.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/07/26
| 1,576
| 6,648
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<issue_start>username_0: Forgive my complete newbieness, but I truly don't to know the answer to this question.
If you decide to write a scientific paper for possible publication in a conference/journal (in engineering, for instance), you'd obviously need to choose a subject that adds something new to the status quo, but then, in doing so, you very certainly will have to tap into the existing research too. And as I understand, most publishing organization have access to special [search engines](https://www.springer.com/gp/authors-editors/editors/plagiarism-prevention-with-crosscheck/4238) that helps them identify plagiarism.
So where does the line between plagiarism and authentic work lie exactly? Stated otherwise, how do you avoid "unintentional plagiarism" so that the paper you submit doesn't look like you essentially copied existing work? What is considered new and authentic work? Because I have seen many many articles published by IEEE, for example, (especially conference papers) where the original/new contribution was very slight (like a 'new' model/technique that modifies ever so slightly a previous one), isn't this considered plagiarism?<issue_comment>username_1: You reference all the work that you use (however you use it) that is by other people which is why some papers have lots of references.
Some papers are part of a series produced as the work, and results, progress. This is normal and expected, but you are expected to reference your earlier publications (based on the comment).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: * Use citations for relatively recent work that is not your own (an exception to this is the idea of "common knowledge". For example, you don't need to reference Newton or Leibniz when you employ calculus).
* You are *not* plagiarizing when you develop layers of references and then build on that body of knowledge to add a contribution to it (and hence, becoming part of the body).
* When you state a fact, result, argument, assertion, etc, that is not your own but that of someone and *do not* use a citation, then you are plagiarizing because your readership will interpret that part of the paper as an original thought of your own.
* Using citations properly is a skill you will develop over time, so do your best to cite everything that you think requires a citation early on and then you can always edit down things later. As time goes on, you'll understand what does and does not require citation.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: There are two kinds of plagiarism, ordinary and "self". It is pretty much impossible to plagiarize unintentionally. It is an *intentional* act. Let me explain.
Ordinary plagiarism has two aspects. One is *knowingly* attributing the work of others to yourself. We avoid it by citing the work we use, giving credit to the originator of ideas that we depend on. But you have to know that the work belongs to another in order to be at fault here. Independently reinventing something yourself isn't plagiarism, though it may appear so. You may still be at fault if you don't know something that you should have known, but the fault isn't plagiarism. Something more like laziness. But intentionally appropriating the ideas of others is seen as an act of malice.
Again, reinvention isn't plagiarism. If I, as a kid, rediscover the [Pythagorean Theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pythagorean_theorem) without the help of books or teachers, or anything, just starting with the idea of a triangle, it is reinvention. It isn't plagiarism. It isn't likely publishable, of course, and if I try, people will laugh.
The other aspect of ordinary plagiarism is that we cite the work we use so that readers can trace ideas back to their source, finding complete context for the ideas, their origin and use along the way. The papers that originated the idea have a context, including the papers *they* cite, and it is sometimes necessary to go back and examine that. If you don't cite, you break the chain.
Self plagiarism is when you use your own previously published work without citing it. Only the second aspect, above, applies here, but it is no less important. Don't just copy-paste (or even paraphrase) from your own old (published) work without citation. But some people do this out of laziness, rather than malice.
But, aside from the technical details, a scholar will spend a fair amount of time researching what is known already about things they wish to explore. This gives the advantage of being able to catapult off of the earlier work (citing it) and deepening your knowledge. It also, hopefully, shows you what is yet to be done in a field, so that you can direct your efforts in meaningful ways.
But ignoring the literature is normally a fault if you wish to publish. People expect you to know the field to the point at which your own explorations begin. If you don't, then your papers will likely get rejected and charges of plagiarism might be made, even if incorrectly. But that is carelessness masquerading as plagiarism, not plagiarism.
As I said in a comment to another post, you don't need to cite things that are "common knowledge". This is a bit hard to define, but generally things taught in, for example, secondary school are common knowledge, though not universal knowledge. But, if in doubt, citing is safer than making assumptions.
Do your homework reading the literature, and, then, cite it if you use it.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: There are two parts to answering your question.
One deals with explicit plagiarism which is copying text from another paper and showing it as your own. You clearly do not wish to do that. Now if you take inspiration from another work or build on another work, you should rewrite in your own word while citing another work.
The second part of the answer which is more relevant to your question is implicitly plagiarizing by reinventing something which already existed but you are not aware of. Firstly, if you are trying to get published in top conferences or journals you could be sure of reviewers pointing out lack of novelty in your work if someone has already done it. So you will do good to avoid plagiarism by always targeting reputed conferences and journals.
And of course, to ensure novelty you should read more papers from top journals and conferences.
Your observation that IEEE has a lot of work which is not of high quality is correct. Always look for A\* conferences and journals to publish with. You will hardly find such issues with them. Look for CORE ranking portal to find such rankings in engineering and computer science area.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/07/26
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<issue_start>username_0: Generally speaking, are the papers submitted to a conference (Scientific conference, say) that took place in region/country X reviewed by peer-reviewers in region/country X?<issue_comment>username_1: No, the reviewers could easily be from other countries and may, or even may not, be attending the conference.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Definitely not necessary and also impractical. Conferences have different chairs and different sessions. Each is controlled by a different person. There are multiple layers to it. In general, reviewers are spread all across the world. And same reviewers do their job across multiple years.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/07/26
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<issue_start>username_0: I was a grader for my university couple of years ago. I'm also a PhD student. Out of the five semesters I graded..I got a "not fit for rehire" 3 times.
I was not responsive, didn't cater to the needs of the students properly, and occasionally would lose assignments submitted to me. I could not handle the logistics of taking in 100+ assignments(sometimes per week). Most importantly, I was thoroughly inconsistent with grading- I could not follow a proper rubric to the bone. Most often I'd have to make a rubric myself, even in really odd grading situations like having to grade students' notes as either 0 or 1(depending on whether they were relevant to the classroom, etc). I would grade the papers, but often I'd find myself grading differently towards the end of the pile as opposed to when I started grading.
Part of the reason this happened was due to my ADHD+OCD combination of mental disorders, but I am tired of citing that to my professors and also myself. The reason I was fired so many times was not due to Grading incompetence, but because I was late to deadlines, would miss TA meetings, and because of reasons like having to leave town before I could finish grading.
The grading incompetence is something only I know. If I think about how many students got, say, a C+ instead of a B- because of MY negligence and irresponsibility, I start feeling like the worst human being on planet earth.
I have considered confessing to my Professors about this, but have never been brave enough to do it. All my semesters of being a TA are long over, grades collected and put up on the students' transcripts. I have somehow managed to get an RA position but have been struggling very badly since the past year mentally due to all this.
I am posting here because I just want some possible solutions. Do I confess, and get terminated from my PhD-most importantly is it technically possible to roll back grades like that en masse? Should I quit graduate school myself? I don't intend to ever be in academia after I get my degree..but I don't feel like I can take that amount of psychological burden and keep feeling worthy of a PhD. What would you do if you were in a similar situation, hypothetically?<issue_comment>username_1: Grading is hard, and it is the structure of reality which we have to accept that we get to hurt others. If you don't hurt anyone you're doing nothing. Sure it's best to go to an approach which minimises suffering but don't mess yourself up because of it.
Go with a "minimum neccesary force" aproach in punishing yourself. Just enough to not do stupid things again and be better in the future.
If you grade differently in the end, one theory is that you have a better understanding of how to grade it.
Grading can be arbitrary especially on subjects which have no clear cut answer and are opinion based.
I'd say if you have something which bothers you then speak to your professors. It might not be as bad as it seems to you. The longer you keep something in the back of your mind the worse it gets. Deal with your demons as long as they are little demons.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> I could not follow a proper rubric to the bone.
>
>
>
That's not unusual. Following a rubric is indeed difficult, even for people who have had many years of experience in teaching. And the rubrics supplied by professors to TAs are often not very good.
>
> Most often I'd have to make a rubric myself,
>
>
>
That's a *good* thing - you found something that helped you get your work done in a more consistent manner.
>
> often I'd find myself grading differently towards the end of the pile as opposed to when I started grading.
>
>
>
This happens to everybody. It's not desirable, and we try to find ways to avoid it, but a certain amount of inconsistency is inevitable when grading is done by humans.
>
> Do I confess, and get terminated from my PhD
>
>
>
Nothing you've described sounds like cause to terminate a grad student from a PhD program. TA performance is usually evaluated independently from academic performance, and staying in a graduate program is based on the latter. The only exceptions I would expect would be something that went beyond poor performance into the realm of blatant dishonesty: taking bribes from students, etc.
If you were to "confess", I think the likely reaction would be something like "Well yeah, it was clear you weren't doing a very good job as a TA, and that's why we're not hiring you as a TA anymore. So that's the end of that. Why are we still talking about this?"
>
> is it technically possible to roll back grades like that en masse?
>
>
>
It would depend on your university's rules, but it's probably unlikely. The standards for changing grades are usually if there was a clerical error (e.g. incorrect addition of scores) or "arbitrary and capricious" grading (e.g. grades that had absolutely nothing to do with the course material). Just being somewhat inconsistent wouldn't rise to that level. Moreover, there's usually a limited time period in which this is possible at all - after a year or so, the students' original assignments have usually been discarded and it isn't possible to regrade their work even if one wanted to.
>
> If I think about how many students got,say, a C+ instead of a B- because of MY negligence and irresponsibility, I start feeling like the worst human being on planet earth.
>
>
>
So, a few students have a GPA that's 0.01 points lower than it otherwise would have been. It's not exactly on par with mass murder.
>
> Should I quit graduate school myself?
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>
>
I certainly do not see any cause for that.
>
> What would you do if you were in a similar situation,hypothetically?
>
>
>
If I found that I wasn't able to meet the standards of a job, and I didn't feel able or willing to put in the effort to get better - I would try to find a way not to have to do that job anymore. And that's exactly what you have done, by finding a source of support that doesn't require you to work as a TA. Again, problem solved.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: You are mixing two things. Your performance as a TA is independent of your performance as a PhD student. Being a good TA or a grader is no requirement for you to be a good PhD student. So leave out the thought of being terminated from PhD.
TAs make mistakes all the time. So do professors and lecturers. Grading is not easy and there is no solution to it.
In your case, you have been insincere owing to circumstances, some under your control and some not. You made mistakes and you feel bad about it. Your assessment that your poor work as a TA must have caused issues for students is accurate but what is done is done. One grade in a particular subject is very unlikely to have a poor effect on the career of a student.
Moreover, it is the responsibility of the lecturer to assign the grade, you are only supporting him. I am sure a student would have approached a lecturer if he felt his grades are massively off from what they expected. And the course coordinator would have fixed that issue. It frequently happens - and the lecturers know about your situation.
You have already quit the job you were not able to do properly. So you have already taken the right step. And furthermore, if you still feel guilty, start some free tutoring sessions to help out students with poor grades. Or start some community service by helping school students for free.
We all make mistakes in life. You are a good human being to have accepted it. It is also important for one to move on. And more importantly, what you have done is not that bad as you are making it out. Your guilt outweighs your mistakes.
Focus on your PhD. All these experiences will make you a better professional. Best of luck!
Upvotes: 5
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2020/07/27
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<issue_start>username_0: (context: undergrad/integrated masters student in a math-related field, planning on a PhD in a CS-related field)
In Asia (at least in India and Singapore), students are generally expected to personally know (and ideally have worked with) their to-be supervisors before starting their PhD.
So it's common for undergrads to try to contact professors for summer projects -- and professors generally like it, because they get free work done and get a good feel of who may be a good graduate student for them to take later.
In the end of my second year at a UK university, I emailed a couple of professors (in other UK universities) asking for a summer project with some semi-generic topic ideas, but quickly realized this was a major faux-pas since:
1. I didn't receive a reply, positive or negative, suggesting that it was regarded as spam.
2. I found that some other professors -- though not the ones I had emailed -- had put notices on their website expressing their dislike of summer internship requests.
3. I saw a [question here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/41687/what-is-behind-the-indian-undergrad-research-experience-spam) that seemed to suggest that such requests are considered spam, although that may only be for generic formats for mass-emailing professors (which is not what I did).
So I realize that I don't really know how "getting into a PhD programme" works in the UK. Are you *not* expected to know a supervisor beforehand? Or do students generally look for other (perhaps less time-consuming for professors) ways to network with potential supervisors, like emailing them about their work?<issue_comment>username_1: PhD students actively look for posts which are on offer, by contacting departments/professors, but prior contact is not usual or needed.
Some students manage to get places in the university because they finished their final year and saw the post which they then applied for - may not be in the same department but the professorial contact comes into play "what's this student like"?
Other students see posts are available and apply, which then leads to interview.
Many departments do not have summer work available as the tech staff may be doing maintenance during the holidays. I know that it was very quiet for us during the vacation - just 3 of us doing research and the cleaners...
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: It is relatively difficult to arrange such internships. The applicants usually look for a 4-6 week period which is usually not enough time to get any meaningful output (except for the very strongest students), but still requires quite some preparation and supervision if done well.
Then, often the visa issue is not resolved and the university does not usually handle internship visa arrangements (it is different with PhDs), so the prospective supervisor needs to help.
Third, it seems that a lot of students especially from India seem to require/seek experience abroad which means that you get a lot of such requests, and, even if the topic sounds reasonably well defined and relevant (which means they have read your website and actually refer to your work) it is incredibly difficult to judge CVs from that country (what does "top 1% in [some fancy national ranking]" or "1st prize of [impressive sounding competition]" mean? Is that good? Is it meaningless?). The extra work in having to supervise a weak/mediocre internship candidate can be astonishing.
I have sometimes accepted internships from students I knew from other channels, e.g. colleagues, or who have talked to me at conferences, workshops and summer schools, but I expected them to organize their visa, where required, mostly themselves - but they did not come from India, and that may definitely require a formal host for a visa; that being said, for a very strong student (i.e. where I would know from other routes that they are strong), I probably would be ready to contribute necessary paperwork (e.g. recommendation/hosting letters) where relevant as long as it is not excessive.
The story is very different if the students are already on location and, especially, if they have taken my course, because I can have an idea what they are capable of and they know my topics and style, so an internship can be ramped up much faster.
In short: external students constitute a significant risk to be a time sink, and especially for a short internship this is usually not worth the logistical and scientific effort, unless you know well who you are dealing with.
For PhDs, there are ads during the year and you apply for them. Getting to know your PhD supervisor is possible separately and outside of an internship. The latter could be a good idea, but, because of above reasons, is usually replaced by an interview. Many prospective supervisors, however, encourage getting in contact with them on applying for a PhD under their supervision.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: It is not necessary to know a professor before applying for a PhD in the UK. I have so far supervised 8 PhD students, only one of whom I knew before they started their PhD.
There are two routes to a PhD in the UK. First is to apply for an advertised position or program. This is how the majority of PhDs are recruited, but it is also usually only open to home students. The second is to find the funding yourself (either through a non-UK government scheme, an NGO or a wealthy benefactor) and to write to the supervisor laying out your experience, your desire to do a PhD (and why with them), and what your source of funding is.
I don't take unpaid interns as I feel it unfairly advantages those that can afford to do an unpaid internship at the expense of those that can't. My university runs several schemes that fund summer internships and my professional society also has a summer studentship fund. Unfortunately, I only have the capacity to take one, or at a push, two summer students a year, and I would normally recruit these from our own undergraduate body. While I try to reply to all requests for internships, I get several a day during some parts of the year, and sometimes they slip through the cracks.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: username_3 mentioned that a secondary route to applying to an advertised position is to find your own funding and then solicit supervisors. I suspect this varies by field, but I would suggest a third viable route, which is that you can contact potential supervisors without having funding. In some cases there may be university specific funding programmes available, or they may have some idea for what grants to apply to. If you do impress them, they may be very willing to help you find funding and to help you apply. Therefore, I wouldn't be put off from soliciting supervisors without having gone through the difficult task of applying for a fellowship alone.
As for how to make the initial contact, I would suggest that you speak to your own lecturers, who may be able to suggest who to contact. The opportunity to "network" with academics in your own department is extremely valuable, and one that you should not miss out on if you are planning to do a PhD. Having the "endorsement" of being referred by a colleague (who would presumably not do so if they thought you were unsuitable as a PhD student) is likely to increase your chances of a positive response. Outside of working for someone as an intern, I believe being referred by a colleague is the next best thing.
I would also suggest you ask if you could attend research seminars in the area you are interested in. If there is a visiting speaker who works in an area you are interested in, it's a good opportunity to ask if they are seeking PhD students.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: One route to meeting a supervisor which is reasonably common in the UK inSTEM subjects, but which seems not to have been mentioned in other answers yet is the masters research project. Integrated masters courses are fairly common in both the 4 year undergraduate programme and 1 year MRes + Phd patterns, as are 1 year taught masters courses. The majority of these will include a dissertation project closely supervised by a member of faculty, which can act as an audition, as well as an introduction to that supervisor and their colleagues.
Having said that, outside of a few institutions, staying at the same institution for all three degrees is sometimes frowned upon (e.g. by funding bodies) as failing to broaden your horizons.
Upvotes: 0
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2020/07/27
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm an Electrical Engineer, working in industry but planning on returning to school in a few years to get my PhD and pursue academia. I was recently offered an opportunity to be a tutor for high school calculus students, and am curious how beneficial that would be for me in applying to grad school and continuing on eventually as professor. It would only be a part-time thing, but I feel like it would be a good opportunity for me to learn how to teach math, since that's a position I haven't really been in before. I'll likely do it whether it'll look good on an application or not, but I'm just curious to see if it could be *doubly* beneficial.<issue_comment>username_1: Yes - having teaching experience can only be a plus, especially if you are applying to departments that fund many of their students through TAships. As a TA, you will spend more of your time in lower-level courses (such as calculus) than in higher-level ones, so it may be relevant. However, it's unlikely to be a deal-breaker when put up against your research record.
More departments (although I am not in your field) are turning toward putting more value on teaching and outreach compared to decades past, so working in a high school would be seen as very valuable to those departments. Even more so if you are able to work with students who do not typically have access to tutoring, or are likewise underserved.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I am not an academician and I have little idea as to what to look for when hiring a lecturer, though I had the opportunity to sit through a few of those demonstration lectures from prospective candidates and also go through their feedback forms given to other lecturers.
From this little insight, I believe that any experience is better than no experience. After all, you would be teaching the same students a few years later in college if you become a lecturer.
More importantly, leaving aside what your PhD committee or the hiring committee feels about you it would be a good experience and I feel that you will learn a great deal in teaching. Teaching is an art and you are honing it at a level when it matters the most.
As for leveraging it in your career as an academician, in your future interviews do not just mention that you had experience teaching high school students. Instead, focus on the challenging scenarios which arose while teaching and how you managed it. And then explain how that experience would be useful for you as a lecturer.
A good lecturer has his or own style which is inherited from their senior colleagues and gets mutated through experiences. You are doing good by being proactive and training yourself beforehand.
Finally, if there is a competition for the position of TA in your school, I am sure this experience will benefit you.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I don't believe this will be beneficial, and has some minute chance of harming your application. Tutoring of high school students is relatively elementary, and is usually the kind of thing college or graduate students do to earn a little cash on the side. If you're already working in industry, taking on this kind of side gig might indicate that you're not well compensated in your current position, which an admissions committee member *might* hypothesize is due to performance issues on your part.
If you had a multi-year history of this kind of teaching it might be more beneficial in establishing a record of your love of teaching and interacting with students. If it's a one-off thing of a single semester immediately prior to your application to grad school, it would come across to me as (probably innocent) resume padding.
If you literally have the free time, then I think it's probably fine if you feel strongly about it. But better things to do with that time might be to try and tutor college students (more relevant to your actual teaching duties in grad school), or complete patents or other work products in your current job that could be claimed in a CV.
Upvotes: 3
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2020/07/27
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in the last year of my tenure clock and will be submitting my tenure package this Fall. However, I will not be able to teach on campus this Fall partly due to COVID-19 disruption (school closing means I will have to stay home with my children). If teaching on campus is required (not yet finalized), I would have no choice but to take an unpaid leave.
Will taking an unpaid leave hurt my tenure process?
I did some basic research. There are nothing specific in faculty handbook, nor can I find anything in the official tenure procedure book.<issue_comment>username_1: This would be a local rule and so no advice here is really valid. I assume people will be reasonable, assuming you are in a reasonable place. But It is better to talk to someone with authority at your institution and get a ruling - in writing. The department head, and/or dean, and or head of the tenure committee would all be good to talk to.
Don't make any assumptions. And don't believe it if a random internet person says don't worry be happy.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Taking an unpaid leave of absence would often factor into tenure decisions. I would begin a discussion with you department head today. Express your concerns. COVID-19 is a very unique circumstance. Surely they could find a way for you to teach remotely if you start a discussion right now.
If I was a department chair, I would be finding ways to accommodate my faculty. But I would also want to have that discussion as soon as possible.
What you definitely do not want to do is wait until a month into the semester to inform your department that you are not going to be showing up. (We had a professor do this a few years ago and he was obviously fired).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Even if you found something in the handbook, then that was probably written before the COVID-19 crisis, so it would not mean much. I would hope that would not be held against you, and you have good arguments, but not everybody is equally reasonable. So the best guess can be made by you, as you know who make the decision.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/07/27
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<issue_start>username_0: I am interested in applying to some applied math graduate programs but I have some deficiencies in a few math courses. However, I have reached out to a potential supervisor and our conversations are going well. So my question is, if a prospective supervisor wants to take on a particular student, but students have to enter a common pool of applicants, how much influence on An individuals admissions does a prospective advisor have in the process.<issue_comment>username_1: The answer to this question depends a lot on the university and the seniority of the prospective supervisor. I did not apply for a Math program but for computer science and though the prospective supervisor was keen the committee rejected my application. I believe there should not be a huge difference in the Math department.
Academia is ripe with politics and resources are limited. So there is never going to be one answer to this question. The influence of the prospective supervisor depends a lot on how good a politician he is. And that will determine how good he is in getting his prospective students into the programme. If the supervisor is junior then his senior colleagues will dictate terms. I have known prospective supervisors to write a personal note of recommendation for some students on the application who they think are more suited to work 'for' them.
In an ideal world, the supervisor should not be a member of the committee which shortlists the application. But even then I have seen senior academicians ensuring their colleagues who are close to them professionally being put into the committee to ensure they get what they want and vice versa.
If I were a prospective student I would care little about all this as none of this is in my hands.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: **"Soft" influence**
It's hard to judge how much soft influence a professor has. Every professor will have a different level of influence, and also a different approach in how they wield it. There is no way to answer this definitively. The most influential professors in departments that allow them to wield influence will have as much power as they want to choose students. Professors in other departments may have little to no influence at all.
**"Hard" influence**
In my experience, the more powerful control over admissions that professors have is *money*. For many programs, there are more qualified applicants than there are slots available for funding. That means that many qualified applicants miss the cut despite being qualified: there are simply too many other prospective students that either have better resumes or have a better fit to the program. However, the program still wants those students!
If a professor has resources to fund a student and offers to do so, that student can possibly skip the queue a bit, because they are no longer competing for the at large funding slots. In the grad program I attended, these students were referred to as "direct admit" students: they joined a lab immediately that offered to support them. Other students had a year to rotate and choose a supervisor.
**Summary**
I have no idea which of these categories your program and professor is more likely to fall into, if either. If you want to be a student, *apply*. It's better to apply and fail to be accepted than to not apply and guarantee you will not be accepted.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/07/27
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a grad student in Italy, for context. My professor wrote some lecture notes about a course I just finished. They are not well written, not because the professor isn't good but because he wrote them in a rush since he wanted to give us some material for the period of Coronavirus, so he wrote them lesson-by-lesson. I think future students could benefit from well-written notes, and I would like to ask the professor the LaTeX source of the notes to add some lectures that he skipped and fix some grammar/paragraphing issues (and obviously give them back to him afterward, without sharing it with anyone if he doesn't tell me to). Is it common to do this? I don't want to seem over-flattering.
Update: the professor was super kind and he replied that he thought it was a good idea, but only if this didn't interfere with my ordinary classes. I'll write a few more chapters and then send them to him.<issue_comment>username_1: There are two parties involved in this, you and your professor. Let us think from both your perspectives.
You wish to help your professor and also want to ensure that the notes are of the best possible quality ( you think they are not currently).
Your professor depending on his objective and personality may like this idea or frown upon it. If the lecture notes are a property of the university and the professor is forbidden from using it in any other context without their permission then he should be more open to sharing the source with you. But if suppose he was planning to write a book or thinking of leaving his job and working in some other place he might be reluctant in sharing it with you as he would like to build upon it, later.
If he were having a personality who does not like criticism from his students or for that matter anyone he would naturally get offended by your proposal. Also, it depends on how much he trusts you in sharing the source with you, not only on how good you will hold on your promise of not sharing it with anyone but also on your ability to improve the notes.
From your perspective, you are a good person offering help for free for the greater good. This is commendable and you must politely approach him. If you are really keen on doing it, you could write the notes from scratch for one lesson basing on existing notes to show that you could add value. Then send the notes to the professor asking for his review and request him for the latex source as it will help you in working efficiently.
Professors in many universities ask the students to share their notes and the best-written notes get extra credits. So students engaging in building material for lectures is not uncommon.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: No, in my experience **this is not common**.
But **that shouldn't stop you from asking**. Your suggestion is certainly within the reasonable parameters in which simply offering your help wouldn't be offensive. (Provided of course you **do so tactfully**, i.e. following the usual etiquette when pointing out that someone else's work could be improved upon.)
I have friends who would be very happy to receive such an offer as they would finally turn their messy notes into something of high quality! But bear in mind that while accepting your offer may seem like a "no brainer" to you, there might be perfectly reasonable reasons why **your professor might turn you down**. For example, even though your offer seems like a way to improve the lecture notes at no cost to the professor that is not the case. Improving the notes will require co-operation and further editing by your professor as your professor will have to make sure that you did not introduce significant mistakes or misinterpretations. And they simply might not have the time for that!
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: **Show the value of your proposal**
Drop a mail on these lines (omitted salutations and format that is likely to be region specific).
>
> Your notes were helpful for me but I did notice that they could be enriched by additional material and minor formatting improvements, for example as in the attachment. *I felt these changes would benefit future students. I would be happy to make such changes and submit for your approval*. If this proposal sounds fine, you may please suggest how to take it forward.
>
>
>
Showcase the value you plan to add in the attached document. This would :
* Make your intention and the value clear.
* Give the professor, the option to respond keeping his obligations with respect to ownership of notes or any other concerns.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: One concern I see in this is matters of impartiality and confidentiality. Assuming by "course I finished" you mean you already got graded for this course, then this isn't as much of an issue. However, if you haven't yet been graded, someone could reasonably claim that your interaction with the professor in this way was an attempt at influencing them into giving you better grades. In addition, there might be comments or other elements in the original notes which aren't included in the final document that could get the professor in trouble if they were to leak.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: No, it's not common
-------------------
The professor may think this notes as a finished product, as in it's not intended to be edited in an integrated process.
How not to be over-flattering
-----------------------------
Show, not tell.
1. **Write a email** thanking for the lectures and **volunteer** to help with the notes;
2. **Attach a small sample** of your suggestions as notes placed over the PDF, or in the body of email, placing the original text and the suggested text in succession;
3. **Wait for the reply**;
4. **With the OK from professor** continue sending your text suggestions and **inform** you are a sufficient LaTeX user that could work directly in originals. **Ask** for a change a process or a change of pace;
5. **The professor may or may not** want to change from a "revision only" to a "shared source" process. Keep sending your suggestions, either way.
This process will allow to you and professor to workout a good balance for both.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Go ahead and ask.
-----------------
It is extremely uncommon.
In many years of teaching I have never had a student ask this.
**But I wish they would!**
If by chance I see that a student has very nice notes, I sometimes ask if they have any interest in helping to produce improved class notes for the class. But so far, they have never been interested. Often, they simply refuse to believe that their notes are any good.
On the other side, I sometimes mention to the class that if people can help improve the notes, we would appreciate that, and sometimes someone does offer to help. But so far it has always turned out that their contributions are not very good, so their "help" is not useful, and the project does not get to the level of producing collaboratively generated documents.
Maybe I have just had bad luck with this mismatch between people's note-producing skills and their willingness to help -- my statistics on this are lousy, because the total number who ever offered to help is very low.
If a student is able to produce notes that are good enough that they would only need light editing by myself before being distributed to the class, this would be **very** valuable.
Provide a sample.
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When you contact the professor, your first email should already include a sample of the improved material (your compiled PDF). That is the *only way* your professor can decide whether or not he is interested in your help. (Yes, this will require re-typing some stuff since you don't have the LaTeX sources yet, but typing time is just a tiny fraction of the time and effort required to produce good notes, so having his LaTeX source is much less important than you think.)
(The other answers are also good -- I just wanted to emphasize that (1) you should go ahead and ask, and (2) you should provide an example of what you are offering.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: At least for another data point: at this time in my life, while I might be willing to give people the TeX source-code [sic] for documents, I would strongly hesitate to get embroiled in co-authorship with students, for several reasons.
It's not exactly that I'd "mistrust" students, but that I'd feel the necessity of ultra-scrupulously editing... and possibly to the point of changing entirely the "voice" of what the students wrote. Not to be hostile, but to be relatively sure that the "tone/voice" of my intention did come through...
Yes, there is the idea that everyone's a peer of everyone else. Yes, morally, that is possibly true. In terms of technical expertise, I don't think so, although I do not want to spend time arguing with people about it. E.g., to argue that 40 years' experience is no better than 1 year's experience seems implausible... but believing this seems to be important to a certain demographic. (Sure, otherwise it might be tooooo depressing to think that there's no real way to accelerate 40 years' experience...)
Actionably: you can ask, but do not be offended if faculty don't want to get embroiled in a situation where they'd need to endorse your revision of their notes.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/07/27
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<issue_start>username_0: Traditionally assignments handed in on paper need to be handed in at the same time due to time constraints on the instructor, to prevent plagiarism, to maintain pace since most of the teaching happens through physical lectures and if someone is behind they will miss out etc.
Since a massive chunk of grading is automated nowadays with online access to materials, not to mention practically *all* teaching being online for the time being, most of the reasons that make assignment deadlines necessary do not apply anymore. After all if someone demonstrates the same learning goals as the next person, what is the difference if they do it a couple weeks later? It's not like the instructor needs to spare extra special treatment time for the student doing it slower for grading or even lectures, it's all asynchronous anyway.
So what is the point of maintaining the practice? Some common arguments I see include "deadlines are part of life, students need to deal with it" or "course design requires so" which are not really arguments if you think about it. Another common one is preventing students from getting too collaborative, which also fails since time constraints do not apply anymore, given the resources and technology and whatnot - people can plagiarize entire job interviews spontaneously these days.
The only big argument that holds any water that I have seen is the issue of students suddenly hitting the end of the semester with massive amounts of work piled up and all the cramming and health issues and stress with that, so it is really for their benefit to impose hard deadlines to avoid that. Paternalism in this aside, that to me seems like more of a consequence of the persisting work philosophy of meeting smaller deadlines with whatever one can put together, rather than meeting learning objectives as completely as possible within a given semester. This in turn causes a great deal of common procrastination that it is offered as a solution for.
So what else am I missing that makes it actually beneficial to set traditional deadlines and penalties even for completely asynchronous classes?<issue_comment>username_1: Your proposed system reduces to the case where all assignments have their deadlines effectively at the end of the course. Courses with such a system do exist, but I am not aware how common this is.
One reason I can think of as to why early deadlines may help is the ability to give feedback. Providing feedback for each assignment before the next allows the students to catch misconceptions and flaws in problem solving approaches early, which in turn can help them perform better in subsequent assignments. While this reason still does not require that there be early "hard" deadlines (e.g. students could get feedback whenever they submit), I still think it counts as an argument in its favour as it helps in better achieving the learning objectives.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_2: Many students will work faster if they have a deadline.
Learning to complete progressively complex tasks on time is one of the benefits of education.
Proper timing of assignments is important to building long-term memory.
It is also possible that some financial aid sources require deadlines.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> the issue of students suddenly hitting the end of the semester with massive amounts of work piled up and all the cramming and health issues and stress with that, so it is really for their benefit to impose hard deadlines to avoid that. Paternalism in this aside....
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I think this is a key factor. Students are rational and will make choices based on what (they believe) will most improve their outcomes (grades). Therefore, instructors need to think carefully about how to align the students' goals (higher grades) with the course goals. This is true in both content and schedule:
* In content, we should carefully consider which assignments are worth our students' time, and make sure the most important assignments are weighted accordingly.
* And in schedule, it is logical to incentivize learning a little each week -- this leads to better outcomes than cramming the day before the final exam. Discounting late work is usually a compromise between learning outcomes (who cares if it's a day late?) and necessity (if there is no late penalty, then there is no deadline) -- though in some cases, learning to conform to deadlines *is* one of the learning outcomes.
Two responses to your comment on paternalism. First, classes are by their nature paternalistic -- you could just as easily ask: why give homework, let the students decide how much practice they need. Or why give lectures, it's all in the book or on youtube. We naturally accept that instructors should curate content rather than just answering questions and giving exams. It is similarly natural that instructors should curate the schedule to facilitate their desired outcomes.
And second, it is often not so easy to fail students who do procrastinate and then end up with unmanageable amounts of work at the end of the semester. Students tend to appeal and make excuses (e.g., "I got sick right at the end of the semester, not my fault"). Even when instructors win such cases, it is a lot of work with little upside.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Way back in prehistory (i.e. 25 years ago), I experimented with flexible deadlines, staggered deadlines, or no deadlines for papers and problem sets in math courses in several institutions. (Yes, I had students write papers in a math course.) It was a mixed success.
There is rationale for timed work and firm deadlines, some stronger and some weaker, from both the instructor’s convenience and student individual learning outcome point of view. Other answers are covering that.
What I’d add is that you're in competition for students’ attention versus their other courses. And for many, each academic term is stressful, and (like all of us) perceived urgency easily becomes the default prioritization heuristic. If your policy on deadlines is significantly more lenient than other courses, your work will be put off. Yes, its paternalistic, and not all students need the pressure of deadlines, but it’s dangerous if your course can easily become the pressure valve in their academic lives.
There’s actually a spectrum of paternalism, from requiring and taking attendance at every class and requiring documented excuses on one extreme, and on the other extreme a *laissez faire* attitude of “I don't care if you ever showed up; write a final exam / submit a single comprehensive paper whenever you get around to it, and I’ll give you a grade in that term". For an optimal student learning outcome, it’s probably best to be slightly more lenient than average at your institution, i.e., to avoid being too close to either extreme relative to what else they’re experiencing in other courses.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: **1: You can't give out model answers or detailed corrections until the deadline has passed.**
After all, it'd be pretty unfair if Student A submitted on time without having seen model answers, and Student B submitted late and had model answers (or a friend's work with the academic's corrections) to copy from.
And if you delay giving out corrections or grades until the end of term, whence comes the feedback so students can improve their grades?
**2: Providing motivation - i.e. downsides to procrastination - is a key part of the university product**
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> There’s a guy inside me who wants to lay in bed, and smoke weed all day, and watch cartoons, and old movies. I could easily do that. My whole life is a series of stratagems to avoid, and outwit, that guy. -- <NAME>
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Everyone knows that, *in theory* you could get a college education by just checking out textbooks from the public library, reading them cover to cover and doing all the exercises. Or following some of the better online courses from the vast wealth available these days.
But everyone *also* knows very few people do that successfully; that MOOC students often fall behind on watching videos; that loads of people have things books they mean to read and suchlike that they haven't got around to; and that it's very common for learners to do assignments at the last minute and cram study right before exams.
And even if the most studious 20% of your students arrive with top tier self-motivation and time-management skills, not all of them will. And having lecture attendance be optional is already a big step up in self-control from high school.
Deadlines reduce a student's option from "study now, study later, or fail at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars" by removing the option to study later - and thereby helping them overcome the temptation of procrastination.
**3: Having people who are on course to fail know that early is a good thing.**
Sometimes a student will find they're out of their depth with their choice of classes. If they discover that early, they can step up the amount of effort they're making, find more support, switch to an easier major, or drop out to get a partial refund.
But when you're in that situation, even thinking about it is stressful - much like someone in debt will come to dread opening their mail. Far easier to say to yourself that you'll rewatch those video lecture and do those assignments later, putting off the tough realisations. But in the long term, delaying can turn a solvable problem into an unsolvable one.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_6: **Marking papers is about more than just the grades; students can learn from their mistakes and improve, and teachers can reinforce concepts and topics in areas of weakness**
Regular assessment throughout a course not only helps stabilise grades at the end of a course, it is also a key part of the teaching process. By marking promptly and giving students feedback you are able to helping your students to learn and improve. It can also help you as a course teacher, if you know a large amount of students have struggled with a particular topic, then you can make time in the remainder of the course to review that material and ensure that it's understood.
In the sciences later parts of courses often build on the techniques taught in the early part of the course, it is essential that students know if they have misunderstood a topic as soon as possible, to enable them to access the later material in the course.
In essay based subjects the feedback is possibly even more crucial. Most students are hoping to improve their reasoning and writing technique during the course and prompt feedback will help them do so. I would argue that there is relatively little value in a course that doesn't provide feedback to help students improve their work.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: I like to discuss coursework in classes, giving general advice on how students tackled the problem, common mistakes, and advice on how to tackle this type of problem in future.
I cannot do that when some students could still submit in future, as it would be telling them the answers.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: Many excellent answers here covering most of the points, but one more I have not seen: it depends on precise rubric and grading practice, but it can be easier to grade consistently when you grade all the material in the same block of time, and to go back and change or correct grading in early assignments before releasing grades, rather than having to remember several weeks later how you handled particular situations.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_9: It depends on the details of the course and subject, and the impact on others and on learning, of late assignments.
In some courses, those impacts may be very significant. In others, they may be negligible. So you just need to consider the specifics.
I do not think there is a universal need to have deadlines at all. All of the history and literature courses I took in the UK, for example, had no hard deadlines, and frequently none of the students turned in a paper on the due date, with no consequences. Some students even turned in assignments after the class has ended. Late assignments had no impact because the assignments were all essays about subjects that concluded with the essay, didn't build on material learned by writing earlier essays, and involved no dependency/cooperation with other students.
Oh, I should add that the impact of no deadlines on me was that I waited until I had an idea for a theme that truly interested me, and then I took the time to do satisfying treatments of those ideas - instead of forcing myself to choose a theme and get it written, usually by staying up all night before a hard deadline. The effect on me was that I did more and much more interesting and better writing than I had done before. And I got more regular sleep, and was much happier and much less stressed, too.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: Assignments can build on each other.
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Simply put, giving deadlines allows you to give assignments that build on each other. For instance, when I was doing my Introduction to Research unit last year, we had three assignments: a literature review where we analyzed the literature in a given area to identify gaps where further research could be pursues, a problem statement that presented a research problem along with a series of research questions that could be investigated based on that research problem, and finally a grant proposal where we took one of the research questions and wrote a proposal for a research project investigating that question.
If all the assignments were due at the same time, that sort of assignment structure isn't really possible: rather than three assignments that build on each other, they're just one really big assignment.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_11: First, why deadlines at all? For many of my courses, it just makes running a course an easier job. I know what I need to do, and when I need to do it, and I feel I can serve students best that way. Also, the lectures and material all build on each other, and would be less meaningful for students who fall behind. On the other hand, I have asynchronous courses that are not designed that way, and I don't have rigid deadlines in them. I'm going to put in some, as some students let that freedom turn into emergencies.
When I do use deadlines, I set them far enough in advance for students to plan around issues, create reasonable penalties, and rigidly enforce them (with the only exceptions being true emergencies, medical issues, and requests for student accommodations from the appropriate offices) in order to prevent any confirmational bias on my part from sneaking in, or accidentally treating anyone unfairly.
Let's say I have a paper due, and two students ask me for a last minute extension. One is an outstanding student, and president of the professional society chapter, and will be attending a professional conference. The other I don't know from a hole in the wall, and says work is getting in the way. Absent any other information, both students deserve exactly the same answer.
In fact, the students don't really even need to ask me, as they know that they may hand in the paper late, but will be penalized a letter grade on the assignment, and they can balance that against handing in a rushed assignment.
In fact, I got an email from students while they were at a conference last fall, asking for an extension on a lab report for which they had been holding the data for three weeks. I turned that request down, and explained that honoring it would be inherently unfair to those that might have opted to NOT attend that conference because of their work load.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: One point I haven't seen specifically addressed in the other good answers: **Grading takes time.** I set strict homework deadlines to be fair to the course staff who are doing the actual grading.
I teach large upper-division computer science courses where almost *nothing* can be graded automatically. Each of the homework problems I assign (typically three per week) takes about 8–12 human-hours of actual focused human attention to grade and provide useful feedback. That work (along with other things like discussion sections and office hours) already keeps my course staff running at full capacity. Allowing late submissions would complicate their already overwhelming job. Removing the deadlines entirely would make the job completely impossible.
This is the main reason I do not accept any late homework submissions, under any circumstances, in those large classes. I drop several homework scores in the final grade, I liberally *forgive* homeworks beyond that (so other course work has more weight) to accommodate unforeseen circumstances like illness or injury, and I'm happy to discuss work that couldn't be submitted on time in office hours. But the deadline is the deadline is the deadline.
Upvotes: 3
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2020/07/28
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<issue_start>username_0: First of all, let me admit something from the beginning; I don't understand *exactly* what is meant by networking in an academic setting.
I am a new Master's student in a country where I never studied before (Germany). Until now, as an undergrad, I have done several internships, worked within a couple of research groups for some time, attended many seminars & workshops, taken several graduate-level courses. During each of those occasions, I had the opportunity to meet with several academics who could (I guess) help me while I am shaping my career, but I've never tried to communicate with people whom I didn't have to. Sounds quite a bit of lost opportunity, but in my defense, I don't like socially interacting with people whom I don't know and don't comfortable being around.
My first question is that what have I (possibly) lost by not networking?
Secondly, what is meant by "networking" exactly in an academic setting? Just knowing each other exists, or being some kind of friends, or just knowing who is interested in what?
Thirdly, how can a graduate student network in events where most of the people are way older, and academically more senior?
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**Addendum:**
I've just come from my first, proper academic event. It was more for a celebration than a networking event, but still, I've met a lot of people and it was great. There were a lot of people who think in the same way as I do (not necessarily we agreed on everything, just our way of thinking were the same; analytical, based on data, etc.). I think I've made some "academic friends", and there was a lot of interesting discussion on almost everything but above all, it was really fun.
But, all the things were with the people whom I had already known a bit, and I found it a bit hard to join the discussion with the people I hadn't know.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> My first question is that what have I (possibly) lost by not
> networking?
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This is a hypothetical question, and we will never know. But, depending on the setup that you've been, you might have lost couple of interesting discussions that could have generated some ideas. Don't dwell on this...
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> Secondly, what is meant by "networking" exactly in an academic
> setting? Just knowing each other exists, or being some kind of
> friends, or just knowing who is interested in what?
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Mostly the first and the last, but not the one in the middle. People will keep it professional, you should not expect to become friends with people that you will meet in a networking event.
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> Thirdly, how can a graduate student network in events where most of
> the people are way older, and academically more senior?
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Targeted networking: in such event you usually know the participants upfront. If any of them are of particular relevance to you, you can easily approach them. If they are relevant, you will already have an idea of the topic to talk about. "The seniors" in academia usually deal with people younger than themselves, i.e., their own students. So, you can expect them to be open to discussions, but you will probably not get their full attention. They are there for networking as well, for their own interest. This should imply that the theme" of the networking event is relevant. If it is meant for the young, i.e., a PhD forum, you will have your opportunity. If it is a lunch break in a top conference, people will stick to their ranks.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: You are confusing between being social and interacting with people in developing professional networks. Professional networks could be strictly career-oriented and collaborative with no personal attachment. Your professor, for example, is in your network and you do not need to socialize with them.
Coming to answering your questions. Why do you care about what happened in the past? Just start networking now. If you can find Linkedin profiles of those people, feel free to connect now with a nice message on LinkedIn. Though, I believe Germany uses some other professional network.
You build an academic network in many scenarios. For example, you discuss someone's work over email or in-person and exchange feedbacks. You can apply for funding together. Look for organizing conferences or some sessions in a conference together. Invite them to your universities for guest lectures and also get invited. Let the PhD students in the groups exchange ideas.
What do you gain from it? You get votes and citations to your work. People who know your work would probably be nicer when they review your paper and vice versa. Without going into many of those things, you can collaborate on interesting ideas and push the boundaries of science and technology faster than you would be able to do it individually.
Focus on these goals and networking will follow suit. Do not put the cart before the horse.
There are people of all ages in most events. And in Europe people are not as hierarchical as in Asia etc. So you can talk to even people who are more senior to you while showing respect. Eventually, it is those people who will give you PhD and Postdoc positions.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: 1. Since you
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> have done several internships, worked within a couple of research groups for some time, attended many seminars & workshops, taken several graduate-level courses
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You have probably done a fair amount of networking already. And I'd say likely more than other Master students. You're maybe not as "connected" as someone who introduced themselves at seminars or workshops, but you still know better now what the various speakers are working on. This is a big part of what networking is about.
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> Secondly, what is meant by "networking" exactly in an academic setting? Just knowing each other exists, or being some kind of friends, or just knowing who is interested in what?
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Since you indicate you are in Germany, networking is about getting acquainted: knowing each other exists and what their professional interests and topics are.
You may also become professional friends (and since you are in Germany, beware of the difference between English friend and German Freund - which is reserved for close friends in English terms)
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> how can a graduate student network in events where most of the people are way older, and academically more senior?
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The most effective way is IMHO attending conferences.
* If you are at a conference on your own (noone else from your group), attach yourself to various other groups that are there in somewhat larger numbers. Easiest IMHO to attach yourself to some fellow students, who are there with also postdocs or their professor around.
* If you are attending together with more senior people from your group, I'd expect "your" postdocs or professor may introduce you to their acquaintances.You can also attend e.g. PhD student seminars. There it should be quite easy to get acquainted with your peers. This is also very relevant and useful networking: a) you can get e.g. information on working conditions in their groups when you'll be looking for a postdoc position later on. b) Like you, they'll "grow up" academically/professionally. In a few years, they'll be your experienced professional peers, PIs and professors that you know already.
Last but not least, I think it also important to get acquanted also with a group of people outside your field. In Germany, I'd recommend joining some sports club/university sports or a theater group or... depending on what your hobbies are.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> My first question is that what have I (possibly) lost by not networking?
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> Secondly, what is meant by "networking" exactly in an academic setting? Just knowing each other exists, or being some kind of friends, or just knowing who is interested in what?
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These two questions are related, since what you've lost obviously depends on how you define networking.
In my view, networking is simply knowing and maintaining friendly relationships with people in your professional circle. It's nothing magical, it's just professional friendship. Those in your network may also be "social" friends, or they might be people you only ever see (or would ever *want* to see) in a professional context. Your network are those people who are more likely to take a biased and positive view towards you and your work, and for whom you also maintain a positive view of them and their work.
Thus, what you lose by not networking, is you lose a pool of people who might be willing to work together with you in the future, you lose those who might favorably review your grant application or journal submission, who might be willing to recommend you for a job or let you know about job opportunities in their orbit. On the flip side, you also miss out on having a group of talented people whose abilities and personalities you know and who you could recommend to fill a position in your own group or in your organization.
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> Thirdly, how can a graduate student network in events where most of the people are way older, and academically more senior?
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I would say in this case focus on networking with your peers or close-peers (i.e. other students and postdocs). Networking is usually **not** about knowing people who are more senior than you, who have a ton more power than you, etc. Those relationships are typically more mentor/mentee, promotor/promotee. Your network are more likely to be made up of your peers. The people who are most likely to be in a position to benefit you in the future are your peers today, precisely because your relationship is *not* built on a transactional foundation. Those in positions above you in power/seniority are more likely to view things in what you are going to bring to them today/tomorrow, and already know enough people in their peer network that they're not in dire need of making a connection with you. Other answers about giving talks, asking questions and getting face-time with those above you at conferences is a good way to connect with those folks, but I don't think this will necessarily build a long-term network.
In terms of building up a solid **peer network** as a graduate student, you should start local. Take part in your school's student chapter of your professional society, take part in department events and interact with your group members. Beyond that, attend conferences as your schedule and advisor's budget allow. At conferences and other social events, don't travel just in a "pod" with your own group-mates. Take a chance to sit at a random table and introduce yourself around. If you see a talk from a student that you were really impressed by, tell them so and introduce yourself. You will probably be seeing those same folks at conferences for the next several years, so after the first meeting it will be more natural to grab lunch/dinner/drinks/coffee at future meetings.
Many of these people may not be those you have a strong personal connection with, but some will. For those whose company you enjoy, make an effort to stay connected between conferences and stay current on their career path. If in the future you're in a position to help their career, do so, and trust that they will do the same for you.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/07/28
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<issue_start>username_0: I received a fund that I can use explicitly for paying graduate (master's and doctoral) students for research. These students already receive a stipend from the university, but most advisors who can afford it pay them a supplement. My colleagues just pay a fixed amount per month. However, I am inexperienced in advising students, and I fear I might end up wasting the money on students who do not do their job.
So I thought of making the payment contingent on some research-related task. I do not want to make it contingent on actual research results, since the "flow" of results (particularly in my field - theoretical computer science) is not constant, and the students need a reliable source of income. Instead, I thought of paying the students for reading and summarizing papers and books related to their research topic (up to the maximum amount I can pay per month). There are several reasons:
* Reading is an important part of research.
* Most fresh graduate students do not read enough - they prefer to program. They need an incentive to start reading.
* Reading is a relatively "stable" activity: by putting a sufficient amount of effort, the student can guarantee a fixed income for themselves.
* Summarizing research papers will help the students once they start writing their own papers.
* The summaries can also be useful for me during teaching, as supplementary material for the students.
Is it reasonable to pay research students based on reading & summarizing papers, or for other activities?
Clarifications:
* The basic income (before the supplement) may or may not be enough to live on. For students who come straight for undergrad, many are young and still live with their parents. During undergraduate studies they had to pay tuition, so the very fact that they now study for free (even before receiving any money) is a substantial upgrade for them. Other students are older and have children; for them, the basic income paid by the university may be insufficient.<issue_comment>username_1: **Do not do this.** At best, you will appear merely stingy; at worst, perhaps financially abusive. (I also suspect your university would not even allow it, but I think that's not as important because it should not be done anyways)
I strongly, strongly advise you to reconsider how you think about students. It seems you are thinking about them like employees you want to squeeze some work out of, with some sort of benefit that you deserve for providing funds. *This thinking is wrong, and leads to many of the student horror stories here about abusive advisors.*
A student should never be under threat that their financial security is subject to the whims of their supervisor on a regular basis. Any process that leads to a student getting paid less than their full salary\* should be a structured process with warning and opportunity for improvement. You write that "students need a reliable source of income" - **exactly**, so don't make it unreliable.
Students in research are not mere employees, they are *future researchers for whom you are taking on a responsibility as an advisor*. You pay students so that they can focus on their research and education. You pay students who you think have good potential as researchers that are worthy of your time investment. You are not paying them to do a job, you are paying them to learn.
If you think you need to add incentive for students to focus on things like reading, do that incentivizing outside of the regular compensation structure. One option is to have regular meetings where students present papers or literature reviews of a subset of papers. Students are typically quite motivated in that setting to look good in front of their superiors and peers and they will put in the effort. You could also use a bit of peer pressure to offer some sort of group reward, like buying lunch for the whole group when a student wants to schedule a presentation over lunch to summarize what they have read (harder to do now during pandemic times, but hopefully that won't be permanent).
I'm glad you've asked about this here before implementing it, because I cannot stress enough how bad this would be.
\*Exceptions: for someone who is a part-time employee, like an undergraduate student, there is nothing wrong with hourly compensation, but it should not be based on production but rather on time worked. You can decide at the end of a semester if it's worth taking that student for another semester. There could be graduate students in special circumstances that work and study part-time; they should be paid a salary relative to their part-time level of commitment.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_2: In theory it sounds fine, but I think you will encounter a number of practical problems.
By paying for summaries you are incentivizing students to skim the paper and whip up a summary with minimal effort. I'll go ahead and assume your students are not so unethical as to hand you fake summaries, but I think it's evident that you will need to define quality guidelines for the summaries to "count". But if you do so, you will then have to verify the summaries to make sure they are of sufficient quality. It's not impossible and I have successfully done somewhat similar things, but it requires setting up a sophisticated system beyond just paying per summary. All that just to get the student to read... The student came to you because they have confidence in your mentorship. Can't you just talk to them and ask them to please read the damn things by next monday?
Moreover, I am a bit skeptical that money is a strong motivator for your students. If they cared about optimizing income, they would have gotten much higher paying industry jobs (especially in your field). Even if money has significance to them in a career sense, like any young student they are probably focusing on getting their career started so they can do well later rather than chasing pennies now. Often the feedback from advisor and the thought that their future career prospects are improving is a better motivator. Not like those are excluded by you paying them extra for writing papers, but you shouldn't get distracted from a big thing by focusing on a minor thing. Concerns about micromanaging aside, if you believe reading and summarizing papers is important you can simply require students to do it, rather than giving an option to skip it and getting paid slightly less. Maybe you could ask for a 5 or 10 minute presentation of the paper at every meeting? That would also help them practice presentation skills and disseminate the content to other members of your group.
Beyond this, you also risk inviting a disproportionately negative response from both your colleagues and the students. See for example the other answer - people in academia do not like this kind of incentive based scheme, they prefer to be paid anyway and have freedom to do their work as they see fit. Even if you had a system that was somewhat effective, you could have so much resistance that it negates any benefits. On the same note, because in academia you are rarely incentivized in this way (even publish or perish tends to take the form of gating at the application stage or annual quotas, not pay-per-work) so in a sense you are wasting the student's time by teaching them a way of working that is unlikely to translate into their future career.
As a tangent, learning to read and summarize papers quickly is an important skill for researchers. But if you want to teach this the "hard way", it may be more practical to simply limit the time they have to do it ("here's a paper, write me a summary by the end of the day"). Their first few attempts will probably not go well, but once they get a chance to experience and reflect on *why* they fail to do it quickly, you can start teaching them how to overcome those problems. While it may sound harsh, nothing stops you from being as nice about it as you want, such as asking the student to schedule some time for this in advance ("can you find a day this week where you have 1-2 hours for our paper skimming exercise?"), being encouraging, telling them that it's okay to not be able to finish in time and this is just a learning exercise, etc.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The other answers cover a lot of different perspectives which are quite important. I am not in academia any more but I have always closely watched the related issues.
Firstly, try to understand, why the funding agency is funding you? What are their vision and specific purpose of this fund? Is it to help you as a new early-career researcher or is it to help you help the students? It seems like it is for the later.
When a fund is being utilized all stakeholders would like to see a tangible result at the end. Students must have learnt something, you must have achieved a research objective and the funding agency must have seen a positive outcome towards realizing their vision.
With this broad guideline, if it suits you, you could try to make decisions. The other answers seem to be from academicians and are at a more micro level.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Not a good idea, and here's a take from a behavioral point of view, taken from [this article](https://www.npr.org/transcripts/857156637)
>
> In Haifa, Israel, there were a bunch of day care centers, about a dozen of them, and the kids came in the morning and the parents picked them up in the evening. And as is the case, some parents came late. And they decided that they were going to impose a fine on the parents coming late. Well, happily for economic science, a couple of behavioral economists knew about it, and so they said, now, wait, wait, wait. Let's just do it on half of the day care centers and not do it on the other half so we have a nice experiment. So, sure enough, one day, the parents came, dropped off their kids and there was a notice. It said, starting tomorrow, anyone who's picking up their kid more than 10 minutes late will be fined 10 Israeli shekels. And then they recorded. They had been recording what was happening in the week before, and then they recorded how many people came late in the day care centers which had the fine and those where there was no fine. It was amazing what happened. In the places where there was no fine, nothing happened. It continued. There was actually a small number. **In the ones in which the fine was imposed on the parents coming late, the amount of lateness doubled - doubled.**
>
>
> Now what - how can you possibly explain that? The fine was supposed to get them to come on time to pick up their kids. Now, if you think about it, there are lots of possible interpretations of what happened. But what you just said, Shanker, about framing seems to be the most likely explanation, which is the parents framed coming late or coming early to pick up their kids as essentially a moral question. I mean, perhaps not high morals, but you ought to pick up your kid on time because your kid might be anxious, because the teachers maybe want to go home and be with their kids or there's something like that. OK. Sometimes there is extra traffic, and you're late. **But it was a moral question. As soon as you put a price on it, then it's just like a commodity.** It's a shirt or a beer. Step right up. You want to get some lateness, here's where you can get it. It'll only cost 10 Israeli shekels. So I think they turned this thing from an ethical problem into more or less a self-interest problem. And, apparently, 10 Israeli shekels wasn't a big enough fine to really cause them to do anything differently.
>
>
>
The core idea is that, if something that is supposed to be done because it is the right/good thing to do, is incentivized with money, then it starts to become a commodity, and loses its original purpose. Feeling like you've got enough money this month and don't like to read? Just don't read and don't get paid, nothing wrong.
Motivating students to read should come from the actual value of doing it, like what you have mentioned in your post: that **reading papers and summarizing them is useful.** So, I believe it's better to have the funding be paid consistently, and not prorated based on the number of tasks they did.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Beware of setting targets. If you set a target, and an incentive for reaching it, then meeting that target becomes the most important thing.
Graduate students should be doing research, writing papers and writing their thesis, in addition to the background reading.
But if you pay them to read papers and write summaries, then that becomes the most important thing. Other activities can, and will, be left until their target for reading and summaries has been met.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I'll provide a meta-answer for your question. I believe you are facing this dilemma due to a combination of several factors, with the most important being the following:
1. Your academic institute at Ariel is in a legal twilight zone - the Israel-occupied Palestinian west bank; and is itself not a regular part of the Israeli academic system (e.g. the Israeli Council for Higher Education), so employment conditions overall have some aspect an "anything goes in the wild west". (Even the question of whether it's a college or a university is a subject of political debate.)
2. Junior researchers are (AFAIK) not unionized at Ariel college/university, nor in Israeli universities proper. The academic staff unions threw them out in the 1970s, and the universities degraded them from full-time academic employees to being only employed in teaching and receiving soft money in all sorts of ways for research. A description of this process at the Technion can be found in my chapter in the book on "Wrongful employment" (העסקה פוגענית); [available online](http://sea.org.il/he/precarious_employment_book/) ; see chapter 16. Over The current unionization picture is that junior academics are mostly unionized as teachers, but those unions avert their eyes when it comes to research work.
Had your employees - and they are employees, even if they're also students - been unionized, you would not have had the prerogative of choosing how to employ them: It would have been in basically the same format and under the same conditions as everywhere else.
3. The Israeli labor courts - who are infamous in their bias in favor of employers - have a checkered and inconsistent history of ruling about employer-employee status of people who perform useful work in relation of, as part of, or during their studies, or as a condition for being recognized with some academic degree. If you try to extract a consistent line of reasoning, all of them should be employees; but the courts often don't rule that way, contradicting earlier precedent. This also means they have never tried to shape a consistent doctrine for the status and rights of "not-quite-employee student-workers" - despite supposedly recognizing the existence of this category. So you are without a legal yardstick even ignoring the question of occupied territories vs Israel per se.
4. Perhaps this goes without saying, but - lack of oversight w.r.t. employment practices and their ethics, by the funding bodies.
As for what you should do: You should pay junior researchers as you yourself are paid - by hour (or an FTE-fragment) spent doing research-related activity. That includes reading, and summarizing papers (assuming you find that to be a useful part of the research process), and writing, and probably just sitting at the office scratching one's head thinking of abstract problems. Of course, they're not quite like you in that they're not independent researchers and are supposed to be guided by you, including in the allocation of their work time to some extent - but you (ethically) cannot condition their payment on their research achievements. An exception is prize/bonus money, over the basic guaranteed wage - which you yourself may be competing for as a senior academic staff member; although, frankly, I'm not a big fan of that either.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: I'm going to detract from the other walls of text here and suggest that it may be worthwhile to use financial incentives to encourage participation (though by grad school a student should be self-motivated) - provided you establish a minimum baseline and use the incentives as bonus.
Just be careful as this is arguably a power dynamic which may be abused. It depends critically on your good faith.
I wasn't paid during grad school; students aren't entitled to this money, unless things are different where you are, though it may make studying easier for some. If you're having problems with unmotivated students, as you allude, then this may be a viable option, if unorthodox.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_8: Beside the legal and psychological perspectives, this is contrary to how an efficient labor market works. (Although in many circumstances, in reality you do get labor markets which allow for this kind of contract due to the concentration of power) You seem to want freelancers, not employees - or worse, to have somebody enter a contract which combines all the downsides of being an employee with all the downsides of being a freelancer, while you have your cake and eat it too.
In a employer-employee situation, it is the employer who bears the financial risks. The employee gets a lower payment than a freelancer, and has a secure income. They are not involved in the enterprise's losses (or success). They are being paid for turning up and doing work, no matter what the result.
In a freelancer-client situation, the freelancer functions as a one-person enterprise, and thus bears the risks of business. You contract with an enterpreneur not for a volume of their worktime, but for achieving a result, and pay for it. Accordingly, it is up to the enterpreneur to manage all financial and complexity risks connected to the project. In some countries, this is even embedded in the legal system (Arbeitsvertrag vs. Werkvertrag in Germany).
Obviously, nobody *wants* to bear a risk. Just the possibility of making a win if things turn out easier than expected is not sufficient to weigh up for the potential losses. It is you who wants the result, and it is your risk that somebody sitting with a paper may not produce the results you wanted. If you want somebody else to bear that risk, you have to pay for it - in practice, this functions through freelancer rates being much higher than employees'. (I am handwaving here a bit about real life complexity - in today's regulated labor markets, there are of course other factors behind freelancers' higher rates, such as health insurance rates. But you'll note they also tend to be connected to bearing a risk). So, if you want to not bear the risk of "when my instructions were followed, the result turned out to be not useful for me, or was not ready in the expected time", you have to 1) find the kind of person who is willing to bear that risk (and so appears on the labor market as a freelancer, not as an employee) and 2) pay market rates for it.
There is a second risk you want to guard against - a lazy student. The economic way to state it is that in a situation of incomplete information, Adam Smith's theory of perfectly efficient markets doesn't hold, and you are in a classic principal-agent theory. This is not something solvable by forcing result-only contracts on people who apply as employees, first because it has the side effect of transferring other, very large risks wihtout a payment, and second because of all the non-economic reasons covered in the other answers. The way it works is by trust. You first hire a student whom your instincts qualify as trustworthy, then you wait for the execution of tasks, and if you realize that the student has been taking your money without spending any time working, you fire them. If you want the theoretical perspective, this is also borne out by game theory - it roughly corresponds to the tit-for-tat strategy in multi-round prisoner's dilemma (which is an optimal strategy). Without the theory, this is how millions of employers and employees solve it every day.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I feel really bad asking for my co-authors, who are also my dissertation committee, to provide edits on my paper so quickly, but it looks like it needs to be done.
I submitted a paper to a journal a few months ago. They got back to me a month later with "major revisions" recommended. I got a lot of great comments, but they will take me some time to complete. The journal gave me only a month to get it done and send it back in. Due to the other things on my plate, this was extremely unrealistic. My primary advisor said it is impossible to do with everything I have going on. So, I asked the journal for an extension. I emailed them multiple times. They did not reply. The submission date came and went and I still didn't hear from them. As a result, I assumed I was not granted the extension.
However, I received FINALLY an email from them about a week and a half ago stating that I have been granted a new deadline of August 5th. Again, I still have A LOT on my plate and those revisions are not my top priority. However, I got a major portion of my thesis finished yesterday so now I have time to work on these revisions. My primary advisor is aware of this new deadline but wasn't sure if it was feasible. However, we had a meeting today where we discussed it. The game plan is to hand it into the journal a week late and hope they accept it (she said many journals are OK with this and won't have an issue). August 5th is still unreasonable. And my department and my advisor are very supportive of mental health and having a work-life balance so they would never want me to work overtime on this (my advisor even stated today that I should not kill myself over this as research is supposed to be fun and remember to take a lot of time during the week off). In my department, most students work from 9-5 or 8-4 since it's strongly encouraged that we have downtime and a life.
Anyways, now that we have a game plan moving forward, I need to let my other co-authors know what will be happening. I will need to ask them to review my edits to this paper over the course of a week. A two-week turnaround is standard in the department, but I will request only a week. My committee also has another paper of mine to review at the moment and there may be some overlap there, so this is a lot to ask and I feel guilty (even though it is not my fault) and bad about asking them to review something in such a short period of time. In addition, my secondary advisor is a lead researcher in the country for COVID-19, so she is extremely busy with that as well.
My question is: what should I say in the email to my co-authors / committee? I really do not want to sound like I am expecting them to review it in such a short time and that I do not value their time or understand they have a lot of other things on their plate?<issue_comment>username_1: It's much more important to send something right away, so that they have as much time as possible to look at it, rather than wasting precious hours finding just the right words.
* State clearly and concisely what you are asking them to do, and when you need it done by
* Explain *briefly* the reason for the short deadline
* Apologize for the rush and acknowledge that they may be unable to do it in time
* Have a backup plan in case they cannot meet the deadline. You can always ask the journal for another extension. Given the amount of effort they have already put into reviewing your paper, and the promise they evidently see in it, they have an incentive to work with you. The worst case is they say no, in which case you may need to withdraw your paper and submit to another venue later. That is annoying but not the end of the world.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: authors
I would like to submit a review article, titled " xxxx "
Please find the attached documents and send me your valuable comments within next week.
Sincerely,
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I‘ve been told (by a PI who is a co-author of the paper) that I cannot submit a jointly authored paper to any journal in my field except Frontiers because anything else is “politically incorrect” or “too slow”.
We have a new method developed with a colleague in a different (more quantitative) field, the results are new, answer an open question and are replicated in two languages.
I found out this week that the PI saying we cannot submit to a regular journal has just had another paper accepted on part of the same topic at a good journal in our field. The findings we have in this paper go against the findings of the paper he wrote five years ago with that group (and I’m guessing maybe against this paper then too, but I have not read this paper).
Is there anything I can do?
At the moment, I have suggested PLOS One as a better alternative to Frontiers, but honestly this is just such a waste - the results are really cool, it took us a year and travelling to get them, and they come from a really good interdisciplinary collaboration. I’m really angry and upset about this - I’m in the third year of a postdoc with no publications, and we finished this data collection over two years ago. Do I have to accept the decision of the PI even though I am first-author and the decision has explicitly not been made on the content, quality or potential readership of our paper?
Note: The paper isn’t a particularly confrontational paper: it just presents previous conflicting results and then shows how the new method is more sensitive and so validates most previous experimental results whilst showing that the theoretical implications people were drawing from them. I‘m sure it’s solid, and I know the co-authors think so too - we had checks worked into the method, replicated it in two languages and again in one of the languages. This type of paper is usually published in a good discipline-specific journal (and it is very rare to have data like this in our field). Both professors are retiring - one already is and wants to use the data in a course he’s teaching - the other retires soon, and is very politically engaged (I have been told to turn down invited talks because they would have involved plane travel). The question is whether as first-author I have any say in where the paper goes.<issue_comment>username_1: Jointly authored papers require permission from all authors. If he is a co-author and you can't convince him, then you are pretty much stuck. Editors will expect it.
And fighting with your PI is probably not the wisest career move.
It is a different story if the PI isn't one of the authors, but that only applies to the first point above, not the second. The "we" in your question wasn't completely clear about who is included.
It may not be too strong to say that a good letter of recommendation from your PI is one of the most valuable things you get out of a post doc. It lets you move on and get away from improper behavior. Winning a battle, but losing a war is sub-optimal.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I'd suggest you analyze your options in a more strategic way rather than going heads-on against the PI:
* First, is there a way to clarify things with the PI, maybe reach some kind of compromise? Ask them to clarify exactly what they mean by "politically incorrect" or "too slow". They might actually have reasonable conditions, in which case you could try to find a good journal which suits both of you.
* If this doesn't work, you need to identify exactly the obstacle. Normally the PI should tell you, but apparently this might involve this other paper that they published. If so, is there a way to smooth things up? Maybe by re-writing some parts of your paper in some kind of diplomatic way, like acknowledging previous findings and presenting the present work as a contribution which goes beyond them, as opposed to bluntly confronting them. Scientific progress often involves healthy debate of ideas, it shouldn't involve conflict of egos.
* You mentioned another colleague and also "a good interdisciplinary collaboration", so it seems that the work involves multiple co-authors right? Where do these co-authors stand on the issue? Could they be convinced to support your cause? Would some of them be in a better position than you to convince the PI, or at least to put a bit of pressure on them? If the work is really good, I would expect the other colleagues to also be eager to publish it in a good journal. And if your PI is blocking the paper for selfish reasons, their position is going to be weak in front of the other colleagues.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Here the resolution/answer:
I spoke to the second PI/co-author alone. He agreed that he thought the data were excellent, and suggested he speak to the other co-author alone, recommending I choose which journal to submit to. This was definitely the right move.
Unfortunately, it turned out that there was a different motive: the first PI wanted to switch to a different project and so needed to show that he had one publication out from our project. He gave comments on the paper to change straight away although on holiday, and I was told that he would not accept any discipline-specific journal because they would not be out in time for his application.
I replied again to the second PI saying this was not right, and he apologised for the situation again and said the first PI would not change his mind so I would have to choose whether to make a formal complaint or accept the compromise of journal (not Frontiers but not a discipline-specific journal). I’ve accepted the compromise of journal.
Essentially: I spoke to the second PI alone, he agreed I could decide where to submit and agreed with what I had suggested, he spoke to the first PI, the first PI changed his position from Frontiers but wouldn’t accept a discipline-specific journal. We are proceeding with this. The next step would have been to make a formal complaint.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: There are multiple cases of movie or TV show students who are attending an exam and are too late to turn in, but then ask the teacher "do you know who I am" at their desk. Then when the teacher says "I have no idea", they mix in their exam with the pile of completed exams and then walk away. 2 examples of this: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CqgnZhb--Q> and <https://www.reddit.com/r/BollywoodRealism/comments/hzeu2u/i_so_wish_this_was_how_it_worke/>
Now, I know that these are just fictional scenes from comedy movies, but if a student were to try and pull a stunt like this during a real exam, what are ways to deal with this and/or avoid this problem to begin with?<issue_comment>username_1: Don't leave the pile of exams on your desk. Simple enough, and good practice. Exams should probably be properly secured in some way.
If you catch them, reject the exam, or otherwise deal with it.
If you consider it a breach of an honor code, especially an explicit one, then they can be reported to the overseeing board, of course.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It is easy. If there is an attendance, compare the signatures. If not check the school's database for student ID pictures (you only need to check for that classroom). If it is not available, you can explain the, quite unusual, situation in an email and kindly ask your students to come in your office in the time of their chosing to verify their identity (that they are not the ones pulling the trick).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Any system where students do not have physical access to other students' completed exam papers would prevent the whole situation. Either the professor can go around the room and collect papers, or put them in a less-accessible spot like a briefcase as they are turned in at the front of the room.
If the situation has already happened, there are ways to track down the culprit. The professor doesn't know who they are *right now*, but that doesn't mean they can't find out later. The professor will be likely to remember the face of such a brazen upstart, so they can search their class manifest on social media to try to find a match. Most colleges have photo IDs, so the college itself may also be able to provide a photo of every person in the class.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: This was actually touched on in *[The Ultimate Book of Puzzles, Mathematical Diversions, and Brainteasers: A Definitive Collection of the Best Puzzles Ever Devised](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0312141432)* by <NAME>. I don't have the book on hand right now, but the solution for the professor goes something like this:
>
> After grading the exams, ask the students to collect them in person.
>
>
>
That's assuming the professor cannot verify the student's identity in other ways, e.g. via student ID. Most universities will have some kind of photo ID of the student (since that's what ends up on the student card). There's a good chance as well the student will have to verify their identity to take the exam in the first place - this policy is in turn in place to stop substitute exam-taking where someone other than the student takes the exam in the student's name.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: I’d have a list of students doing the exam and require (student) ID as they hand in the exams.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I found a potential wrong application of machine learning validation methods in one paper recently published in Nature Energy, which is the best energy journal (>50 impact factors). The authors used k-fold cross validation over a forecasting model on gasoline demand under COVID-19 with Google mobility time-series data and the COVID-19 data. They claimed they don't have over-fitting issue, as both training and testing cases reach R-square above 0.8. That should be wrong, as time-series validation should be considered instead of K-fold cross validation. It would be cheating to use K-fold in this case. Please correct me if I am wrong.
I reached the editor, and there is further evaluation ongoing since then. However, the editor does not promise to take the proper editorial action since I am not willing to disclose my personal information. Is that true? Could anyone make suggestion on this? How to report this misconduct in a correct way if I want to remain anonymous? Thanks a lot for your advice!<issue_comment>username_1: I won't comment at all on the validity of your criticism, because that is off-topic for Academia.SE. I'll only answer the more general question, though I will assume that the conduct is not really misconduct (as mentioned in a comment) but rather an argument about proper statistical approaches.
---
If you're not willing to attach your name to criticism, you put little weight behind it.
I'm not sure this choice rises quite to the level of a retraction, which would be done through the editor. A letter to the editor may be appropriate, which could be published in the journal (often after inviting a response from the original authors). If so, I'd suggest you convince a co-author to write the letter with you, preferably someone with a stable position (tenure), both to give it more credence and to give you a bit of protection (and also to verify your concerns).
These days, there is an alternative venue through social media where you may be able to raise an issue anonymously, but unless you already have a strong following it's probably difficult to get it picked up. Perhaps you could contact someone in the field who has a history of calling out errors in statistical approaches - I won't recommend anyone specifically but there are several blogs and Twitter accounts devoted to exactly this.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Two things here:
Firstly, if you want people to take you seriously, you really should use your real name. I [quote](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/18570/):
>
> **Use your real name.**
> Not using your real name indicates that you are trying to avoid suffering any potential negative consequence of your claim being incorrect. Using your real name indicates that you are sure enough to be ready to suffer potential negative professional consequences if you are mistaken, so you can be taken more seriously. If you are not completely sure about your claim do not waste her time.
>
>
>
If you must be anonymous I don't think you have many good options. Some (many?) people simply aren't going to take you seriously. You would have to convince someone who is willing to use their real name to do the convincing for you.
Secondly, there is an important difference between misconduct and an error. An error is simply an error. It is a mistake, it isn't intentional, it can be corrected. Misconduct goes much further and claims that the authors intentionally attempted to deceive their readers. You deal with both differently. With errors, [you do one thing](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18911/what-should-you-do-if-you-spotted-a-non-trivial-error-in-a-highly-cited-paper). With misconduct, [you do something else](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/20188/what-to-do-when-i-think-a-published-paper-displays-academic-misconduct). Your description of the problem sounds like an error, not misconduct. Do remember that a misconduct allegation is more serious than an error. Everyone makes mistakes, but misconduct can lead to job terminations or awarded degrees being rescinded.
Based on your description you aren't alleging misconduct, you are alleging a mistake. Be clear which one you're alleging because they are different things. Confusing something like this does not bode well for being taken seriously either.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In contrast to what the others have said, I believe there are reasons to want to be anonymous when reporting misconduct.
However, what you describe is not misconduct, but just bad interpretations of their data. Many, many papers use incorrect methods, or faulty interpretations. As long as this is not a deliberate attempt to mislead, it wouldn't be classed as misconduct.
While I understand that pointing out flaws in other peoples work is scary, particularly if they are more powerful than you, I think there is less of a case for anonymity. Of course in peer review you are often anonymous to the author, but you are not anonymous to the editor and it is understandable for the editor to want to understand who you are to judge who to believe - you or the author.
Upvotes: 3
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2020/07/29
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<issue_start>username_0: I am faculty in a technical field, and I started exploring a new research direction that I could work on in the coming years.
I have not worked yet on this particular topic I am exploring, but after reading a bunch of papers, I have a solid grasp of the state of the art and research opportunities.
Given that I read many papers and made lots of notes, I started writing a review paper summarizing the literature and discussing a research agenda. There hasn't been such a review paper published so far.
However, many journals are very particular about review papers. Their guidelines often state that it should be written by an expert established in the field (presumably one with many papers), and some journals even state that they welcome review papers by invitation only. I have written review papers before, but in this case I do not have a single paper written on this topic yet, so I am not sure how to proceed.
Would it be wise to continue writing the review and submit it somewhere? What strategies can I employ to increase the chances of having it published in a good journal?
As a solution, I can contact a more established person and offer co-authorship, but that does not have my preference as I am halfway writing the paper and I can finish it on my own.<issue_comment>username_1: Please do not do this! People like review papers precisely because they are written by acknowledged experts in the area. Just don’t, please!
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: The simple and short answer is Yes!
You have the freedom to try and publish anything you want, assuming the publisher is accepting it.
Now the long answer. Your concern is that since you do not have any expertise in this area you might do a poor job. This concern is valid and indeed there are high chances that you will do a poor job. But there is no rule written in stone that you cannot write a good review if you spend sufficient time and effort in learning about the new area.
Let us also explore a few more questions.
Why do we need to write review articles and if you get it published, will it be useful?
Review articles help many researchers in understanding the state-of-the-art in their field of research and sometimes new researchers actually start by writing review articles, in the first year of their PhD. And some of them end up doing a decent job with that.
Review articles are of a different nature. Some of them are written by experts in a field to make it more popular and they try to include reviews of articles written by their collaborators with the goal of improving their citations. I believe your goal nobler and you should carry on with it.
I am from the field of computer science and I just wrote a blog reviewing vaccinology 3.0 and how data science is enabling it. While doing this review I learnt a number of important concepts regarding vaccines and my review are also useful for an audience which is of similar background.
Since you are writing a more formal review you have more responsibility but with proper care and hard work you should be able to do a good job. Moreover, you will always get feedback from the reviewers which will help you a lot in further improving your understanding of the field.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: Shouldn’t the algorithmic problem statements and their editorials designed for online international programming contests, which are published on well known coding platforms like Codeforces, Codechef, Topcoder etc. be considered as worthy of publications in academia?
Before publishing the problem statement online, the moderators, testers and editorialists of the platform review the problems and rigorous testing is carried out. Also testers and editorialists are invited from all over the world based on respective expertise and their review, tested code and editorial is made available online for further discussions and improvements.
Each problem statement is open for feedback, ratings and corrections/bug reports from the users.
Also, before publishing, the statement undergoes intensive plagiarism, quality and novelty checks.
Authors of the problem statements also submit their solutions in form of tested code, logical explanation, proofs and test cases to the hosting/publishing platform.
In short, these problem statements also undergo a rigorous review process.
Any perspectives are appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: **No.** Those contributions are not peer-reviewed (in the traditional sense) and they do not describe computer science research (in the traditional sense).
Regular authorship of accepted IOI problems (for example) would be considered valuable *service/outreach* work, which should definitely be mentioned in an academic CV. But that value derives at least partly from the rigorous screening process that IOI problems go through before they are actually used, which comparable to peer-review. I wouldn't expect contributions to platforms like Codeforces or Topcoder (or StackExchange!) to carry as much weight.
---
**Update:** Until the question was edited, I was not aware of that Codeforces, Codechef, and Topcoder also required a rigorous review process. But I would still argue that those contributions are still not *research* of the type that is normally valued in academia, so I would still classify them as service (or outreach, or educational) contributions rather than publications.
But really, I think "Should these be considered publications?" is the wrong question. The right question is "Are these valued as scholarly contributions to the author's target academic community?" That value comes from two sources: content (Are the contributions of the form that the community values?) and reputation (Do trusted people in the community advocate for their value?)
For example, my theoretical computer science research papers have little or no value to biologists, historians, or competitive programmers, because those communities are looking for things that my papers don't provide. Yes, they're *publications*, but not in any sense that would *matter* if I were to try to switch careers. The only way that could change is by someone who is *already* trusted in the biology, history, or competitive programming community publicly declaring that my papers actually *are* important for that community's work.
I'm not aware of an *academic* community that would value Topcoder problems as *the same kind of thing as* research publications. Those problems are not intended to expand the boundaries of human knowledge; they serve a different purpose. And so my answer is still "No."
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: To complement @username_1’s excellent answer, I think it’s worth making explicit what the flawed premise behind your question is. You seem to think that what gives value to academic papers as markers of professional achievement is that they undergo a process of review by experts, as well as the fact that they are “submitted”, “published”, and that some “feedback” is given on them.
The problem is that you are fixating on cosmetic aspects of the process of academic publishing that are by no means specific to that type of activity, and that have only a tangential connection to why the activity is valued the way it is. In fact there are many types of creative works that undergo all of these processes that you listed. If I wrote a novel or a cookbook, I would have to submit it to a publisher who would find someone to review and critique it. Eventually it might be published if it was considered good enough. Similarly if I wrote a script for a film or TV show I wanted to get produced, or wrote an essay I wanted to get published in a newspaper, or made a work of art I wanted to exhibit in a gallery or museum. None of those things are in my job description as a researcher in a particular academic discipline (math in my case), and none of those things are things my department will give me any professional credit for doing - although I’m sure my colleagues would be quite impressed if I did them.
The same goes for writing problems for a programming competition. It’s a fine activity that I’m sure is intellectually quite challenging and rewarding, and as username_1 said may even have some academic value as an educational activity. But research it isn’t, and it won’t be valued in the same way as actual research.
Upvotes: 4
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<issue_start>username_0: Many PDFs of old papers are only an image of text. Other papers have been converted with [optical character recognition (OCR)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition). By OCR'ed, I mean the text is electronically typeset, and so there are no artifacts from the scanner and good support for zooming in, copying-and-pasting, etc. In a properly OCR'ed document, the text layer is on top of the image level, so the reader can read the text comfortably; otherwise, the text will look ugly, as if the document has not been OCR'ed at all.
I find documents of the latter group to be very annoying. Is there any free service to fix such documents? Or other options to make reading such documents easier?
Example link:
<https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%252FBF00117714>
By OCR'ed and ugly, I mean the following image. Please click on the image to see the enlarged text:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HLWra.png)<issue_comment>username_1: An easy way that often works: Go to <https://scholar.google.com> and search for the paper and then click "All X versions".
I not only got an open access version (your link is paywalled), but it even was OCRed (the original image lies over the OCRed text, but you can copy & paste as usual): [paper link](https://www.ualberta.ca/centre-for-teaching-and-learning/media-library/symposium/less-teaching-more-learning-2009/royce-sadler/articles/symposiumltmlroyce-sadlerbformative-assessment-and-the-design-of-instructional-systems.pdf)
Another option would be to OCR it yourself. There are very good (and often quite expensive) commercial products, but you can try to use pdftk and tesseract/gocr on the command line as well. You'll probably also find easier to use frontends for the open source tools.
If you're looking for a nicely formatted document, you'll out of luck unless the author's (or someone authorized by the authors) published a newer version with modern formatting.
For equations no automated process will help because even when it mostly works someone needs to check the result afterward, as even small errors in recognizing parts of the equation are a huge problem.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If by "ocr pdf files" you mean applying [Optical character recognition](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition) so that they become searchable, you can either:
* Look for a software to do it yourself. I personally use [OCRFeeder](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCRFeeder) with correct results, you can find more recommendations e.g. on [writing.sxe](https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/2293) or [softwarecs.sxe](https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/q/3412/30773).
* Find a service on-line that runs one of those tools and do it for you. There is some discussion about this in [graphicdesign.sxe](https://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/58323/ocr-software-recommendation)
If you mean "typing it in a new document", then you'll have to find a human person to do it, as it cannot be automatized (as far as I know).
What specific software or on-line tool to use is a) Outside of this particular stackexchange website, b) likely to be treated as a ["shopping question"](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/q/2038/19627) and therefore closed.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am about to start a research career in physics. I am trying to read plenty of research papers. Is/are there a smart way/ways (a software or something else) to keep track of the papers I have already read, partially read, wish to read, my favourites and so on? I am sorry to ask such a dumb question. I am being thoroughly overwhelmed by the unmanagable research literature that exists in my field of interest. Do researchers maintain a 'research diary' like stuff?<issue_comment>username_1: Here are two suggestions, but only the first relates to your question.
A simple way to keep track of things is with something as simple as a word processing document, though you can also use spreadsheets or databases in the same way. Simply enter the title and author(s) of the things you read along with a bunch of keywords that are meaningful to you and will let you find documents by keyword. You can also write your own short abstract of each paper, which will help keep the information in your head, not just in the document. This document will let you find them easily in the future. This should be an electronic document so that you can easily search it for keywords and such. Don't forget to do backups, of course.
Entries in this list should be numbered as well. And each paper can have a list of the numbers of other, related, papers. (also see below)
But, the other idea is to keep a research diary that has your own ideas for future papers or research threads that you don't have time for at the moment. Often when working on something and idea will come to you that you might want to work on later. Enter the idea in the diary along with the date and the numbers of any papers (from the list above) that seem to relate to the idea.
If you keep a research diary, keep different ideas on different pages so that you can add to it in the future. Review the diary periodically - especially when you want a new project.
If you are doing patentable work then the research diary should be bound (not loose leaf) hard copy and each page dated. You also want to have the ideas witnessed by someone who signs and dates your pages. This diary can provide evidence of "first use". It is (or was) typical practice at IBM Research for example.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I would suggest:
1. Using [Mendeley](https://www.mendeley.com) - both their Web Importer and the software, it really helps to arrange the papers in different folders and your notes while reading them.
2. Keep a daily research journal where you can note down keywords and even author names whose other papers might be of interest to you. This especially helps at the beginning of a PhD.
3. If you print a hardcopy of the papers, note down the date of printing in the front page(eg. near the title of the paper). That helps to keep track of your reading speed. You can also see later how the topic/s varied over time for the papers you printed.
There might be numerous other methods of keeping track of research literature, do find a combination which works best for you. There's no one way of doing it.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: My recommendation for a free option would be Zotero over Mendeley. Neither of them is as easy to customise in terms of output options as Endnote, but people have started to tell me lately that Mendeley is becoming increasingly focused on making it easier to integrate with Elsevier’s databases, at the cost of usability with other databases.
Otherwise, check with your institution. Many universities these days have bulk subscriptions to programs like Nvivo or Atlas.ti
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: You might think the title is a bit of an exaggeration, however this is exactly what has happened.
Note: No, I can't find my answer on How to React to Incorrect Claims by Reviewers? as it addresses the rebuttals/revisions but my question is about what to do after the final decision. (no rebuttal chance)
The reviewer can not differentiate X from Y, is technically wrong and obviously have no in-depth expertise, no let me put it this way even an undergrad knows X from Y, they suggested this is not the first paper using Y in A, when my paper is using X in B (totally different methodology and scope and even the problem addressed).
Moreover, they told me they think the format of my abstract is "extremely odd" because it is divided in 4 sections and they haven't seen it anywhere when it is the author's guidelines, and I sent them the link to the author guidelines and the template file, also copy/pasted that part and included in rebuttal - and they wrote they "still think it is extremely odd and they haven't seen it elsewhere".
After receiving my first reviews and submitted a complete rebuttal making changes to answer ALL questions, revised writing, added supplementary materials, I was still waiting to hear from the journal after almost 3 months (one week short) for revision - I am a reviewer for the same journal and I am asked to submit reviews in 3 weeks!! so I asked them why it was taking so long, and in a few days I get the reviews and the reject.
The other reviewer's first review was "the technical writing is weak" - this was ALL, no details, no directions - I made substantial changes and wrote very much in detail, the math, the narrative and they wrote "I should reorganize and submit as new" with no details, no directions.
I feel so frustrated, I had an experience like this with the same journal before and got an even worse one who said "the paper was clearly written by a native speaker and that native speaker should help the other revise" - I wrote the whole paper! They also wrote some technical claims about my methodology which was plain wrong.
AND! again, it was also the same - I asked them why it was taking so long (over 4 months after my revision), and in a few days I get the reviews and the reject. Moreover, someone had snatched my exact methodology and used for the same problem and submitted to that journal later. As a reviewer I see papers being accepted all the time with much less novelty and technical writing.
I really don't understand how the editor even lets this happen, the part about the abstract's format made its way to the both reviews! Even after my correction. The reviewer clearly thinks my paper is on something else entirely and lacks expertise.
How can I refute this? Can I refute this? are they doing this on purpose to gatekeep me?
there are not many journals in my field, because this one took so long I couldn't make it to other major conferences, and now I wanted to submit to another journal which is a bit different in scope and is much harder to get into -but- I am not even sure I can because my journal submission here is also accepted as a paper (first version) -but- is not published yet (so I can't submit to another journal because I would need to make a reference to the paper version). Also these are all supposedly Q1 journals.
Should I submit to the same journal and hope there will be reviewers with some common sense? Would I be rejected right away? Considering how slow they have been (7.5 months for these kind of reviews! I doubt they will be kind to answer my emails)<issue_comment>username_1: I would move on. Everyone makes experiences like that, and some other time, everyone gets lucky with the reviewers as well. So in the large scheme of things, such experiences cancel out each other.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Moving on is the best approach, as @lighthouse suggests.
If you don't like the best approach and prefer to combat it, you can ask the editor for another reviewer. Politely, on a day you feel great about everything else in your life and after being absolutely showered by compliments by all of your friends has put you in the very most positive mindset, write a rebuttal identifying the review's shortcomings and suggest to the editor that some bias seems to be preventing a good review and that you ask for another independent review.
If they send it to another reviewer, your fate is then in their hands. If they refuse, well, you're back where you started: move on, submit to another journal. You express concerns about an overlapping conference submission but if your field accepts conference papers as papers then the journal article doesn't matter, and if your field does not accept conference papers as papers then the conference doesn't matter.
"Bad reviews" like you describe - not bad in terms of negativity but intrinsically poor - are common.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I agree with "move on". Most of the problems here are with the editor and/or editorial staff, not with the reviewers. That is, the reviews may indeed be bad or slow, but since this is common (as @username_2 says, or following [Sturgeon's law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law), "90% of everything is crap"), it is the editor's *sole purpose* to (1) pick reviewers who are likely to be timely and give good reviews, (2) nag them if they are slow, if necessary seeking out new reviewers (this responsibility may be shared with editorial staff), (3) adjudicate bad reviews. If the reviews are bad **it is the editor's responsibility to recognize it** - either (hopefully) up front, or (if necessary) when the author complains. If the reviewers give a mixture of useful and useless (incorrect, irrelevant, etc.) advice, the editor is supposed to let the author know which reviewer comments to respond to and which they can ignore.
Unfortunately, the editor is the final arbiter unless they have done something truly egregious — in the category of misconduct, not just incompetence and/or irresponsibility — in which case you can appeal up the chain of command at the journal (editor in chief, editorial board, etc.). But it sounds, if everything you've said is correct, as though this is run-of-the-mill incompetence. You should probably move on.
---
By the way,
>
> my journal submission here is also accepted as a paper (first version) -but- is not published yet (so I can't submit to another journal because I would need to make a reference to the paper version)
>
>
>
this isn't entirely clear to me, but [nothing prevents you from referencing "Doe *et al*, *Journal of Whatever* (in press)"](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/56265/how-should-to-be-published-articles-be-referenced/56267#56267) in your submission — this is not the same as referencing *unpublished* material. (You may want to include the final preprint of the ms. as supplementary material for review purposes, so the reviewers and editors can have access to it.)
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: This bugs me a bit. I understand that technically the advisor or supervisor relationship may be a bit different from the more senior-level collaborations, but I can't help but think when I see people say "thanks to my supervisors/advisors for their help with this project" (i.e. on Twitter press-releases of research, at the beginning/end of presentations at conferences) that it is a bit infantilising... I am not suggesting it is a particularly important problem, but from many PhD students I know and from my own personal experience, the supervisor role can certainly be very much equivalent to normal collaboration between other academics. I think it makes a PhD student sound more independent and capable if they were to refer to their co-authors on papers published during their PhD as their collaborators - even if they are in fact their supervisor/advisor.
Keen to hear others thoughts!<issue_comment>username_1: I think you're correct that the supervisor role can be equivalent to normal collaboration in that the student will bring their own unique ideas, knowledge, and experience to build on a mutual project collaboratively. However, where I think there is an unavoidable difference (at least, in every student I have met including myself) is the conception of viable projects. In my field I've never heard of a student (masters or PhD) conceiving from the ground-up their entire project. They're always built from a project advertised to prospective students, or developed with the supervisor (often from previous work) where a research relationship already exists.
As a student, you're learning to become an independent researcher. This means learning what is and isn't scientifically interesting and viable, how to search the literature and theory for relevant information, etc.. This is what a supervisor is teaching, and this is a very specific relationship that isn't properly conveyed with "collaborator".
This distinction is most important when there are multiple co-authors on a paper, including co-authors that are not the supervisor. The non-supervisor co-authors fit the description of collaborators and still should be described as such, no matter their academic "rank".
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't think I have ever seen anybody ever "thank their advisor/supervisor(s)" (in a presentation or press statement) without explicitly name them. One of the purposes of such a statement is to communicate the existence of a particular student-advisor relationship. There is a number of reason someone might want to do so:
* The relationship will immediately provide some additional context to the scientific work being presented for people in the community familiar with the advisor/supervisor.
* Acknowledging the relation provides appropriate credit to the advisor. This is particularly important when the advisor is a junior faculty, since the successful supervision of students is one of the criteria they are judged upon. Seeing students of a researcher appear at conferences plays a role in reshaping how the community views a junior researcher as a viable more senior candidate.
* The reputation of the advisor can be used as leverage to help people take a student more serious, especially when presenting research that is a bit "out there".
* The reputation of the advisor my help shield against some members of the audience being particularly nasty.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm joining a grad school for a research-oriented Masters in CS in Germany, early next year. There's a professor whose research interests me, but I certainly don't know enough currently to contribute to his group. His group regularly offers HiWi (tutor/research assistantship) positions and I'd love for a chance to work with him and get to know his research better.
Would it be okay to directly ask him what is expected from a student, to obtain a research assistant position in his group, so that I could prepare myself better? Given that I haven't even taken his classes yet (or even started school!), would this be frowned upon?
By asking him this, my intent is two-fold: (a) directly get to know the prerequisites of commencing research in his field, (b) make myself visible to him, even if it's in a cursory way - I'm assuming a lot of students would want to work with him, so I just figured networking a little early could improve my chances. Would this be okay, or am I being too eager about this? If anyone could tell me experiences specific to Germany, that'd be an added bonus (since university culture varies from country to country) - any advice would be great though!<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, you should ask that. Also ask his former students for advice.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: You should definitely ask him. But at the same time let him know that you have gone through his course details online. In your conversation with him ensure that you are not asking anything which is readily available on the university website. In other words, you should reflect in your actions that you are sincere about your queries and not wasting his time.
You should definitely ask the previous students. You can glean from their experiences to find out if this position is suitable for you.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: During lockdown I found some books/articles online for my thesis. Am I allowed to quote them or is it unprofessional? Should I find a paper edition and quote that instead?<issue_comment>username_1: You want to reference reliable material - whether physical or virtual. If you read an article online in a refereed journal, or quote a standard book in your field that you read electronically, credit both the physical reference and the url in your bibliography.
References to, say, wikipedia or blog posts or unrefereed work you stumble across on someone's website may be problematic. To use them you have to make a case that they are correct and reliable.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Short answer: Yes.
Longer answer: When the book is a reputable source and you are sure the electronic version has the same content, you can cite it just as the paper book. Nobody cares about if you read it on dead trees or as PDF and people will not even know it.
The versions you found online may or may not be legal to download, but this has nothing to do with being username_2wed to cite them. Just make sure you find the right citation format, such that one can find the book.
If the book has a online version (and your copy may or may not be a pirated version of the online version), have a look if the online version needs to be cited in a different way (e.g. having a different publisher or a different number of pages).
You'll usually find the right citation format with Google Scholar, both for paper books and online versions.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: A bit of background: I just completed my MA at a large Canadian university, and I will be starting my PhD in Sociology in the fall (at the same large Canadian university). Over the course of my 2-year MA, I worked as a teaching assistant (TA) both years, and also held 6 different research assistant positions with different faculty and projects.
For my PhD, about 30% of my total funding is tied to a guaranteed TAship for the next 4 years, so I will be working as a TA no matter what. As the summer progresses, I've started to receive offers for new research assistant positions in the fall from faculty in my department and other affiliated departments. Currently, I have 3 offers. They're all very part-time (a few hours a week each, tops), so I could theoretically accept all of them from a time-management perspective. I held 3 positions simultaneously in addition to my TAship in my MA and did not find it overwhelming, nor did it compromise my academic work in any way.
Before accepting, however, I've been trying to calculate the cost-benefit analysis. The extra money is definitely nice, but I have enough funding that I could survive without it, although my finances would be tight. Overall, how valuable this experience would be to my career is a bigger factor than the money.
With all that in mind, is accepting as many research assistant positions as I can manage (without compromising my other work) a reasonable career decision in terms of what future hiring committees (in the humanities) would likely be looking for? Again, I'm in the Canadian context, and my understanding is that most positions are seeking a solid mix of both teaching and research experience here.
Does the reputation/prestige of the faculty members I am working for matter in this case? (The way it would for an advisor?)
I recognize that one of the other major factors is whether or not taking all of these positions would compromise my ability to publish, but the flip side of that is that it's not entirely uncommon in my field for research assistants - especially at the PhD level - to end up co-authoring papers with the faculty they work for, so it may actually open up more doors for publication. I have two small/less-prestigious publications accepted so far (an interview with a senior scholar in a journal, and a chapter in an edited book), and I'm working on two others currently that will be submitted to peer-reviewed journals, so I'm in okay shape as far as publications go relative to where I am timing-wise in my career.
Sorry if that's **too much** context, just trying to be thorough!<issue_comment>username_1: The value of these types of RA positions lies in the connections and research experience (seeing up close how a successful faculty member puts together high-impact papers, learning skills).
You should select RA positions based on whether the position is likely to position you well for relationships with high-productivity scholars in your area. These can then lead to mentorship relationships and joint research in the future.
In addition to looking at the faculty publication record, you could talk to past RAs. Some faculty use RAs as a stepping stone to joint work, and some just burn through RAs on grunt work tasks. You obviously want the former, not the latter.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm a faculty member in a Canadian university who hires a lot of RAs (and who has sat on hiring committees), so I can speak to this.
In general, you need to really watch the balance you take on. The extra money is great, of course, and if you need the funds you ultimately should take these positions - the hourly rate is good.
In terms of CV building: some RA work is great, *especially* if it can dovetail with your research project (i.e. accumulating knowledge for your field) and if you can get a publication as a co-author. Others may involve more clerical work. The important thing is that the RA position *in and of itself* is not a real addition to your CV when it comes to hiring, but the effects of it can be: a publication, skills, or having a faculty member who can write a positive letter of reference.
The reputation or prestige of the faculty member would I think only really matter if they wrote you a letter of reference or co-authored with you.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a first year PhD student, and since starting, I’ve had worsening mental health problems which I have tried to deal with to no avail. I ended up failing quite a few things in the second term earlier this year and am on a very very fine ledge with the exam board.
One of the biggest factors upsetting me during this time is my inability to read a paper. It’s incredibly important to read as many papers as I can in my field, and I find so many excellent and relevant ones, but once settling down to read them, I just don’t. My brain refuses to take in the words. It causes me a lot of pain and sadness and makes my mental health worse. I found that I am self sabotaging myself on an extreme scale especially when I need to have read it by a certain time, but I just don’t. I focus really hard on objects on my desk and end up breaking down and taking a long time to settle myself down.
I have spoken long ago to the universities mental health services and the counsellor was very vague and seemed to skirt my immediate problems instead offering suggestions that didn’t really help. I don’t understand what is happening to me so I don’t know how to speak to colleagues or advisors. I’m just a poorly performing student right now who doesn’t seem to know what’s going on in their field.
I don’t know what I am suffering from, but I feel like I’m slowly drowning in despair. I am on here to ask for advice. This website has helped me a lot.<issue_comment>username_1: In a graduate student's life (or any person's, for that matter), going through a mental health crisis is very common nowadays. Things have been worsened due to this pandemic (but, that is not the point of discussion here).
Instead of focusing on "why" part of your question (i.e. why are you feeling this or that?), I would suggest a few things:
* **Do regular exercise:** Exercise is something that always brings back the mood. Start with small sit-ups, jogging some miles, pushups and you will see that you sweat. When you sweat heavily, your mood tries to come back.
* **Go somewhere and cry if you have to** This is a bizarre suggestion but this one always removes so many things from our conscious mind. So many things start to matter that wasn't.
* **Eat good food** Eating is most important. I am sure, you must be feeling like there is a *knot* in your stomach, but, force yourself to eat at least 4 times. Avoid coffee or tea or any drinks that affect mood.
* **Create a study environment** You must create an ambient environment that you love to stay in. You like sitting there like there is peace.
* **Just sit and relax** Just "sitting" is a problem for many. Sitting without doing anything has been big stuff now given the emergence of AI and technologies. We are always with something in our hand. But, try to sit "yourself". Let all thoughts come, that's ok. It will vanish, or find its route to go away.
* **Writing helps** Writing stuff or even drawing, scribbling do help the mood. Nothing needs to be meaningful. Just random also helps e.g. *An ant talked to me today and said my stomach is full. I was delighted to listen to him. He was indeed full with sugary paste.*
* **Remember this is not the end of the world** Nothing is the end. You may feel like not good enough, but, that is okay. Nobody is perfect or good at anything. People become good at things eventually. Takes time. Perserverence and focus is the key. Just remember that no matter what, this is not the end that can end things.
* **You mean something in this world** You are here for something. May be just to "live". Just live as you wish. If you have to read a paper for that, why not?
* **Read slow and small** Read slow and small amount every time you sit to read. Not to think anything other than that small amount. Try to bath that, sleep with that, eat that, and run that. Then you will see things are getting back to normal.
* **Remember to call friends for a meetup** Just try catching up with friends and families for small random talks. Not necessarily stuff related to yourself, but, sometimes nonsense also helps.
Last but not least:
* **Piling up research papers creates guilt** If you are not reading at all and just piling up papers starts adding extra burden on the head and you start feeling guilty about it. That you are not doing anything for this, you can't do it. So, when you pick a paper, make it a commitment to finish it up. At least read the abstract and conclusion of any paper that you pick. That is enough.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Let me make a few comments from an academic point of view:
* **Make sure you pass your classes.** You say that you have failed some classes and imply that your position is in jeopardy. Given this, you should feel free to focus entirely on coursework and give yourself a pass from reading papers. There will be plenty of time to read papers later, but continuing to fail coursework could be a major problem for your career.
* **Make sure you are reading the right papers**, at the right level of depth. At this point, you are probably better off reading survey papers (or even textbook chapters) rather than specific journal articles. Further, it is better to understand the "gist" of many papers than to spend weeks trying to understand every detail of a single paper.
* **Discuss your paper reading with your advisor** (or another professor familiar with your situation). Your advisor may be able to suggest more appropriate papers. Make sure you're willing to take advice, even if the advice is to do something other than read papers.
* **When reading papers, consider taking notes**. If you can afford it, an iPad is a great investment for note taking. But changing your goal from something abstract ("studying") to something concrete ("a few pages that summarize the gist of the paper") may help. Further, allowing yourself only a few pages per summary may ensure that you focus on seeing the big picture rather than getting into all the details.
Of course, this advice is from an academic, not medical, perspective -- we cannot give medical advice and I would defer to your therapist or doctor in any case.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an Indian student and studying in the USA away from home and family.
I am writing my master's thesis in a private University and we were two weeks away to submit the final version to the committee and I was about to start my PhD in a public state university. I was working in math and proved some original result with some different proofs and I also read a paper and elaborate the proofs in my own language. I admit that I took the statement of the theorems word by word and some discussions as well.
I was unaware of this serious plagiarism before as in my undergrad I didn't have idea of writing a thesis.
I first wrote my understandings on paper and then tried to type this in overleaf. I am pretty bad at reading pdf files from computer screen and can't do it for longer and after typing a bit I went to another state to my relative's house and got stuck in Covid19 and **I lost some major details of my paper. I was panicked because of family's health and my health. I also consulted with doctors as I have anxiety and insomnia problems which includes some short time memory loss.** I don't know how to express this that I forgot to put a citation of that corresponding paper. I cited a ton of other papers in my thesis and even other papers of those corresponding authors. I even thanked some of my friends and my students whom I give private tutions with whom I discussed in my papers. I also said my advisor that I am reading one paper and elaborating it and asked whether it is okay or not and his reply was it is ok if you give proper citation and still I missed that particular paper. Now my advisor has taken an academic dishonesty action against me as last week we were discussing about one definition and suddenly I recalled that I wrote a particular section of my thesis from a paper and although we were out two weeks away from my submitting it he complained against me.
I have an anxiety feeling and guilty feeling because what is happening with me these days. I am student with good academic understanding. I never wanted to make this happened with me and I want to confess when I am now reading about plagiarism I feel that it is a plagiarism but I was unaware of this fact before this severe consequences. I remember I asked my professor whether my thesis will be published or not and he said that it won't be published. I have few questions:
1. How severe the consequence of plagiarism in masters thesis if it won't get published?
2. Can I appeal to make changes as I have one week now in hand?
3. Should I say the reasoning or rather accept my guilt and say that I have done this willingly because in one article it is written that accepting is a better solution.
4. How should I defend myself? I have my defence on Monday. I am the first scholar in my family so I don't have any guidance on how to say it precisely. I can also have paid guidance if someone wants to guide me. I can't afford much I think I should have one. Moreover, I often feel that I am a Bengali so my English is the very weak to express what I feel and the committee members or the teachers sometimes get bored with what I say. Partially this is because of nerve problem as well.
Clarifications / details / updates:
* I did find the citation in the bibliography, so the only problem was the lack of an inline citation.
* My advisor and I discovered the issue during a final review. I mentioned in the discussion that a citation was missing. The next day, he canceled a meeting with me and I was informed that a misconduct hearing had been scheduled.
* In addition to the mental health issues, I also have some physical health issues that could be relevant (B12 deficiency, etc.)
**Further edit**
As suggested I am confused with some comments as some people are claiming that I can't have oral defence before submission.
Let me add timeline details:
17th of April: I have mentioned all the citation of the corresponding paper and after that, we have almost met 30 times on reviewing the thesis. Most of the discussions were till section 5 and I overlooked that I missed the citation on section 6 and was the major citation that I am realising.
12th of July: I have sent my thesis for review to the thesis committee.
16th of July: One committee member made some comments on half portion of my thesis and asked me to correct it( didn't have any information regarding plagiarism) but stated that in this current format the thesis is unacceptable.
17th of July: My defence scheduled on 24 by my advisor.
17th of July: Another committee member made some comments on one third portion of my thesis and asked me to correct it( didn't have any information regarding plagiarism). Some comments were common with the first committee member.
17th of July: My advisor emailed me that we need substantial improvement in the clarity of the
writing to accept the thesis for graduation. Committee members
will get comments to me by early next week. I should go through the
comments as a high priority and send to me a new version. He will go
through that new version again and mark any places that still need
improvement. We will then go through those places **together** until
they are acceptable. This final version will be returned to the
committee for a final look. My advisor is away August 4-9, so this must be
completed before he is out of communication.
This does not all need to be completed before the defence but does need
to be completed before the format meeting with the graduate school. Note
that the latest version you sent still has overruns into the margin
which will cause the graduate school to reject your thesis. ( didn't have any information regarding plagiarism).
20th July: I was done with the part one comments of the 2nd committee member.
21st July: We had a meeting regarding defense.
24th July: Defended my thesis and did it successfully but was informed that current state of thesis is still concerning. Plan is to sit next week every day for hours and fix it and return it to the committee at the end of the week and upon satisfactory re-read the recommendation for conferral degree would be submitted.
27th July: Done with most of the comments of all committee members.
27th July: We first discover the citation problem in the thesis and my advisor told me that he will inform on how to fix it next day once he will read the other paper.
28th of July: My advisor cancelled the meeting stating that he will be in touch with me. By that night, I didn't hear back from him and asked whether he is ok or not! I was worried about pandemic going on in the states.
29th of July: I heard from my instructor that academic dishonesty report has been filed against me. I was also advised to inform the counselling centre as the proceedings will be very stressful.
30th of July: I have heard from the departmental head about my hearing is on Monday.
**Is it called submission that I have done on 12 th of July because the committee sent me several comments to improve and I was improving that?**
Further edited:(Missed one comment)
My thesis has 6 sections in the first 5 sections I have given some new proofs of some known result and the last section I actually discussed someone's paper entirely. I did copy-paste the definitions the statement of the theorems, lemma and corollary directly like a verbatim in my undergrad I was advised to remember the theorems, lemma et all exactly and I tried to write the proofs in my own language.
\*\*I am also wondering one thing that I completed my writing with a citation by 17th of April. Does any advisor check for plagiarism after that as we were doing grammatical and mathical corrections after that. Now after being reported I found that in see \*\*<issue_comment>username_1: *This answer does not respond to subsequent edits to the question.*
If you submitted a thesis with plagiarism, the typical consequence would be expulsion. You would not get a degree. The good news is you didn't submit it yet, so there might be no consequences.
Can you still change your thesis? You need to ask your supervisor.
You have admitted there was plagiarism in the draft. Stick to that. Just make sure there is no plagiarism in the final version. Your defense should that you did the wrong thing in the draft and have fixed it; the final version does not contain plagiarism. You will still look bad, but I think avoid punishment.
Health problems are never a defense against charges of plagiarism. Continue to get treatment from health professionals.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: *This answer does not respond to subsequent edits to the question.*
Have you submitted your paper yet?
**If you have not yet submitted** then you haven't done anything wrong (yet!) and you have time to change it. If required you may have the option to ask for a deadline extension, given the current exceptional circumstances and your own health issues.
Reading your question I'm not 100% clear what you've actually done or how much of your thesis could be considered plagarism.
* If you've failed to attribute a couple of theorem definitions then this should be easy to fix; either re-write them in your own words, or quote them, and cite all sources properly\*.
* If you've copied (even in translation) large portions of discussion and analysis then you'll have more work to do, but it's essentially the same job as you've had throughout your thesis: You need to express these ideas in your own words and convey your understanding of them.
* If the writing is your own, but you are worried that the ideas are not as original as you have portrayed then you may not have such an issue. Provided you are submitting your own work, then a masters thesis does necessarily not need to contain entirely "new" proofs or results. If this is your concern you should talk to your supervisor and understand their expectations (and the marking rubric) for a thesis, if they have read your draft and are broadly happy then you may not need to do anything further.
**If your thesis has been recently submitted** then you should talk to your supervisor as soon as possible and explain clearly what has happened. It may still be possible to retract you thesis and further you may be able to talk to your academic institution and arrange for an extension and re-submission date when you can submit a plagiarism-free version. This will be a discussion between you, your supervisor, and your academic institution, the outcome of this will depend on the precise details of what has happened at what stages.
**If your thesis has been submitted and plagiarism has subsequently been found during the marking process**.
This is a very different situation from the above. You should read up on the policy of your department and the broader institution. You may wish to edit your question/ask a new one in order to get more specific advice, you will need to provide further details as to how much was plagiarised and how exactly it was copied (short phrases with minor changes or entire paragraphs etc.).
**General advice on discussing health and it's impact on your work**
Current issues surrounding COVID and your personal health are not an excuse for plagiarism, but they may be a valid reason for delaying a submission until you can remove the plagiarism and submit a legitimate thesis.
\*Edited for clarity, you should *always* cite sources properly, not just when quoting!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Admitting your mistake is the 2nd step in fixing things (finding the mistake is the 1st), and the 3rd step is making sure the mistake doesn't become a problem by fixing he mistake. There are lots of minor steps (which usually change based on the situation), but I've found these are the 3 major steps to get a situation back on track.
We're all human and can rush through even important things. Use this as a learning experience to prevent doing it again.
You shouldn't defend the plagiarism, just admit the mistake and correct it, which it sounds like you are willing to do, if you haven't fixed the issue already.
The things that caused you to make this mistake can all too often be used maliciously as excuses for bad behavior. Don't fall into that trap. Even if they are true, it'll likely be taken as an excuse, rather than a good reason. We've all been affected by changes in our lives due to Covid-19, so there's a little more leeway for things like this getting in the way, sometimes. But that's still not a good reason for making career ending mistakes.
If you haven't already, you should apologize to your advisor for the mistake and reassure them it won't happen again. You can state that it was unintended, but unless you can somehow prove it, like you said you could with the reference in the appendix, then it likely won't reduce the lost trust.
This is a case of "take your lumps" and learn from it. It'll likely take less time and energy than anything else. You "did the crime" so you should "do the time". Because it done was accidentally (intention often matters in law) and you haven't submitted this as a final draft, your crime isn't as serious as it could be. Defending it would make it more serious, so just don't do it. The "time" usually depends on the severity of the crime, so you've lost trust from your advisor, which is a lighter sentence than another Answer mentioned about expelling you. Just work to regain that trust, even though it might not ever be regained, and try to make sure you don't give them another reason for them to lose trust in you.
<NAME> is a good example of this. She was convicted of [insider trading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ImClone_stock_trading_case) and, for the most part, did her time and got over the whole ordeal fairly quickly. She could have made a huge deal of trying to save her fame and fortune by putting up a massive fight, but instead she only did what seems to be a perfunctory fight against the charges. She ended up doing her time in prison fairly inconspicuously, then her home confinement without making a big deal of it. She might not be as big of a deal or as much of a "household name" as she could have been without the problem, but she's still around.
There's plenty of people who have made a huge deal about charges against them, only to make things worse. Don't do this to yourself.
As for your feelings about what happened, well, you'll just have to deal with it. Forgive yourself if you can, understand that it was a mistake that you fixed, and over time, it'll feel less like you've done something "horrendous". It could have been worse, but it was caught before that happened. Again, use this as a learning experience. You are allowed those. I know what I'm saying isn't exactly comforting right now, but that'll just take time to dull the edge of what happened. That's normal.
It's actually a good thing you are reacting like this, even though it doesn't seem like it right now. Your feelings will help prevent you from making the same mistake later, due to "never wanting to feel like that again". Just take some time to calm down. In a few years, you'll look back at this as a lesson learned and pretty much everyone else will have forgotten about it.
**Edit:**
I'm not saying to not defend yourself, just defend the correct thing. Don't defend the plagiarism, defend that you did it accidentally and are willing/working to fix it.
**Edit 2:**
Also, when you go to defend your thesis, don't bring up this issue, as it'll simply confuse your defense. The people on the Board/Panel/whatever, will either know the situation and bring it up, or they won't. If they do bring up the plagiarism, stick to defending the accidental nature of it and point out that it's fixed.
You can say that you've learned you lesson and that it'll never happen again, but that can come off as a simple placating gesture, rather than an actual fact. They've probably heard the same thing from others that end up making the same mistake they promised would never happen again. It's possible to make this type of statement sound real, but it has to be said with real conviction, since the tone of your voice and your bodily actions can speak just as loud, or even more loudly, than your words.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: A masters thesis in math rarely has any significant original research in it. In fact I know people whos MS thesis in math consisted entirely of citing other peoples results and discussing them in an expository fashion.
As long as you didn't claim an original result from someone else I'm not seeing the problem.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: Talk to the disability office at your university.
=================================================
The mental health and insomnia issues that you mentioned in the original post would qualify as disabilities, and the university is obligated under the Americans with Disability Act (ADA) to grant you reasonable accommodations. Additional time to correct errors in your thesis paper that arose as a result of your disability would likely qualify.
Of course, you should also take efforts to correct the mistakes now that you've become aware of them, and to let other people in your department know so that you don't publish your thesis prior to the mistakes being corrected.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: *This answer may be bringing some new points only because, coming late, I've been able to draw from a number of more recent comments, trying to answer (semi-) briefly on select points. Otherwise, as the most relevant points have been discussed in great detail and length, the rest may just approximate some summarizing. But still...*
>
> How to defend plagiarism in master's thesis
>
>
>
**Do not** *defend plagiarism*. That is, if your wording of your question title is not just a language thing (no offense meant). Plagiarism in itself is indefensible and, as has been broadly pointed out here and elsewhere, is commonly treated as an inexcusable offense (to a point where some may even seem to stop using their brains and EQ to consider and differentiate circumstances. To be sure, neither do I mean to defend plagiarism or any motivation to plagiarize whatsoever.).
Plagiarism is **not** *(seen as)* covered by any health or state of mind issues, either (excluding recklessness, which counts as aggravating). There is simply no acknowledged health issue that is seriously believed to *bring about* plagiarism. (It has been discussed elsewhere on this site that some rare health issues *can* bring about *unbelievable* things (like deliberated murder incomprehensible to the victim-perpetrator), but I don't think that helps here.) So as others have said already, you had better not seem like you were trying to hide behind excuses. (The ADA thing may be valid where applicable but surely not for directly explaining plagiarism, as far as your actions are seen as that.)
Though I might contest the idea that *no* health issue could *contribute to a course of things happening* that *may lead to an effect* that, assessed by *the rules*, amounts to plagiarism -- but be very careful with that, it could count as a desperate attempt at a cover-up, so unless a seriously qualifying and qualified person (maybe at the counselling center or faculty) advised you explicitly and clearly to mention anything in that quarter (and what), or was going to mention it for you, you may be better sticking to cold facts, not including any of this.
(I think, and hope, it may help you a bit that working this QA has made you summarize the cold facts which may help you work from there. Have that timeline handy in the hearing - things now being where they are, help the committee determine the facts by offering up what facts you have - unless advised otherwise, and use as appropriate.)
As a corollary and general rule (though I guess that's not helping you much now, but for the classical step back and for posterity), if you are facing whatever issues that are a risk to your *ability to avoid* producing plagiarism, it is a very good idea to deal with them as early as possible, doing whatever is necessary. It helps to start building a habit of absolutely producing complete and sound citations from very early on during your academic progress. And rather citing "too much" than too little so in doubt you'll be erring on the side of caution.
Going from that, can you *reasonably* mention - only as a side point, **of course** not as a mainline of defense - that your habits of citing everything (which can be seen in action in all other citations you made - if these are high-quality enough to justify saying so), were insufficiently trained *(in terms of the training you allowed yourself, not meaning by your advisor and teachers)* as this was the first thesis you had to write ever, or for a long time? Beware though, that could be self-disqualifying, too - I'm actually surprised, if I get that right from what you're writing, that you were never before required to write something that required proper citation practice.
>
> The problem is I asked my professor that I am reading a paper and elaborating it.
>
>
>
Not meaning to overdo taking you literally, but that's not a problem. What's a problem (and a big one) is that you failed to expressly cite the specific paper and passage even after your supervisor expressly said you have to cite here.
>
> 27th July: ... 29th of July:
>
>
>
Wondering **what caused the sudden change of attitude in your advisor** (I really do), I'm imagining he suddenly realized that you seemed to have defied his clear order to cite and fell for the assumption this was intentional as he was so clear about it. (In this case, I'll assume this should be taken like an order -not just advice or guidance- because it is advice about really complying with the most basic rules that should be understood to be taken and complied to far earlier than only in one's graduation thesis)
About this being basic - as hinted, until the time you had to prepare a thesis in earnest, you should have trained your very gut feeling to awake you even from sleeping on Valium, and in the middle of whatever stressful work or distraction, to the slightest trace of an omission of citing any old thing, and then make you calmly and automatically and fully add whatever missing citation.
I do think it may be in your defense ***unless - see next paragraph*** that it was you who brought up the missing citation to your advisor, not vice versa. I don't dare give advice on this point in your situation but maybe somebody in the know can advise you about bringing that up in the hearing (unless your advisor will claim it's not a fact?) - it could be clear from here that there was simply nothing bad you were trying to do.
**But** considering that the oral defense had already happened and you did use that part of your thesis there with the citation missing, after which you brought the missing citation up to your supervisor later, it seems possible that he reacted to this by seeing it as first successfully trying to slide it by the defense audience then cover it all up by fixing it later in the paper. That would be really wrenched and sophisticated misconduct, of course. Again, I don't dare advise if and how you should react to that possibility but if there's still some time between now and your hearing, you may be able to get some advice about it.
>
> have taken the statement of the theorems and example from that paper and tried to write all the proofs in my own word
>
>
>
That's a double-edged sword - it may be what (you think) you do to show that you have understood and thoroughly thought through all of it. Of course, technically it's also the same thing that the ordinary common plagiarizer would do to hide the fact that they are really just copying someone else's work.
A better approach seems to be to make it a habit to always state (if need be, ad nauseum), so-and-so explain this and that and their reasoning goes thus - recounting all of it meticulously with not ever the slightest of change (and not forgetting any of as many footnotes as may be warranted) - then add "I use this as the basics to do X, changing Y, arriving at Z via R, S and T."
(Once you do this perfectly, you may well be at liberty to summarize the work you are citing, where applicable, but always keep the distinction visible.)
Keeping the clearest visible distinction possible between your work and others' work may save you a lot of misunderstandings (and the immense effort of rewording lots of stuff that presumably has been worded well already, so in fact your rewording could not help rendering the same facts in an inferior way, which is clearly not your goal in a thesis.)
And that could be guidance to rework these parts of your thesis if you get the chance, and it seems not entirely impossible that where you are this could be seen (but you better ask the right people there) as a way to also clear up a methodical fallacy ("rewording is good") and produce a remedied version of your thesis that clearly shows your work and what is the work of others.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: *Your edits/clarifications have changed the question substantially, so I'm going to post a second answer as I think the first still holds as general advice*
The situation you describe is still confusing to me, I'm not sure I can gauge the extent of the "citation problem". Missing a (single?) in-line citation (which has been put into your own words) is certainly not good practice, but I'm not sure it would usually lead to the reaction you describe. In particular, your advisors rapid transition from "you should probably cite this, let me check the paper" to "This is a case of serious academic dishonesty, I'm escalating it immediately" indicates to me that there is more going on than is given in your post.
Before your department meeting (today!) I would urge you to ask yourself the following:
* What does your department policy consider to be plagiarism?
+ Is this different from what you think plagiarism is? If so, why is it different?
* How much of your paper does your department consider to be plagiarism according to their rules?
* How much of your previously submitted work contains this kind of plagiarism?
Just to add, I wouldn't expect the reviewers of your thesis to date to have spotted plagiarism, the fact it's been seen by several people doesn't mean that any of them would have been the look-out for plagiarism.
Separately, you seem to have an issue with the overall quality if your thesis "informed that current state of thesis is still concerning". I would put that issue out of your mind as much as you can for now as it's not relevant to a discussion on plagiarism.
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm from the humanities, where research grants etc. are scarce. Also, training to deal with research grants and external funding is nearly non-existent in my field.
I'm curious as to how graduate students in more external money-heavy areas like engineering or medicine (or maybe even computer science?) learn how to manage a lab.
I saw [Managing lab funds](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/135335/managing-lab-funds) , [How does laboratory funding and money management work in grad school?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18376/how-does-laboratory-funding-and-money-management-work-in-grad-school), and a few other posts but it still feels opaque to me how people become adept at managing research money at scale — and yet this is a really central part of the job in many fields (but as I said above — not common in mine).
Presumably a lot of that money has allocation rules, accounting rules, and can be audited to insure compliance too.
* Are there courses in graduate school?
* is it learned informally from being a postdoc?
* or does everyone take a funding management compliance course at their university?
Other questions indicate that people do have knowledge of this: [Is it usually allowed to use grant money for voluntary contributions?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/153473/is-it-usually-allowed-to-use-grant-money-for-voluntary-contributions) but it’s hard to believe no one has an explanation of how they got this knowledge.<issue_comment>username_1: My experience may be anecdotal, but in my personal experience it is all learned informally during grad school and postdoc training. Many folks who eventually go on to become faculty win smaller grants (or even travel grants) during their postdoc time that give them a small amount of money to be in charge of.
In China, where I'm most familiar with the money management process, this can be "baked in" to the early faculty years as many of the "young faculty" grants (analogous to NSF CAREER, etc.) are less structured in terms of separating the grant into different buckets like labor, equipment, etc. This makes management easier because you just spend the money on what you need rather that what you *thought* you needed when you won the grant. And it gives you a bit of a longer leash when you are learning what *are* the real costs of running your laboratory. This way your later budgets for more structured/stringent grants are more accurate.
It's also the case that money is never enough in any field, so "management" is as @solarmike suggested, keeping the costs under control enough to squeeze extra time out of the grant until the next one walks in the door!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: As with many parts of becomes a group leader and teacher, this is just something you are expected to be able to do. I was never given any training, it was just expected that I was clever enough to work it out!
"allocation rules, accounting rules, and can be audited to insure compliance too" is usually handled by central admin who are professional accountants and administrators.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: By far the hardest part of managing funding is getting money in the first place. In order to get a meaningfully sized grant, you need to produce a fairly detailed budget, with good justifications for every kind of expenditure. However, once you have gotten good enough at preparing the budgets to land a grant, it is largely (and to some extent rightly) assumed that you know how to manage actual real-world expenditures. There will always be an employee responsible for grant accounting, who can tell you how much money you have in each account and how long you have to spend it, but unless you try to spend money on something that is obviously not allowed, they won’t have much to say about what you do with the funds.
Research universities always have training for faculty in how to win grants, put on by the dedicated office that handles these grants. Often, this office will can provide a great deal of assistance to faculty members as they are actually writing grants. How useful those services are in practice can be highly variable. At my institution, the grants staff seems to be pretty knowledgeable about how to prepare proposals in the biomedical fields (especially for clinical work at our medical school), but they have a lot less useful advice for faculty in the physical sciences and most engineering fields.
However, there is also a learning process at earlier stages in one’s career. As a graduate student, working on an experiment, one develops an awareness of what things cost. The students use supplies that need to be reordered; use of outside facilities has to be paid for; travel is expensive. However, there is typically little formal instruction in these questions between a graduate student and more senior people.
Later on, working as a post-doc in a research lab frequently carries responsibilities that require being aware of the lab budget. As a colleague said to me, in no uncertain terms, “The post-doc *is* the lab manager.” A post-doc will often be responsible for basic lab inventory (ordering routine items from suppliers), arranging repairs, etc. To do this job, the post-doc needs to be made aware of the budget, even if major decisions are made by a PI (and even small expenditures probably have to get the PI’s signature).
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I uploaded an article to arXiv which has been published in The Astrophysical Journal after referee suggested edits and final proof. How do I cross ref the arXiv version with the DOI of the published version? Do I just cross-ref the DOI of published version with the older version in arXiv or do I download the published pdf and upload it with DOI as a new version in arXiv? (I think the latter is not allowed as when I uploaded the published version of another paper as full-text on researchgate, I was told to remove it).<issue_comment>username_1: There are two options:
1. Upload the revised version that you submitted to the journal (i.e. the one which got accepted finally). But, don't upload the post-produced pdf that you got from the publisher (and did not compile yourself from a `.tex`); this is not allowed by most journals. Further, you might want to look at the journal's statements about arXiv submissions. Some journals clearly mention this on their website. Your new submission to arXiv will be given some new version ID e.g arXiv:xxxx.yyyyy.v2
2. You can just edit your present arXiv article and edit the DOI field (please see <https://arxiv.org/help/jref>). Additionally, you can add a comment "For a revised version and its published version refer to the Journal of XYZ, DOI. cd/90111" (This option would not help you much if you want to make your revised version available for public; in case the journal is subscription-based).
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The arxiv has a dedicated field where you can add the DOI. (Note that this will not create a new version.)
In addition, most journals will allow you to upload the final accepted version (that is, the version with the corrections you did following the referee comments, but without any copyediting done by the journal), so you can additionally upload that version when you add the DOI (and potentially clarify in the "comments" field that this is the accepted version).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: [arXiv automatically ingests publication metadata](https://arxiv.org/help/bib_feed) from many journals and some other sources. So the DOI might be automatically updated for you once your article is published. For a major journal like ApJ, I would expect that to be the case.
If that turns out not to happen, then you can update the DOI and journal reference metadata on the version of the paper that you have uploaded. I believe it's generally understood that those metadata items refer to a final published version of the paper, whereas the PDF that can be downloaded from arXiv is a preprint, which *will not precisely match* the published version. You don't need to upload a new PDF to arXiv, but if there is a more updated version that you're allowed to upload, it's a nice courtesy to other researchers if you do so.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/07/31
| 479
| 1,800
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<issue_start>username_0: Is Diplom-Mathematiker equivalent to M.Sc?<issue_comment>username_1: *(Note: The answer is primarily referring to the question in the title, which is not quite the same as the one in the text.)*
No. Why would you think so?
Diplom-XXX is a title which is, mostly, not awarded any more. The "Diplom" system has been *replaced* with the BSc/MSc-system. But this does not mean they are equivalent (it is a rather different system), and you certainly cannot call yourself Dipl.-Math..
From a more pragmatic point of view, I would consider it a more or less equivalent *degree*. But again, this does not mean you can call yourself "Diplom-Mathematiker" if you got an MSc in Maths.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Concerning the question if the Diplom is equivalent to M.Sc.: it mostly is, but in some instances, a Diplom is actually considered inferior to a Masters.
Why?
Follwing the Bachelor - Master route compared to the diploma means you have actually completed two separate courses of studies and have written two theses. Master graduates are thus considered (slightly) more proficient in "academic skills" than diploma holders.
As far as I know, this only makes a difference when it comes to becoming a supervisor for students on their bachelor or masters thesis, though. In general, the rule is that you need to have at least the same degree that you want to supervise, e.g. a person with a bachelor can only supervise other bachelors theses. At my university of applied sciences, a person with a diploma cannot supervise a student for their masters thesis, only a person with a masters degree themselves can.
It might be that this is not the same allover Germany, but I know of some other universities with the same practice.
Upvotes: 0
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2020/07/31
| 507
| 2,229
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<issue_start>username_0: This came up in a paper recently submitted and commented on by the tutor. The paper relied on, and separately referenced, multiple separately authored essays in a single volume ("edited by...") on a single subject.
A comment returned was "... perhaps too much reliance on a single source (though the defining volume) ...".
This was a surprise as I thought that the separately authored (and credited) essays would each be considered a separate source (though published together).
Is this, perhaps, field dependent?
(This question is not in any way going to lead to any complaint about the remark whatsoever. I just would like to know - as I said, I believed otherwise.)<issue_comment>username_1: Your question suggests that this was for a tutorial. Perhaps the tutor wished you'd looked around more, even though you found many useful separate references bound together. You can ask.
I doubt that an editor would object that this was a "single source".
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: We could argue whether this is technically this is or isn't "the same source".
More productive is to ask, **"could relying strongly on multiple essays in the same edited volume be putting blinders on your thinking?"**, and the answer is **yes**.
The use of multiple, genuinely independent sources ensures you have had to engage with different perspectives on a topic: different framings of the issues; differences in terminology, methodology, conclusions/implications. If there are schisms, you are likely to have stumbled across them.
In a single edited volume, the editor is likely to have -- deliberately or accidentally -- chosen authors with the same perspectives, and therefore biases. In fact, the individual essays may well have been edited to uniformize their framing, teminology, etc. Now, in some cases the editor may have carefully reached out to include differing voices. But very often not, and you have no way of knowing unless you've looked elsewhere.
All of these things taken together mean that though it may look (from the number of different names) that you're taking a broad look at the topic, it is fairly likely to have been curated enough that this is not truly the case.
Upvotes: 3
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2020/08/01
| 1,046
| 4,525
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<issue_start>username_0: I will be applying for grad school soon and have drafted a few informal enquiry emails. When would be the best time to send out informal enquiry emails to potential supervisors? Would it be advisable to send them out as soon as the programme starts to accept applications or even earlier than that? I'm asking particularly for US universities.
Thank you!
**EDIT:** Since a lot of people have said this is field related, I thought I'd mention which field I'm applying for - I'm applying for microbiology/immunology programmes<issue_comment>username_1: Most professors that I know in the US (in computer science) do not want to receive such emails and will ignore them. Many have a note on their website saying so. The expectation is that students should submit an application and only after they are admitted should they talk to faculty. If you are interested in a particular faculty member, you should note this in your application.
That said, norms vary greatly. In the UK, the expectation is the opposite in my experience -- you should only apply after contacting a potential supervisor.
You should look at the websites of faculty that you are interested in working with and see what they say about contacting them. If they do invite such inquiries, then you should contact them. In terms of timing, earlier is generally better, as long as you are at the stage of having reasonably concrete plans.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In my field --- history (so I would think applicable to other humanities disciplines) --- these sorts of e-mails are actively encouraged, and I would recommend e-mailing potential supervisors to see if there's a good fit. Once in a while an application for a PhD applies out of the blue without pre-contacting a supervisor, that's usually rare and it isn't always a great fit.
Why? A potential PhD supervisor might not be taking that students that year, or they might be changing their research emphasis away from what the student wants to do, and it both helps them manage their workload *and* helps the student save throwing away application fees.
In Canada, if applications are due in January, I usually expect to see e-mails from potential students in September or October, but anytime through December is usually OK.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: As people have said, this varies greatly by field. In my field (psychology), such emails are *strongly* recommended. In fact, to the point that it was suggested to me to not apply if I did not receive a response. At the very least, check that professors do not have a notice regarding emails or not taking students for 2021-22.
In my case, of the three professors I spoke to meaningfully, they were the only ones whose program I was accepted to (two) and received an interview for, but later declined (one). I emailed an additional couple, and applied to about three other programs "blind."
To answer your title question, I was told to send **emails in August**. My applications were due mostly December 1 - January 1. This also nicely is before the semester starts, when many professors will get busier.
**However, I would check with a trusted mentor about expectations of doing this in your field.** I note that you use a non-US spelling of "program," so best to check with someone who also has familiarity with the US system specifically.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I'll write from my experience as an American professor in *mathematics*.
Generally I am happy to receive such emails, and I respond by thanking the writer for their interest, briefly describing our graduate program, and encouraging them to apply. If they ask about my research interests, or other aspects of the program, then I'm happy to answer questions. (Or, if they don't, I will tell them that I'm happy to answer questions.)
That said, I don't try to seriously evaluate them as applicants. If they include a CV then I basically ignore it. And I don't usually bring these conversations to the attention of our department's graduate admissions committee.
If you were applying in my field, I would say that sending such emails is a good idea, but that you should keep them brief, not try to "develop the conversation further" unless you have particular questions to ask (or are invited to by the professor), and take any sort of encouraging reply as a good sign. If you decide to send such emails, then now is a good time: professors are less busy now than they will be once the semester starts.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/01
| 310
| 1,427
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<issue_start>username_0: I have written a paper with some interesting results. However, I would like to add one or two sentences that draw the attention of the reader to the fact that the results also depend on the instruments used for the experiment. I would like to point out, that if the equipment were more advanced, the results may be different. Do I add this information at the end of the results section, the discussion or do I add it to the conclusion? Which section is best suited for this kind of information?<issue_comment>username_1: Look at other similar papers in your field to see what they do, but I expect this should be written in a methodology section or similar, where you describe the equipment used and how you used it, before presenting your results.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I think it depends. In my opinion, it makes most sense to address equipment limitations (e.g. instrument resolution, reachable temperatures, etc.) in the method(ology) section, as was suggested by astronat. Limitations on your results, however, are more naturally addressed in the discussion (e.g. since we are resolution limited, we cannot definitively rule out alternative interpretations X, or Y, but our results are consistent with prevailing theory Z). If it is a particularly important qualifier that's central to your work, it can make sense to repeat it in the conclusion and possibly elsewhere.
Upvotes: 3
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2020/08/01
| 532
| 2,322
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<issue_start>username_0: **Question description so that anyone can evaluate and answer accordingly**
Since last many years, I have self-studied a subject that is Theoretical Physics - Cosmology, Time and Space. I have never got the opportunity to study this at University level so I self-published a book on the theory which I have researched.
I don't know what is the formal process for a theory to get accepted by the science community, please guide me on how to proceed further?
The link provided in the comment section is different as it was more about publishing a paper in a science journal...
However, I got an answer below that there is no formal process and there are options of publishing a paper in a reputed journal or participating in the conference... I am looking for more options if possible.<issue_comment>username_1: There is no formal process. But before much of anything can happen, a new theory needs to be widely seen and evaluated. A period of independent verification of its predictions needs to happen. This was the case even for Einstein.
But self publishing a book is not a great way to disseminate your ideas as it will probably be seen by very few people unless you are already very prominent.
In the case of Einstein, in fact, there were, at the time, more or less generally accepted competing theories and those who held them were resistant to accept his ideas, but were also very powerful. As they "left the scene", his ideas became more accepted by younger physicists, but it also took experimental verification for the ideas to become dominant.
If you want to have your ideas widely disseminated, you need to publish in accepted journals or have them presented at conferences.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As username_1 said, the first step toward "getting a theory accepted" is publishing it in a peer-reviewed journal.
Few people will read your self-published book\*. Submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed journal will at least get it read by a few people in the process of considering it for publication. Then, if the paper is publised, many more will see it, and some of them will even read it.
\*Even books on the top of the New York Times bestseller list are often bunk. For example, we can often see such books with spurious medical or dietary claims.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/08/01
| 2,922
| 12,848
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<issue_start>username_0: I went to university to study a degree which has computer software and hardware elements to it. I didn't do badly in my normal modules at all, I never got below a 2:1 grade in any module, and some of them I got to over 80% percentage wise. Now, I don't feel like I come from a terribly good home, and there has been a lot going on in the background that is sort of still there, at least some of it is.
When it came to my dissertation I picked a topic somewhere in September last year. My topic was to do more with physics and graphics than my actual degree. I thought it would be interesting to find out about these things. I tried to do it in C++ which I already knew, and apply OpenGL to see it on the screen.
Honestly, I didn't know how or why but learning anything on the topic didn't work for me. Creating the programming environment took me days and sometimes I still have issues with just making the bare skeleton of things work. I followed a tutorial from over 10 years ago (so quite outdated for my liking) on how to do this particular thing, but its 2 days from hand in date number two and the practical side doesn't work. To give you an idea of time, I say I failed twice because I managed to get a 3 month extension due to Covid, and failed to hand anything in on hand in date one, and now will fail to hand in anything on hand-in date two because I simply can't learn how this works.
When it came to actually working and meeting with my supervisor, every meeting I would want to break down and cry, and so I'd avoid most meetings, and then further not be able to do any meetings online during Covid, because every single second I knew that I didn't understand a thing, and there was nothing to say to him. I haven't spoken to him for over 3 months. I generally tried to do work in the mornings, and only started with my hobbies in the evening so that I gave myself at least 3-6 hours of work per day to do this, especially after the extension was given as this was my only work for those three months. But it looks like I am just too stupid to do this. Tutorials for OpenGL took me days to get through in a way that I understand what was going on. I got some medication for my panic attacks, but generally, due to this work, I've been waking up to me sweating and breathing really fast for the last few weeks especially, not to mention constant nightmares I have. Needless to say, I find it difficult to be happy right now and people have been telling me I am distant and I act like I hate them.
I don't know how to move on from this failure and tackle the re-take, if it happens at all at this point. I want to ask for some sort of study leave, so that I can study what a dissertation is, and what is it that I could possibly research instead of this, and then hopefully go back and do the retake, not run away from my supervisor, and actually feel like I know what I am doing like I usually did during my modules. In general, I need some recommendations on how to tackle dissertation and failure, as well as how to pick a dissertation topic I feel like I can do.
Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask for help, please leave a comment on where I can go otherwise, but mostly I just wanted advice from people that actually have an academia background and could write a dissertation, especially in a computer or programming related field.<issue_comment>username_1: You have to speak with your supervisor / course mentor / Head of Department as any solution will have to be within the course regulations.
We cannot suggest a solution as we don’t have the regulations for your course so you have to reach out to them.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Your first and main source for help and advice on this should be your supervisor.
Working in industry I went through a high stress phase when I tended to cry during meetings with my boss. He was a very courteous person, and ignored my crying except for moving a box of tissues next to where I was sitting. Depending on your supervisor, you may need to bring your own tissues, but that is no reason to cut yourself off from essential help and advice.
Your supervisor knows what is expected for your dissertation. It is not something you should go off and study by yourself. Your supervisor should also be able to help you with where to go from here in terms of getting an extension and modifying your project if that is the best thing to do.
As for not having anything to say to him, "I am stuck, and will not be able to hand anything in on the current schedule" is something you should tell him as soon as possible - a few weeks ago would have been better than today, but today is much better than tomorrow.
In addition to a PhD in computer science I have over 30 years computer industry experience. I would plan and expect to spend a week or so learning my way round OpenGL if I needed it. Needing a few days to understand a tutorial, especially as you probably have less experience learning programming languages and libraries, does not seem like a very serious problem to me.
If you are using a current version of OpenGL with a ten-year-old tutorial that may be part of the problem. The tutorial and the OpenGL version you are using may not be compatible. In general, if a tutorial or book is not working for you, try a different one - there are plenty to choose from. Also, once the tutorial tells you what features you need to use, read the reference documentation on those features.
Given that you have medication for panic attacks, you may be able to use that issue to get extra time and help from your university's disability services. If you have not already done so, discuss your project difficulties with whoever is treating you for the panic attacks.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Honestly, a BS project isn't expected to be great or even functional. It's expected to demonstrate problem solving methodology and show some results. I would argue your problem is that to even show any result involves a lot of boiler-plate coding which you seem to be having problems with.
What exactly are you trying to do?
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: I looks to me like you are overly ambitious regarding the goals you have set for your dissertation project. Modern C++ is a large and complex language with unsafe memory handling, thus offering you more than enough rope to hang yourself. In addition, OpenGL also offers a large and complex API, requiring you to understand the intricacies of dividing the rendering work between the CPU and the massively parallel and specialized GPU. Moreover, both C++ and OpenGL have evolved significantly over the past decades, and as a result you'll find tons of outdated information on the web. To these two problems add the fact that you also need to obtain the required domain expertise in physics and possibly also computer graphics (if you hadn't taken such a course). In short, possibly due to inexperience regarding what you set out to achieve, you've set yourself up for failure. Very few would have succeeded in what you set out to do, so don't blame yourself.
I don't know if your supervisors only agreed on the topic rather than its implementation. If they knew how you were going to implement your topic (with C++ and OpenGL) they could have warned you that this was over-ambitious. Consider explaining to them that you misjudged the difficulty of using the technologies you chose, and that you need a significant extension to start from scratch.
Then, **use a friendlier environment to tackle only the physics problem**. For example, depending on your existing knowledge and the problem's requirements, you can use Python or R and [Jupyter notebook](https://jupyter.org/) or [Processing](https://processing.org/). Python would be great for reusing diverse third-party libraries, R for performing sophisticated numerical or statistical processing, and Processing for interactive animations. Split your work into small tasks, and try to make concrete progress each day. If you find yourself stuck for a longer period, reconsider your implementation choices and talk to your supervisor.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: As others have suggested, step 1 is to address your mental health with a professional. That doesn't mean you'll feel better instantly: it means you'll have a place of support and some reality checking and some assistance monitoring how you're doing.
Step 2 is re-establishing a relationship with your advisor (or a new one). This type of project is supposed to be hard and it's not something you are supposed to do alone, that's why you have an advisor. When setting up the scope of a project, ask them very direct questions for feedback:
Is this scope reasonable?
How much time do you think this would take a student at my level?
Are there better ways to approach this that I'm not seeing?
You've acknowledged here that you're failing. That's good, but you need to acknowledge it with your supervisor as well. In your position I would approach the advisor and say honestly: hey, I tried to do this on my own and it's not working out. I was scared to get advice and that made it harder for me. I don't know what my next steps should be and I need advice.
A good supervisor will take this and do the best they can to help you and will be much more useful than this Stack can be. You should plan to meet with them weekly **at a minimum**, and every week discuss what you've done and what you plan to do next week. It's okay if "what I did this week" is "I tried XYZ and all of them failed" or "I got stuck learning to do QRST and didn't make it further". This gives your an advisor a chance to help you through those spots and suggest other approaches or other resources, or help recalibrate your goals.
Other supervisors may not be willing to help at this level, in which case you would need to see if you can move to a different supervisor or look at other options you have.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: *I coordinate graduation projects in our department, thus I have quite a bit of experience in this.*
These things happen. It is normal. It happens to the better or worse students. If you are certain your mental situation is really tied to this mess, then it is the symptom. In this case it is easier to treat the issue then to treat the symptom. But just to make sure, visit a professional.
Before following any advice here, talk to your supervisor. There might be particular regulations in your department that may render these problematic.
Now there are obviously two solutions. Second solution is generally not considered early enough by students. And it is perfectly acceptable in most situations. Accept defeat, change your topic. Now you may feel like defeated and may even think you are not good enough for this particular topic. Know this, when you are in a deadlock which you might be in, it doesn't matter if you are the best in the world. You are trapped and will not be able to get over the problem. If you are such a person that does not accept defeat, call it fallback and later try it again, after you finish your degree.
I have been programming for over 20 years, at times there were things that I found very difficult. Once I disengaged and tried even a few months later, suddenly the problem becomes so simple. The reason behind this is approach. Once you start something, you may commit to a path to the solution. But sometimes the path you have initially chosen is terribly unsuitable. The best idea is to start over with a completely different mindset.
First approach is obviously find a more efficient way to handle your project. A lot of commenters say OpenGL or C++ is difficult, don't believe them. I have written several game/graphics/ui engines with OpenGL and C++. **They are easy once you learn them properly; but it is also very easy to get a wrong footing with both of these.** Learning C++ properly is a serious challenge.
However, these are tools. If you are after 3D physics simulation, then the problem you will have will be about simulation. And if you join them right away, you will get nowhere. First start small, write a small application that cubes fall from sky. Watch and enjoy your work. Learn the pipeline. Slowly add things that you think will be simple. Everytime I wrote circles I animate sunflower patterns using the circles. So satisfying, so easy (just a simple formula). These things might not be related with your topic. But you just need to feel these tools. You don't learn how to use a hammer on the shelf you are trying to build. You practice on a piece of throw away wood.
You should start your project after being comfortable with your tools. You have a good working schedule, you should be able to learn and complete your project in a short amount of time.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/08/02
| 514
| 2,141
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm an undergraduate student pursuing B.Tech IT from India. I'm entering my final year. While going through requirements for a job in the AI field online, I could see most of the big competitors ask for either a Master's degree or experience of 2 to 5 years in the AI field.
I thought having a mediocre self-taught knowledge in deep learning gained through decent academic projects can land me in an entry-level job/intern from which I could develop my career. But after seeing the above trend from job recruiters, I have a heavy doubt.
Please help me to decide whether I should try to enter the field with some luck by grabbing any slightest opportunity I get (I doubt whether I'll get that) or should pursue a master's degree from a good college? (I'm financially constrained too to do a Master's degree abroad).<issue_comment>username_1: If you want to work on AI in academia, probably yes.
====================================================
I can't speak about what industry wants, but if you want to work on it in an academic setting, then you will almost definitely need a PhD degree, because basically every job doing academic research needs a PhD. Depending on how your university manages its PhD program, you might need a Master's Degree to apply, or it might include the Master's Degree as a coursework component of the PhD program.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Probably not, but this depends on the job ad you want to answer.
I think you gave the most important answer yourself:
>
> I could see most of the big competitors ask for either a Master's degree **or experience of 2 to 5 years in the AI field**.
>
>
>
Getting a master degree will probably at least take two years, so you may also try to gain experience in other ways and possibly make more money in this time.
Of course the type of knowledge will be a bit different (probably more applied) and the type of jobs may be different as well, on the other hand many jobs will probably be the same and not require that much of the masters degree, if you don't mind being more focused on the AI and less generalistic.
Upvotes: 0
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2020/08/02
| 933
| 3,954
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<issue_start>username_0: I sometimes receive review requests that says the authors have recommended me, and I know them in person but I have no COI, so I do my best to objectively evaluate their paper. Also, I do suspect some labs might be recommending me as I always end up reviewing their papers (or maybe the editor thinks I am a good fit, I don't know).
When I submit however, I feel this is not very appropriate. I don't mind reviewing for others who recommended me but I don't recommend anyone because I don't think it is ethical, but I have been having problems with the reviewers simply not having adequate expertise on the field, though they are quite arrogant so in the end I receive reviews that are low-quality (and I mean this, they are not just mean reviews or anything, I mean reviews that are technically dead wrong that they don't get the scope, methodology not even what problem is being solved) How common is it to recommend referees for your paper? Am I missing something?<issue_comment>username_1: A significant number of physics journals require authors to recommend referees. So it is common to recommend referees.
I do not believe that recommending referees is unethical. It is the editor that picks the referees, not the recommending author. If the editor picks the author's recommendations without considering the quality of those referees, the editor is behaving unethically.
Some editors will exclude referees suggested by the authors.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It's fairly common for journals to ask for reviewer recommendations. This is to help them get reviewers. Suggested reviewers make the editor's job easier, since they no longer need to work that hard to find people who can review the paper.
The downside isn't that it's unethical - I don't see why it would be - but rather that the authors are going to suggest their friends or even commit peer review fraud by [nominating themselves](https://www.nature.com/news/publishing-the-peer-review-scam-1.16400). But that's something for the editor to worry about, not you.
Finally it's worth noting that not all reviewers you recommend will be invited to review your article - it's fairly common for journals to have a "one recommended, one self-invited" policy for example. In fact, it's possible none of the reviewers you recommend are invited.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: A small addendum to @username_2's and @AnonymousPhysicist's answer. The "one recommended, one self-invited" policy is based on two ideas:
1. the authors have a good idea of the experts in the field, and can do a good job identifying people who will give a knowledgeable review;
2. ... *but* reviewers recommended by the authors *may* be biased toward them.
So making sure that the reviewers are a mix of recommended and non-recommended is wise editorial policy. However, this means that *recommending a long list of everyone who you can think of* is a bad idea, as it means that at most one of those people will be invited to review.
But yes, if you are asked to recommend reviewers, doing so is (1) ethical, (2) in your interest, and (3) doing the editors a favour (because they don't have to work as hard to identify suitable reviewers). (You can say, "I shouldn't have to do this, it's their job", but why shouldn't they benefit from your knowledge of the field? How hard is it for you to list a couple of researchers in your field who you think are well-informed on the subject?)
Also worth noting that *reviewers* are usually required to certify that they don't have a conflict of interest (COI: typically includes blood relatives; current or former academic supervisors; and people who have co-authored or worked together on a grant within some time window). This automatically rules out some of the most positively biased reviewers (and don't bother recommending reviewers in these categories, it will just waste everyone's time).
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/02
| 890
| 3,821
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<issue_start>username_0: Recently I watched a series of video talks that greatly helped me understand a topic I am researching. I wanted to help the author create more such videos by making a Patreon donation. This made me wonder whether such donation can be done using money from a research grant? I looked at guidelines of some local grants. They usually allow to pay for professional courses related to the research, but do not say anything about donating to free such courses. Do other funding bodies have an explicit policy about this?<issue_comment>username_1: I have to guess on this one, but can imagine that they haven't mentioned it because they haven't thought of it. I also imagine that they would be somewhat upset to learn of it unless you make provision for it in the grant application.
The reason for my speculation is that few grantors are so rich that they don't much care how their, perhaps, limited funds are spent.
But if you use something that is explicitly funded by donations, then you may be able to make a case that you should donate. Your suggestion of Patreon's involvement suggest that you may be in this situation.
But not all "donations" are prohibited or discouraged. Putting grant funded software in public repositories and making it open source or giving generous licenses to it is often encouraged. Another possible form of donation is the funding of a person so that they can donate their time and efforts to worthy public projects that can't afford their own funding.
I would ask the grant administrator before doing this, and suspect that different people will give different answers. And if the donations are a minuscule part of the grant, it is less likely to be forbidden. But that, too, is speculation.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: The answer to this question will vary significantly based on the laws of your country, policies of your institution, and your contract with the grant funder. Although your profile specifies that you are not in the United States, some readers may find value in an answer specific to U.S. law and practice. I recognize this won't directly apply to you.
*Mea culpa* aside, for U.S. federal grants under Uniform Guidance the answer is definitely "no". To be an allowable cost, the expense must:
>
> Be necessary and reasonable for the performance of the Federal award and be allocable thereto under these principles. ([2 CFR § 200.403](https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/2/200.403))
>
>
>
Since the video content would have been available to you even without a donation, the donation is not necessary or reasonable for your grant-funded project.
For projects that are non-federal, or otherwise not under Uniform Guidance, the details will likely be found in your specific contract with the funder. Research institutions typically have sponsored projects offices with trained staff who are able to assist you with answering these kinds of questions.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I'd argue that you're not funding them for the work they've already done, but to produce more of the lectures you found useful. So, why not enter into a conversation with the person making the talks directly about this? Ask them if there are upcoming talks they'd like to make, and then see if you can help fund the making of those.
This would then be very similar to, for example, paying for changes to a piece of software (even if those changes are then freely released)\*, and should be possible to get past finance/the funding body.
You probably can't use grant money to pay for the existing ones though.
(\*I'm a developer in UK academia, and paying open source developers for the changes we need is something we've had approved before, and it's simply been billed as "software development" on the grant)
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2020/08/02
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<issue_start>username_0: How do I move forward after working with a toxic academic supervisor who ruined my all job opportunities by giving negative referrals, when my next job is asking referee report from him?
If anyone has gone through a similar experience and survived, would love to hear how you survived.<issue_comment>username_1: I think you will have to be transparent about the relationship in the lab when potential employers ask for that reference. However, assuming you warned whatever graduate degree you had, it can also be taken as a sign that despite a toxic work environment you were able to still carve out success. Everyone has experienced a toxic work environment, so if your story is authentic, and you sound authentic, employers might be able to identify that.
But what you can’t do is use that supervisor as a reference, and you most likely won’t get other faculty to speak poorly about your supervisor in a letter. So, I would argue, that you just need to be transparent about your experience when you need to confront it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You can apply for positions that do not require a reference.
You can use other people as a reference.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: If you are applying, and you are asked to provide referrals, you can just skip this or name 1 instead of 3 etc. I have skipped this information and I was still invited to an interview even at King's college and Oxford, though I couldn't attend neither due to timing issues. Perhaps it would come up at later stages or say for lectureship but, the person I applied to said my resume looked impressive. This is such a toxic academic rule, do they ever ask the interviewee to evaluate their supervisors? No.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]
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2020/08/03
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<issue_start>username_0: Perhaps it is a sign of paranoia that I even ask, but is there a chance that the private college I got my BA from back in the 1980s would revoke my degree if I were to publicly complain about its political stances?
Unfortunately, I have never donated significantly to the college, so my views don't hold any real force.
I doubt they would do so. And if they did, I find it unlikely that it would set off a chain reaction. But theoretically, my teaching degree depends in part on my MA, which in turn depends in part on my BA. Theoretically, if my BA got revoked, I could lose my teaching accreditation and hence my job. But **can** they?
---
Thank you to everyone for these thoughtful and detailed responses. My fears have been broadly dispelled, although some anxienty remains. I probably have more to fear in my current setting directly, than through a chain reaction involving my degree.
I have posted some thoughts in the comments under the first response and will remain engaged in the discussions above.<issue_comment>username_1: I've been working in Academia for the past ten years. The only cases of degree revocation that I am aware of were due to severe cases of academic misconduct such as plagiarism, fraud, or large-scale cheating. The rationale is that gross academic misconduct invalidates the achievement the degree should certify.
Revocations on grounds of expression of (political) disagreement with the issuing institution are unheard of in rule-of-law democracies. I've never heard of such a case, although it would certainly have become very well-known.
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_2: I think the chances of having your degree revoked for criticizing the political choices of a university are more or less zero. Degrees are awarded for academic reasons, not moral ones.
The exception to this is honorary degrees. Honorary degrees are given to some for expressly moral judgement even though the recipient hasn't completed any classes or met the required academic standards. They are awarded because they represent to sort of character that they would like the world to associate with the university. If they prove themselves not that have that character, or stop having that character, then it makes sense to remove the honorary degree.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I sit on our university's Senate which is the body that would have to deliberate a degree revocation. Even a *straight-forward case of plagiarism in a degree* requires a long, drawn-out and surprisingly contentious decision, and it *might* happen once or twice a decade. This is the last step of a very, very long and drawn-out process.
So no, I wouldn't worry, outside of demonstrable research misconduct that puts the entire integrity of the degree in jeopardy.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: Princeton University only started admitting women in [1969](https://libguides.princeton.edu/c.php?g=84581&p=543232). Even in the mid- to late-1980's the alumni magazine ([Princeton Alumni Weekly](https://paw.princeton.edu/) printed letters bemoaning this fact from alumni of various older classes (issues that old are not available on-line). However, as an alum, and son of an alum, I read through the magazine from the mid-70's until today. Even by the standards of that time the letters were sexist and demeaning. No degrees were revoked.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: In the (2005) paper [The Right of Educational Institutions to Withhold or Revoke Academic Degrees](https://www.stetson.edu/law/conferences/highered/archive/2005/RevokeDegrees.pdf) from the Stetson University College of Law Twenty-sixth Annual National Conference on Law and Higher Education, the authors give an in-depth survey of reasons universities have successfully revoked degreees. Not one of these involves the behaviour of a candidate after they have completely left the institution—whether this behaviour be academic, political or indeed criminal.
There are cases, for example, of degrees being withheld after a murder on campus before the degree was conferred, even though the strictly academic requirements of the course had been met, but this was on the basis of the student not abiding by the student code of conduct whilst at the university.
Similarly, other cases, involving financial fraud or involvement in the death of another student, all relate to the period when the candidate was actually attending the institution.
There may be countries where it's possible for universities to revoke degrees on the basis of a student's non-academic conduct after leaving an institution, but it does not appear to have happened in any American or European universities. Such cases would become very well-known, especially if, as @Henning notes, they merely involved voicing political opinions.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: You need to read up on the legislation regarding your activity and location. I'm unaware of revoked undergraduate degrees affecting graduate degrees on a chain reaction. While your BA might have been a requirement at the time in order to receive your MA, it's been already fulfilled and it would require a separate procedure to revoke it, too.
Most jurisdictions would protect your job based on either the *acquired rights* principle (such changes cannot have retroactive effects), the *reasonability* principle (disproportional punishment to the misdeed), or the *notorious knowledge* principle (your aptitude has been publicly recognized). In my jurisdiction, even undergrad students who committed fraud in the acceptance process would not have their studies fully revoked, although the institution was allowed to expel them.
Therefore, I would be highly skeptical about having your BA revoked: it would have little effect (alone) on your career, it's likely to be overturned in most courts, and taking such extreme measures without strong evidence of gross misconduct would reflect quite poorly on the institution. Honestly, I cannot see why they would jeopardize their reputation in such manner, instead of just taking you to court, where they could build a case and cause more damage to your career.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: Historically, there have indeed been cases in which degrees have been revoked for purely political reasons, including cases where the degree holder espoused, or was perceived to have espoused, political views at odds with those of the university:
* In 1930, the Tunisian scholar <NAME> published *Our Women in the Shari'a and Society*, a controversial book advocating expanded rights for women. Haddad was declared an apostate and his alma mater, the University of Ez-Zitouna, stripped him of his degree. [1]
* In Nazi Germany, the government passed legislation to revoke the doctoral degrees of Jews and political dissidents, and certain university senates independently issued revocations of their own accord. These revocations were not universally considered to have been voided after the regime's downfall in 1945, leading some universities—among them Vienna's Technische Universität Wien and the University of Wroclaw, standing in for the dissolved Schlesische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Breslau—to formally reinstate them years later. [2–4]
* Beginning in the 1970s, Soviet universities would often revoke the degrees of academics (often but not always Jews) who had emigrated, or even merely *attempted* to emigrate, for political reasons. [5, 6]
I'm not aware of any similar politically motivated revocations happening in modern times in Western countries, though it is certainly conceivable that this practice continues or could occur in the future in authoritarian or politically unstable regimes. If you got your degree in such a country, and if your words or actions reflect unfavourably on that country or on your university, then it is possible that your degree may be stripped as punishment. (Without knowing what university you attended, what the political situation is there, and exactly what you said or did that they may find objectionable, it's not really possibly to quantify the risk.) However, if you got your degree from an accredited institution in a country that broadly protects freedom of political speech, then you probably don't have anything to worry about.
---
**References:**
1. <NAME>. [Justice, Equality and Muslim Family Laws: New Ideas, New Prospects](http://www.zibamirhosseini.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ZMH-Justice-Equality-Muslim-Family-Laws.pdf). In: <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, and <NAME>, eds. *Gender and Equality in Muslim Family Law: Justice and Ethics in the Islamic Legal Tradition*. London: <NAME>, 2013, pp. 13–14. ISBN 9781784537401. DOI: [10.5040/9780755609277.ch-001](http://dx.doi.org/10.5040/9780755609277.ch-001)
2. JTA. [Poland University Restores 262 PhD's Stripped by Nazis:
Wroclaw Shamefully Zealous in Targeting Jewish Academics](https://web.archive.org/web/20150408045206/http://forward.com/articles/212310/poland-university-restores--phds-stripped-by-na/). *The Jewish Daily Forward*, 8 January 2015.
3. <NAME>. [7 decades on, scholars to annul Nazi revoking of doctorates: Polish, German academics to denounce the stripping of Jews’ university qualifications during WWII](https://www.timesofisrael.com/7-decades-on-scholars-to-annul-nazi-revoking-of-doctorates/). *The Times of Israel*, 8 January 2015.
4. <NAME>. Continuities and Discontinuities: Personnel Policies from 1945 to 1955. In: <NAME> and <NAME>, *The Technische Hochschule in Vienna 1914–1955: Part 2: National Socialism – War – Reconstruction (1938–1955)*. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2016, pp. 177–192. ISBN 978-3-205-20132-8.
5. <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, <NAME>, and <NAME>. [Degrees Revoked in Soviet Union](https://science.sciencemag.org/content/216/4544/360.1). *Science* 216(4544):360, 23 April 1982. DOI: [10.1126/science.216.4544.360](http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/science.216.4544.360)
6. <NAME>. [Scientists in the Soviet Union](https://www.nature.com/articles/292578a0). *Nature* 292:578, 13 August 1981. DOI: [10.1038/292578a0](https://doi.org/10.1038/292578a0)
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/03
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<issue_start>username_0: I wrote a 20+ page postdoc grant last year and was rejected, but decided to revise and re-apply with the same collaborators. I am probably *days* away from it being ready to re-submit, with slightly better odds this time around. In total it's gone through maybe 4-5 months of work with multiple drafts making the rounds among myself, the PI, and 2 other collaborators. However, I just got a postdoc offer that is too good to turn down (funded position at the perfect balance between learning new skills in a new system while flowing naturally from my PhD work). I know I will accept this new offer, so **how do I contact my collaborators on the grant we were writing to turn them down?** The timing is awkward as hell. Should I just submit it (since it's nearly ready) and then once the new offer is finalized (signed contracts, etc) tell them? Or, tell them now and propose that we sit on the proposal for 2-3 years to submit around when the first postdoc ends? I don't want to burn any bridges as the grant collaborators are also important names in the field and I'd like to keep future collaboration possibilities open.<issue_comment>username_1: I certainly wouldn't recommend sitting on the project for a number of years. Science moves on and so do the participants.
But, even if you have to take a different, lesser, role, you can probably move forward with the project.
I don't know if you need a "diplomatic" response, just an honest one. If you can stay connected with the project, if even as the "idea" person, it should be fine. But you will need to make a commitment that you will do "something" for the project even though you will be busy with the new duties. Collaboration with people from different institutions is normally a good thing.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The most diplomatic approach I see would be to tell your current collaborators that you are taking another position, but that they should feel free to move forward on the grant on their own, either by finding a new postdoc to fund with the proposal, or to morph the grant into something where one of them acts as PI, so their effort in helping you polish/shape the grant isn't lost.
Of course they *might* be willing to wait a few years for you to get around to working on the project with them again, but I doubt it. First, science moves on and someone could beat you to the punch or the proposal may simply be less relevant in 2-3 years. Second, who knows whether you will come back to them in 2-3 years?
If the research you're proposing is still a match with your new lab, and you think a productive collaboration could be formed between the two locations with you acting as the bridge, that's another great option. However, it would require substantial commitment from both labs, and you would likely need to work a substantial amount of overtime to get everything off the ground in addition to making adequate progress on the project your new boss is hiring you to undertake. Whether that's worth it to you depends on your confidence in the project, your collaborators, and other situation-specific variables.
If you decide to go that route, I would discuss it first with your current collaborators. They are the ones with the most invested in the project at this point, and they're the ones who should get to decide where, when, and how to move forward with or without you. Since the proposal is privilged information, only take the proposal to your new boss if your current collaborators have all signed off.
Upvotes: 0
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2020/08/03
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm writing my master thesis and I've created an initialism that has the letter *S* repeated three times in a row (the initialism is OSSSP and stands for *Optimization Search Space Scope Parameters*). In my opinion, the constant repetition of letters in initialisms, abbreviations, and acronyms makes them look ugly, but I couldn't find a well-accepted rule for what to do in such scenarios.
Turn my initialism in something like 'OS3P' is an option, but it seems to be naive and informal. If I knew how to do it for this specific case, choosing synonyms to replace the original expression would be an option too. Any other thoughts on this?<issue_comment>username_1: I doubt there's a rule. I agree that OSSSP is ugly. "OSP" for "optimum search parameters" with the full five word meaning when you first define it should work fine.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Turn my initialism in something like 'OS3P' is an option, but it seems to be naive and informal.
>
>
>
There's no rule against such kind of initialisms, and I wouldn't consider it naive either. Actually, there are standards designated in similar ways, e.g. the [I2C](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C2%B2C) and [I2S](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I%C2%B2S) data busses, also spelled I2C and I2S.
Upvotes: 3
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2020/08/03
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<issue_start>username_0: I graduated with a bachelor’s in the humanities last year. I would have preferred to continue studying, but I don’t have the money, and I have found very few opportunities for full funding where I live (in the EU). I’m originally from the States.
I work in IT, and given how the wages are at present, if I buckle down and exclusively focus on work, I could probably save up enough in 5-6 years that I could live completely off of conservative investments (index funds). I would work at a US company (where wages are high) and live in central Europe (where costs are low).
My question is: **from an academic point of view, does it seem reasonable that the benefits of self-funding my research would outweigh the disadvantages of delaying my career by at least 5 years?**
For the purposes of this question, please assume that my financial assumptions are realistic. I realize I will need to do my due diligence there.
**More details / clarifications:**
* The plan would be to attend graduate school in Europe after achieving financial independence, and then self-fund independent research after that. By "self-fund," I mostly mean paying my living expenses; my field does not require expensive equipment, travel, etc.
* My concern is that at 30, my motivation and ability to re-enter academia will be much less than it is now, both because I’ll be older and because I will have spent all of my youthful energy on non-academic work. Obviously, 30 is young, but still, I’ve been warned that motivation and capacity to learn really decreases from one’s 20s.
* I think one advantage of this idea is independence. I am in the humanities and have a far-left persuasion. I've heard that junior faculty have to research what their seniors want to see, rather than what they’re interested in. I recognize the need to consult senior colleagues., but having to censor myself would defeat the purpose of doing research in the first place, for me.
* It seems to me that academics have to waste time and give up autonomy in order to get grants. I could avoid all of this by self-funding.
* It's unfortunate that my IT work (which requires study and effort) has no overlap with my research interests. So, I would have to put research completely on hold until saving enough money, and then would never use my IT knowledge again.<issue_comment>username_1: It seems implausible that your plan can work: You can't hope to draw more than 5% off an investment per year, so even a moderate income of $50k (or equivalent in your country) will require you to accumulate about a million dollars. It seems improbable that you will be able to sock away this much money in 5-6 years, post-taxes, unless you have a pre-tax salary on the order of half a million dollars.
So what that means for your current situation is then that you'll have to save for far more than just 5-6 years -- and that you'll miss some of the best years of your life where you can establish a career, a family. In other words, I think that the premise in the title of your question is flawed and that you'll miss out on some of the best parts of your life.
(As a side note: In your 30s, you probably will want to have a partner and family at some point. It's conceivable that you could live of less than $50k per year if you're living by yourself frugally. But you can't do that if you have a family and children: They have needs that may exceed your own, and what's acceptable as a living abode for you may no longer be for your family.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I would share my perspective, though I am not from humanities but from CS.
Though you have multiple questions, the answer to all of them is actually fundamentally common.
But before going into that, I do not know what index funds are and earning enough in IT in 5 years so that after proper investment, you can retire is an assumption, which with high probability is going to fail. So first you need to carefully rethink that. I do not believe there is any investment without risk and experts advise investments should be diversified. Anyways, that is not a topic I know much of.
To all your questions, at the crux, the answer is you need to match with the right supervisor and find the right topic of research. You seek autonomy and you could get that if you want, which comes with caveats. A PhD requires multiple kinds of skills and you should ensure that you have those skills to complete your work -- something which you will not learn if you work with someone who gives you a lot of autonomy.
You should do a PhD if you feel the need for research as you are excited by an area of study. You say you can wait for 5 years to do that. That raises the question, are you driven enough right now? If so, you should already commence your research while working. Five years is a long time. If you are OK in not doing that for 5 years, you probably should never do it. Moreover, starting you research now could get you a funded PhD position. Though, I do not know how much fieldwork is required in your area as I have little idea about research in humanities. I am a CS guy and can do my research just with a good computer at home.
Other political factors and age are not something you should worry about. There are hundreds of studies and hundreds of opinions. We do not fully understand how our body and mind work. So why worry about something which comes from half-knowledge. You like something, you do it. If you are doing something which requires risk-taking and commitment, you need to ponder if you like it that much. There are hundreds of counter-examples for every study you will go through -- e.g. people finishing PhD in their 40s, 50s and so on.
So, imho, abandon this line of thought. The fundamental question is, are you driven by a research area and the research questions? Dig deeper and identify what motivates you. Only after finding an answer to that should one look for other things like money and age. And then should one consider which supervisor(s) and university you should make your place of research.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The financial plan is possible
==============================
If you have not already done it, find some related blogs or communities online. "Early retirement extreme" by Jacob <NAME> was one of the early ones and the book is still excellent, but generally searching about financial independence and how to achieve it should give plenty of results. Other website are more appropriate for asking for details about this.
It might not be easy, but it is possible. Most people live a very wasteful life. You need not to.
If you want to do a PhD, try to do it
=====================================
Apply to any funded study programmes you find and grants. I guess getting the master's degree might be the difficult part; PhD students are employed in a number of European countries and therefor paid. Contact possible advisors.
But if not, go get a job
========================
You can also apply to the IT jobs. If you can't get the academic position you want, continue applying while working and saving. Maybe you can do something on your free time to improve your changes of being accepted? Courses via open university studies, some research. Or maybe you can find an IT job that teaches you skills that would be useful in research and that many others do not have.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: It's possible - I know people who did similar things, and knowing that one is on a secure footing financially before going into a poorly-paid academic position is a great reassurance.
However, make sure you can *actually* bank $50k a year. There could be all sorts of unexpected expense, for example, taxes (this is probably the biggest one), partner/children, house/car, and so on.
A few more things worth pointing out:
* Your expenses might be different once you're in graduate school - you might have to relocate away from central Europe, for example.
* If you decide to go for graduate studies, there's a good chance you don't need to self-fund. After all, many programs (especially those in the US) offer their graduate students stipends. Your studies are effectively free in that case, and the $300k you save is simply a backup plan in case you drop out, funding expires, etc.
* Nothing stops you from drawing down the principal on the $300k. That's a substantial amount of money, much more than you might need as a safety net.
* [Note that being able to self-fund might not be an advantage in graduate admissions](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/45746/i-am-able-to-self-fund-a-phd-how-can-i-use-this-when-applying).
Upvotes: 0
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2020/08/03
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<issue_start>username_0: Assume that I have a math problem, I want to find results, theorems (as much as I could find, in maximum number) relevant to the problem, how can I do that **efficiently**?
For example, one way could be to look for the latest survey paper related problem, but I have seen that survey paper does not exist in every case.
Second example, is searching using key words, but it does not help in mathematics much, as search engines are not compatible with mathematical notation... is there any technique to optimize search related to the specific topic or problem?
Is would be nice to have a optimized flow-chart for searching, collecting and compiling related to the problem or topic.<issue_comment>username_1: No single strategy is likely to be optimal for all (math) searches. I would start with math key words (not symbols), both on the full web and in google scholar. You will get hits to math papers and books and stack exchange postings. Those links will suggest next steps.
You can also post a request for references at [math.stackexchange.com](https://math.stackexchange.com) if you are specific enough about the problem.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You're asking for the impossible. Almost every mathematician with more than a few papers has had the experience of submitting a paper or circulating it as a preprint and having some relevant work they didn't know about (and are not expected to have known about) pointed out to them.
If you are asking about one or two specific narrow questions or equations/formulas, then usually the best thing to do is to figure out who the friendliest expert who might know is, and ask them. Even if they don't know, they might refer you to another friendly expert. (Some subsubsubfields have friendlier experts than others, and this difference definitely influences the popularity of the subsubsubfield.)
If you're looking to break into a new subsubsubfield with lots of history without an advisor, then some subsubsubfields have friendly conferences, but, in general, ...uhh... good luck.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: A literature search might not be effective, but might work.
Start by finding one or a few articles that are as relevant as you can manage. Read their introductions and check for cited articles that are more relevant, or at least equally relevant.
Then check which artiles cite the article you are considering (from Semantic scholar og Google scholar, for example; both tend to link to PDF files when accessible). Do some of them seem promising?
Then you just iterate through the eternally expanding collection of interesting articles. As you become familiar with a subfield, you learn to ignore articles which are not of interest, which speeds things up, but this is still a long process, and it is only as good as the bibliographies in the relevant fields are. You want to start somewhere reasonably close to have any change of finding what you are looking after, too.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/08/04
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<issue_start>username_0: If you are in academia, you might have noticed that your contact information is being sold, sometimes you collaborate with a person with a very specific research line and background and get an invitation to review, submit to this journal you never heard of despite not working on these topics - I got one on veterans medicine - luckily they responded to my requests to not receive reviewer invitations anymore after a couple of times. But more disturbingly, when you submit to some journal, you are bombarded with "submit to us" emails citing the title of your work around the EXACT time of a revision or refusal. So this is clearly organized by an insider to the journal, and can be quite taxing and borderline manipulative, different to than say, when a predatory journal finds your arXiv preprint and starts randomly bombarding you.
Can I make a complaint about this to the publishers? I don't think this is ethical, and it is outright manipulative to get those aggressive emails just around the time of reviews and decisions.<issue_comment>username_1: If you are in Europe there may be a breach of GDPR, but
1. proving it would be next to impossible.
2. You likely signed a waiver buried in the small print of something that you ticked when you submitted.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: How do you know editors are selling your contact information? It's much more likely your contact information is being harvested. For example, if you've ever published a paper, your contact information might be available on that paper's front page. Or if you have a website.
For example suppose I want to contact <NAME>, one of the world's most well-known physicists right now. It's not hard at all: a simple search using Bing lands on [this webpage](https://phy.princeton.edu/people/edward-witten) with an email. Or I could search for some papers written by him, and odds are there'll be a published journal article that gives it in the contact information ([example](https://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/%7Ev1ranick/wittenpaper.pdf)).
Once your contact information is publicly available you can hardly expect to complain about others for allegedly selling it. You write that "when you submit to some journal, you are bombarded with "submit to us" emails citing the title of your work around the EXACT time of a revision or refusal" - but this is not proof either unless they are literally the only people who know about the existence of your paper. Did you make your work available on a preprint server? Or even if you didn't publish the preprint and didn't talk to your colleagues/supervisors/department: how do you know which of the many people who looked at your paper during review did it? You accuse the editors, it could also be the publisher or reviewers.
tl; dr: it's not going to work.
Upvotes: 0
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2020/08/04
| 2,713
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a student working on a doctoral thesis. We're working on a paper for which I've done most of the coding for the statistical analysis (the field is microbio/bioinformatics). I'm new to coding and the whole thing is more of an add on to my "real" career, which is medicine. Therefore, my style of coding is more than basic I'd say. Now I fear if we're handing in the manuscript plus the code to a journal for peer review it will be rejected or ridiculed. Is this possible?
edit: I use R to conduct a large statistical analysis. If someone would like to point out online learning resources, esp. for the fields of medicine/biology, I'd be very grateful.<issue_comment>username_1: You will not have a paper rejected for poor coding style. Particularly not in bioinformatics. Unless the paper is a tool development paper, the chance that a reviewer even looks at the code is not that high, and if they do, it will just be to check that its reasonable. In the outside case a reviewer might spot a bug, or poor assumption that actaully makes the result wrong, but they will not reject you for poor style.
However, having the code associated with the paper massively increases the chances that it will be useful to someone else.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Let me bring up a more serious issue that you don't ask about. Poor coding "style" can also mean poor "coding". And poor coding can hide errors, affecting the results. If your research results don't depend on the coding then it may not be an issue and there is probably no need to publish the code itself, beyond some description of it.
But if the research results depend in any fundamental way on the code, as it does in some cases, then you are at risk and your paper may be rejected, properly, for having insupportable results. But that won't be for the "style."
I don't know which is the case here, but you need to assure yourself that your results are sound. You might need to collaborate with a programmer to provide suitable testing of your code, and perhaps improve it.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: **It could happen in principle, but only in extreme cases, where the code is so bad that it impacts the reliability of the results.**
The code is a part of the research you are reporting on. In some fields (e.g. parts of computer science) it is often an key aspect of the research itself; in other fields (e.g. most natural sciences) it’s a more auxiliary part of the setup, about analogous to the lab equipment.
Either way, it’s a part of the research, and so in principle, a paper could be rejected because if it was too bad. However, “too bad” would have to be very bad indeed — typically if it had bugs that affected the results, or could have affected them. (Just as a paper might be rejected if a referee found errors due to contaminated lab equipment.) No referee will care about stylistic issues — the usual standard of most academic code is very variable indeed, and usually not very stylistically clean.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I would probably say that releasing the code is better than not.
In all likelihood the reviewer won't look at the code even if you include it, they may in-fact give you a little tick for including it even if they don't look at it since it would help with the reproducibility of your results by other people who do bother to look at it.
If they do look at it and don't like it there will be one of three outcomes:
1. They request more comments in the code
2. They say your code is not incorrect but it should be re-written for efficiency or style
3. They find a mistake in your code
I have ignored the case of them only running your code and not looking through it since it shouldn't give a different result when they run it compared to when you run it.
**1)** If they request more comments, fair's fair. Comments are important for readability, and in-fact you should make sure there are enough comments there now to make sure you'll quickly remember what you were trying to do with the code when you look at it in a few months time.
**2)** If they say you should improve the efficiency or style of your code then in all likelihood you can argue to the editor that only the code's results are relevant for the peer review, not the code style for your field. After that the editor will just ignore any similar comments from said reviewer. The exception is if they complain about your choice of variable/function names, which really falls more under 1) rather than 2). However if that happens then all that is involved is ctrl+f to find the bad variable names and give them a better, more explanatory, one.
**3)** The worst case scenario is they find a mistake in your code, in which case you can correct and check if/how this changes your results and modify your paper accordingly. The people who do this would probably include any reviewers who might try to reproduce your results on their own if they didn't have the code. In which case they may make different assumptions to you and therefore get different results which leads to a headache arguing over who's code is correct. Since they have your code you can now challenge them to point out the mistake if they just say your results don't match with my results.
Now it is possible that you will find nothing of interest after making this correction which makes it seem like all your work in the project was for nothing, but its important to remember you would have done all this work and written/verified your code before reaching this point, so in fact all you've lost is the time taken to write the paper, which while not good is still a learning experience for you so the next paper you write is done quicker/better. Furthermore it means you don't have a paper that is incorrect and leading to confusion when people try to replicate/extend the research that is tied to your name.
While this case sounds very bad it will **only occur if your code is wrong**. If you are confident in your code then its fairly safe to exclude this case, if you aren't confident in your code then you should check it until you are.
One last thing that you should keep in mind is that if you release your code you will want to provide a license with your code without the license nobody has a legal right to use it/extend it/write code based off reading your code. Or at the very least this falls into a gray area. Normally scientific code is released with a very open license (I think MIT license is the standard) but you can google to find out what types of licenses there are.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: You seek to balance the time and effort to develop the code to a degree that it is
* «good enough» to tackle the task you *currently* address in comparison with an earlier defined set of duties
* easy to maintain by you or (future) colleagues in your group / community, e.g. to add features you did not anticipate in the beginning
* documented well enough that others not directly interacting with you may understand how to use the program and its inner working
while programming not necessarily is your centre of activity.
In your context, I recommend programming classes specifically set up for an audience without prior exposure to computer science. Here, [software carpentry](https://software-carpentry.org/) is the first site which comes into my mind. Because of its collaborative character designing the courses ([survey](https://software-carpentry.org/lessons/), includes R), their classes exemplify best practices and standards you may use as *a* reference which suits places around the globe they taught and teach. It equally may introduce you to peers of similar interests to yours, too. As a result, your code quality improves and is more likely to be accepted by others.
Contrasting to on-line classes on sites like [edx.org](https://www.edx.org/), improvements of their material is not constrained to the duration of the class itself. Any interested may access their public repositories and suggest improvement.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: It sounds harsh but I sometimes used to cringe at the rats-nest of code some scientists would ask me for advice on.
If your development of the code has been linear rather than cyclical then I would bet my boots it contains significant errors.
A problem with R is that a lot of it is created by amateurs.
Compare this with the various libraries of cast-iron copper-bottomed (professional) routines that have stood the tests of time - the problem is of course licensing fees.
If you wrote your own statistical code then I suggest two ways forward:
1. Put aside your original code and rewrite it again from scratch with the benefit of hindsight. You will write it much quicker and much better the second time. When finished, run it on the data and see if you get the same results.
or
2. Get hold of proper tested routines and write a simple program around them. For example NAG routines. <https://www.nag.com/content/using-r-nag-library>
If the professional packages cost too much then find out if someone else has a license they will let you use as a temporary measure.
Or pay a keen undergrad to write the new code for you. Test theirs against yours.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: Bad coding style can lead to reviewers not reading the code. They usually are not obliged to read it and especially not to review it, but providing code can help to get good reviews because they are able to reproduce your results, which is a good thing.
I would say the most important thing is technical correctness, followed by an easy way to run it (try to use easy build systems and provide instructions for dependencies, when it is complicated to install them and maybe provide binaries in addition to the code).
Coding style comes last and many academic codes are not so easy to read. Especially mathematicians tend to use a lot of non-descriptive one-character variable names, which can only be understood when reading the corresponding paper at the same time.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: I am a software developer. I frequently work with research scientists, incorporating their equations and simulations into other programs. I originally had your same concerns, but from the other side (worried it would be detrimental that I only have a low level of knowledge about the underlying science). Someone explained to me that it was like learning a new language. To a native speaker, yes, you'll be harder to understand. It means a lot, though, that you're even making an effort to learn that language. People know you're new at it and they'll generally cut you a lot of slack.
Like you said, you're in the medical field. There's not an expectation that you're proficient in coding, or Russian literary history, or accounting, or anything else that you haven't been trained in. Research papers get published all the time that are clearly not in the author's native language. The writing is *rough* and hard to read, but the paper still gets published because the science is sound and that's really what it's all about. Your code is really no different. Unless your code is so bad that it makes the paper harder to understand or that it has bugs that cause incorrect results, I highly doubt anyone would think any less of it.
If you're *really* concerned about the code's quality, create a public repository on GitHub (or similar) and invite others to help clean it up. You might be surprised how much your code can be improved with nothing more than a half hour and a different pair of eyes.
As an aside, I've had a number of my scientist co-workers apologize for the quality of the code they give me. They're shocked when I tell them that their code actually looked *better* than the absolute garbage that some professional programmers generate. The very fact that you can see quality problems in your own code says that you're more skilled at it than you realize.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently finished an undergraduate program and obtained an engineer’s degree. I am working as a software engineer at an automotive company and I can only imagine myself having a career in “production”, meaning working for a private company for a while and eventually starting a company of my own or working as a freelancer. This is to say I have no interest in pursuing a career in academia.
In my country it is very common that people start a master’s degree immediately after finishing their bachelor’s degree. I did not enlist for a master’s program and I am still debating whether I find it worth doing several years from now or not.
However, recently the professor that acted as my advisor for my diploma project asked me whether I want to co-author a paper that would be presented at a conference and later submitted for publishing in a journal. The paper’s topic encompasses the topic of my diploma project and the professor said he would like to use parts of my project for this paper.
I like the idea of being a co-author on a published paper, but I suspect this will mean a lot of work and I wouldn’t want to do it if the only thing I got out of it was the achievement alone. Would there be anything to gain from doing this if I don’t intend to pursue a career in academia? If there is no good reason to do it, would it be appropriate to give the professor permission to use my project for his paper without asking to be listed as co-author?
EDIT: Thank you very much for all your answers and encouragement! I emailed the professor back telling him I was interested, but that the time I could invest was limited and he told me it would not be a problem since he will write the paper, my previous work being enough of a contribution already.<issue_comment>username_1: Congratulations! In my opinion, it is perfectly polite to write back and say that you are interested, but can't afford to make a significant time commitment to the project. Ideally, the professor will be happy to do the work himself, and your role would largely be to look over the finished product, sign off on it, and make suggestions or comments.
It's fine to invite the professor to write this paper without you as a coauthor. That said, since you did much of the work already, the professor might prefer that you be listed as an author.
If you are thinking of possibly applying to graduate school in the future, it would probably be a good thing to have a publication under your belt.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This focuses on the first part of the question, i.e., whether there could be anything to gain from writing the paper. The other answers cover the second part.
Some industry jobs in computer science require or prefer applicants to have a master’s or PhD degree, or some research experience. If you wish to apply for such jobs now or in the future, a paper could help you to:
1. Strengthen your application or make you eligible for such jobs.
2. Strengthen your application for a graduate program if you decide to apply for one later, in order to become eligible for such jobs.
3. Maintain good relations with your professor in order to get a strong recommendation letter for applications in point 2.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: It may be fine for the professor to write the paper without your cooperation, but NOT so fine to omit you as a co-author if the work is yours. You should be a co-author, though need not contribute further to the project.
A co-author need not be involved in every aspect of a publication. If you created it, you are rightfully an author. It isn't the "writing" itself that makes you an author. It is the intellectual work that makes it possible.
Let the professor know that you don't have the time to contribute more, and that you would be happy to review the work as it nears completion. This gives you a chance to know what is being said in your name. You need to approve the publication if you are co-author.
But omitting you is a form of plagiarism unless there are clear statements in the paper that it is based on your work. Your earlier work needs to be cited appropriately in the paper also.
But this situation seems to call for more than an acknowledgement.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: >
> Would there be anything to gain from doing this if I don't intend to pursue a career in academia?
>
>
>
Of course! You can put it in your CV. You might not need it for whatever job you're going for (are you sure you don't?), but you still have a rare opportunity that's worth bragging about which you give up by declining. Remember, the future is uncertain, and you cannot tell what you will need in the future.
For example here are some things which have come up unexpectedly for me:
* I once agreed to fill in for a friend for two weeks as a tutor. He wanted to switch to a full-time job but didn't want to leave his student hanging. I was not looking at a teaching career at the time, but four years later, I was able to cite this episode as teaching experience.
* I once put on my CV that I had some experience editing Wikipedia, which was relevant since I was applying for a publishing job. That later led to the company's marketing division asking me for help with navigating Wikipedia's conflict-of-interest policies (I was in the editorial department).
* And yes, I was in the same boat as you once: I graduated thinking I would never go for an advanced degree, but then changed my mind years later. I don't know how valuable the publication was, since my advisor wound up writing most of it, but it can't have had a negative impact.
Years from now, the time you spend to co-author this paper will look completely negligible. While it's possible there never are benefits, it's also possible that there will be, and that's when you want the paper under your belt.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: Others have already mentioned the benefits in terms of CV enhancement and similar, but there also are some direct benefits for a non-username_1 career:
* You get experience with communicating your results, be it in writing or public speaking (should you present at that conference). In particular you have the opportunity to get insight into the process of somebody who is (hopefully) experienced at this, namely your supervisor. While username_1 writing and talks have their peculiarities, this is not without value for communicating your work in other settings.
* You get insights into the mechanisms of the username_1 publishing process. This may be valuable if you should ever use the products of this process (which depends on your field).
* You learn how to handle independent evaluation of your work (peer review).
Of course, at the end of the day, there is no life experience that does not teach you a lesson or two, so you have to take into account:
* How much time does your supervisor expect you to invest?
* How would you spend that time and energy otherwise? (The difficult part is to be honest with yourself here.)
* Would this be tedious work for you or rather a hobby project?
* How stressful is life for you currently?
* How much have you learnt the skills in question already?
Ideally, this is a hobby project without much pressure where you occasionally spend a few hours of your free time to stay in the loop, write a small piece of text, produce a figure, give feedback on your co-authors’ writing, etc. and have to do not have to do any tedious organising work and do not find it difficult to motivate yourself.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: If you're looking for an unbiased expert opinion on whether the hours you'd have to put in are **worth it**, you're looking in the wrong place. A publication is valued in academia, but is it equally valued in the career path you envision? Though a publication will undoubtedly improve your CV, the time spent on it could have been spent on activities that improve your CV even more - activities that are perhaps more enjoyable to you as well.
So instead of asking on the StackExchange specifically designed for academia, I recommend you ask someone who knows the industry (and ideally role) that you want to work in. They will be able to give you a better view on how much a publication will advance your career.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: On co-authorship
----------------
I would suggest to have a look what **co-authorship** means and implies first, and this is not uniquely defined everywhere.
### Example of the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors
Some golden standards are in the so-called [Vancouver Recommendations](http://www.icmje.org/recommendations/), in full Recommendations for the Conduct, Reporting, Editing, and Publication of Scholarly Work in Medical Journals. This seems to have a general bearing beyond purely medical journals, and I like to quote this (boldface mine, uppercase theirs):
>
> The ICMJE recommends that authorship be based on the following 4 criteria:
>
> 1. Substantial contributions to the conception or design of the work; or the acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data for the work; AND
>
> 2. Drafting the work or revising it critically for important intellectual content; AND
>
> 3. Final approval of the version to be published; AND
>
> 4. Agreement to be accountable for all aspects of the work in ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
>
>
> In addition to being accountable for the parts of the work he or she has done, an author should be able to identify which co-authors are responsible for specific other parts of the work. In addition, authors should have confidence in the integrity of the contributions of their co-authors.
>
>
> **All those designated as authors should meet all four criteria for authorship, and all who meet the four criteria should be identified as authors. Those who do not meet all four criteria should be acknowledged** [...]
>
>
>
Your work should, at a minimum, be acknowledged. The overhead of being co-author is not necessarily huge, since you might already have done your fair share of work.
### Example of the publisher Elsevier
Also I know that Elsevier frowns upon *ghost authors* (unacknowledged contributors) and *guest authors* (idle contributors).
More specifically in their page on [Publishing Ethics, Role of Authors](https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/publishing-ethics#), they set a general standard for their wide range of journals (boldface mine):
>
> Authorship should be limited to those who have made a significant contribution to the conception, design, execution, or interpretation of the reported study. All those who have made **substantial contributions should** be listed as co-authors.
>
>
> Where there are others who have participated in **certain substantive aspects** of the paper (e.g. language editing or medical writing), they should be recognised in the acknowledgements section.
>
>
> The corresponding author should ensure that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-authors have **seen** and **approved** the final version of the paper and have **agreed** to its submission for publication.
>
>
> Authors are expected to consider carefully the list and order of authors before submitting their manuscript and provide the definitive list of authors at the time of the original submission. [...]
>
>
> Authors take collective responsibility for the work. Each individual author is accountable for ensuring that questions related to the accuracy or integrity of any part of the work are appropriately investigated and resolved.
>
>
> Individual journals may have particular definitions of authorship (e.g. medical journals may follow the ICMJE definition of authorship [1]), and authors should ensure that they comply with the policies of the relevant journal.
>
>
>
Indeed, not too far in spirit from the ICMJE, and referring to it. Mother-tongue speakers may want to elaborate on the relevance behind distinguishing between [substantial](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/substantial) contributions and [substantive](https://www.dictionary.com/browse/substantive) aspects.
On strategy
-----------
The underlying question whether you should engage in something solely after the expectation of a future benefit, rather than for the achievement in itself, is tricky.
In general, you reap what you sow, so long as the season and the harvest go well.
Many people like to encourage/discourage themselves or each other talking of low-/high-hanging fruits. It is really subjective and uncertain. You can think of few horizons though:
* **regret** when you realise you could have done it, but you didn't (the window of opportunity is closed);
* **remorse** when you realise you did do it, but you should not have done it (unlikely for a properly done job);
* **satisfaction** when you realise you could and did do it (a mild feeling will do);
* **relief** when you realise you could not do it and should not have done it (say because you moved on something so great and new, and you have lost nothing);
* **indifference**: where you just did not bother at all.
Where would you like it better to be when this opportunity is far in the past? Up to you. For sure it will depend on what happens in the meantime.
Thanks for sharing your dilemma.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: Generally speaking, if your advisor asks you to do something reasonable and relevant (which co-authoring a paper is), you should do it. Although this is especially good advice pre-degree, it also applies post-degree. My own advisor wanted me to take his advice after I obtained my PhD. Things like good references may depend upon it. This is simply respect to the advisor and also it will greatly help your goals.
Also a published work, even as a co-author can help your career. It looks good to people if as part of your degree program, you can show work worth publishing. This is especially true for those going into academia, but to a certain extend in business / industry. Obviously, this would depend on your geographic-region, and also on your field-of-study.
There would be certain ex**ceptions,** such as if you work in a national-defense scenario where secrecy is paramount. However, if you have a publicly-accessible LinkedIn account (or similar) or mention your work publicly on social media such as Facebook, the above secrecy-consideration does not apply.
Writing papers is a good experience, though somewhat daunting until you have done it. I would expect that if you do co-author the paper, you will probably be glad you did it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: As an engineer, who has never worked in academia, I would recommend doing it with a limit on your time commitment. It is a great CV enhancer, much of engineering is writing and communicating. This will be especially important if you strike out on your own. The skills to be a good engineer are not the same as the skills to be a good freelancer.
Most employers are impressed with publishing credits for engineers because of the ability to communicate.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: For me, this, like so many questions, has a simple answer.
If you are not sure about something, ask the person *involved*.
In this case that person would be your professor. You need to know the level of commitment required of you. Here is my suggestion (to be put in your own words of course).
*Thank you for your email/whatever,
Thank you so much for all your help and guidance throughout my studies. That sounds like a great idea. However I hope you don't mind if I ask what commitment you would need from me. I'm asking because I want to pursue a career in industry rather than further education and I don't feel able to commit much time to the project. If I could, I'd waive my authorship in favour of you but I understand that is not allowed. Can you suggest the best way forward?*
This throws the responsibility on the prof to come up with a solution that is beneficial to all. If s/he wants it enough, s/he'll find a way.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_11: Folks answering on this site may have a bias towards publishing, so let's talk about this in a way which abstracts from the paper a bit.
Getting a job requires:
* Demonstrating an ability to get things done.
* The ability to talk about the things you have done.
Getting parts of your undergrad work published provides evidence that you can get things done. Saying you did X project/research during your undergrad is very different from saying that you did X project/research with Y quantifiable outcome---a (peer reviewed?) paper in this case. The latter demonstrates that you weren't dinking around. You built something that made it into the broader world. Any potential employee who can demonstrate that has a leg up.
But when you apply to your next job your current job will supply sufficient evidence of that, right?
Not necessarily.
Many jobs require you to sign NDAs which make you unable to speak about what you've done or require you to be vague about it and your role in it. In contrast, since this is username_1 publishing, once the paper is out you're free to discuss any and all details about the work. This freedom gives you the opportunity to dive deeply into technical problems you solved in a way that might not be possible with your industry work.
In summary, having a number of completed, quantifiable projects you can talk about in-depth can only help in future interviews.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I found few professors having supervised more than 200 masters theses 'each' in the past 14-15 years. When looked at these theses, I found that out of 200 theses supervised by a professor, more than 100 works were based on the same idea:
1. theory is same
2. method of analysis is same
3. results and discussion are alike (similar)
4. proposed future works are same
Only the data sets are different, that is in thesis 'x', he used data in the range 1-2, in thesis 'y', he used data in the range 2-3 and so on. In some cases, I found that even the data set in a particular range, say, 1-2, collected by different filters/methods were distributed to 5-6 students and asked to do the same same work. Even after 14-15 years, the future works to be done have not changed. The proposed future works are appearing same from one thesis to another. I noticed the same behavior in the remaining theses also. The whole bunch of theses were just based on 2-3 ideas.
So, the question is: if such type of works repeatedly supervised is good or bad. My personal feeling is that it is a bad practice. Even in masters thesis there should be newness.<issue_comment>username_1: In some places, a masters is mostly based on coursework. A thesis, if even required, can be pretty pro-forma. It can just be intended as a learning experience for the student, rather than a serious attempt to create anything new. My own situation was a bit different, but the thesis was really just a review of a small area of math, bringing a couple of ideas together. It broke no new ground, but was more like a literature review and summary than anything else.
Other places the standards are different.
The case you describe seems like an outlier, actually, but it might be perfectly acceptable for the student to cover old ground and still have validity, depending on what they need to do. Even "going through the motions" on a research project might have some value in a "coursework" based MS.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: In the UK there are 3 types of master's degree. An MA/MSc is usually what is called a "taught masters" or post-graduate taught (PGT). An MRes is referred to as a "masters by research" or postgraduate-research (PGR), and then you have "integrated masters" where the master's degree is part of an extended undergraduate. The title of that degree tends to depend on the subject, so in Engineering, its MEng, in biology its MBiolSci etc. Integrated masters can be anything on the spectrum from pure course work to pure research.
A taught master's program will generally have research dissertation which makes up around a third of the credits. But the aim of this is to
1. Give the students experience in the practical/technical aspects of carrying out research (how to pipette etc).
2. To teach them to plan a well thought out study
3. To critically assess their own findings
4. To situate their results in the context of the field.
None of these learning outcomes require "newness" as such.
Even in a masters by research, the aim is generally to prepare a student for a PhD by giving them the correct skills - they are their to learn something. Although I would expect more novelness in an MRes, many of the aims can be met with a project that is only minimally novel.
I also think you might be surprised that many PhD projects are created by the professor rather than the student.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: This is a symptom of bad supervisory practice.
While it is true that Masters students are not in general required to conduct original research, they should be taught the state of the art. In this case the supervisors have taught the same theory and methods repeatedly for 14 years. This indicates that the supervisors are not continually improving their supervision. Continuous improvement is good practice.
It seems unlikely the best theory and methods appropriate for masters students have not changed in 14 years.
Furthermore, nobody can provide quality supervision to more than 10 simultaneous masters students while also teaching. If these students received good supervision, some very unusual scheduling was involved.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: This is a poor supervisory practice. Unfortunately, it becomes increasingly common in Universities, particularly in countries with strong marketalization of Higher Education (e.g. US, UK). Students are treated as customers, and academics are assessed and promoted based on their "efficiency" in terms of the number of students they supervise, not the quality of education they provide. The pressure on academics to supervise more students is constantly increasing, and they rarely have enough time to meaningfully prepare to supervisory meetings. It is not surprising that many academics find it convenient to reuse the same projects over and over again.
UPD: Answering comments, I want to clarify why this practice is detrimental to students' learning. Project-based learning attempts to recreate an authentic experience of doing something, then encourages students to reflect on this experience and learn from it. The authenticity of experience is the key for success. However, after some repetitions the supervisor knows all good and bad ways around the project, and unconsciously projects them to the student. Students don't have the same feeling of *terra incognita* in their research. Of course, realistically, we can't expect each master project to be completely new, but it's still important that the supervisor has not rehearsed it by heart yet.
A closely related, but not exactly the same reason is potential plagiarism. All theses are published and could be dug out by students. I have seen some supervisors who passed good theses from past years to new students to "get the style", effectively encouraging plagiarism. But they had way to many students to supervise and no time to do it properly. Surely, copying from someone else's paper is a poorer learning experience for students compared to doing research themselves.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: The case you describe seems extreme but I have known a lab that did somethnig similar. They had a huge task to do, analysis to conduct on *all* existing genes, and each master thesis with them tackled a fraction of that task, one gene.
It was a win-win situation: they got forward on the project and the students could tackle an interesting non trivial task much easier because they had a solid pipeline in place.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/05
| 946
| 3,973
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<issue_start>username_0: My university had a quite strange rule that set an upper limit 78 on the average grades for each course. To be more specific, even if you're the number one student in your school, your GPA will still be lower than many other applicants who are applying for grad schools.
My question is **"Should I address this problem in my Statement of Purpose?"**
P.S. the official transcript does mention this rule, but I'm afraid that admission offices will overlook these tiny tiny texts.<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, mention it, but don't make a big deal out of it. A single sentence like
>
> "With regards to my transcript, please note that the lower averages in
> my first three semesters were due to the University's 78% rule, that is fully
> described elsewhere on the transcript."
>
>
>
Any more than that will look like you are whining or trying to make excuses.
But, this statement can be very helpful to those who have to read your application package.
Source: I've read many application packages.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I am assuming this is US. I want to suggest an alternative. Kindly ask your references to add the situation in their recommendations. I don't think username_1's suggestion is exactly the right one, simple because of [this answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/141054/112033). From questions regarding SOPs and from some personal experience I understand that at least some admission bodies in US universities do:
1. only glance over SoPs
2. Eliminate a significant (sometimes even more than half) of the applicants based on numbers (gpa, gre etc.) without even looking at anything in the application.
Now, nothing you can do right now that can help you in the second part except for scoring really high on your standardized tests. Even that won't be that useful as anonymous physicist points out in the comments. I heard people joking about getting someone to read your application as being the hardest part of an application (in US). You will need to somehow manage that. Probably good portion of your applications will end before a pair of eyes can lay on it. When, if, you get over that stage, 1 applies. They will read your recommendations more carefully than your SoP almost always.
Also, I would strongly suggest looking into graduate programs in other countries. I had much better experiences with European ones. They were always free and much easier to apply (in my case). Instead of dumping another 100 hours to a menial test, I reckon you can find and apply to 20-30 suitable master's programs in Europe.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: If your class rank is good (first?) but your GPA is low, simply highlight your class rank in your application. If your university does not disclose your class rank, then this won't work.
Admissions committees know that grading standards vary between institutions. Just give the committee context for your achievements. Compare your performance to the average.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: Could you get a letter from your university that such a rule existed? I believe they should definitely give you that. You can attach this letter with your applications.
And if it is possible for your teachers to evaluate your grades without that rule and write another letter for you independently, then it would be fantastic. I doubt though, that this is possible. You could always try.
And the other suggestions that you could ask your referees to write it in their letters will work too.
Do not worry too much about it. Grades is just one aspect which the admission committee considers. There are many other parameters which are considered.
By the way, the earlier rule was silly. I wonder who came up with it. I once had same problem in high school. I got angry and complained to the school principal. I was able to get it overturned as I lost the first rank in my class due to such a rule.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: 0
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2020/08/05
| 451
| 1,844
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<issue_start>username_0: Firstly, I am aware of [this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/65717/can-i-still-try-to-publish-my-work-if-my-algorithms-results-are-not-as-good-as) question, but: 1) there is no accepted answer there and 2) my situation is not as good as the OP's in that question.
Being new to research, I have always thought it is about the new knowledge you create. Many times, you follow a theory to find out that it doesn't work. I had thought it is OK to publish such findings and to provide a constructive criticism thereof, but recently I got a second rejection which made me revisit myself.
*From your practical experience, is it worthy submitting in such cases? if not, how is this situation best dealt with provided that much time and effort are usually invested therein?*
I assume it makes sense to submit in principle but I am wondering whether the academic reality agrees with such an assumption.<issue_comment>username_1: There is a big problem called [publication bias](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Publication_bias): only studies that "find something" get published. In part this bias is due to journals being less likely to accept papers with negative findings. In part this is due to researchers not even submitting the papers. So, the fact that you submitted those papers is an important and positive step you have taken to (try to) reduce publication bias. However, it is an uphill battle.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Can you make a good theory on why it doesn't work? How it fails? When it fails? Can you extend your showcase to show that? I think this would be more interesting.
The truth is, otherwise it is difficult because far too many people are reducing papers to state of the art results. I don't approve of this but this seems to be far too common.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]
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2020/08/05
| 504
| 1,956
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<issue_start>username_0: How does the process of collaboration in math work ? Do mathematicians like to share their problems ? Can I do this by e-mail ? How to ask mathematicians if they want to collaborate in a math project ? I'm still learning more advanced math but these are questions I had in mind and didn't know where to ask.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Do mathematicians like to share their problems ?
>
>
>
Usually yes. Published papers will often have open questions or conjectures to which authors worked on / or think worthwhile but does not have a solution. These conjectures sometimes even have corollaries provided by the authors.
Mathematicians also sometimes just "hand out" open problems that arise in their research, write them on their webpage or public chat rooms.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: **Comments**
It is still true that a majority of mathematics papers have only one author.
It could be that your first chance to collaborate in mathematics will be the collaboration between you and your Ph.D. advisor.
After others get to know your publications, they may be willing to collaborate with you.
Two (or more) mathematics students at the same university, who see each other frequently, will likely talk about mathematics; that may occasionally develop into a result worthy of publication.
---
addition on : "a majority of mathematics papers have only one author."
user3482749 doubts it. I still think it is true.
Searching for evidence. MathSciNet has 57,667 journal papers for the year 2000. There is a "Sort by number of authors", but I did not get it to show me beyond the first 2,000 ... that was still in the one-author portion of the list.
Trying a smaller sample.
I arbitrarily choose MSC classification 20, journal papers published in year 2000.
Total number: 1307.
Number with zero authors: 2. {one erratum, one corrigenda}
Number with one author: 783. About 60 percent.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/08/05
| 1,499
| 6,398
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<issue_start>username_0: I submitted it yesterday, after sending it to a repository. Then, a colleague gave a quick read and found some narrative issues, i.e., our abstract seems to be claiming something we did not do and we did not give much importance for some classical results in our introduction. He pointed out that any reviewer who knows those classical results will raise a red flag when reading our paper. So, I want to withdraw it, if possible, change the text and re-submit it to the same journal. How bad it is to do that?
Just another question:
>
> How bad it is to simply e-mail the editor asking for a chance of re-submission due to some issues with the paper itself?
>
>
>
It is a mathematics journal and the status is currently "with editor".
Thanks in advance!<issue_comment>username_1: I am a co-editor of an interdisciplinary journal (social sciences/humanities). I would rather an author withdraw and get the piece into shape than for us to either read it and have to desk reject, or to send to reviewers and they flag it. It's mildly embarrassing but like so many things in academia (and life), you will care more than they will care – it is trivial for me to return a paper to an author.
If the editorial management system allows you to withdraw the paper, even better.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I once withdrew a paper shortly after submission (IIRC a week or so; found a mistake in the data analysis code and said so to the editor).
The editor basically answered thank your for letting us know\* and that if we resubmit within the next so many weeks, they'd count it as revised submission that keeps the original submission date, if we need longer to fix everything we should do so as entirely new submission.
That was basically all there was to it - and really much less painful than one would think beforehand.
---
I'd recommend being open to the editor about the reason: someone showing up with "I made a mistake and need to correct it" is trustworthy.
Also, if I understand you correcty, you got an important comment on the preprint. If that is the case, you may tell the editor that you got an important comment about ... on the public preprint which you think should be addressed, and ask whether they prefer you to this now or to bundle it in with the revision.
---
\* I don't think a reviewer would have had an earthly chance to spot the mistake although it did have consequences for the results (didn't change the broader picture, but they were visible with the naked eye). In my field back then publishing the code alongside was unknown.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: You should withdraw it immediately. Reviewers are not paid for their time in reading your paper, though they have other motives to do it. So if you withdraw while it is with the editor you save everybody's time, most importantly, yours.
It is indeed careless of you to have not got it proofread before submitting. But better to fix the mistake right away.
Be polite and smart in writing a withdrawal letter to the editor. And do get it proofread by your friend.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Sounds like the real question is, "there are some minor issues in my submission, how do I fix them?" There's nothing wrong per se with withdrawing so you can submit a corrected version.
In theory reviewers are not supposed to reject you for errors that can be corrected, such as inaccuracies in the abstract that can easily be rewritten. So if it's something that can be easily fixed, it won't matter that much in the end and you will probably still get an opportunity to fix it after reviews. Granted, reviewers are humans and one error may bias them to judging you more harshly, so it depends somewhat on how nice your reviewers will be. But you can never escape from the human factor anyway.
I think most journals will not mind the retraction too much, especially so soon after submission and if you phrase it diplomatically (don't make it sound like you didn't bother proofreading before firing it off). Some may even have a submission system that makes it a non-issue for the staff. But it is also possible that the retraction creates a bunch of hassle and stress for the editor, who may have already done work to process your submission and assign reviewers. The submission is not supposed to be a living document, but your final draft. Of course being a draft, it's not perfect -- the reviewers are there to help you with that. But if you keep withdrawing and resubmitting over minor errors, it is annoying to the editor. And if you have already withdrawn and resubmitted once, who's to say when you will be satisfied and stop "fixing" it?
It's really not possible to say from your question whether the error is minor or not. If it is minor, don't bother. You will get a reviewer comments telling you that part is wrong, and you can submit a response saying you rewrote it. If you believe the error truly sinks your whole paper, then you probably do want to withdraw, as reviewers would recommend outright rejection. But it seems like you believe that it can be easily fixed, and the reviewers will probably have the same opinion.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: >
> "He pointed out that any reviewer who knows those classical results
> will raise a red flag when reading our paper."
>
>
>
Then it would be in your best interest to withdraw the paper immediately (the sooner the better) and re-submit once you've fixed the problem, and perhaps write a genuine and truly apologetic (but not too long) email to the handling editor.
>
> "Is it bad to withdraw a manuscript one day after it has been submitted?"
>
>
>
Indeed it's bad that you are in this situation. This is what happens when you rush. There is a saying: "haste is waste". The editor might remember that you once submitted a paper and retracted the submission within 24 hours, and it certainly doesn't look great (the most successful academics are very careful people, and this does not happen to them, at least in the vast majority of the papers they submit).
But there is nothing specifically bad/worse about withdrawing the submission now that you're already in this situation. If you follow the advice in my first paragraph, the editor is likely to forgive you and you can just take this as a learning experience :)
Upvotes: 2
|
2020/08/05
| 2,232
| 9,186
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<issue_start>username_0: Here are some things that are well-established:
1. Being a PhD student is a (albeit, temporary) career-path with the **poorest education-level/income ratio in the United States.** It has been estimated that [Post-Doc salary is comparable to junior librarian.](https://cheekyscientist.com/why-a-postdoctoral-researcher-position-pays-less-than-a-librarian-salary/), and PhD salary is comparable to a waiter.
Note: *Average salary of a waiter entry level positions start at $21,158 per year while most experienced workers make up to $39,585 per year. A junior librarian makes less than $50,000/yr.*
2. The opportunity cost is also stark compared to people who are similarly educated in STEM but left for industry early, with a popular estimate of around 1 million USD by the end of the PhD (5-6 years) (which might not include time-value of money, investments, and retirement savings).
3. Despite academia as a whole being a multi-billion/trillion dollar industry, the administration refuses to raise the stipend for PhD student, leading it to stagnate on average 25,000-30,000 USD/yr for the last three decades if not more.
It is pretty clear to me that most (but not all) PhD programs are path to an enlightened poverty, with STEM PhD faring better than Humanities PhD, and industry-demanded STEM PhD faring better than say biology or pure math.
However, I wonder if this opportunity cost has gotten even **even worse** over the past few decades due to some factors such as,
1. rising competitive (on the global scale),
2. job/housing insecurity,
3. a sizable aging but not retiring faculty,
4. skill-based labor market heavily favored over degree-based,
5. rising cost of living in almost every part of the globe.
Take a current example, due to Covid19 many industry stocks (say airline) are at their lowest point, however, most PhD students do not have the money to invest hence will not likely to reap the benefit. Another example is in software engineering: it is pretty well established salary was good about a decade ago but now the supply is high enough for the wage to fall, most PhD students also miss this "golden" period. Almost all major tech companies (such as Stackexchange, minus IBM, Microsoft, Apple) are founded/launched by people around 2000s, we can firmly say that period is over. Yet another is encroachment of industrial research on academic topics. Google, Twitter, Facebook and various other large tech conglomerates dominates all major AI references in 2020, which makes research on a PhD stipend look pointless
I sometimes take a look at these so-called industry-academia collaboration and wonder out-loud if this isn't just some scheme that seeks to exploit underpaid and highly motivated graduate students.
**Objectively speaking, has the opportunity cost gotten higher over the years? If (or not) so why?**<issue_comment>username_1: **In general** one should not try to get PhD if they are not interested in an academic career. There are national differences but with globalizing practises, increasingly being a doctor is no longer what it used to be. A hundred years ago in Europe is relevant because the transition has been long. Not long time ago there were no Post Docs. And there used to be even Licentiate degrees between the Master and Doctor.
PhD used to be more about creating a master piece to showcase ones vast knowledge accumulated in tens of years of experience as a researcher. Nowadays it is just an extension to education. Now there has been about a generation of people for whom the latter is true. Comparing free education with salary against someone actually working makes no sense. Before getting into a tenure track you cannot compare the industry and academia one to one. Once one is in a tenure track is there a similar job agreement with administrative responsibilities.
But overall no one should compare relatively free academic pursuit of knowledge with resource constrained for-profit pursuit of corporate side. In academia you are meant to only explore and in the business world exploit and minimize the exploration. A novel idea is not valued if you cannot turn it into a product. Industry-academia collaboration is about common goals. The work they do is different so you cannot compare the opportunities. In business world you learn production skills. They are better for production. In academia you learn about the theory. Which allows you to build more theory. In academia you are more free to pursue what you are interested. In the industry you are given the task you need to do. Some people give value to that freedom. It is not all about salary.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The opportunity cost could be calculated only ex-post. So if you take a 1000 PhD students and determine their total earnings 5 years after their education vis-a-vis the alternatives, says a software engineer. And do a statistical analysis, only then, could you come to a conclusion. Perhaps you can look for such data and do the analysis if you want to be rigorous.
But that might not really be highly useful because there will be outliers and most of the choices we make in life, assuming we are motivated to be successful, is to become an outlier. We make decisions to pursue higher degrees like PhD with varying goals.
Most of the PhD aspirants wish to find a career in education -universities and colleges - requiring to fulfil the eligibility criteria. In their case, there is no value in calculating the opportunity cost as that is the career path which suits them.
Another group of aspirants pursue a PhD with the hope of building something which can bootstrap their career in innovation and entrepreneurship. You build a very good idea in academia and launch it as a product. Google is one such example. Silicon Valley is filled with such instances. If successful, the opportunity cost is not high. If you fail in this goal and then get back to the industry there is a high opportunity cost-- with a good chance that your boss was your junior in high school.
There is another notable group of PhD aspirants who pursue a degree in the hope of migrating to a newly developed country with better living standards. The host country either runs the universities, more as a business, raking in billions of dollars in tuition fees and then letting these PhD students work in the industry -- where they do not really mind doing even jobs which have got little to do with what they did in their PhD. Again, in this case the opportunity cost is very low -- considering their objective.
Going deeper into your question, or rather now addressing your actual question, has the opportunity cost changed over time. The opportunity cost has, with time, reduced, imo. I have known students who extend their Master's thesis into PhD and finish the whole work in less than 4 years after their Bachelors. In Europe, the average PhD duration is increasingly tending to three years though it is still 7-8 years in the US. Naturally, the opportunity cost in the US is high but so are the opportunities.
You can see that the opportunity cost is not just a function of time but also the region of the world and the ability/goal of the PhD aspirant.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think the answer is a relatively clear yes, at least if you compare to 30+ years ago.
First of all, the rise of software development, mathematical finance, and more recently data science, means that at least some STEM majors have much higher salaries in industry than was possible 30 years ago. I think this change is at least as important a part of the story as an changes within academia.
Second, academia has been in strong decline in terms of availability of good jobs for at least half of those 30 years. Universities were growing due to the baby boom and increases in the portion of students going to college, and has been in crisis since those trends stopped. Sometimes this crisis is more acute (the financial crisis, the end of the Soviet Union, covid) but it’s ongoing even during the less acute phases. As a result there’s fewer jobs in academia with tenure track lines replaced by insecure and poorly paying positions.
All that said, I think “enlightened poverty” is wildly overstating the situation, and could only be said by someone who has no idea what actual poverty is. If being extremely wealthy is important to you, then yes doing a PhD is a terrible idea. But even PhD wages are not poverty, and for many people the goal is to make enough money while having a job they enjoy. With that viewpoint the opportunity cost isn’t so important. If you have enough and are happy why waste time being jealous of people who have more? Even if you go into industry there’s always going to be some people who make even more, so constantly comparing yourself to the perfect sequence of financial decisions is not a productive way to look at life. Of course, if you do think you’d like both jobs it’s very justifiable not to do a PhD because you’d prefer more money, and I do think the changes over the last generation means that choice is right for more people than it was previously.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
|
2020/08/06
| 1,614
| 6,940
|
<issue_start>username_0: I have recently applied for a grant. The specific application consisted of a 3 page-pdf document and an online application form. The 3 page pdf document is solid (at least from my point of view), and there are no grammatical mistakes or typos. Unfortunately, in the form, I made some minor grammatical mistakes/typos. These are, however, very few and far between. For example, mistakenly not adding a word in the sentence, forgetting to add/type a verb in the sentence etc.
Do you think that such errors/typos albeit very few, in general, can be detrimental towards the outcome of the application?<issue_comment>username_1: **In general** one should not try to get PhD if they are not interested in an academic career. There are national differences but with globalizing practises, increasingly being a doctor is no longer what it used to be. A hundred years ago in Europe is relevant because the transition has been long. Not long time ago there were no Post Docs. And there used to be even Licentiate degrees between the Master and Doctor.
PhD used to be more about creating a master piece to showcase ones vast knowledge accumulated in tens of years of experience as a researcher. Nowadays it is just an extension to education. Now there has been about a generation of people for whom the latter is true. Comparing free education with salary against someone actually working makes no sense. Before getting into a tenure track you cannot compare the industry and academia one to one. Once one is in a tenure track is there a similar job agreement with administrative responsibilities.
But overall no one should compare relatively free academic pursuit of knowledge with resource constrained for-profit pursuit of corporate side. In academia you are meant to only explore and in the business world exploit and minimize the exploration. A novel idea is not valued if you cannot turn it into a product. Industry-academia collaboration is about common goals. The work they do is different so you cannot compare the opportunities. In business world you learn production skills. They are better for production. In academia you learn about the theory. Which allows you to build more theory. In academia you are more free to pursue what you are interested. In the industry you are given the task you need to do. Some people give value to that freedom. It is not all about salary.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The opportunity cost could be calculated only ex-post. So if you take a 1000 PhD students and determine their total earnings 5 years after their education vis-a-vis the alternatives, says a software engineer. And do a statistical analysis, only then, could you come to a conclusion. Perhaps you can look for such data and do the analysis if you want to be rigorous.
But that might not really be highly useful because there will be outliers and most of the choices we make in life, assuming we are motivated to be successful, is to become an outlier. We make decisions to pursue higher degrees like PhD with varying goals.
Most of the PhD aspirants wish to find a career in education -universities and colleges - requiring to fulfil the eligibility criteria. In their case, there is no value in calculating the opportunity cost as that is the career path which suits them.
Another group of aspirants pursue a PhD with the hope of building something which can bootstrap their career in innovation and entrepreneurship. You build a very good idea in academia and launch it as a product. Google is one such example. Silicon Valley is filled with such instances. If successful, the opportunity cost is not high. If you fail in this goal and then get back to the industry there is a high opportunity cost-- with a good chance that your boss was your junior in high school.
There is another notable group of PhD aspirants who pursue a degree in the hope of migrating to a newly developed country with better living standards. The host country either runs the universities, more as a business, raking in billions of dollars in tuition fees and then letting these PhD students work in the industry -- where they do not really mind doing even jobs which have got little to do with what they did in their PhD. Again, in this case the opportunity cost is very low -- considering their objective.
Going deeper into your question, or rather now addressing your actual question, has the opportunity cost changed over time. The opportunity cost has, with time, reduced, imo. I have known students who extend their Master's thesis into PhD and finish the whole work in less than 4 years after their Bachelors. In Europe, the average PhD duration is increasingly tending to three years though it is still 7-8 years in the US. Naturally, the opportunity cost in the US is high but so are the opportunities.
You can see that the opportunity cost is not just a function of time but also the region of the world and the ability/goal of the PhD aspirant.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think the answer is a relatively clear yes, at least if you compare to 30+ years ago.
First of all, the rise of software development, mathematical finance, and more recently data science, means that at least some STEM majors have much higher salaries in industry than was possible 30 years ago. I think this change is at least as important a part of the story as an changes within academia.
Second, academia has been in strong decline in terms of availability of good jobs for at least half of those 30 years. Universities were growing due to the baby boom and increases in the portion of students going to college, and has been in crisis since those trends stopped. Sometimes this crisis is more acute (the financial crisis, the end of the Soviet Union, covid) but it’s ongoing even during the less acute phases. As a result there’s fewer jobs in academia with tenure track lines replaced by insecure and poorly paying positions.
All that said, I think “enlightened poverty” is wildly overstating the situation, and could only be said by someone who has no idea what actual poverty is. If being extremely wealthy is important to you, then yes doing a PhD is a terrible idea. But even PhD wages are not poverty, and for many people the goal is to make enough money while having a job they enjoy. With that viewpoint the opportunity cost isn’t so important. If you have enough and are happy why waste time being jealous of people who have more? Even if you go into industry there’s always going to be some people who make even more, so constantly comparing yourself to the perfect sequence of financial decisions is not a productive way to look at life. Of course, if you do think you’d like both jobs it’s very justifiable not to do a PhD because you’d prefer more money, and I do think the changes over the last generation means that choice is right for more people than it was previously.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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2020/08/06
| 5,432
| 22,268
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<issue_start>username_0: My apologies in advance for asking such a trivial question. My concerns may not be as urgent or serious as some of the others on here, but I have been worrying about this for some time now.
My life since starting my PhD has can typically be summed up as waking up early, getting to the office about 7AM and working on some part of my research until 5PM before going home to study some more theory. I adore my field - I really think I'm the luckiest person ever for having the opportunity to work on such interesting problems.
However, I often get comments about my work-life balance being unhealthy. People often tell me to get a hobby that isn't related to physics or mathematics. In fact, a friend even brought me evidence that the vast majority of highly successful scientists, including my scientific heroes, have had a creative hobby.
I've honestly tried to maintain a hobby but I keep getting pulled back into my old routine. The progression typically goes like this:
* I start a hobby, say drawing.
* I draw consistently for a week or two. I even buy a course book for drawing and work through it. I'm making progress, all is great.
* By the third week, I'm plagued with thoughts that slowly erode my motivation to draw. Thoughts about how I could be studying complex analysis, or working on that atomic configuration generation code...
* By week four I've forgotten that I was trying to draw in the first place and am now back to the old routine.
Yet, as my friends point out, the evidence really is against me here. A lot of successful scientists *do* have hobbies outside of their work. It strikes me that the problem might be a bit more deep-seated: it may just be that I've developed a very unhealthy work ethic that'll cause me to crash and burn down the line.
As academics, how important would you consider hobbies as a part of your lifestyle? Would you consider the cultivation of a field completely unrelated to your own to be an essential component to an academic career - or, as my eloquent colleague puts it, being human in general?<issue_comment>username_1: It is very important that work-life balance be available to people who need it. Most PhD students and most scientists need some form of balance but exact needs vary.
You are not obligated to adopt someone else's idea of balance. There is no evidence that what works for other people will work for you.
Healthy diet and exercise are strongly correlated with better health and longer lifespan. There is very likely a causal relationship there. But I don't think that's what you were asking.
>
> Would you consider the cultivation of a field completely unrelated to your own to be an essential component to an academic career?
>
>
>
No. Common, normal, and fair, but not necessarily essential.
>
> being human in general?
>
>
>
That's more of a religious question than an academic question.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Yes, maintaining a work-life balance is important. But what the balance entails changes from person to person, and from day to day. The questions below may serve as prompt to facilitate the balancing.
Do you think you have a good grasp on how you are doing in general, emotionally and in terms of your energy level and motivation? Or can't you even tell? How often do you feel exhausted or tired? How often do you feel lonely or down? How is your sleep? Do you mostly enjoy what you do? Do you feel what you do has a purpose?
When it comes to hobbies, I noted that your approach seems rather solitary, cerebral, and goal-oriented: Learn something, using a book, with a specific outcome. Perhaps you might consider something more physical, more social, and more intrinsically enjoyable as counterbalance. For example dancing, team sports, bird watching, hiking, playing music in a band, (urban) gardening etc.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: If you're happy and well-adjusted by your own yardstick, I think you're doing fine.
The only dark cloud I see is that your life and work as a grad student will change after graduation. For example, if you follow an academic career path, you will have to face that in the future it is likely your students who will be doing the really fun work! While many professors keep a foot in the lab or what have you, a professor's main job typically isn't doing bench work (or the theoretical/computational equivalent). Their job is primarily to keep the ideas & money flowing, and support students' learning and careers (and of course teach courses now & then!).
If you really have no interests beyond your research work, you may find that transition from foot-soldier to admin difficult. Difficulties may also arise when you face inevitable rockiness in the career side of things (a difficult project getting stalled, a dry spell in grant funding, etc.), a larger outside-of-work social support system or hobby may help keep you on an even keel.
But ultimately what is "normal" or "healthy" depends on whether it's healthy for you. For example, if things are going great now, why bother to change? But just recognize that if in the future things no longer feel healthy, it's okay to pick up a hobby at that time with no regrets.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: When you do a Ph.D, I think one of the main challenges is that you always try to figure out some solutions for your methodological/theoretical questions you try to answer.
Sometimes, when you are really stuck for many days on a problem (a proof for example), you may lose your perspective since you are inside the problem. You may miss little trivial details that may help you to make a proof. At that point, having a hobby is helpful. After spending some time on your hobby and coming back to your work would probably give you a fresh perspective. So you could be even more productive for your research with a hobby.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Your work-life balance is, well, yours and nobody else's. It isn't measured in hours per day, or how many hobbies you have, or how many parties you go to. It also is likely to change over the course of your life, as your life situation changes.
As a grad student, I loved my work. The experiments that I did required long runs on equipment at an industry lab partner. The available time was weekday nights, and all weekend. But I didn't work all weekend long - almost every weekend I took a day off, drove up to a well-known climbing place, met up with friends and spent the entire day climbing. Being outdoors for a day, focused on the hear-and-now of climbing and being with friends, was a good work-life balance.
Now, years later, I still love what I do at work. However, with a wife and kids I make sure that I spend plenty of time with them on evenings and weekends, and take all of my vacation (now about 7 weeks/year all told). I don't climb anymore (my strength-to-weight ratio is not as favorable!), but still am happy to head out backpacking and whatnot (the plan to spend 6 weeks driving to the Arctic ocean this summer with my son was, sadly, a victim of Covid). I think my work-life balance is just fine.
If you are happy and productive, don't worry about what other people think. But, be bluntly honest with yourself - if you feel a need to get away from your research for a while then do it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: There is no obligation for you to have a hobby. If you don't want to draw, then don't draw. If you want to study complex analysis in every spare hour you have, then by all means do so. You are an adult and free to do as you will with your time.
Yes, work life balance is very important to many PhD students. They have a tendency to mismanage their own time and overemphasize the volume rather than quality of their work. Volume of course is easy to measure, you can "work" 14 hour days and feel secure that you are doing everything you ought to for the sake of your own success. Whereas judging the impact of the work is much harder and comes with experience, so it is tempting to overlook the importance of that one hour that was worth 1400.
However, clinging to volume like a safety blanket is not harmless. People get tired as they become fatigued and their productivity can drop dramatically (especially in knowledge work like a PhD). There is a risk of becoming bored with your project and incurring substantial delays as a result. It can be bad for mental health and depress people. Having too much work can interfere with basic personal upkeep like paying bills, staying on top of paperwork, housekeeping, and so on which then lead to more distractions from research. This is why people talk about the importance of having work life balance as a PhD student.
From what you said in your post, you are clearly happy with spending all your time working, and don't enjoy hobbies. In this regard, you are different from other people and it is not important to *you*. Congrats and don't feel you have to be someone else just because. Generally, I'd like to think that if an adult does not want a hobby, other adults can respect and understand that. But some people are stubborn, so if the attempted interventions bother you, there is always the simple option of lying to them about a boring hobby that will make them feel like they've done their good deed for the day and leave you alone. Of course, don't be surprised if people who do care about their hobbies then don't have as much in common with you. And you might change your mind one day, about how much work with no play you are willing to tolerate...
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: What's a work life balance?
On a more serious note: Typically filling life with work longterm is not a healthy choice. Having said that, taking the following quote from your post:
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> My life since starting my PhD has can typically be summed up as waking up early, getting to the office about 7AM and working on some part of my research until 5PM before going home to study some more theory. I adore my field - I really think I'm the luckiest person ever for having the opportunity to work on such interesting problems.
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You are stating that you are happy working continuously on the topic and that is quite normal when you enjoy a topic, even more so in academia. - Having said that, success in academia is not necessarily tied to long hours. Some successful people worked regular hours too.
I think as long as you work on it because you want to, it will be fine. - If you work long hours because you feel any kind of pressure to do so, it is NOT fine and will be damaging.
I'd also ask if you feel happy to do something else and drop to "normal hours" if you found something more interesting. If yes, you should be fine.
And just on a personal note: Those who have dealt with IT know the feeling of having something to work on/resolve and suddenly it is the middle of the night as time flies by - this happens.
One more comment: There are also good answers in other contributions, such as the "change of tack" from research PhD to permanent academic post. Having said that, nearly pure research posts exist - often one temporary contract after another from funding proposals. Stressful, but 100% research.
Edit:
Hobbies? Well, I did spend some time on photography during my academic years but also stopped for several months? A year? In between.
As others have said, there is no need for hobbies - you might not have found yours yet. So what?
Maybe you could also do something along your research subject? Rendering graphics? Raytracing? - Code mathematical software? Try, see if it sticks or not. - If it doesn't, it is fine.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: Keep an eye on your mental health. Spending so much time on your own keeps you inside your own head. A friend of mine developed paranoia at one point by simply ignoring everything around him. Just check in with yourself every so often to see if your thinking is still straight. Remember the movie <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Beautiful_Mind_(film)> ? Don't be scared by this warning but if others start to wonder about odd facets of your behaviour then it is worth stopping and considering if they could be right.
As for a hobby, the best one I have ever found when working intensively is going for a walk. You can carry on thinking but you are getting oxygen, exercising, and allowing your body to recover. I have a dog now so she reminds me when it is time to walk. However you can equally set a timer on your phone to go off at regular intervals - say every half hour for a round-the block walk, or once every hour for a two-block walk. On the way drop in at a local cafe and get to know the staff. Chat about inconsequential things briefly but then get to work while drinking your tea/coffee.
Human contact is important because research can be very lonely. However there is no need to go overboard and join a club.
P.S. Short-term bouts of intense working are fine but three solid years while doing a PhD is too much for brain and body without changing the scenery at least a little.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: At the very least, I think it is important to pick up some sort of physical activity as a "hobby". It will help keep you in good physical and mental health in the long run.
Also, from personal experience, it should not interfere with your technical thoughts. During my phd (quantum computing), many good ideas on how to solve the technical problems I was facing came about while I was working out.
For everything apart from physical activity, there are no real guidelines, just do what feels ok for you.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: I was talking to one of my best friends about the prospect of getting a PhD. His response was something like this:
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> The best thing about being in a PhD program is getting to really dive into a single area, and focus and just that, for a few years. You'll probably never have that opportunity again in your life.
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Okay, so some scientists have other hobbies and interests, that's great. Were they pursuing them intensely *during their PhD program*? That might be a different kettle of fish, and in need of more specific data.
I would recommend: Follow the routine that works for you and feels natural. Some people never find even that, so you should count yourself as fortunate. Yes, proper nutrition and exercise is a must, you need to find some way to work that in. If you're hyper-focused on one topic (for now), people should respect that.
Be skeptical of, and don't try to hold yourself to, some anecdotal "famous scientist" behavior; those stories likely get passed around *because* they are novel and unusual. In many cases they may have other resources (money, family, connections) that make it easier to maintain academic and outside interests than normal. In other cases the stories may be inflated "tall tales" told to build up the brand and mythologize the person in question.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_11: The concept of having a "life" varies by individual. Ultimately, you must decide how you define "life", rather than trying to copy what other people think "life" should involve. If you enjoy your work so much that you **gladly** find it to be almost coterminous with your "life", that is a great and enviable place to be, and you should ignore other people's admonishments about "work-life balance" (having said that, you should, of course, still ensure that you have enough sleep and exercise, and eat a healthy diet).
Few people are so fortunate, and even fewer manage to sustain this happy state for very long (after PhD, most scholars have to confront the tedious administrative realities of finding an academic job and, if they get one, discharging all the irritating bureaucratic demands). The notion of "work-life balance" as a conflict between two different sides has arisen as a coping mechanism for the majority of people who do not find their work sufficiently fulfilling to be the **sole** constituent of a good "life".
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: Work-life balance is a useful concept as an approximation of what works for the average person. But it’s a concept that’s mostly relevant for people for whom “work” is a concept that’s very distinct from the rest of “life”. And it sounds like you may be one of those very lucky people who enjoy their “work” so much that it becomes essentially the same as a hobby - something you are so passionate about that at times you like doing it more than anything else.
Well, I think I know the feeling, because I’m also such a person. While I do have quite a lot of hobbies, sometimes long periods go by when I enjoy my work so much I only “work” from moment I wake up until I go to sleep, and I start feeling guilty about neglecting my “hobbies”. At the same time, I realize how lucky I am to be paid to do what I love. Over time I’ve come to realize that for me, there simply is no boundary between “work” and “hobbies”; to me they are pretty much the same thing, at least for a large part (math research) of what’s considered “work”.
So I think your friends are basically wrong. Hobbies are good not because they will make you a more successful academic, but because they make you a more interesting person and can develop you in directions that are orthogonal to your academic work. In a sense they let you exercise different parts of your brain and expand your horizons in ways that work won’t. But that has little to do with an academic career. I think there are some mathematicians who are extremely successful precisely because they don’t care about anything other than math and spend their entire lives just thinking about their research. So you could very well succeed with such an approach if it suits your personality and interests.
At the end of the day, you need to decide what you’re optimizing for. If you’re optimizing purely for career success, your current approach may well be optimal. If you’re optimizing for overall happiness, you’d probably want to think about investing time in things other than work, like friends, a romantic life, and yes, maybe also some fun hobbies (which incidentally can help with the friends and romantic life part).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_13: There are certainly benefits to having a good work/life balance. Having downtime from work can help avoid "burning out" later on. Social interaction is good for mental health. Physical activity is good for physical (and mental) health.
However, having a hobby which you basically treat like another kind of work isn't necessarily going to be beneficial. And from your post, that sounds like what you have been going for. You should be looking for ways to switch off, not just change channel! Try to avoid the idea that your hobby needs to be productive, and look for activities that involve spending time with other people and/or outdoors. What do your friends do with their time off?
I think the Simpsons had the right idea.
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> Erin: You like hanging out too?
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> Lisa: Well, it beats doing stuff.
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Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_14: You're fine. Key is to be aware that you're doing what you want---and to be aware that as time passes, what you want will change. A new-ish PhD student often wants to eat all the candy in the store. Complex analysis, yum! If the candy gives you indigestion, pay attention. But as long as it's all delicious, gobble away.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_15: >
> However, I often get comments about my work-life balance being unhealthy.
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Come to work in my country, Japan, and you won't be getting such comments.
Jokes aside, I share the view that if you enjoy your work and are passionate about it, you don't need to balance your work, in the first place. The only valid reason to pursue an academic career is when you are so passionate about doing research that it is a kind of hobby for you. Academic jobs are very demanding in terms of effort and qualifications and are not well paid, so if you just want to make money, build a career in a more financially rewarding field - IT, industry, banking, real estate, or anything of the kind. And still, I'd recommend choosing a job you are passionate about, not just the highest paying job you can get.
Since you say you think you're "the luckiest person ever for having the opportunity to work on such interesting problems," it doesn't seem that you have any real problem. If you enjoy your work, just keep enjoying it, and if anyone tells you that your work-life balance is unhealthy, respond that what is unhealthy is to have a job that needs to be balanced. And you can refer to the fact that the life expectancy for Japan, where people tend to work longer hours than in the USA or Germany, is higher than the life expectancies for those two countries. And you can ask your advice-givers whether they would advise a famous painter such as <NAME> or <NAME> to get a hobby, too. Painting is their hobby. And your hobby is research. Research is to a large part about creativity - just like painting is.
Furthermore, research work is really multifaceted. To be a good researcher, you have to be a good manager, a good writer, a good negotiator, a good orator, and so on. The tasks you have to do greatly vary in their nature. You make measurements, do calculations, write research articles, arrange collaborations, travel to conferences, give talks, discuss research findings with your colleagues, write persuasive grant proposals, come up with hypotheses to explain things, etc., so you frequently change your activity. And a change is as good as a rest. Why would you need a separate hobby then?
The very reason why people need a hobby separate from their work is that they are so bored at work that they need to spice up their lives and fulfill the urge to fulfill their creative potential. But if your job already brings you everything you need in terms of self-realization, you don't need a separate hobby. Your job already brings you everything. And that's how things should be.
I humbly hope that my answer will help you and other users look at the problem from a somewhat different perspective as compared to other answers.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/06
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a master's student in India, supposed to apply for PhD applications this year. However, I am still unsure of what I want to pursue in my PhD program. Meanwhile, I came across PSI's one-year master's program which seems like something I would like to explore. Should I apply for it or another master in the same subject will be a drawback for admission committees when I apply for a PhD in the US? I am also a bit reluctant to apply this year for PhD because of the pandemic.
Also, while presently I am mostly interested in computational work related to general relativity, I want to explore more in the theoretical side, hence inclined towards the PSI program.<issue_comment>username_1: I would say if you apply and are successful then it would be worth taking, I think the program in general is well-regarded but if your worried about it looking weird to have two masters degrees you could refer to one as physics and the other as theoretical physics. The program is very challenging to get into but it covers lots of material in theoretical physics, though goes through this material very fast (and the entire lecture series is online).
You will also get to know all the other participants well which will be good for networking in the future, and you will get to meet a number of well regarded researchers in theoretical physics (and because of the reputation they will probably be more likely to keep an eye on people who participate in the program).
The only thing that comes to mind is that it is possible PSI may be looking for students who don't already have a master's degree, but I have no knowledge of that and it if it is an issue, then its not an issue with respect to your ultimate goal.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Should I apply for it or another master in the same subject will be a drawback for admission committees
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It's likely getting another (3rd?) master's degree won't help much and may signal indecisiveness in admissions committees. You've already proven you can get a master's degree in a STEM subject. It may raise concerns that you will "[Master Out](https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/08/05/why-mastering-out-phd-program-might-really-be-mastering)" of a PhD program.
It could actually work against you if you aren't publishing. You've spent double the time in grad school, you'd be expected to have more papers published than other applicants. The university would prefer you did more research at their institution.
If you think PSI would be a good fit, then you should apply to the PhD program instead.
**What you should do instead - work for a professor**
Instead of getting another official degree, see if a professor will hire you part-time to work with them. This will usually give you access to classes for free, and (hopefully) provide a great reference and research papers (both of which will help your application).
Upvotes: -1
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2020/08/06
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<issue_start>username_0: Suppose a computer science student who has had lots of life problems and failed courses during their master's degree, but eventually defended successfully with an excellent score, seeks PhD positions.
Is it impossible for him to get accepted into a PhD position and a professor who's willing to work with the student or is there still a chance, even a little?
The student is from Iran, seeking PhD positions in Canada or Germany.<issue_comment>username_1: If you have a poor academic record, it is bound to have an impact on your chances to admitted to a good PhD program. But, in life, bad the things happen, sometimes due to life and sometimes due to mistakes.
If I tell you that it is impossible for you to get admission to a PhD program, would you stop trying? That would be one more mistake in your life.
There is no sweet answer to this. My master's supervisor once told me: "You judge yourself by what you think you could do and the world judges you by what you have done." I do not know if it is his own words or he quoted from somewhere.
Your job is to narrow this gap. You have a poor academic record. But what you could do is improve it by doing extra-curricular activities. Start a Github project and contribute to open source, particularly in the area in which you wish to do a PhD. Try to collaborate with academicians in your university and try to write research papers, preferably as the first author. Interact with industry over meetups. Keep track of research blogs and read recent papers.
Build your profile and forget your past record. If you do this properly, it might delay your admission but once you get it, your PhD could be a lot easier considering you already know what is a failure, literally. And you know how to succeed after failing.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This isn't my field (and I'm in the US), but I think it would depend on the program as well as the individual advisor. It's probably best to contact potential advisors beforehand and address the circumstances. If every other aspect of your resume is stellar and you just had one bad semester due to your life problems, then you'll probably get in somewhere. Good luck!
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: *I will answer specifically for the German system, as that is one of the two countries the OP expressed interest in in the comments.*
To enroll in a German PhD programme, you need the agreement of a professor to supervise you and (typically) an MSc in a related subject with (often) grades exceeding some threshold. Only the overall grade on your MSc certificate matters, not the individual modules.
Thus, the fact that you have some failed modules on your transscript will only matter for your admission to a German PhD programme indirectly, by impacting your ability to convince a professor to take you on as a student. There might be some professors for whom this is a deal-breaker, but there will also be some who don't much care; and certainly many who see it as a negative which can be overcome by other strengths.
It is worth pointing that failing modules is very common [or at least, used to be until not too long ago] in the German system (eg the math exam in computer science often have failure rates of 50%+). So I expect much less of a stigma carried by it than it seems to have in the US, for instance.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/07
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<issue_start>username_0: I watched an episode of "Patriot Act with <NAME>" called ["Is College Still Worth It?"](https://youtu.be/YytF2v7Vvw0)
In there the point was made, with ample evidence, that universities are increasingly resembling businesses with dire consequences for the professors. The amount of tenure-track professors is steadily declining while the amount of low-paid, adjunct professors, who are seemingly abused by the institution, is increasing.
I am a graduate student in mathematics and I am getting close to finishing my degree. It was always my dream and intention to go into academia and contribute original research to the fields I am interested in: Differential Geometry and Mathematical Physics.
After watching this episode and witnessing for myself what being in academia is like, I am actually considering other options. Now, my question is, how many other academics have seen and are upset by the way academia is going in terms of being run like a business? How are you handling it? Or do you think it's not really a big deal? Any advice for someone who wants to do pure math research for a living but doesn't want to be tied to a university? Or are my options rather limited?
As brought up in a comment, this show and my experience are referring to US universities but I am interested in hearing anyone's perspective on it. I can imagine similar situations might be faced by academics in other countries.
I would like to emphasize what I see as the important parts of this question. People are mainly addressing the title, which is only part of the story. **How are you handling this situation? How is effecting your work/life? Are you okay with this, as a professor/instructor/person in academia?**
Here is an article that nicely describes what I am talking about with a good amount of evidence. I am sure there are counter-viewpoints. I am posting this to clarify that I am not talking about universities simply covering their costs: <https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/156375><issue_comment>username_1: In the US, the job market is so terrible right now that it most likely will not be your choice. I would not be surprised if the number of tenure-track hires in pure mathematics in research universities in the US over the next year can be counted on my fingers. While the current situation is due to COVID-19, there is not much or a reason to expect the situation to become an order of magnitude better. I believe my department has hired its last ever tenure-track(\*) pure mathematician. With such a small number of hires, the only hires will be mathematicians who are at least longshot [Fields Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal) candidates.
This has very little to do with running like a business. Universities simply do not have enough funding at the moment. No one is willing to pay for basic research. (Honestly - if someone was purely interested in their material well-being, why would they ever pay anyone else to spend time thinking about differential geometry?)
This does not affect people who already have tenure-track or tenured positions very much, because universities are very reluctant to break the (sometimes implicit) agreements they have made with their employees. At worst we are expected to have more students in our classes than we can actually teach and give passing grades to students who try hard, but have inadequate preparation to learn the material (with the assistance we can give them given class sizes) in our courses.
(\*) Our university may at some point reinstate a tenure track for 100%-teaching (or 80%-teaching/20%-service) positions; for the purposes of this answer, I'm not counting such positions (or other similar positions at other universities) as "tenure-track positions".
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm not going to answer your career questions, but just the title whether universities are run like businesses:
Over the past 20 years (with longer roots), universities have largely been stripped of the substantial state contributions that have financed operations before then. It used to be the fact that states funded the majority of university expenditures because (i) that provided an education for the young people of the state at a small cost, and (ii) the research done at universities translated into state-of-the-art knowledge in the state that led to highly educated students, start-up companies, companies that want to have offices in the state because they needed that knowledge, etc. In return for these state contributions, universities were run in a manner that had the welfare of the state as its top concern -- which includes a focus on education and research. Both provided great flexibility to faculty as long as they reasonably looked towards the bigger goals.
But states no longer provide that money for a variety of mostly political reasons: For example, my own university now receives less than 10% of its budget from the state of Colorado. This comes with consequences:
* We rely on student tuition for much more substantial part of our revenue, and so keeping students happy is an important consideration (whether they deserve it or not).
* We rely on out-of-state student tuition to a much larger degree because the out-of-state tuition rate is not subject to political pressure that universities are still subject to despite the fact that the state no longer provides a substantial part of the budget. To attract out-of-state students, they need to be treated like the customers of a business.
* We rely on Federal and private research dollars much more than we used to. There is substantially greater pressure on faculty to bring in these research dollars than there used to be.
So when people say "universities are run like businesses today", what they really mean in some sense is that there is greater pressure on paying attention to students ("customers") and to go after research grants than there used to be. One can complain about that all day long, but the reality is that that is in large parts a function of how the income sources of universities have shifted, and what the expectations of those who provide this income are today (students, research funders: wanting to get a good education/research product for their money) in comparison to what they were 20 years ago (states: wanting to benefit the welfare of the state's population). The issue that professors complain about is that the expectations that come with these new sources of revenue are not aligned with what faculty like to do: research and teach.
All of this is not to say that there aren't other issues that also fall under the "operate like a business" category and that are much less driven by external factors. Among these are administrator salaries, for example, and I think that for that there really is no good reason why they should be as high as they are.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: In Sweden, non-government funding of universities is minor — whereas there is pressure to get external research grants, and some tuition fees (but only for students from non-EU countries), these factors haven't had much effect on what sort of courses are offered or what academic criteria are set. There is an ongoing discussion about worry that the general quality is slipping, but that is then rather tied to the students apparently starting university with less knowledge than they used to have. However despite those factors being mostly absent that in the US seems to drive a transformation of universities to operate more like a business, I would say I see also Swedish universities are showing signs of the same. Maybe it's the zeitgeist.
One way in which things have changed concern the basic organisatorial structure. It used to be that not only the universities, but also the individual departments within a university, had a large degree of autonomy: while there was a department head that served as executive, many formal decisions (including, as I recall it, electing the department head) were rather taken in the department board, which was elected by the department staff (in a small enough department, the board would *be* the department staff). This sort of pattern was then repeated for two more levels, ending at the university as a whole; technically the vice-chancellor was appionted by the government (since most Swedish universitities are formally government agencies), but in practice a local election of vice-chancellor would merely be confirmed by the government.
For the last decade or so however, fashions have changed to rather organise universities in a more businesslike "line organisation", which at least in my eyes looks almost feudal: the department head is vassal to the dean of school and the dean of school is vassal to the vice-chancellor, each tasked with delivering enough students to keep the economy afloat. Some of the internal democratic structures remain, but they have been made rather harmless. It is a striking bit of newspeak that the reform which made this possible was called the "autonomy reform" — it mostly meant that the University Board (comprised mostly of career officials and random professional board members, not accountable to anyone) and vice-chancellor could do whatever they want, without worrying about the faculty that had previously enjoyed practical autonomy. All of course with the best intentions.
Another way in which this trend shows is in the Univerity websites. It used to be (1990's, early 00's) that every department had its own webserver (or shared part of the webserver of a neighbouring department), where the computer-literate professors could publish whatever they liked: research, teaching materials, popular science, etc. Then (circa 2010) there came a decree that all University webpages had to be served from the common Content Management System, leading to significant migration overhead and loss of content that was too hard to migrate, but all professors could still publish material on the university web. However as of last year, when the university switched CMS, the policy has changed again: only staff employed as Communicators are allowed to publish material, and they generally prefer not to. In particular, the new web policy states that university departments should *not* on the web publish what sort of research they do, since that counts as "assisting *other* parties in their monitoring of progress", which is not what the university web is for! I consider this a sign of the University communication department having switched from an academic perspective, where freedom of information is a primary value, to a business perspective where it is rather control of information that is king.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: It does not just effect the academic staff as support staff are cut.
Workshops are closed and all the knowledge of how to make instrument/jigs is lost. Students could just go and discuss a job with a technician; they now have to create CAD drawings and get them made outside. The engineering company has no idea if they will work or not they just make to the drawings. There is nobody to tweek or modify instruments to re purpose them etc. If something goes wrong with an instrument who is going to fix it as a lot are bespoke?
Speaking from experience!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: No, universities are *not* operating more like businesses. They are operating more like farmers of tax money.
A business will seek to provide a good or service that its customers want. A good business will seek to provide a good or service that its customers want, and that is also good for them. Current universities are doing something very different.
Consider the thesis of this book.
[The Economic Laws of Scientific Research](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0312173067)
His claim (backed up with huge swathes of data and analysis) is this. If you get government out of the business of education, universities will end up with more money, and less restraints. Yes yes, the crowd here that think you can only get money from government grants is outraged.
Outrage is not an argument. Let me explain the book.
Consider Fred's Transistor Company (FTC). They want some research done on some new semi-conductor. But they don't want to buy their own labs. So they go to the local physics department and ask them. And FTC has to find out what motivates professors.
And that comes under the heading "academic freedom." Part of that is money, but by no means all. It has aspects such as the right to publish your work, the right to read other people's work, the right to have or be a visiting speaker or researcher. The right to get some post-docs in, or research associates. The right to visit some place with special resources or facilities. Like special labs or libraries or archives or research sites, etc. And the right to have a comfortable university with various facilities like poetry readings and art and music and philosophy discussions, and so on. And a good library on campus. And so on and so forth, all the things that make up a university life, which would require many thousands of words to cover even a small fraction.
So FTC negotiates with the physics department. And the science faculty. And the various powers-that-be at the university. And they drop a stack of cash on the physics department, and another stack on the university leadership.
The only restraint is, they want time to make commercial use of the research before it is published in full. After that, they literally do not care what the university does with the money. They can give it to whatever part or portion of the university, for whatever purpose, the university cares to apply. University related funding decisions made internally to the university.
Consider this applied across the uni. This company wants some research on its new thing to keep birds out of airplane flight paths and maybe out of wind turbines. This company wants to know if this chemical is safe to put in toothpaste. And so on, and so forth. They would all like to get their research done without having to buy their own labs.
Then consider the area of specialty training. This company needs its staff to learn French to do business in Canada. This company needs some staff to learn to recognize artifacts of various types because they deal in antiquities. This company needs staff trained in how to write an environmental report. This company needs staff trained in how to use the latest equipment in forestry. And so on.
What is the result? Each $2 of government money the university gets removes $3 of private money. And, government money comes with huge sheaves of restraints and restrictions and regulations and paper work and promises and constraints. From "give your research to this three-letter-agency for nothing" to "hire this guy we say needs a job" to "charge students this much tuition, no more or less" to "you can only do this kind of research or no grant for you" to "you must have this many books in your library, this big a sports center, this many faculty-to-students" and so on and so on.
What is the result of taking government money? The need for ever more administrators to deal with the constraints placed by government money. And far *less* money than private grants would have provided.
Why would a university operate this way? It is clearly bad for students, bad for profs, bad for research, and bad for society at large.
It is good for administrators. And the admin run the unies.
"Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy" tells us why that is happening.
[In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#:%7E:text=His%20best%2Dknown%20%22law%22,and%20sometimes%20are%20eliminated%20entirely).
Universities are not operating as businesses. They are operating as cronies of various government agencies and politicians. Admin and government feed and help each other. Governments insist only universities can prepare people for a career, then they prop up the price, then they provide subsidies to pay for the inflated price. Then the admin squashes any dissent within the university, and scares off any private money that might somehow make it in the door. As I mentioned in a comment under another answer, tuition has doubled in ten years. Classes are still full. And grants have gone up 50%. Yet the universities cry poor. That's because steadily more-and-more of the incoming cash is used to feed the [admin](https://www.sais.org/news/372522/FastStats-Is-Your-Administrative-Staff-the-Right-Size.htm#:%7E:text=By%202016%2D2017%2C%20the%20number,the%20number%20dropped%20to%2039)
and satisfy the government-imposed constraints.
A final quote from the cite behind that word [admin](https://www.sais.org/news/372522/FastStats-Is-Your-Administrative-Staff-the-Right-Size.htm#:%7E:text=By%202016%2D2017%2C%20the%20number,the%20number%20dropped%20to%2039)
>
> Figure 3 clearly shows a rather steep decrease in the number of students per administrator over the past 15 years in both SAIS and NAIS schools. For NAIS schools, there were 41.1 students for every administrator in 2001-2002. By 2016-2017, the number of students per administrator lowered to 27. This represents a 53% difference. For SAIS schools, the number of students per administrator was 59 in 2001-2002, by 2016-2017 the number dropped to 39. This represents a 60% difference.
>
>
>
Universities have become places where administrators spend tax money and government subsidized tuition money. They are by no means businesses. They are barely still universities.
====
Note added to respond to comments: Why would FTC fund stuff not related to their transistor? I already explained that. They pay the uni for the right to work with the physics department. Or the biology department if it's biology research, or the engineering department if it's engineering research. Or the languages faculty if it's specialty language training. And so on.
So if you are worried that you couldn't get funding from your uni, even if your uni had 50 percent more money, then you are admitting your fellow professors don't evaluate your work as worth funding.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: Where I'm from (Ontario, Canada), our current provincial government has implemented something of an outcomes-based evaluation of funding for university programs. This basically translates into "how many people get jobs once they graduate from your program", although it is more nuanced.
In some sense this is frustrating and anti-academic, because the idea of the academy as a free and open place of inquiry is strong and, in a sense, important. However, in another sense it is reasonable - taxpayers pay a substantial amount to universities, and many of those taxpayers see university education as both an expectation (for their children) and a route to employment. There are some of course who feel that learning is important for its own sake, but the current societal winds are blowing in the direction of "higher education is primarily there to get better jobs".
However, and it's a big however, this is not an incompatible worldview with the idea of the academy as a place of free inquiry. Instead, it adds an additional responsibility on academics to remember the needs of their students.
Long ago, a degree of any sort was a kind of ticket to a better job. That is not the case anymore, since many more people are getting degrees. In many, but not all, industries, it is an expectation that someone have a relevant degree, and *then* they'll start looking at your other qualifications and experience. Students looking for careers in these fields therefore need to go and get degrees that prepare them for those fields. Thus, they have a need, that their education be high quality, relevant, and current.
In addition, research funds are easier to get if they are tied either to a project that trains people to be more qualified than they are ("Highly Qualified Personnel", or "HQP", in the lingo of our national science/engineering funding council) or has direct, industrial or societal relevance. Practically, this means that it is far easier to get lots of funding in engineering than philosophy.
Finally, we are simply churning out a LOT of PhDs. Seriously, a lot. We are creating more PhDs than there ever were academic positions. I can only find [a source](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/02/number-of-people-with-masters-and-phd-degrees-double-since-2000.html) for the US, but since 2000 the number of people with PhDs has doubled. Doubled! The number of academic institutions has...not...and so yes, there are a lot of PhDs who simply will never be employed in a university.
So all of this means that there is a growing sense of "justify your existence" in academia that may not have existed before. It also means that some fields have a lot of work to do to convince people that their existence is justified, and this is not fair to those fields. Others, like engineering, do not have this problem because for the most part engineers are employed and society values them. This, too, is not really fair, since it give some programs an easier time than others.
Now, this doesn't mean that academia is a factory. Fundamental and inquiry-based research can and does happen. It just can't be the only thing you do. Eventually, you need to go to the people funding you and explain what you've done with their money. You need to at least keep in mind that they may not be interested in what you are, and that you do have an obligation to give them some kind of return on their investment.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Universities in the U.S.A. routinely encourage vast numbers of students to take calculus, while knowing that the students lack the prerequisite knowledge. Specifically, typical students in first-year calculus have never suspected that mathematics is a subject in which, while learning it, every day one works on understanding why things are as they are, rather than just memorizing dogmas. Never suspected. That is the central lesson of the prerequisite courses. Students have merely learned algorithms and don't suspect there's anything to math besides that. This includes those who have perfect grades in the prerequisites.
Professors teaching such courses are as naive as the students: They explain students deficiencies by saying they are deficiencies of natural ability rather than that the incentive structure is set up in a way that makes that outcome predictable. Teaching that kind of material to students whose reason for being there is not that they want to understand the material, but rather than they either want to get good grades to impress employers or that they want to put requirements behind them, must inevitably have that effect. Far from creating a more enlightened populace, such teaching spreads gross falsehoods.
**Why is this done? Because it brings in tuition money.** Some administrators encourage this practice only for that reason. They are prostitutes. It's amazing how oblivious math professors are to these facts. Professors and students endowed with high degrees of intelligence become stupid in order to game the system. Profoundly so.
One of the worst things about this is that there is an immense amount one could teach such students about mathematics instead of spending all this time, effort, and money on such phony courses.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I know this question has been asked before, but I didn't find it asked by a UG student.
I'm a senior undergrad student, and I want to start communicating with professors in Canada and the US in order to get a funded MSc position for fall 2021.
Being an undergrad, I haven't published any papers. However, this summer I've been working as a research assistant intern, and our project has reached an state where I've started to write the actual paper as the first author. Unfortunately, the paper is not likely to be ready for when I'll be trying to find an advisor, but I think since it is my one and only research experience, and it has reached the state of being publishable, it should be included in my CV!
So, what do you think I should do?
* Add my time as an intern as a "research experience" with some explanation about the paper?
* Add the paper in a separate section in my CV?
* Something else?
Thanks in advance!<issue_comment>username_1: In the US, the job market is so terrible right now that it most likely will not be your choice. I would not be surprised if the number of tenure-track hires in pure mathematics in research universities in the US over the next year can be counted on my fingers. While the current situation is due to COVID-19, there is not much or a reason to expect the situation to become an order of magnitude better. I believe my department has hired its last ever tenure-track(\*) pure mathematician. With such a small number of hires, the only hires will be mathematicians who are at least longshot [Fields Medal](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fields_Medal) candidates.
This has very little to do with running like a business. Universities simply do not have enough funding at the moment. No one is willing to pay for basic research. (Honestly - if someone was purely interested in their material well-being, why would they ever pay anyone else to spend time thinking about differential geometry?)
This does not affect people who already have tenure-track or tenured positions very much, because universities are very reluctant to break the (sometimes implicit) agreements they have made with their employees. At worst we are expected to have more students in our classes than we can actually teach and give passing grades to students who try hard, but have inadequate preparation to learn the material (with the assistance we can give them given class sizes) in our courses.
(\*) Our university may at some point reinstate a tenure track for 100%-teaching (or 80%-teaching/20%-service) positions; for the purposes of this answer, I'm not counting such positions (or other similar positions at other universities) as "tenure-track positions".
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm not going to answer your career questions, but just the title whether universities are run like businesses:
Over the past 20 years (with longer roots), universities have largely been stripped of the substantial state contributions that have financed operations before then. It used to be the fact that states funded the majority of university expenditures because (i) that provided an education for the young people of the state at a small cost, and (ii) the research done at universities translated into state-of-the-art knowledge in the state that led to highly educated students, start-up companies, companies that want to have offices in the state because they needed that knowledge, etc. In return for these state contributions, universities were run in a manner that had the welfare of the state as its top concern -- which includes a focus on education and research. Both provided great flexibility to faculty as long as they reasonably looked towards the bigger goals.
But states no longer provide that money for a variety of mostly political reasons: For example, my own university now receives less than 10% of its budget from the state of Colorado. This comes with consequences:
* We rely on student tuition for much more substantial part of our revenue, and so keeping students happy is an important consideration (whether they deserve it or not).
* We rely on out-of-state student tuition to a much larger degree because the out-of-state tuition rate is not subject to political pressure that universities are still subject to despite the fact that the state no longer provides a substantial part of the budget. To attract out-of-state students, they need to be treated like the customers of a business.
* We rely on Federal and private research dollars much more than we used to. There is substantially greater pressure on faculty to bring in these research dollars than there used to be.
So when people say "universities are run like businesses today", what they really mean in some sense is that there is greater pressure on paying attention to students ("customers") and to go after research grants than there used to be. One can complain about that all day long, but the reality is that that is in large parts a function of how the income sources of universities have shifted, and what the expectations of those who provide this income are today (students, research funders: wanting to get a good education/research product for their money) in comparison to what they were 20 years ago (states: wanting to benefit the welfare of the state's population). The issue that professors complain about is that the expectations that come with these new sources of revenue are not aligned with what faculty like to do: research and teach.
All of this is not to say that there aren't other issues that also fall under the "operate like a business" category and that are much less driven by external factors. Among these are administrator salaries, for example, and I think that for that there really is no good reason why they should be as high as they are.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: In Sweden, non-government funding of universities is minor — whereas there is pressure to get external research grants, and some tuition fees (but only for students from non-EU countries), these factors haven't had much effect on what sort of courses are offered or what academic criteria are set. There is an ongoing discussion about worry that the general quality is slipping, but that is then rather tied to the students apparently starting university with less knowledge than they used to have. However despite those factors being mostly absent that in the US seems to drive a transformation of universities to operate more like a business, I would say I see also Swedish universities are showing signs of the same. Maybe it's the zeitgeist.
One way in which things have changed concern the basic organisatorial structure. It used to be that not only the universities, but also the individual departments within a university, had a large degree of autonomy: while there was a department head that served as executive, many formal decisions (including, as I recall it, electing the department head) were rather taken in the department board, which was elected by the department staff (in a small enough department, the board would *be* the department staff). This sort of pattern was then repeated for two more levels, ending at the university as a whole; technically the vice-chancellor was appionted by the government (since most Swedish universitities are formally government agencies), but in practice a local election of vice-chancellor would merely be confirmed by the government.
For the last decade or so however, fashions have changed to rather organise universities in a more businesslike "line organisation", which at least in my eyes looks almost feudal: the department head is vassal to the dean of school and the dean of school is vassal to the vice-chancellor, each tasked with delivering enough students to keep the economy afloat. Some of the internal democratic structures remain, but they have been made rather harmless. It is a striking bit of newspeak that the reform which made this possible was called the "autonomy reform" — it mostly meant that the University Board (comprised mostly of career officials and random professional board members, not accountable to anyone) and vice-chancellor could do whatever they want, without worrying about the faculty that had previously enjoyed practical autonomy. All of course with the best intentions.
Another way in which this trend shows is in the Univerity websites. It used to be (1990's, early 00's) that every department had its own webserver (or shared part of the webserver of a neighbouring department), where the computer-literate professors could publish whatever they liked: research, teaching materials, popular science, etc. Then (circa 2010) there came a decree that all University webpages had to be served from the common Content Management System, leading to significant migration overhead and loss of content that was too hard to migrate, but all professors could still publish material on the university web. However as of last year, when the university switched CMS, the policy has changed again: only staff employed as Communicators are allowed to publish material, and they generally prefer not to. In particular, the new web policy states that university departments should *not* on the web publish what sort of research they do, since that counts as "assisting *other* parties in their monitoring of progress", which is not what the university web is for! I consider this a sign of the University communication department having switched from an academic perspective, where freedom of information is a primary value, to a business perspective where it is rather control of information that is king.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: It does not just effect the academic staff as support staff are cut.
Workshops are closed and all the knowledge of how to make instrument/jigs is lost. Students could just go and discuss a job with a technician; they now have to create CAD drawings and get them made outside. The engineering company has no idea if they will work or not they just make to the drawings. There is nobody to tweek or modify instruments to re purpose them etc. If something goes wrong with an instrument who is going to fix it as a lot are bespoke?
Speaking from experience!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: No, universities are *not* operating more like businesses. They are operating more like farmers of tax money.
A business will seek to provide a good or service that its customers want. A good business will seek to provide a good or service that its customers want, and that is also good for them. Current universities are doing something very different.
Consider the thesis of this book.
[The Economic Laws of Scientific Research](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/0312173067)
His claim (backed up with huge swathes of data and analysis) is this. If you get government out of the business of education, universities will end up with more money, and less restraints. Yes yes, the crowd here that think you can only get money from government grants is outraged.
Outrage is not an argument. Let me explain the book.
Consider Fred's Transistor Company (FTC). They want some research done on some new semi-conductor. But they don't want to buy their own labs. So they go to the local physics department and ask them. And FTC has to find out what motivates professors.
And that comes under the heading "academic freedom." Part of that is money, but by no means all. It has aspects such as the right to publish your work, the right to read other people's work, the right to have or be a visiting speaker or researcher. The right to get some post-docs in, or research associates. The right to visit some place with special resources or facilities. Like special labs or libraries or archives or research sites, etc. And the right to have a comfortable university with various facilities like poetry readings and art and music and philosophy discussions, and so on. And a good library on campus. And so on and so forth, all the things that make up a university life, which would require many thousands of words to cover even a small fraction.
So FTC negotiates with the physics department. And the science faculty. And the various powers-that-be at the university. And they drop a stack of cash on the physics department, and another stack on the university leadership.
The only restraint is, they want time to make commercial use of the research before it is published in full. After that, they literally do not care what the university does with the money. They can give it to whatever part or portion of the university, for whatever purpose, the university cares to apply. University related funding decisions made internally to the university.
Consider this applied across the uni. This company wants some research on its new thing to keep birds out of airplane flight paths and maybe out of wind turbines. This company wants to know if this chemical is safe to put in toothpaste. And so on, and so forth. They would all like to get their research done without having to buy their own labs.
Then consider the area of specialty training. This company needs its staff to learn French to do business in Canada. This company needs some staff to learn to recognize artifacts of various types because they deal in antiquities. This company needs staff trained in how to write an environmental report. This company needs staff trained in how to use the latest equipment in forestry. And so on.
What is the result? Each $2 of government money the university gets removes $3 of private money. And, government money comes with huge sheaves of restraints and restrictions and regulations and paper work and promises and constraints. From "give your research to this three-letter-agency for nothing" to "hire this guy we say needs a job" to "charge students this much tuition, no more or less" to "you can only do this kind of research or no grant for you" to "you must have this many books in your library, this big a sports center, this many faculty-to-students" and so on and so on.
What is the result of taking government money? The need for ever more administrators to deal with the constraints placed by government money. And far *less* money than private grants would have provided.
Why would a university operate this way? It is clearly bad for students, bad for profs, bad for research, and bad for society at large.
It is good for administrators. And the admin run the unies.
"Pournelle's iron law of bureaucracy" tells us why that is happening.
[In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerry_Pournelle#:%7E:text=His%20best%2Dknown%20%22law%22,and%20sometimes%20are%20eliminated%20entirely).
Universities are not operating as businesses. They are operating as cronies of various government agencies and politicians. Admin and government feed and help each other. Governments insist only universities can prepare people for a career, then they prop up the price, then they provide subsidies to pay for the inflated price. Then the admin squashes any dissent within the university, and scares off any private money that might somehow make it in the door. As I mentioned in a comment under another answer, tuition has doubled in ten years. Classes are still full. And grants have gone up 50%. Yet the universities cry poor. That's because steadily more-and-more of the incoming cash is used to feed the [admin](https://www.sais.org/news/372522/FastStats-Is-Your-Administrative-Staff-the-Right-Size.htm#:%7E:text=By%202016%2D2017%2C%20the%20number,the%20number%20dropped%20to%2039)
and satisfy the government-imposed constraints.
A final quote from the cite behind that word [admin](https://www.sais.org/news/372522/FastStats-Is-Your-Administrative-Staff-the-Right-Size.htm#:%7E:text=By%202016%2D2017%2C%20the%20number,the%20number%20dropped%20to%2039)
>
> Figure 3 clearly shows a rather steep decrease in the number of students per administrator over the past 15 years in both SAIS and NAIS schools. For NAIS schools, there were 41.1 students for every administrator in 2001-2002. By 2016-2017, the number of students per administrator lowered to 27. This represents a 53% difference. For SAIS schools, the number of students per administrator was 59 in 2001-2002, by 2016-2017 the number dropped to 39. This represents a 60% difference.
>
>
>
Universities have become places where administrators spend tax money and government subsidized tuition money. They are by no means businesses. They are barely still universities.
====
Note added to respond to comments: Why would FTC fund stuff not related to their transistor? I already explained that. They pay the uni for the right to work with the physics department. Or the biology department if it's biology research, or the engineering department if it's engineering research. Or the languages faculty if it's specialty language training. And so on.
So if you are worried that you couldn't get funding from your uni, even if your uni had 50 percent more money, then you are admitting your fellow professors don't evaluate your work as worth funding.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: Where I'm from (Ontario, Canada), our current provincial government has implemented something of an outcomes-based evaluation of funding for university programs. This basically translates into "how many people get jobs once they graduate from your program", although it is more nuanced.
In some sense this is frustrating and anti-academic, because the idea of the academy as a free and open place of inquiry is strong and, in a sense, important. However, in another sense it is reasonable - taxpayers pay a substantial amount to universities, and many of those taxpayers see university education as both an expectation (for their children) and a route to employment. There are some of course who feel that learning is important for its own sake, but the current societal winds are blowing in the direction of "higher education is primarily there to get better jobs".
However, and it's a big however, this is not an incompatible worldview with the idea of the academy as a place of free inquiry. Instead, it adds an additional responsibility on academics to remember the needs of their students.
Long ago, a degree of any sort was a kind of ticket to a better job. That is not the case anymore, since many more people are getting degrees. In many, but not all, industries, it is an expectation that someone have a relevant degree, and *then* they'll start looking at your other qualifications and experience. Students looking for careers in these fields therefore need to go and get degrees that prepare them for those fields. Thus, they have a need, that their education be high quality, relevant, and current.
In addition, research funds are easier to get if they are tied either to a project that trains people to be more qualified than they are ("Highly Qualified Personnel", or "HQP", in the lingo of our national science/engineering funding council) or has direct, industrial or societal relevance. Practically, this means that it is far easier to get lots of funding in engineering than philosophy.
Finally, we are simply churning out a LOT of PhDs. Seriously, a lot. We are creating more PhDs than there ever were academic positions. I can only find [a source](https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/02/number-of-people-with-masters-and-phd-degrees-double-since-2000.html) for the US, but since 2000 the number of people with PhDs has doubled. Doubled! The number of academic institutions has...not...and so yes, there are a lot of PhDs who simply will never be employed in a university.
So all of this means that there is a growing sense of "justify your existence" in academia that may not have existed before. It also means that some fields have a lot of work to do to convince people that their existence is justified, and this is not fair to those fields. Others, like engineering, do not have this problem because for the most part engineers are employed and society values them. This, too, is not really fair, since it give some programs an easier time than others.
Now, this doesn't mean that academia is a factory. Fundamental and inquiry-based research can and does happen. It just can't be the only thing you do. Eventually, you need to go to the people funding you and explain what you've done with their money. You need to at least keep in mind that they may not be interested in what you are, and that you do have an obligation to give them some kind of return on their investment.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Universities in the U.S.A. routinely encourage vast numbers of students to take calculus, while knowing that the students lack the prerequisite knowledge. Specifically, typical students in first-year calculus have never suspected that mathematics is a subject in which, while learning it, every day one works on understanding why things are as they are, rather than just memorizing dogmas. Never suspected. That is the central lesson of the prerequisite courses. Students have merely learned algorithms and don't suspect there's anything to math besides that. This includes those who have perfect grades in the prerequisites.
Professors teaching such courses are as naive as the students: They explain students deficiencies by saying they are deficiencies of natural ability rather than that the incentive structure is set up in a way that makes that outcome predictable. Teaching that kind of material to students whose reason for being there is not that they want to understand the material, but rather than they either want to get good grades to impress employers or that they want to put requirements behind them, must inevitably have that effect. Far from creating a more enlightened populace, such teaching spreads gross falsehoods.
**Why is this done? Because it brings in tuition money.** Some administrators encourage this practice only for that reason. They are prostitutes. It's amazing how oblivious math professors are to these facts. Professors and students endowed with high degrees of intelligence become stupid in order to game the system. Profoundly so.
One of the worst things about this is that there is an immense amount one could teach such students about mathematics instead of spending all this time, effort, and money on such phony courses.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: For a class demonstration, I am seeking a political topic that all of my students (US undergraduate class) would pretty much hold the same opinion on. The original topic from the research I'm basing the demo on was support for the Castro regime in Cuba (study was conducted in the 1960s) - everyone was against it. I have used support for ISIS (ISIL) in the past (again, everyone against it), but I have often had to explain who ISIS was to students. I'm teaching asynchronously this semester, so won't have the opportunity to do that.
I would greatly appreciate ideas.<issue_comment>username_1: Poverty is bad.
Polluting the environment is bad.
Murdering people because of their race or religion is bad.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Not sure where the boundary between "political" and "societal" is, nor what your cutoff for "most" is, but: as of 2017, 91% of a sample of the US population thought interracial marriage was either "good for society" or "not much difference" as opposed to "bad for society"; 96% of the 18-29 age group thought so ([Pew Social Trends](https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2017/05/18/2-public-views-on-intermarriage/)). (There must be a bit of rounding error, as "bad for society" is listed as 5% in the same line ...)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/N94Fm.png)
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I was awarded a degree from a reputable college or university. For what reasons could my degree be revoked after the fact? Should I be worried?
**Note to readers:** *This is a special community wiki 'canonical' question that aggregates advice on a frequently-asked question. See [this meta discussion](https://academia.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/4764/should-we-have-a-canonical-question-about-degree-revocation?cb=1). Please feel free to edit this question to improve it.*
*Each answer here relates to a different criterion which may (or may not) lead to degree revocation. If you have a new possible criterion, please add an answer. If you have more information about an existing criterion, please edit the existing answer.*<issue_comment>username_1: *Please feel free to edit this answer to improve it.*
Criterion: Research or Academic Misconduct (e.g., Plagiarism)
=============================================================
Degree revocation is **very** rare. When it does happen, academic misconduct is usually the cause, and it usually must be severe and intentional. As [henning writes](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/153499/79875):
>
> I've been working in Academia for the past ten years. The only cases of degree revocation that I am aware of were due to severe cases of academic misconduct such as plagiarism, fraud, or large-scale cheating. The rationale is that gross academic misconduct invalidates the achievement the degree should certify.
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Similarly, [canadian humanist](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/153506/79875) reports:
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> I sit on our university's Senate which is the body that would have to deliberate a degree revocation. Even a straight-forward case of plagiarism in a degree requires a long, drawn-out and surprisingly contentious decision, and it might happen once or twice a decade. This is the last step of a very, very long and drawn-out process.
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> So no, I wouldn't worry, outside of demonstrable research misconduct that puts the entire integrity of the degree in jeopardy.
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>
A now-departed user [provides some examples](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/81918/17254) of degrees which have been revoked for major academic misconuduct, notably plagiarism:
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> There have been spectacular examples of falling from grace.
>
>
> * <NAME> resigned as President of Hungary after his doctorate was stripped by Semmelweis University on findings of plagiarism.
> * Former German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg graduated...from the University of Bayreuth in 2006...A finding of plagiarism led to his degree being revoked.
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The same answer also reiterates that the criteria for revocation due to academic misconduct are likely formally defined by your university:
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> In my university...the policy allows for a revocation in the event that the degree was awarded in error or through fraud. The policy proceeds to list the criteria and processes to be followed. Fraud is defined broadly and includes conventional definitions of academic misconduct, but other acts as well. Finally, there is a specific clause [stating that] one cannot [defend oneself] on the basis that there was no intention to commit fraud.
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Practices on degree revocation also vary regionally. <NAME> [reports](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/68330/79875) that degree revocation in the Spanish-speaking world almost never happens, even when clearly merited.
Could academic misconduct *after* completing the degree lead to revocation? User [<NAME> addresses this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/54809/79875):
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> Yes. Although you will need to do something blatantly unethical.
>
>
> For instance, my alma mater (the University of Konstanz, in Germany) revoked an alumnus' Ph.D. after this alumnus blatantly falsified data, although the Ph.D. thesis as such was not tainted.
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But this varies regionally. Araucaria [describes a 2005 paper](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/153534/79875) from a US institution, which did not find a single degree that was revoked for bad acts subsequent to graduation.
>
> In the (2005) paper *The Right of Educational Institutions to Withhold or Revoke Academic Degrees* from the *Stetson University College of Law Twenty-sixth Annual National Conference on Law and Higher Education*, the authors give an in-depth survey of reasons universities have successfully revoked degrees. Not one of these involves the behaviour of a candidate after they have completely left the institution—whether this behaviour be academic, political or indeed criminal. [Note, Stetson is in the US].
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Further, revocation due to academic misconduct is rare due to practical reasons. As reported [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/54818/79875), it is often difficult to prove that academic misconduct took place happened years after the fact. And outside of certain high-profile individuals, few theses are scrutinized after being approved.
Prior to this wiki's creation, Academia.SE received dozens of questions from users concerned that they could be accused of academic misconduct, leading to their degree being revoked. To my knowledge, the answer was never once "yes, you committed academic misconduct and your degree is likely to be revoked." For example, concerns like [data changing underneath you](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/123891/can-my-university-revoke-my-degree-after-it-was-granted-due-to-corporate-data), [the thesis not containing sufficient novelty](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/124106/will-the-phd-degree-be-retracted-if-the-thesis-is-found-to-be-not-novel), [self-reporting possible problems with the thesis](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/121940/unintentional-plagiarism-in-my-masters-thesis), or [having a missing degree requirement](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/124569/should-i-worry-that-my-bachelors-degree-will-be-revoked-because-i-only-complete?rq=1) were all dismissed.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_1: *Please feel free to edit this answer to improve it.*
Criterion: Personal Misconduct
==============================
Degree revocation is very rare, and is usually a result of [academic misconduct that renders the degree itself invalid](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/153662/79875). However, degrees are occasionally revoked for serious personal misconduct, particularly in Europe.
We should first distinguish between honorary degrees and academic degrees. As [<NAME> explains](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/153503/79875):
>
> Honorary degrees are given to some for expressly moral judgement even though the recipient hasn't completed any classes or met the required academic standards. They are awarded because they represent to sort of character that they would like the world to associate with the university. If they prove themselves not that have that character, or stop having that character, then it makes sense to remove the honorary degree.
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For academic degrees, the situation is quite different regionally. In Europe, degrees can be (and are) revoked for personal
misconduct, though it is rare. For example Earthlin reports that [in Germany](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/104154/79875):
>
> a PhD may be revoked in case of:
>
>
> * a wilful act resulting in a prison sentence of one year or more, or
> * a deliberate/wilful offence abusing their scientific qualification.
>
>
> These are quite "mild" conditions, presumably in place to discourage degree holders to engage in behaviour on the wrong side of the law.
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>
Similarly, doog [reports that](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/104141/79875) Cambridge is/was in the process of revoking a pedophile's degree, though in this case, the bad acts happened while attending the university and were discovered later.
On the other hand, revocation for personal misconduct in the US is even less likely, as [user6726 reports](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/54818/79875):
>
> In the US, you have a property right to the degree that you earn and pay for (regardless of the ultimate source of funding -- the student has the responsibility to pay), and as long as you don't violate the conditions for obtaining the degree (various forms of dishonesty in admissions and satisfaction of the degree), improper actions after the fact don't license depriving a person of what they have earned.
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(\*\*) *Existing answers are limited to Europe and the US; please feel free to edit this page with your expert knowledge about other parts of the world.*
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_1: *Please feel free to edit this answer to improve it.*
Not a Criterion: Political Activities
=====================================
As discussed [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/153498/can-public-political-criticism-of-my-alma-mater-result-in-my-ba-being-revoked-35), revoking a degree based on political activities (e.g., criticizing the university that granted the degree) would gather wide attention, but we are not aware of any such cases having happened. Although anything could happen in the future, given the lack of observed cases it does not seem political activity is considered grounds for revoking (non-honorary) degrees.
Indeed, taking any sort of action based on political *expression* is anathema to Western ideas of tertiary education.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_1: *Please feel free to edit this answer to improve it.*
Short answer: will my degree be revoked?
========================================
**Almost certainly not.** Degree revocation is *extremely* rare, and almost always involves some major, willful misconduct such as plagiarizing long sections or falsifying data. Almost everyone who has raised concerns on this site over the years had nothing to worry about. The different answers below discuss different criteria that *could* lead to degree revocation, but these are generally edge cases. The typical person who earned their degree in good faith has nothing to worry about.
**But this site cannot give you a definitive answer.** Different schools have different staff and different policies, so it is impossible to predict how a particular institution will respond to a particular situation. Nor can we decide whether you committed misconduct (and even if we did, our decision would not count for anything). We recommend checking your school's policy on degree revocation (often available online). If you are concerned about degree revocation, you could discuss the issue with a legal advisor or the school in question, though you may be better off "letting sleeping dogs lie."
Finally, note that degree revocation may be *discussed* or *threatened* rather more frequently than it actually occurs. Individuals and/or organisations may respond to some incident or action by 'calling on the university to revoke the degree', and this may gain traction on social (or indeed traditional) media. However, this does not mean it is actually likely to happen.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Criterion: Admissions Fraud
===========================
If a student was admitted to a university through fraudulent means and graduated, the university may revoke the degree once it knows that the student should not have attended the institution in the first place.
For example, UPenn initiated [a policy](https://www.thedp.com/article/2019/08/penn-degrees-revoked-college-admissions) that states the university may revoke degrees for providing false information on their applications.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: **Do reviewers/editors receive a deadline for reviewing a paper**?
I wanted to know that whether reviewers/editors receive any kind of deadline for reviewing a manuscript for a journal or they are allowed to submit their reviews any time they wish since they are not paid for this service.
If they do receive a deadline what is the average time the reviewers get for evaluating the following in journals owned by Elsevier, Springer, World Scientic, Taylor & Francis etc.
1. Round 1 revision or first review of a paper
2. Major Revision
3. Minor Revision
I find that if a major revision is required then the authors receive a time of 2 months for fixing it.
For a minor revision the authors get a time of 1 month.
What is the time given by the journal authorities to the Editors/Reviewers for checking a major revision and a minor revision?
Can someone please let me know as one of my manuscript is in major and other in minor revision?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: In general when journals contact potential reviewers, they do tend to give a time frame they expect those who accept to receive a review back in. The more enlightened ones also give a time limit to accept the review. As has been noted in the comments, the length of these windows varies by subject and by journal, with mathematics journals noted as being at the long end, and some disreputable science and engineering journals at the short end. In practice, these are soft targets, and editors tend to be happy if they get any response at all, even a late one. My experience is that these windows tend to be the same for initial and subsequent reviews, but I definitely won´t claim that is universal.
Note that for resubmissions there is a strong preference to reuse the original reviewers, since they are in the best position to check that their criticisms have been addressed. Having a strict deadline for review would be likely to slow the process further, since new reviewers would have to be found (and given a new block of time to respond in), who might easily raise points ignored under the original review.
One misapprehension in your question is in assuming that these targets are set by the publisher. In general it will be the senior editors making the decision based on the volume of submissions they have available, and the standard of impact they are aiming to maintain. The exceptions are at the predatory end of the market, and no reputable journal is going to publish an article unreviewed, just because all the reviewers were late responding. Modern editional systems have made life a bit easier by automating reminder emails, but these are often treated as spam messages by the recipient. Your principal solace is that many of these systems track review times and quality, and push editors to request reviews from fast, high quality reviewers.
As an author, your most useful data is average time from submission to publication, which many journals now advertise to win custom. Note that tis is a figure which can be manipulated however, by techniques such as forcing revisions to be treated as a new submission, or by giving up of articles which have sat for a long time.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: *Peer review is broken.*
>
> Do reviewers/editors receive a deadline for reviewing a paper?
>
>
>
**Typically yes.** But, many reviewers seemingly wait until they receive a reminder or the deadline is near, before starting their review, for various reasons: I have reviews to do, so I can't accept more. Ultimately, reviews have to be written, so why delay? That's not always possible, of course. Reviewers are busy people, they don't always have the time, everything is last minute, and many are simply overloaded.
Personally, I should avoid overloading myself for more than a month-or-so at a time, which means I can (usually) review within two months. If I can't commit to that, then I'll decline to review, because I can't deliver in what I consider a reasonable time (which is typically less than permitted). (Beyond two months, I try to avoid making commitments, where possible.) Sometimes editors come back to me and ask if I'll just get to it when I can, and I typically agree. Sometimes I accept with the proviso that I'll take far longer than normal.
Reviewing doesn't always get my best cycles, those are reserved for duties that I get more credit for. Since there are always lesser cycles, when I can't get the return I'm after for the aforementioned duties, that's when duties with less credit get done. Such duties can be numerous, so I don't always have the time for reviewing.
Peer review is broken: Better incentives are needed.
>
> What is the time given by the journal authorities to the Editors/Reviewers for checking a major revision and a minor revision?
>
>
>
That'll vary between journals, but is somewhat irrelevant: Reviews are regularly submitted late. There's a website that provides averages, try searching for it, add a comment below when you find it. (I can't remember the name.)
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> Can someone please let me know as one of my manuscript is in major and other in minor revision?
>
>
>
No, every situation is different. Try looking up the aforementioned website for a rough guide.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I will likely be applying for PhD programs in mathematics. Several of the schools I intend to apply to state that they require ‘a minimum of 3 letters’. Presently, I have three solid letters from well known professors in my current institution, as well as a fourth letter from a professor from a different institution, with whom I’ve conducted research. Is it acceptable if I send four letters to these programs? Will it have any sizable positive/negative impact on the application? My main reason for sending the fourth letter, is because I feel it would highlight a specific research experience, and add credibility. Thanks!<issue_comment>username_1: You should email the institution to which you are applying and ask their graduate admissions team if they would accept more than three letters. Whether it’s acceptable, irrelevant, or above a threshold to send more than 3 letters is subject to the preferences of the institution to which you are applying.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: A problem you might encounter if they will only accept three and you send more, is that the might just ignore or throw out some of them. They might throw out the ones(s) you most want them to keep in such a case.
Unless you hear otherwise from an institution, stick to their requirements.
Some of the rules are to limit the work they have to do in evaluation, and some of it is just establishing fair rules for all applicants.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The first criterion, of course, is that if a particular institution's application intsructions communicate that only three letters should be sent, then abide by that. For the ones that say "at least three" or the like:
To be honest, in practice it really depends on the internal details of each university's application storage system and how it lets reviewers view applicants' files—and this can vary wildly from place to place. At my institution, if you have four letters of recommendation, they will all be visible when I look at your file. In other places, their online portal might have specific spots for three letters and no more (I would hope such institutions would make it clear in their instructions that only three letters should be sent).
As someone who has reviewed graduate applications for nearly twenty years, I can tell you that if my file system allows me to see the letters, I will read all the letters if I am interested in an applicant. (Well, I probably wouldn't read ten letters … but certainly four.) If you have reasons to believe that the letters will offer complementary perspectives on your excellence, I would use them all.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: Having worked in various universities in all sorts of different roles, from being a systems programmer to teaching etc., I would go to the department's office at first. These are the people who send out letters, open the mail and, usually, are the ones who calm down students who are late with submissions - although they can't and won't break the rules.
>
> In fact I would phone them. Or even visit! I did this a few times and
> by making a personal connection I had a running start. For example I
> visited one institution without any appointment. Someone asked if they
> could help me. It turned out that they were a senior member on my
> interview panel and were impressed by my making the effort. I got the job and had many enjoyable years.
>
>
>
Phone call
"Hello, I'm sure you are busy so I hope you don't my asking. I'm planning to apply for X and I notice that three letters of recommendation are asked for. Would it be unusual to submit four?"
Anyone who has worked in that office for less than a year will ask a more experienced staff member.
Either they will answer or they will tell you who is best to talk to. This will most likely be the lecturer/prof who is overall responsible for intake.
Say: "Oh I don't want to bother them. Do you think it would be alright?"
There is a good chance they will arrange a brief phone conversation with the person. You will end up discussing your aims and interests as well as mere conventions.
**Important**
If you meet indifference or even hostility at any point when asking for information, this will tell you something something about the department and how it is run. Personally I would only want to go to a friendly place and would cross anything else off my list.
By contacting and talking to people, you change from being paperwork to being a human being. They will notice your application when it lands on their desk.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm trying to apply for a PhD and want to include references in my resume. Is it okay to include a PhD student, one who has gotten a degree and has worked in our lab,and is currently working in industry, as a reference?<issue_comment>username_1: Why “former”? Has their PhD been revoked?
As to whether to include them, if they can vouch for your skills, abilities and/or experience then there is no reason why you should not include them.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: **Yes, they can, but consider whether they're the best choice:**
A referee needs to be your champion. A lab mate who you've never worked with probably can't do that, because they don't have a working relationship with you. Someone you've worked with can. (It's unclear which case applies here.)
Senior referees carry more clout than junior referees, so that's something to keep in mind.
Having referees from both industry and academia can be useful—it depends who the recipient is: A theoretician will surely be less interested in a referee from industry than someone more applied.
Upvotes: 1 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I graduated my bachelor's recently (have not received the final degree yet, but all the requirements are done and I have a provisional degree). As part of the degree, we are required to do a bachelor's project during the last two semesters. We also have to do courses in parallel, so nobody really expects this bachelor's project to contain work equivalent to a full-blown thesis.
Now, since I still had a few months till I start with my master's, I thought of continuing with the work that I did for my bachelor's project (also partly because I had not been able to fully achieve what I had planned; various reasons but mostly due to lack of time and guidance required for an area in which very less prior work has been done).
I have done a significant amount of work in these few months and want to mention it in my CV. I had written something like this earlier:
```
Bachelor's Thesis August 2019 - present
```
But this will clearly not work now/ will create confusions.
How should I modify it to convey that I am still working on it and a part of what I did was for my bachelor's project?<issue_comment>username_1: ```
Bachelor's Thesis August 2019 - formal end date
Blah blah blah. I have since built upon my thesis to...
```
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You should be a bit more specific. Instead of just "Bachelor's Thesis" give it a name - or a name for the project, along with the detail that it was for the thesis.
Then in a "Work in Progress" section list the project again, by name, and note that it is an extension of the thesis.
Generally speaking it is good to show a *Work in Progress* section as it indicates you haven't been idle.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: In some countries, whenever someone applies for a Ph.D. admission, the universities ask for a research proposal. A research proposal includes a literature review and bibliography.
If the research is paper-based research, i.e. no popular survey or experiment is involved, I see no further need for research work.
For instance, say, someone wants to redefine and redescribe the origin and purpose of British colonialism in India.
In this case, if the researcher has already read the needed resources and done his desk-research, the only task left is writing a thesis that may take at most three months.
What is the difference between preparing a research proposal and writing the actual thesis in the case of theoretical research?<issue_comment>username_1: In general a research proposal (separate from the literature review) is a description of the questions that you wish to answer in the research and a description, perhaps preliminary, about how you intend to answer those questions. it doesn't include the results, which, we assume, aren't available yet.
The literature review asked for will probably be less complete than the one that later appears in the dissertation, since all that is needed here is the papers, etc, that you have read that lead you to ask the question and support the idea that they are important questions that haven't yet been answered. You will possibly need to do more in a formal literature review once the research begins.
You seem to imply in the question that all research questions have already been answered before you make the proposal. That is normally not the case. In the example you state, your proposal should also include how you intend to support the conclusions you reach. This might include additional library research or interviews with knowledgeable people, etc.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Even if we imagine that the information of interest is perfectly and unambiguously presented (which is not reliably the case...), it is absolutely *NOT* the case that all the logical implications are easily obtainable.
(See <NAME>'s completeness and incompleteness theorems, about first-order predicate logic.)
Another aspect: even though one can perhaps conceive of a project, and see no obstacles to its completion, that is very different from *execution* of the project. E.g., conceiving of moving a huge pile of sand from one spot to another, versus literally moving it.
And, also, there's the question of "what questions we didn't think to ask" :)
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I applied for a postdoc at a lab in the US as I really liked
the work of that lab.
I had the initial interview with the professor and then with the lab members.
All went well and the professor welcomed me to join the lab.
When the administrative part started, things got very strange quickly:
1. The prof put me in touch with his lab manager, and then, casually mentioned that the university has a covid-related hiring freeze...but that it might be OK since I have a scholarship/bring my own money (which I do). It was however only then that I learned about the hiring freeze.
2. The lab manager (quite unfriendly) told me that given that I have my own funding I will be only considered a "visiting postdoc" and would not receive benefits. When I asked about more details, she told me to "google".
3. I then got invited to a zoom meeting to clarify some other points about a document I had handed to admin. First of all the mail suggested that it was me, prof and one admin person.
Against my expectations 6 or 7 people joined and it felt like a cross-examination.
In addition, the meeting turned out to not be about said document at all (they even said that that document was fine??). First, they told me that my scholarship can't be below their minimal level. Then they told me that I would not be allowed to collaborate with another college during this time. Then they asked all kinds of further questions like: If you are really an engineer, why was the department you were at before the department of chemistry? When I said that yes I was an engineer, the admin person said "OK I will have to google to check if this chemistry department really hires engineers" - i.e. she made it clear that they don't believe me....?
4. I asked them about the terms and conditions for "visiting postdocs", they said there are none (???). That is, I have no clue about what rights, benefits etc. I would have when joining the lab.
The prof seemed to side with admin, though he told me to call him after this cross-examination-style meeting. There he said that it is strange for him as well that admin does not allow for collabs (and he would not mind if I would collab but we should keep it under wraps) and mentioned that he would make up for it if my salary should be below the minimum. But, although he had previously
mentioned that he would make sure that I would not be just a "visiting postdoc", he now seemed to have changed his mind.
This entire process was so hostile, I still can't believe it. I invested a lot of energy trying to get this job, but then having to fully commit without being considered a full employe..? I feel like the prof was not fully transparent.. though I really like the work of his lab and it could be great for my career.
And by the way, the place I was before was Stanford, so I am not coming from some (supposedly) random university.
Is this usual behavior, and how could I deal with this most constructively?<issue_comment>username_1: I'm not sure why you are considering this "offer". You've given a lot of downsides that could easily lead to future pain and suffering. But other than a weak endorsement in your first paragraph, you haven't really given any positive aspects to this position.
If you have any other offer(s) with better conditions, you should probably consider them first. If it is this or nothing at all, then be very wary if you take it. The professor in question can probably help somewhat.
I'll note that some of the restrictions given by the administration are probably the result of laws that must be followed, since the position is not a standard one. If you aren't a regular employee, then you don't have the protections (or requirements) that regular employees have.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Currently, I am in a similar situation (working since 12 months as a postdoc in the U.S. with a scholarship that covers 24 months from the "NIH" of my home country). Similar to what you described, I came expecting to be a regular postdoc based on the prior communication with the PI.
**Personal situation:**
Upon my arrival, I quickly realized that my PI does not support me or project in any relevant manner and that I am essentially a visiting scholar working on a line of research that is as of today not really of interest to my PI. In the beginning, I was super motivated and provided weekly detailed “Objectives and Key Results” (OKRs) during our meetings. I would recommend you to give it at least a try. Nevertheless, over time I had to somewhat realize that the meetings should be kept as slender as possible, given that the technical/research feedback is limited either way. I decided to stay and I do not regret it too much. The PI is overall a supportive and respectful leader. While I have to apply for computing resources (applying to Google Cloud credits) and organize data (i.e., setting up MTAs with other institutions) myself, the PI allows me to do so freely. Nevertheless, I keep him always in the loop. I am still thightly conntected to institutions in my home country - i.e., getting data is not a significant bottleneck for me. The institution provides a strong halo effect and is an interesting place to be for me, irrespective of my output.
**Thus, the following factors are in my view important to consider:**
1. Do you expect your PI to be supportive even if you work somewhat like an independent collaborator on your own projects?
2. Is it possible to obtain data in chemistry independently or are you very dependent on the group?
3. Is the institution/environment exciting enough to justify some degree of a diminished research output?
If the answer to all 3 questions above is not "yes", I would recommend to leave. While you may want to try to talk it through with your supervisor, do not expect that you will be able to change too much about the supervision style.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Is this usual behavior
>
>
>
Short answer: no.
Longer answer: I have heard many stories of bad workplaces, both in academia and beyond. Even at good workplaces one occasionally encounters weird, rude, and borderline exploitative practices and staff/employer attitudes. So perhaps it’s not entirely accurate to say it’s not usual. But by and large, the situation that you describe does not sound good or normal. Self-respecting, respectable US institutions will generally go to great lengths to make their postdocs feel welcome, and will have an orderly, transparent hiring and onboarding process, clear policies, and staff that will communicate those policies to you upon request (even if not always in the most friendly or efficient manner). That’s quite a contrast with what you are describing.
>
> and how could I deal with this most constructively?
>
>
>
Since you bring your own scholarship and generally sound like you are an attractive hire (and someone who has the self-confidence to not be shy about being one) I would guess that you have a fair amount of leverage in this situation, and will assume in this answer that that is the case - specifically, that you have a reasonable likelihood of finding alternate employment quickly if the current offer does not pan out. You need to put that leverage to use. The key is to make the professor/mentor-to-be aware that there is a minimum level of treatment that you are expecting from him and his department, and that should he fail to offer you credible assurance that you will be receiving that minimum, you have other options and will go elsewhere.
To put it bluntly (although in your communication with the professor you will want to be less blunt), you need to make a credible threat about withdrawing your acceptance of the offer to join the professor’s lab, assuming you’ve already accepted, or about not accepting if you haven’t yet.
In preparation for bringing this up, there are two crucial pieces of information you will need to know:
1. What are your options? Do you have other places you could quickly arrange to give you offers? Given that you have your own scholarship, I am hoping the answer is yes. But do your homework and explore this at least informally, by sending out feeler emails etc.
2. What are your minimum expectations from the current professor and his lab? That’s a personal question you’ll have to ask yourself and answer - it may include things like health benefits, a written contract or reference to a set of institutional policies governing your type of position, a conversion of the “visiting postdoc” to a title more commensurate with your qualifications, or similar things.
Once you know the answer to the above questions, ask to have a video meeting with the professor and politely bring up your concerns. Be tactful, and make sure to mention all the positive things that make you want to join his lab rather than someone else’s, but also make it clear to him that your concerns are serious enough that you can and likely will withdraw your agreement to join his lab if he does not take them seriously.
I mentioned the threat to bail out needs to be credible. That means it would be good to mention any specific facts at your disposal to make it seem like you have the ability to act on the threat (again, I am using blunt language - I trust that you can phrase it more diplomatically in the actual conversation). For example, you can mention names of specific places where you have a pending offer or promise of one, or at least adopt an attitude that signals your confidence that you can get another offer easily because you have your own funding.
Finally, part of making the threat credible is that you need to be mentally willing to act on it in the scenario where the conditions you are setting are not met. If you think you’re not willing, the approach I am proposing may not be right for you.
Good luck! I hope things work out. But cover your bases and be prepared for the possibility they may not. Honestly, this behavior does not sound normal, and should not (in an ideal world at least) be an acceptable way to treat people.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I want to warn you about a red flag that I see, which has come up in two parts of your question:
>
> The lab manager (quite unfriendly) told me that given that I have my
> own funding I will be only considered a "visiting postdoc" and would
> not receive benefits. When I asked about more details, she told me to
> "google".
>
>
>
and:
>
> I asked them about the terms and conditions for "visiting postdocs",
> they said there are none (???). That is, I have no clue about what
> rights, benefits etc. I would have when joining the lab.
>
>
>
A "visiting" researcher is usually someone who works ***elsewhere*** and is ***visiting.*** This usually means that your employer (which is different from the place where you're "visiting") is the one that has an employment contract, which outlines all the things that you mentioned: rights, benefits, terms & conditions, etc., and the place you're "visiting" may have some much smaller-scale agreement with you or your primary institution, outlining the terms of your "visit", usually allowing them to have reduced responsibilities and liabilities compared to if you were a regular employee.
***Unfortunately***, some universities have started to give the title of "visiting" researcher, to people that are working exclusively at the university, which can be an extremely shady way of binning you into a category that is neither faculty nor staff nor student, meaning that you are not represented by the faculty association, you are not represented by the staff association, and you're not represented by the student union, and therefore have zero support and almost zero rights.
Let's look for a second at the Memorandum of Agreement between the University of Waterloo and its Faculty Association:
>
> "In all matters under this Article, a Member has the right to seek
> advice from the Association and to be accompanied by an academic
> colleague for advice and support (including, if necessary, aid in
> presenting the Member's position) during any meetings attended to
> discuss such matters."
>
>
>
Therefore, if a professor is called into a surprise meeting with 7 people (like what happened to you) from the university administration, the faculty association will provide an academic colleague (e.g. another professor) to join them as a witness and support-person for the meeting, if the professor wishes. The same is true of people represented by the Staff Association, or the Student Union, but as a "visiting" researcher, which union or vocational association will represent you? It would be the labor union of your employer (the company or university that sent you to "visit" this university!), but wait a minute: You don't have one!
Also, look at [section 9](https://uwaterloo.ca/secretariat/documents-potential-interest/memorandum-agreement-uw-fauw) which outlines a process by which an employee represented by the Faculty Association (e.g. a professor) can make an internal complaint if something goes wrong. The Staff Association will have something similar, as does the Student Union, but they have gone *out of their way* to point out that "visiting" positions are ***not*** covered:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/5Jdjs.png)
What happens if you get harassed or abused or the university does not follow their own policies? There might be no internal process available to you for making a complaint, because you're "only" and visiting researcher --- How do I know this? Because it happened to me when I was a "visiting" researcher at the University of Waterloo, which is one of the top universities in Canada (this can happen anywhere, and the opening to your accepted answer: "I have heard many stories of bad workplaces, both in academia and beyond. Even at good workplaces one occasionally encounters weird, rude, and borderline exploitative practices and staff/employer attitudes" is a bit of a *polite* way of saying what goes on).
Therefore, you were very smart to ask those questions about the nature of a "visiting" position.
Since you said many times that you have a fellowship that will be paying your salary, I would recommend to look at the rules that they have for "host" institutions like this university which you are currently considering. As a postdoctoral fellow, I held a Banting Fellowship at McMaster University and [they had certain guidelines for host institutions](https://banting.fellowships-bourses.gc.ca/en/app-dem_instit-etab.html) (I have put bold-font emphasis on the specific aspects about which you expressed concern):
>
> From the outset of the application process, applicants and host
> institutions should discuss:
>
>
> * the details of the fellowship appointment any ***benefits*** offered to the
> Fellow any financial obligations associated with the appointment
> (union dues, insurance premiums, etc.)
> * the availability of any research and/or other support
> * the ***rights*** and responsibilities of postdoctoral fellows
> * any other institution-specific ***policies*** that might apply to the Banting Fellow any established research-related
>
>
>
**Summary:** If you go into a "visiting" position (usually not a "real" employee) and you don't have a "primary" institution that is bound by standard employment laws, be careful. Let me quote [username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/153726/93303): "If you aren't a regular employee, then you don't have the protections (or requirements) that regular employees have." Please be careful and take care of yourself.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Please contact Human Resources, and the International Student Services of the institution. Now, the latter might not give specific information on postdocs but they usually do a lot of related paperwork and in my opinion they are the most knowledge people in a university about these matters. The benefits can be learned through HR. It seems to me that they are taking your scholarship granted. The benefits are usually included for postdocs that are "hired" but scholarship holders/fellows are not necessarily employees, so I think they are putting you in this category. The way they brush off your questions would make me think twice to be honest, but been there done that, it seems you are further in the process and don't want to consider other options. There is also a lot of uncertainty around visas, hiring etc. but they should at least be transparent about it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: While a Postdoc is a training position, you're also something of a "hired gun". In a normal situation, the PI needs something done, and hires a postdoc to do it. Bringing your own money to the position isn't very typical.
Sometimes profs have absolutely no awareness of the red tape required to bring in a postdoc, or any employee, and assume because they made arrangements to bring someone in, somehow magically, the admins can make that happen.
In this case, it seems that the University cannot actually do any "real" hiring because of a hiring freeze, and they are trying to come up with a creative way to bring you in. All indications are that they can't make an arrangement to actually make you an employee of the university, and you would be walking into some nebulous situation. This is good for you if you have no better options, but bad for you if you need a job! There will be ALL SORTS of ramifications. For example, if you are in the US, you will likely be on the hook for the 7.5% FICA tax normally paid by the employer. This is called a self employment tax, and would be an immediate 7.5% pay cut. You may or may not have health insurance. You will have very little in the way of job protection.
You should not be told to "google" anything. This is your life, and you are entering a position. At the very least, you are entitled to know all the details, without confusion. The only place you should have to look is in their employee handbook or your contract.
If this weren't pandemic times, I'd tell you to run away, but I suspect many universities have hiring freezes right now.
At the very least, I would ask them two questions: Will you be an employee of the university? and Can I see my benefits package in writing?
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: Firstly, I understand what matter are the regulations from my own college and advice from my supervisor. I would like to ask this question more as a survey of experience and opinions.
It happens that my supervisor has suggested an external examiner that has lead a lab for numerous years, with extensive experience, knowledge and publications in the field of my thesis, who would surely be suitable in examining the quality of research work by expertise, but also one who comes from a research institute that does not use the titles "Lecturers" or "Professors".
According to the written regulations, an equivalent or higher rank is required, without specifying the nature of origin institute. As I search for more information to understand more of the general practice, I saw some writing "universities or research institutes", while oftentimes this is not specified.
It would be nice if anyone could share more on what have you seen and been thinking so far. Thank you so much!<issue_comment>username_1: Yes. For universities that use external PhD examiners, typically the examiner can be from a university, non-university nonprofit/government research institution, or an industrial research laboratory. Typically the examiner has a PhD.
University faculty are most commonly selected.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: From a UK perscpective:
Yes. External examiners can come from non-university affiliated institutions. It is normal in such situations for the supervisor/examiner to be asked to provide evidence not just that the examiner is knowledgeable in their field, but also that they understand the requirements for being awarded a PhD. The most common way to do this is to present evidence the examiner has either supervised or examined PhD students before.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: As I understand it, today's professors spend a large amount of time writing grant applications, many of which fail. As a result, I'm thinking of endowing a professorship someday with enough funds to remove this part of the job description - effectively funding the professor for as long as they hold the professorship.
One thing I'm concerned about is that this would also be removing a critical part of the job. For example this [job advertisement](https://www.adzuna.co.za/details/1608013621) for a senior lecturer/associate professor explicitly asks for "A proven record of attracting external funding for research". In that case, the professor would never pass this requirement since they would have no experience at writing grant applications, let alone actually getting the funding.
Question: is this a legitimate concern? If so, are there any obvious solutions? This should only matter if the professor leaves the professorship, and presumably that is not likely to happen, but I'd still rather the professorship not become a position which one can enter but not leave because it makes one uncompetitive on the market.<issue_comment>username_1: No, this is not a concern.
* Typically individuals who receive endowed professorships already have a long record of applying for grants. You could, as the donor, attempt to negotiate some other situation if you wished.
* Typically endowed professors only leave their job due to retirement or death. If you have really endowed the professorship with enough money, there will be no desire to leave for another endowed professorship, if one could be found. An endowed professorship does not make the holder uncompetitive on the job market. It makes employers uncompetative to hire the professor.
* Most endowed professors do apply for grants.
Assuming you really have that much money to give, my advice would be: Require the holder of the professorship to refrain from applying for grants. This will free up a lot of their time to do something more productive.
If you want to make a positive impact on academia, you can achieve more for your dollar by endowing (or just spending all the money immediately on) scholarships at institutions that charge low tuition, like community colleges.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Let me focus on the headline question: *Is a professor who's never had to write a grant application disadvantaged in the job market?*. I'll leave aside your admirable intention to provide funding.
To do their job, a professor needs many skills, but acquiring them takes time and effort. Not all of us are (in my case, were) excellent teachers or even researchers at the start of our careers and had to learn those skills and others over time. Obtaining grants is one of those valued and valuable skills.
But note that such grants aren't solely to provide salary and benefits to the grant recipient. Typically they fund many more things, the most important of which is probably support for students. But they also cover such things as travel, conference and publication fees, lab equipment (and maintenance). In some fields there are also technicians that need to be employed. Travel and the opportunity that provides for collaborative work can be very important. Grants are also highly valued by universities, since the "overhead" charged against the grant funds such things as lab space (including maintenance) and support staff, including the necessary legal and administrative costs.
So, yes, if a person never acquires this skill they will be disadvantaged in academia generally, though as [username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/153742/75368) suggests, a person would be unlikely to leave a generously funded position. A "beginning of career" person can't, of course, be expected to have such skills, but, at almost every institution, would be expected to work to gain them. And failure of a grant application is just a learning experience, like falling off your bike several times while trying to learn to ride it as a kid. You often will get feedback on such failures that help you on the next one.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Question: is this a legitimate concern?
>
>
>
No. I think you misunderstand what kinds of people endowed professorships are designed to fund. This funding structure is not designed to fund a senior lecturer/associate professor in a department that doesn’t know how to spell “discrete mathematics” in its job ad, or someone straight out of their PhD as you suggest in a comment.
Rather, in the academic world an endowed professorship is considered a high honor and is given only to well-established researchers with a proven track record of producing top quality research. Those researchers, assuming they are in a field where grant funding is important, will of necessity have either already had considerable experience getting such funding, or (in a more unusual situation of a young superstar) will have such stellar achievements under their belt that they should be able to very easily get grant funding at any point in the future.
Another way of saying this is that successfully competing for an endowed professorship is a much more impressive achievement than getting grant funding, and can be thought of as being in somewhat the same category of achievements. The concern that you are raising is therefore nonexistent for such scholars.
If you want to fund early-career researchers in far-flung universities off the academic beaten path, that’s a noble idea and there are ways to do it, and in that case, depending on how you go about it the concern you have might be legitimate. But for an endowed professorship, it’s a non-issue.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: This question was first asked on [writing](https://writing.stackexchange.com/questions/52157/does-a-glossary-make-sense-in-a-computer-science-thesis), a user pointed me at this site.
I am currently writing my master thesis in computer science, more specifically on voice activity detection, a sub-area of automatic speech recognition using neural networks. I asked my supervisor if I needed a glossary and he told me that was up to me. I looked at other computer science works, some have a glossary, some don't. Now I'm unsure on what to do. Here are my thoughts:
On the one hand, a glossary is useful especially in printed documents to quickly find the best explanation for important terms. It provides a proper place for definitions. And to me it provides a feeling of "scientificity".
On the other hand, almost all readers will use my work in pdf form. Thus they can easily search for appearances and definitions on a given phrase. Given my work is only of use to computer scientists I'd consider them aware of these functionalities. Thus a glossary feels a bit anachronistic.
I hope this qualifies as a proper question and isn't too opinion based, I figured rules here might be a little less strict considering the "proper" way of writing something is often influenced by personal preference.<issue_comment>username_1: It depends on, first, your advisor, but also on your expected audience. If you think it makes sense and your advisor agrees, then it makes sense. Also, if you define some new terms or use standard terms in a non-standard way, then it might even be more valuable, though, perhaps, not necessary.
If you intend to publish it formally, then an editor of a journal (or the committee of a conference) might ask for a revision. But that is a different issue that you can easily deal with if it arises.
In the absence of constraints, do what you think best. Not a problem.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I'd encourage you to include a glossary.
I expect your work to use a mixed vocabulary from different fields of science, e.g. computer science, signal processing, or even linguistics. Your paper might be read by people who are not as familiar with all these fields as you are. And some of the terms might not have a common, generally-accepted definition. Or they might gain a different meaning over time (e.g. "AI" now has a rather different meaning today than it had in its early years).
So, defining and explaining the vocabulary that you use seems quite necessary to me, to make your paper accessible to an audience from slightly different fields of research, and understandable for a longer period in time.
As a (maybe old-fashioned?) reader, I'd prefer to have these definitions in one place, not forcing the reader to search through all occurrences of the word just to find its meaning.
Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: >
> On the one hand, a glossary is useful especially in printed documents to quickly find the best explanation for important terms. It provides a proper place for definitions.
>
>
>
I'd contest that the proper place is a background chapter that provides a story underpinning what comes next. Not everything need be introduced there, for instance, there's no need to introduce an acronym that'll you'll use in some distant chapter (just introduce it in that chapter), but the core concepts should be, especially since a masters' thesis presumably demands demonstrating knowledge of the fundamentals - maybe ask your advisor about this, it might be a good way to ensure you aren't dropping marks.
>
> On the other hand, almost all readers will use my work in pdf form. Thus they can easily search for appearances and definitions on a given phrase. Given my work is only of use to computer scientists I'd consider them aware of these functionalities. Thus a glossary feels a bit anachronistic.
>
>
>
Searching isn't always as easy as it should me! To make it easier, use italics the first time you introduce a term that you define, it'll help readers find what they are looking for.
---
Some form of hybrid approach might be possible, especially with the number of tools that LaTeX provides for this type of thing.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I just recently finished a masters program in Mathematics, unfortunately it seems most PhD Programs require a math GRE Subject test. At the moment I'm living with my parents and don't feel comfortable going in to take an exam with others - especially with the cases in the US right now, but I don't want to lose a shot at getting into some programs.
Does anyone know if universities have lifted the requirement for GRE Subject tests as a result of Covid?
Thanks<issue_comment>username_1: Certainly if universities want students in a time of chaos, they need to be somewhat flexible in their admissions. Some will have dropped the GRE requirement, and some haven't had it for a while.
Unfortunately that is an individual decision by an individual university (or perhaps a statewide system) in the US, so you have to inquire for each university to learn a useful answer. Don't assume that any given university has, or hasn't, made changes to their requirements.
However, note that ETS is making accommodations also. It is possible to take the [General Test at home](https://www.ets.org/s/cv/gre/at-home/) under certain circumstances. It doesn't seem to include the Subject tests, though that may change.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Some universities are not requiring GRE test this year due to the pandemic, see for example UChicago's website - <https://mathematics.uchicago.edu/academics/graduate-programs/mathematics-phd-program/how-to-apply/>
On the other hand, I know 10-14 days quarantining alone in a motel, after taking the test, might be depressing, but it seems that's one possible solution for your situation.
If you know some other friends taking the GRE, you can do that together and actually enjoy this time.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: A professor I'm familiar with has multiple partners, **none of whom are his direct students, supervisees**, or university affiliates. As he married to none of them, I understand that having multiple girlfriends seem to be legal in most of North America and other Western countries. They are not casually dating, but serious cohabitant partnerships.
I understand that this is not illegal, but I find it a little bit inappropriate because the girlfriends involved might find themselves unsatisfied. Here are some relevant cases I know:
1. Some professors in recent years were fired because their students/supervisees reported their relationships.
2. Schrodinger had multiple partners. Although he was not forced to leave Princeton, he did not accept the offer because it seemed that having multiple girlfriends created a problem.
3. <NAME> had multiple partners and it seemed like that he was fired because of this.
I am not sure if the general public and the academia in US and other Western countries find this conduct acceptable/acceptable. Here are my questions:
1. If one of his partner reports this to the University and claims "harassment," will anything happen?
2. If an outsider reports this to the university, will there be any action taken?
I come from an Asian country and I know that, suppose it happens in my country and someone post this case online, the poster would not be penalized but the professor's reputation will be seriously harmed by the angry crowd. I understand that US can be very different.<issue_comment>username_1: Here’s the thing - what someone does in their personal life is almost always exclusively not your business or your concern. In many parts of the world it is completely acceptable to be in more than one relationship, unless what this individual you are concerned about is breaking a law, then you should just leave them alone.
Seeing as you are in the U.S.A, i would say your best course of action is to just not interfere in the personal and/or romantic relationships of your peers. The university, in a U.S.A context, will probably read the email, put it in the trash, and carry on if the women in the relationship are not related to the university in any capacity.
As others have mentioned, if you pursued such actions against a member of the institution, you yourself could find yourself in a position where you are being accused of harassment and it could open the door to other unintended consequences for yourself as well.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As stated in the comments, this depends very strongly on the country and the specific university. However, there are some legal statutes in some countries that are important to consider.
In Canada, it is **illegal** to terminate someone based on "family status". In the US, there are some states where termination can happen based on any reason. These are known as "at will" employment states, and basically it means that there are either no contracts for employment or the contracts do not state anything about reasons for dismissal. I don't know about other countries.
However, there is a difference between family status and inappropriate behaviour. A professor who brings a new girlfriend to every faculty party but is otherwise well behaved is not acting inappropriately and it is none of anyone else's business that there is a new relationship. A professor who repeatedly discusses his or her sexual exploits in a class is acting inappropriately. For such inappropriate behaviours termination may happen.
Ultimately, this is probably a better question to ask at workplace stackexchange, rather than here.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: As someone mentioned in a comment, reporting someone for private life behavior that is *not* in any way unethical or illegal due to something you find "inappropriate somehow" is **in itself harrassment**. Don't do it.
Someone who reports this will probably face less consequence in this circumstance than some others that some people find "inappropriate somehow" because they are homophobic (in the case of same-sex relationships) or racist (in the case of interracial relationships), but still, **don't do it**.
I'd expect the complaint to be simply ignored in the circumstances you describe. If someone pursued it further the *person reporting* could face consequences, the professor likely will not. There may be exceptions at certain highly religious institutions.
Upvotes: 4
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<issue_start>username_0: Is there any good reason to be optimistic? I have the impression that this may be the worst job market year in the past ten years.
Edit to be more specific: I am referring to hiring grad students, postdocs, and tenure-track assistant professors, primarily in the U.S., but in other countries as well. Have many universities instituted hiring freezes for this upcoming year?<issue_comment>username_1: At my US large state univ, there is a hiring freeze for this coming year. Yes, this did also happen c. 2008.
One difference is that in the US the trans-economic source of the problem is by no means resolved... and even when/if it is "resolved", I think the "new normal" is very hard to predict. So administrations are being, and I think will continue to be, very very cautious about commitments toward the future.
So, no, no reason to be optimistic, because we don't even see the end of the disaster yet. Sorry.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: There are some imprecise indications that the last several years have all been the worst year in the last 25 years. 2020-2021 will be much, much worse. In most cases, the question is not who will get a job, but who will lose one.
<http://theprofessorisin.com/2020/05/01/tenured-faculty-member-says-quiet-part-out-loud/>
Hiring freeze list:
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1KohP4xZdN8BZy1OMeXCAGagswvUOWpOws72eDKpBhI4/edit>
I have no affiliation with the business that provides this information.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: DISCLAIMER: I'm from the UK, and I mostly speak about UK academia, although I have some experience with the US also.
I think there is a difference between Grad Students, Postdocs and Tenure track profs, because they are all funded differently.
I see no reason to be optimistic about the job market for Lecturers/TT profs/others that are funded by core University money. Every university I know has a hiring freeze.
Postdocs are different because by-and-large they are not funded from university funds, but from external grants. The universities wouldn't get to keep that money anyway if they didn't spend it on postdocs. Certainly here in the UK, people still have grants, and there is no suggestion there will be fewer next year.
Some grad students are funded by universities themselves, others by outside agencies. In the UK the vast majority (9 out of the 10 students each year in my department for example), are funded by outside sources, and so they aren't going anywhere either. But I would expect to see places funded by the universities themselves drying up.
Upvotes: 4
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2020/08/11
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<issue_start>username_0: I am applying for a position at a University. The director of the department at the University I am applying to was my PhD supervisor.
Is it still proper to ask them to provide a letter of recommendation? Or is this a bias (conflict of interest) I should try and avoid?
EDIT: The director IS involved with both the interviewing and hiring process; however, they said to still use them as a reference.<issue_comment>username_1: I think you are confusing "bias" with "conflict of interest."
The fact that a job applicant was previously supervised by the person who is making a hiring decision is not an unethical conflict of interest. There might be a conflict of interest if you were related or if you offered a bribe.
In this case, it is not clear if your supervisor is even involved in the hiring decision.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: You could request them to give a general recommendation letter (To whomsoever it may concern) and then add it to your application. Now it is up to the committee or your former supervisor to decide the outcome. Your association with the director in a professional capacity should in no way be detrimental to your chances of securing this job. If it is, then it is a case of reverse bias.
In any case, it is not something you must be worried about. In fact, you should feel more confident in getting the position as your skills and strengths are well known to the potential employer.
Best of luck!
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: I suggest that you ask the person whether they believe it is proper for them to write you a letter. They know the institution to which you are applying and its procedures. If they indicate that it should be fine, then it is fine. Otherwise, look elsewhere for a letter.
But it is good to avoid assumptions in a case like this. The director may be involved or not. A letter from them might be considered proper or not. Don't assume. Don't guess. Ask.
You can indicate in your note that you don't know the proper rules and, while you would value a letter, you will understand if they think it improper. Hopefully you know them well enough that such a note won't seem out of order to them.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: If your supervisor's guidance is to put them down as a referee, then you should put them down as a referee (i.e. it's a good idea to do so). The fact that your reference comes from someone within the department is in no way hidden from the other people involved. It is entirely transparent.
Turning this on its head, it would be very odd indeed—assuming that this is a postdoc position, or one you are applying for soon after your PhD— if you did *not* use your supervisor as a referee. In fact, this might look a lot dodgier than if you do. Think about if you were applying for a job and didn't give someone from your most recent employment as a referee. It raises questions.
How to counteract any bias (or perhaps sound knowledge about you) that may enter into the hiring process, given that you are the ex-supervisee of someone in the department, is a question for the hiring committe to work out, not for you. And remember, whether your ex-supervisor is your referee or not, they are still your old supervisor and you are still their ex-doctoral student. There is nothing you can do to change this. The reference makes no difference in this regard.
Good luck with your application!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: You need a letter of recommendation which he/she is honour-bound to write strictly with their supervisor's hat on.
If that letter is not there, and the person is asked their opinion during the meeting, it will be less clear which hat if any they have on.
It is up to the hiring committee to work out if and how the person should recuse themselves. There may be bias and or conflict of interest, but this is precisely their deontological burden, not yours.
Between you and me and the bedpost, *all* appointments in academia are at least a bit tainted. Be grateful if and when the cards come up in your favour, as it will not happen terribly often.
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<issue_start>username_0: This question revolves around using integers (−1, 0, 1, 2, 3) or simple fractions (½, ⅓, ⅗) vs. real numbers (−1.254, 42.72) in teaching concepts, assigning homework, and preparing tests for math, science, or engineering. For the rest of this question, I will call integer or simple fractions *nice* and real numbers *ugly.*
For the sake of simplicity, let’s say that you are teaching a math class, and the first topic is basic addition. The first time that you teach it, I would assume that you would want to teach it using nice numbers. For example, using 2 + 2 = 4 would be preferred over 1.234 + 5.678 = 6.912. Sometimes you can get lost in the weeds of the calculations ("just plug these numbers in here and get the answer out") and completely miss the concepts. While concepts are important, it is important for the students to be able to apply the concepts for more complicated problems. While part of me thinks that learning concepts should be the same for nice numbers and ugly numbers, my personal experience says that there is a difference (perhaps just a small one) between these two.
In order to facilitate better learning and better application of course material to real-world problems, should you also include homework with ugly number inputs and answers? How about tests? During my engineering studies, it seemed like there were lots of problems that had nice inputs and/or answers. Most of the questions did not have really ugly answers. Is this typically done to make it better for the students learning, or is this done to make grading easier? Perhaps calculator use can also influence the type of number being used too. Overall, it would be nice to understand why professors and/or teachers often select nice numbers for assignments.
If it would help to know, the main drive of this question is that I would like to automate some of the homework or maybe even tests for classes. I would like to be able to generate multiple versions of homework or tests so that students can’t simply copy answers from each other. If I am generating homework, it might be tricky to find nice solutions vs ugly solutions. I think I have a method for automatic grading, so that is not a problem. The main thing that I want to maintain is a good learning experience for students.
Note on π and other irrational numbers: For my studies, π was of course in lots of the problems, and this technically makes problems have answers that are irrational. For most problems, it is acceptable to include the symbol π in the answer instead of including the numerical form in calculations. These problems could be still written nicely with implied multiplication like 2π or 3π/5.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> While part of me thinks that learning concepts should be the same for nice numbers and ugly numbers, my personal experience says that there is a difference (perhaps just a small one) between these two.
>
>
>
I'd expect a difference: Ugly numbers get in the way of applying and learning a concept. E.g., average (−1, 0, 1, 2, 3), (½, ⅓, ⅗), and (−1.254, 42.72). The first I can do in my head, simply by applying the concept of averaging, the addition is trivial, the division easy, I'm just thinking about the concept. For the others, I'm not think about the concept, I'm think about fractions and more complex addition/division.
>
> In order to facilitate better learning and better application of course material to real-world problems, should you also include homework with ugly number inputs and answers?
>
>
>
I've just argued that ugly numbers are a barrier to learning, so **nice numbers are preferable**, imo.
>
> How about tests?
>
>
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The same. (Plus, do students have calculators?)
---
**Ultimately, it depends what you're trying to teach.**
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: On a test, you don't want students to be always unsure if they got the right or wrong answer when it comes to algebra, so generally nice numbers are preferred. Also, if you just want to test them on knowing the basic methods and you assume that they can work with more complicated numbers, making the numbers messy is a distraction. At the very least you need to give the students an idea of what to expect. If all but one of the answers have nice answers and the other one has a messy answer, the students who get the messy (but correct) answer will spend all their time double-checking their algebra, when they could be spending their time on other problems.
On HW then I think messy numbers are fine, but I think that writing "Round your answer to the nearest hundredth" would be appropriate.
For lower-level classes, though, using some messy numbers at some point on HW is a good idea. Once during a final exam for precalculus, a student thought that she messed up on finding a vertical asymptote because she got a number that wasn't an integer. Apparently vertical asymptotes can only happen at integer values. Well, she looked again at her work and had a flash of insight when she found her mistake and got that the asymptote was in fact at an integer value.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I want one question on the test to have ugly numbers, since I want students to learn to trust their calculations, and not use "the answer is a nice number" as a verification method. Ugly numbers are great for teaching you to trust the method and the knowledge. But most of the time, they are simply annoying.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Since this is a website about *higher* education, I will answer in that context.
The only "difficult" thing about "ugly" numbers is doing concrete basic operations with them, like adding them and so on. Everything up to that is typically done algebraically using variables (*x*, *y*, *z*…). University students are already supposed to know how to perform basic arithmetic, even with "ugly" numbers. This is never what you want to teach in higher education. So either let your students use a calculator, or use "pretty" numbers in your data. If you are concerned about real-world applicability, then surely you know that today everyone who has to perform this kind of tasks works with a computer that is hugely more capable of performing mathematical computations than any human.
As for computer-generated homework questions, I have had the unfortunate duty of doing it last Spring, like many of us, I guess. It was not particularly hard to produce "pretty" numbers, even when I needed to produce complicated linear systems to solve for example. Make it so that your question depends on a few parameters (let's say 3-5) and make sure that these parameters are taken to be integers in a reasonable range (for example [-5,5]). Then unless you get crazy with how you derive questions from parameters, you will mainly get "pretty" numbers. And since I assume that you wouldn't dare giving a question to students that you haven't even looked at, when you do a cursory check of the automatically generated questions you would quickly pick up bad edge cases.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: You write "I think I have a method for automatic grading, so that is not a problem.". If you are going to depend on automatic grading, you should use easy, simple numbers.
There are two ways of getting a wrong answer, not getting the method right and making a mistake copying from question to calculator and from calculator to answer sheet. During manual grading you can distinguish those by requiring the students to show their work and grading that. Automatic grading tends to give the same weight to not knowing how to do a calculation and entering one incorrect digit.
Using simple, easily checked numbers reduces the risk of calculator error.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: I think I'm going to be fundamentally disagreeing with a lot of the answers here.
Nice numbers definitely make problems easier, and I make a habit of using them when first introducing a concept; they make the students more comfortable, and let them focus on the key idea that I'm trying to teach. **But** I never rely on nice numbers for tests or assignments. There's three major reasons here:
1. I have had many students over the years who genuinely *stop understanding* a concept when presented with "ugly" numbers. For example, I've had students who can easily find the average of 2 and 6 but when asked to find the average of 2.3 and 6.7 don't even know how to start. This isn't an issue of getting confused by the calculations; it's that they think about "nice" numbers differently than they think about "ugly" ones. In the case of the average, the issue was probably that the student in question thought of the average as "the number in the middle", not "the sum divided by two", which makes sense when working with integers but not otherwise. The problem is that you can't capture failures of comprehension like this without using ugly numbers at least occasionally.
2. username_2 and username_3 pointed out that many students use the "nice number" test to tell whether their answer is right - they tend to trust the answer if they get "2", not so much if they get "2.134". So from the perspective of "be nice to your students", you should use nice numbers; but the thing is that, in literally any application they will have for this material later in life, they won't be working with problems that were carefully curated to produce nice numbers. If you're teaching them something you expect them to use later, it's a disservice to allow them to continue to use the "nice number" test.
3. Loosely speaking, there are far fewer "nice" numbers than "ugly" ones. I've had students "solve" problems by assuming the answer will be a whole number and then guess-and-checking their way to success.
That said, if you're using ugly numbers, you do need to make some concessions to make that work. Here's what I do:
1. I allow scientific (not graphing) calculators on every assignment and test.
2. I allow unsimplified answers, except when the problem is about simplification; so, they're welcome to leave their answer as a complicated mess of radicals if they want to.
3. I warn them specifically that the numbers involved in some problems may be messy, and I go through "messy" problems in class.
4. I take some class time to teach techniques for judging whether your answer is correct that don't rely on niceness of number; my preferred one is "ballparking", where you use the context of the question to estimate the general size of the answer (is it positive or negative? Bigger than a thousand? Etc.).
5. Problems that involve ugly numbers tend to take longer than ones that involve nice numbers - even I find that I go slower when a problem involves weird fractions or decimals. Take that into account when writing tests.
6. Problems that involve ugly numbers are more prone to minor error than ones that involve nice numbers; for example, you probably don't want to be counting an answer in a calculus class as "completely wrong" because they typed "2.146" instead of "2.156" into their calculator. I always offer extensive partial credit based on work shown, and do not generally mark off for errors that don't show a lack of comprehension or change the difficulty of the problem. For online tests, to make this work, I allow students to submit their work alongside their answers.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_7: I’m in the habit of giving *mostly* nice numbers of assignments and tests. As “mostly nice” number is Sqrt[2], or Log[6] or e^7, for instance. This way students can provide answers in exact form (without floating point) without too much difficulty.
I would stay away from things like Sqrt[1+Sqrt[2]]$ which I consider truly ugly. The students know this so if they get an answer like Sqrt[21/213] they suspect there’s probably some bug in their calculation.
Now I also have in some courses assignments questions which are entirely numerical (v.g. plotting some solutions to some nonlinear differential equations). Even in those cases I will try to find “nice” boundary conditions so that the students can verify if their intuition matches the numerical output.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: What kind of students are you teaching? If you are teaching elementary or high school students, then use the kind of numbers that are appropriate to your curriculum. If you are teaching engineering students, then you should use real world numbers.
You say *"During my engineering studies, it seemed like there were lots of problems that had nice inputs and/or answers."*. Wow, what kind of engineering did you study. After halfway through my first real engineering class, just about every problem I did had no tidy solution - we used trial and error to solve nearly every problem (on first generation programmable calculators (think HP-25)). The numbers made sense - a heat exchanger might be rated 100,000 BTU/hr, for example, not some oddball number. But the pipes going in to that equipment might be 4 inch schedule 40 (which are 4.026 inch inside diameter - I always had a pipe schedule booklet handy, along with steam tables in my bag). When I used the ideal gas constant R, I always used a version with 5 significant digits (and I could rattle those values of R off in 4 or 5 different unit systems - I studied in Canada in the middle of the transition from Imperial to metric units).
When teaching, you want to use numbers that challenge your student to think and to be unafraid to solve the problems that they will see when they do their senior design project or when they get their first job. There's no sense using numbers with much more precision than they will see in real problems, but you are cheating them if you make everything too "cute" by having problems that feature integers as inputs, and particularly integers as outputs.
If you really want to challenge them (and get them understanding the numbers they are using), get them to buy or borrow a slide rule and give them a "no calculators allowed" test (by the way, if you do that, you probably want to make sure that the problems are reasonably easy to solve using a slide rule - lots of multiplications and divisions and little else).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: I'm not an educator. I'm simply a math graduate working in related industry but my answer would be a hard no-no on nice numbers. Some answers claim that makes students use intuition to know whether the result is correct. There is absolutely no scenario where intutition is a good verification for the result you get (not saying it's useless for choosing the right method of calculation).
You absolutely do not want to teach students to rely on the result being nice. Another answer mentions that using them gets rid of the need to verify their calculations. This is an absolutely crucial step, you should always verify your calculation at least once. It is a process that never has any drawback.
Otherwise you might hear news stories like "building collapse kill 50 people because civic engineer made a mistake but the number looked nice so he didn't check again".
EDIT: I actually more often checked my calculations when the result was actually nice. If it wasn't then I assumed that I have used the best method I could think of and the worst that could happen was loosing a point for the wrong result.
Luckily I mostly had professors and teachers that graded the method, not the result.
EDIT 2: You want to teach your students to think of a solution, not how to game the system. Those same students might learn to later look for legal loopholes to deliver a half completed and sometimes dangerous product instead of doing the expected (see dieselgate scandal, why work on the solution when you can just game the result).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: There is a pedagogic advantage in using ugly numbers: users will try to avoid them and teach themselves algebra in the process by maninpulating symbols instead of specific integers, fractions or decimal expansions. The idea is that you simplify the expression as much as you can before plugging in the actual figures.
So it really depends on what you're trying to teach.
By the way, what you call "real" number is referred to as a "decimals of nonintegers", which is a pretty ugly name, as -1, 0, 1/2 or 1 are real numbers too.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_11: Unless the point of the homework is to test them on their ability to do basic arithmetic, why not give variables rather than numbers, and the answer should be an expression in terms of those variables.
Going from that to a numerical answer is just some easy but tedious arithmetical calculations.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_12: Using nicer numbers allow calculation in tests to be more fluid. I think this is generally a good thing.
However there are sometimes situations where you explicitly want to teach the basics of symbolic calculations, where for example rational numbers like 1/3 ensure that the task cannot be solved numerically without leading precision. Sometimes with trigonometry questions they might rely on the fact that intermediate results are expressed in pi fractions.
One of the examples mentioned that when asking for the average of numbers, that 2.3 and 6.7 would better test the understanding than nice numbers. However I would argue that those are actually nice numbers as they add to a round number and can easily divide by 2, so the result is a clear 4.5 with no need for calculator or risk of rounding error.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_13: It has been suggested that I should turn my comment into an answer.
* Use 'ugly' numbers for an entire page of assignments.
* Take all the results and add a few more 'ugly' numbers as distractors. List them of the bottom of the worksheet.
That means students will practice to work with 'ugly' numbers. They can easily verify that there was *no* arithmetic error by finding their result in the list, yet guessing will not get a passing grade. If the number is not in the list, the first step is to check if they mistyped on their calculator or got their sums wrong.
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<issue_start>username_0: I am pursuing a PhD in one of the physical sciences. I attend a university that is top 10 or so in my field and has a recognizable name (Ivy league). My adviser’s past students have had somewhat good luck finding professorships, but even so several have left the field for jobs in computer science. Since I enjoy traveling, to increase my chances of finding a permanent academic position I plan to also apply abroad. Unfortunately, I only speak English.
Do you have any suggestions of where a monolingual American PhD can find an academic job abroad? If I need to complete a postdoc first like in America, would it be better to do it in America or said foreign country?<issue_comment>username_1: Obvious answer is other English speaking countries such as Britain, Ireland, South Africa or any other Commonwealth country such as Canada or Singapore.
Non-obvious answer is the countries that have some schools teaching in English. It is actually harder to find a fuller picture in that regard. English is rarely the teaching language in Germany or France whereas it is more common in the Netherlands. I am sure there will also be schools in "second world countries" that teach in English.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm Dutch. In physical sciences, most of our universities teach their MSc programmes entirely in English. Some of our universities also teach their BSc programmes entirely in English. If you find an academic job here, you are quite likely to get by with only speaking English. From a language POV, American PhDs are welcome here.
Dutch universities commonly do expect at least one postdoctoral stint before starting a tenure-track position. Whether that stint is performed in Europe or the USA makes little difference IMO.
Of course, your mileage may vary, and this answer sketches only the situation in a single foreign academic job market. But the conclusion is: **yes, there are foreign academic job markets where American PhDs are sought after**. Beyond the Netherlands, I expect the situation to be similar in the Nordic and Baltic countries. Also, anecdotally, I know of one American PhD who did a postdoc in the USA and then moved to a professorship in Belgium.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Pakistan, we have education system in English (many primary, secondary schools have books and exams in English), and the undergraduate, post-graduate education is also in English.
Although teachers teach the class in a mix of Urdu and English, all the material is in English: books, exams, assignments, papers are in English (except a few subjects but except languages, they also have the option of choosing the language). The mode is entirely English if the professor or one or more students are foreigners.
Having credentials from the US is a big plus, they will work to your advantage, having a US postdoc will help more. Nowadays we have a lot of people getting Masters and PhDs from the west, and coming back as faculty in our universities.
Although the answer doesn't meet your criteria of favoring US degrees, practically you will get the advantage.
And as far as I know, most of what I said applies to India as well.
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently published my [first paper in a conference proceedings (CogSci2020)](https://cognitivesciencesociety.org/cogsci20/papers/0183/). Before submitting I was struggling how to give my name. My name is:
* First: [Alireza]
* Last: [<NAME>]
The two words for the last name are both my last name. First I was thinking to get rid of Mahmoudi and publish with **<NAME>** since Kamelabad is pretty rare and except my uncle and a relative who publish there are no Kamelabads in the world. But I thought maybe it is better to give my full name. So I did and now that the paper is appeared in [Google Scholar](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=11647009302339698289&hl=en&as_sdt=0,5) it considers **Mahmoudi** as a middle name and for citation makes it *AM Kamelabad* instead of *A Mahmoudi Kamelabad*.
I have set up my Google Scholar account and tried to fix my name by there but it does not happen. Also the citation that Google Scholar shows is wrong in general in terms of format.
My question is how can I fix that? Is there any way I could specify in google scholar that [Mahmoudi Kamleabad] is a chunk and not separable?
Thank you.<issue_comment>username_1: Google crawled your data from somewhere, I suspect that source gave Google the wrong data. E.g., perhaps a bibtex listing is wrong. So, to fix the problem, you could fix the source.
Taking *Mahmoudi* as the middle name in *<NAME>amelabad* is a standard reading. To avoid that reading, you could use *Alireza Mahmoudi-Kamelabad* in the future.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In your Google Scholar profile page you can edit the citation by clicking on the name of the article. Just move your first surname to after the comma, together with your second one. At the very least it should help Google to catch on.
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<issue_start>username_0: I work as a postdoc in a lab that is extremely mismanaged. The head of the lab micromanages all the staff, often claims successful work as his own, and rejects new ideas that are not from him. All the employees (both scientists and technicians) are miserable, and some of the team has become destructive, creating regular conflicts between team members that the lab head refuses to resolve.
The head of the lab is hiring a new postdoc, and I, as the only other postdoc, will meet with the candidate as part of the final interview step. I am already planning to leave, but haven't told anybody yet.
My question is:
* If asked by the candidate, should I be honest about the working environment?
* If not asked by the candidate, should I tell the candidate anyway?
I feel it is dishonest to let someone enter a destructive work environment without them being prepared.
---
**UPDATE:** I had no chance to speak to the candidate alone; the lab manager stuck by the candidate's side the whole time. Interestingly, the candidate later declined the offer, so perhaps they were astute enough to recognise the environment for what it was. Thanks to everyone for the help and advice!<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, you should be honest, but you may be able to do it without jeopardizing yourself or assigning blame to individuals. You can also answer "no comment" to questions that you think would leave you vulnerable, and the candidate is likely to get the proper implication. In fact, stating that "Off the record, I'd prefer to be elsewhere" is the poison pill that the candidate will probably find sufficient.
If not asked, it is a little harder to make a recommendation. Don't leave yourself open to retaliation.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: The general rule in these situations is that being *honest* is okay (though consider that it can be risky if word of your honesty makes it back to the boss), but it's important to stick to facts and to your opinions *about your own situation/experience*.
"The team is destructive" is not something you should say, nor is "the lab is mismanaged". Those are your opinions about other people: stay away. What you *can* say is "I feel like I've had trouble getting credit for my work", "I wish I had more freedom to choose the direction of my work", etc. Even better is to use specific factual information (note: opinions are not facts), like "I've only been able to get one first-author publication in the past three years."
That said, take care of yourself, too. If you need a recommendation for a future job, it might be necessary to bite your tongue a bit. It's good to want to warn a candidate off gently, but consider that once you are gone *someone is going to get that position*, and it's even possible that the person who does will have a different experience than you did.
Also related: <https://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/137037/can-i-tell-a-prospective-employee-that-everyone-in-the-team-is-leaving> (not an identical situation but I think the advice there still applies).
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I applaud your concern for honesty, and I understand. That said, I would strongly discourage you from being overly honest about the bad working environment.
First, this is your opinion on the environment; it may be unlikely, but it's possible others would find the situation better than you do, and you coloring the situation at the start wont help them or be appreciated.
But even if you do your best to stick to facts, as other responses have suggested, you stand basically nothing to gain, and in fact have a ton to loose. You don't know this person, and they have no reason to be loyal to you. What if you imply something negative to them and they promptly tell others what you said? What if they decline the position because of you and tell the lab director the honest reason why?
Unfortunately this extends to "no comment" answers intended to be obvious catcalls regarding the bad environment.
Personally, I would avoid lying outright, but also do my best to evade any sort of opinion question with excuses like "oh, I mostly keep to myself" or "I've managed one publication this year, so I was happy about that."
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: "Should you have any more questions, feel free to ask." while handing him a business card with your private phone number on its back. Don't write the phone number down then. It happens to be already there.
If there are questions by him in the interview that would be a bad idea to answer honestly, be evasive, like "that is not a black and white thing" or "it depends on who you ask", "that's a bit of an expansive topic for discussing in a focused context like this".
Chances are that he'll take a hint even if you don't get to speak to him alone.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: In this situation, I believe in being a tactful truth-teller but not a complainer.
---
You are entitled to describe your opinions and feelings (truth) but not those of others (gossip).
**Example**
Q: What's it like working here?
A: I have to admit the approach here feels a little too combative for me - I'm sure everyone has their own opinion.
---
If you are worried about your words getting back to the wrong people, remember that they can't quote what isn't explicitly said. I believe that a lot can be conveyed with a pause, a sigh, a wry expression or a non-committal answer.
**Examples**
Q: What's your supervisor like to work for?
A: Next question! (blunt non-committal - preferably not in the hearing of the head!)
---
Q: What's your supervisor like to work for?
A: Mmmm ... We have our moments. (non-committal but more gentle)
---
Q: What's your supervisor like to work for?
A: What sort supervisor are you hoping for? (evasive - letting the other person specify)
Q: Oh someone who is easy-going, relaxed and generous.
A: Smiles and says "Might not be your type then"
---
I could give hundreds of examples but what's really important is your mind-set. Vow not to lie. Be calm and act as though you are describing what happens in a movie, i.e depersonalise but answer truthfully (or possibly decline to answer).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: I have successfully left a similar work environment in Europe. When asked by a prospective postdoc candidate I choose to give direct, factual and honest answers. I would have appreciated a similar warning myself. If you feel that you can not safely say anything too negative without endangering yourself, then I think some of the other answers give excellent tips about how to give more circumspect answers. The level of honesty and directness you can use in your answers will depend on the local work culture and your personal circumstances. You could always find an excuse not to meet with the new postdoc (meeting, vacation, illness), in my opinion that is still better than misrepresenting the work environment.
If you are worried about not getting a good reference because of a of conflict with your supervisor, maybe you could ask your supervisor's supervisor or someone else at the University to be your reference. Alternatively, the University might have a system in place where you can report or discuss your work environment confidentially.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: >
> If asked by the candidate, should I be honest about the working environment?
>
>
>
Yes, be honest and describe details regarding different aspects of lab life.
However:
* You should make it clear you're describing your own experience, and it's possible that others don't see it that way (if others really don't all see it the same way as you do).
* Try avoiding phrases like "Professor X always does [Something]", in favor of "Professor X has done [Something] on several occasions when I was involved, and I understand this has happened in more cases."
* Prefer describing events rather than than the supposed character of people or groups. Let the candidate draw their conclusions.
So honesty and an attempt at fairness.
>
> If not asked by the candidate, should I tell the candidate anyway?
>
>
>
Yes, but not like in the above. Tell the candidate that, if they're interested in the experience of someone working at the lab, you're offering to have a chat with him/her and sharing yours. If they take you up on it, it's back to the previous scenario; if not, well, you offered.
>
> I feel it is dishonest to let someone enter a destructive work environment without them being prepared.
>
>
>
It might not be dishonest, but it's immoral, in my opinion, and against your collective interest and public benefit.
But - if things are really that bad, then telling potential candidates is not enough. You (= all people working under him) should do something about it together. Possibly with union support, if you're unionized; possibly some kind of in-lab intervention; possibly sending a delegation to the dean or whoever is at the head of your department.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: Morality and self respect have their price.
Ask yourself if you are O.K. with anything you say getting back to your authority chain as opposed to seeing yourself as dishonest.
Every person must answer this for themselves.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_9: Pretend you are going to have a discussion with this person ten years in the future. At that point, you will be free to discuss everything without repercussions.
What will you be comfortable telling the candidate at that point? Here are some possible examples:
"My own experience was bad, I understood others to feel the same way, and I was planning to leave. However, due to the employee-employer power imbalance I feared for my career if I was completely honest about my perception of the lab."
"I did my best to hint to you that I felt the lab was poorly run, but I didn't feel that it was my place to make that decision for you."
What you probably don't want to say is something like "I was scared and I didn't do what I would have liked someone else to do for me in that situation."
If you were really in a highly vulnerable situation, I would not hold you accountable for what you felt you had to conceal/not reveal. So if that is really the case, I think you can be comfortable protecting yourself. That's the point of the first couple of responses I typed.
In a situation like this, the ethics are not straightforward. Am I ethically obligated to sacrifice my safety for the benefit of someone else? One can come up with any number of situations where it would be very, very difficult to make a blanket declaration that X is the right decision.
My personal approach has been to accept some risk to myself in order to help other people. Sometimes that has had negative repercussions for me, but I felt good about the decision and pushed forward through those situations.
I agree with other suggestions that you might want to give hints in such a way that you do not expose yourself to legal action but which you can reasonably expect that the candidate will understand.
"Just as personal advice, I highly recommend that before you join *any* lab you do your best to read between the lines to get an idea of what the culture might be like there. People don't always feel comfortable saying exactly what they think in formal situations like interviews."
That is, technically, just true advice (in fact, very good advice). If you are challenged on it, you can play dumb. "What? I was just giving him personal advice, do you disagree with anything I said?"
Conversationally asking about other opportunities they might be considering and asking how they assessed the culture there (if they've already interviewed at any of them) might give you cover to comment about the fact that it can be hard to tell what the culture is in a lab because people don't feel completely free to talk about it if they think it's bad. Then you have cover by saying that you were talking about the other opportunity.
"I don't want to say anything bad about the culture here without the person being in the room to defend themself." True statement, they should be able to pick up on it.
To protect yourself it might be worth rehearsing a few lines like this and keeping the phrasing in such a way that you can accurately say "I never said *anything* negative about the lab here." Phrase all your comments in such a way that that is true so that you can confidently state this should the candidate (intentionally or not) blow your cover.
Here are some other true statements:
"It's not my responsibility if the candidate misinterpreted what I said [this is true--even if you actually intended them to interpret it badly and the candidate accurately interpreted everything, it's still true that it's not your responsibility if they misinterpreted it]."
Is your lab on Glassdoor? If so, put what you really think on Glassdoor (it's username_12ymous--but make sure that you don't say anything that makes it obvious that it's you. Note, however, that if the lab is small it may compromise your username_12ymity. Only take this option if you can be reasonably sure that it won't be traced back to you, which is probably only true if there are hundreds of people that could have written the review you wrote. [this caveat is a reaction to a comment on this question by Bob]). Then you can casually mention (in the context of that conversation about what other opportunities the candidate might be applying to, for example), that Glassdoor was originally mostly about corporate environments but now some academic labs are on there and that you *always check Glassdoor* before you accept an offer.
Another example of a true statements that is not directly about your lab:
"People are often under a lot of pressure to keep a lid on a bad situation. If there is bad leadership, it's even worse, because they probably can't trust that bad leader not to retaliate."
Your defense, if cover is blown by candidate: "We were just talking about the academic interview process in general. I was trying to build rapport [true statement!]. I didn't say anything negative about the situation here."
In the end, no one can tell you what the appropriate amount of risk to take is. You want to make sure that you feel good about how you handled yourself. You should look for a way that *you* feel is the right balance between courage and caution for *your particular situation at this time*. You are a person with particular vulnerabilities at this particular time. The candidate is a person with particular vulnerabilities at this particular time. You would have to be omniscient to know what the exactly correct balance is. You are not omniscient, so you are going to have to make a guess. Do your best, with the emphasis on how you think you will feel about your decisions in ten years, and recognizing that you are fallible and your approach will not be perfect, and that's ok.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: Use "faint praise"
==================
For better or for worse this isn't a situation where you can openly speak your mind about the shortcomings of your employer without putting your career at risk. Appearing to be trying to run off potential hires would look doubly bad. There is however a way that you can honestly communicate your misgivings to the candidate while (if done right) minimizing the risk to your career. It's called giving "faint praise". From the Wikipedia article on the topic (note: the word "damning" used here is not a curse word, but means "condemning"):
>
> Damning with faint praise is an English idiom, expressing oxymoronically that half-hearted or insincere praise may act as oblique criticism or condemnation.
>
>
>
[en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning\_with\_faint\_praise](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise)
Basically most candidates in this situation will realize that employees won't be able to say anything bad about the employer, and so will be listening carefully for red flags in the form of less than fully enthusiastic praise for the employer. So if you communicate your misgivings in the form of faint praise, they are likely to be understood. But critically, they are ambiguous, and so are difficult for your boss to weaponize against you in case your words do make it back to your boss.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_11: I think this is the right thing to do, so I would recommend talking to him about it in a pleasant way and to suggest ways for improvement.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_12: The candidate has no way of knowing whether your "honesty" is in good faith
===========================================================================
Look at it from the candidate's perspective: he/she has no idea whether he/she can trust the OP's "honest" negative commentary on the job. Given that the OP is on the interview panel, any attempt on the OP's part to discourage the candidate may be perceived as an attempt at sabotage to allow nepotism to take place.
If I attended a job interview and one of the panellists were trying to discourage me from accepting the job, I would assume the following:
* interview panel hoped to appoint a pre-selected candidate;
* however, the pre-selected candidate is manifestly weaker than me;
* the panel is thus obliged to offer me the job, but hopes I refuse it so that they can get away with offering it to their pre-selected candidate instead;
* therefore, the panel engages in a subterfuge designed to discourage me from accepting the job (this subterfuge takes the form of a junior panellist, the OP, claiming to be "honest" with me about a "toxic working environment").
Given this distinct possibility, it is deemed severely unprofessional for someone on an interview panel to actively discourage a candidate from accepting a job offer.
My advice to the OP
===================
If you feel you must disclose negative information, **do it in a way that does not come across as an attempt to discourage the candidate from accepting the job**. Express the information in a neutral, fact-based way that makes no assumptions about how the candidate is supposed to react (e.g.: instead of saying the PI "micromanages" subordinates, the OP could say that the PI "is heavily involved in directing the day-to-day work of subordinates" -- then the candidate can decide whether he/she feels that is a problem, and, if so, ask for clarification such as "does that mean that there is not much scope for working independently?" or "could you describe the PI's management style in a bit more detail?").
Upvotes: 0
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2020/08/11
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<issue_start>username_0: For context, I'm entering a mathematics PhD program that offers several different areas of specialization, mathematical computer science (MCS), pure maths, statistics, and more. My undergrad was in pure maths, so I feel most comfortable there, but I'm also interested in MCS, although I'm essentially a stranger there, other than a course on graph theory and a chapter of Algorithms. I'm trying to decide which track to put myself on while considering job prospects after school.
After reading several posts about job prospects for a pure maths PhD [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/54063/to-what-degree-does-earning-a-pure-math-phd-in-dynamical-systems-limit-my-career?noredirect=1&lq=1), [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/18300/are-there-any-research-careers-except-professorship-for-a-person-holding-phd-in?noredirect=1&lq=1), and [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/11149/what-are-the-potential-pitfalls-of-having-a-phd), I've noticed a few places where you can go with your PhD.
1. Academia, with a notoriously tight job market, but where you get to continue doing enjoyable research, possibly gain tenure and basically continue the freedom from the same "business" demands that industry would have. I'm not sure I have the mettle to make it here, so the next options feel safer.
2. Industry, where your skills will probably be underutilized, or even totally irrelevant, meaning you will have to learn entirely new skills -- programming, statistics, etc -- that you're perfectly capable of learning but haven't been directly taught in your PhD studies. These are jobs like actuaries, software engineers, etc.
3. Industry Research, rare in between opportunities where research is restricted to what the company needs, but is still relatively open and free. Places like Google and Facebook labs.
There is obvious tension between the first two because a PhD is an academic, not professional, credential. It's simply not optimized to land you into option 2. If you're interested in options 2 or 3, the advice is that you should learn programming or something else on the side and use that to get your first job, and essentially leave the learning in your dissertation behind. This seems like an enormous waste to me. The effort and time spent learning esoteric pure math is essentially for fun (admittedly, a lot of fun), while you are still left to develop marketable job skills on your own.
So my question is: how can I choose my academic track/thesis topic minimize doubling my work? Am I merely butting my head against an intrinsic problem of academic vs professional credential? Should I see the PhD instead as an magical time to enjoy learning math, which will end but leave me mentally strong to tackle other, very different challenges? Perhaps instead it is merely an incubator, where I'm supported while developing a variety of skills not directly involved in the program?
**Edit:** Thank you for your responses. They're very helpful on a soul searching level and definitely respond to my question, but they weren't exactly what I was looking for.
I should have phrased it like this: **What kinds of concrete choices -- courses, advisors, areas of mathematics, etc -- can I make while doing a PhD to maximize its' value after graduating?**
For example, is MCS a better choice in terms of applicability outside of academia? Should I consider where a professor's students go after graduating when considering them as an advisor? Am I just worrying too much, and I should just find a problem I love so much that I think about it in the shower? What else am I missing?
Thank you again for your help.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't feel there's a tension between the two at all. Your PhD will give you lots of time to work on topics that you are hopefully interested in. It will also teach you the importance of communication, collaboration, and how to teach yourself new topics. When you say you will `leave your learning behind`, well, that's probably the same as if you went to do a postdoc in a different field (for example). There's a very strong chance that you will never use the exact things you did in your PhD in future. You have learnt far more than just the topic of your thesis. To use your example of learning to program, given your courses, you will more than likely pick some up. Once you know the basics, what's far more important is how you think about problems.
If you want intellectual work outside academia, look for interesting companies, simple as that. Bear in mind that what a company advertises isn't necessarily what they are currently doing... There are many, many people in industry who would have been more than capable of doing a PhD, and I would advise not to consider yourself above them, simply for having taken a different path.
So, enjoy exploring interesting topics, take time to see what other people are doing, get experience of communicating (reading, writing, and presenting), and you'll be well set.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: A math PhD will teach you a large number of completely marketable, industry-ready skills:
* how to think logically and analytically
* how to research challenging technical topics on your own, solve problems, and pursue difficult goals over an extended period of time, overcoming frustration and maintaining a good level of motivation
* how to communicate your ideas effectively, in writing and in person (in particular, if you gain teaching experience while doing your PhD your presentation skills will end up orders of magnitude better than those of your peers who went into industry straight out of college)
* and many other “soft” skills that are difficult to quantify and describe but are nonetheless extremely useful and important.
All of these things add up to a very attractive package for employers. It’s easy to focus on the “esoteric math” part of a PhD and conclude that it’s a “waste”. Will an industry job give you an opportunity to use your knowledge of Schur’s lemma or Brouwer’s fixed point theorem, or show off your familiarity with Radon-Nikodym derivatives? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean you will have wasted your efforts learning those things. Along the way, you will have learned to look at the world like a mathematician, and that, as it happens, is a darn useful skill almost anywhere you go.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I won't be overly worried. Just think about all the people who didn't go on to do a PhD. They got a job and probably living out their lives right now. You can definitely explore whatever you want, and all the best if your advisor is supportive or doesn't care that you are doing some work on the side (mine wasn't so flexible), although full fledged courses will definitely put you behind on your thesis and research. I have not figured out the best solution, however there are plenty of MOOCs or even certificates, e.g., Oracle, Microsoft, which you can get.
That being said, math PhD will definitely put you in a niche in terms of future career and set you back money/youth-wise. Read this excellent answer <https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/11208/78834> It is not good to start life when you are 30 in today's economy. I'm saying this because I don't want to gaslight you about the harsh reality of today's job market. No, you are not better prepared for a tech interview than a highschool student who spent his entire life hacking computers because you did a PhD.
And it is not about the lack of knowledge, it is about the lack of experience, and accumulation of experience over the years. We are in a fully experience/skill-based market as compared to a degree/whatever-is-in-your-head based market. Think about the thousands of PhD scientists who work on climate change that gets their finding rebuked by people in charge with no science degrees whatsoever. We are living in this era/climate and we can't deny this.
Ok, so you learned C++ while doing your PhD. Now you are out of the program, and you will have to compete with undergrads or highschool students who maybe doing C++ many years longer than you. Who will be hired? (Not you, because every job nowadays literally wants at least 5 years of professional software development experience.) Think about that.
Not to scare you further, but my friend in graduate school (who is much more robust in the technical-skills than me), got rejected from a bunch of high-tech companies. He taught C++ and was a TA bunch of other software courses as a master student. There is literally no person more knowledgeable in when it comes to memory management in C than him. We spent a week lamenting how industry hands out rejection letter like candies and how it is so much harder to get into a good tech company than passing the PhD oral defense. Then we forgot about it. Mind you however, those were some top companies. I'm pretty sure he could easily work as a code monkey.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I believe that the mindset to pursue a PhD should not be this.
Landing a good paying/mentally satisfactory job in tech is always a challenge and won’t be easy for anyone, and it does not require a PhD in particular. So if getting a tech job is priority to you in your life, I suggest not pursuing a math PhD.
However, PhD studies are not just some very specific topic you will study like crazy for a couple years and then forget all about it. Being in a PhD program strengthens you socially, psychologically and mentally. One acquires more than some coding skills in a PhD program if they are doing it for the right reasons. Also, one requires more than just a desire to get a job to be doing a PhD for the right reasons.
I think one should pursue PhD if and only if they are interested and passionate about a certain topic so much that even in the shower they are thinking about it. Doing a PhD for the right reasons requires you to be married to your topic, just because you are interested in it beyond reason. Otherwise it is a waste of time and it is better to do a masters where you can learn some skills required in industry and go directly into the real life.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: 1. A nearly necessary ingredient to doing well in pure math is the conviction / delusion that your research question is important, your efforts are relevant, and you will make a meaningful contribution to the world. A cynic doesn't think this way. A rational thinker performing Bayesian reasoning based on existing empirical evidence about past outcomes, placements, and job market realities, does not think this way, either. It's clear that you don't have this conviction / delusion -- this itself makes it harder for you to do well in, say, abstract homotopy theory. Pure maths sounds idealistic and romantic, until you come to the realisation that pure maths actually treats its younger colleagues like shit. If pure maths really loves us, why it is making us hardworking and gifted people suffer from such job insecurity, low wage, and tremendous stress? If your romantic partner says that he or she truly loves you verbally, but they always act abusively towards you, would you stay with them just for their sweet promises?
2. One of the biggest favours you can do to yourself during graduate school is to become *genuinely interested* in coding, machine learning, and statistics. Stats has a better academic job market than pure math; statistical learning would not be wasted double effort; and the connections of stats professors and students are closer to industry jobs. Some maths PhDs are smart kids, so they can wait till year 4 to have their big realisation, leetcode for a year, and still land reasonable jobs. They then give you self-justificatory coping narratives of how their previous 4 years of intellectual exploration have been fulfilling and meaningful -- this is just copeism. If we modify their interests from abstract number theory to machine learning, while controlling for every other factor including the level of intelligence, then the same kids would be just as happy if not happier, would have completed their PhDs one year earlier, and would have been better placed in the industry. Despite all their copeism, deep down in their hearts, the 4th year leetcoders fully know that it's a tremendous pity that abstract algebraic topology will never show up in their professional life anymore, ever.
3. You seem to be under the impression that pure math has more intellectual challenge and enjoyment than coding, ML, and Stats. The former is what you'd do if you had all the money in the world; the latter is what you do to pay the bills. This is the cross-discipine prejudice that pure mathematicians often exhibit. I don't think this is fair. Look - The Invention of C, C++, and Neural Nets are among the top ten most significant technological achievements in the history of Humanity. Proving theorems about Neural Nets actually says something important, and nobody has solved the problem. Mathematically formulating and explaining the empirical phenomena achieved by Stochastic Gradient Descent on deep neural nets is a mathematical challenge deeper and greater than the one faced by <NAME>, which was doing the same for Quantum Mechanics, and we needed to invent the theory of operator algebras to do that. These are fields where a lot of activities are happening. They give you the skills and knowledge that our free market economy is rewarding - and free market is the best exsiting definition of what our society considers to be of "value."
In short, if you only *genuinely and passionately love* number theory, then, why, go fucking do it. But if there's any intellectual possibility that you can be *genuinely and passionately* be interested in statistics and maching learning, then why don't you go ahead and develop this interest?
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/11
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm starting my Ph.D. this year. My first 2 years will **only** be coursework. So, I won't be able to do any serious independent research. My research will only be in the context of what's required for the specific courses, so nothing too serious.
I am aware that I should meet with my advisor regularly, but what should I talk about? Usually, graduate students will talk about their results, advancement of their thesis, etc. Should I be talking about my courses and such?
Thanks!<issue_comment>username_1: This is a challenge that I know we face from our end as a graduate program: the supervisor *will* be extremely important for the student, but not until they actually start their dissertation process.
So yes, regular meetings are key. You should talk about:
* **your courses**: progress making, anything interesting that you're working on as part of the coursework;
* **any TA/RA duties**: your supervisor might be able to find funding for you (field and university dependent), but can often serve as a sounding board around issues like balancing teaching and coursework, etc.
* **comprehensive exams**: if applicable, your supervisor will want to make sure you suceed in comprehensive exams.
* **yourself**: this depends on the supervisor, but we often want to know who are students are. How are you doing? Especially during COVID, your supervisor will probably want to know how you're holding up. You can make a bit of small talk and get to know each other.
This is important for building that relationship, and also for your supervisor to get to know you. What's working well for you? What successes have you found in coursework? It may come time for scholarship rankings and opportunities, and you want a supervisor who can make the case for you if they happen to be at those tables or have other opportunities.
All supervisors are different: some will want regular meetings, some less so, but you'll need to discover the shape of what will hopefully be a long and productive relationship to come.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Your first meeting(s) with your advisor should be...directed at answering this very question.
How should your meetings going forward be structured? What topics should you plan to discuss? What's your schedule for making progress toward degree requirements/prelim requirements? When can you start considering research directions? etc.
You might be used to interacting with professors as people who stand above you in some way, people who you only approach with deference and who are judging you at every step. A PhD advisor shouldn't be that person. They are training you to be *their peer and colleague*. It is expected that you will need some help along the way, and they should be there to help you, so you should feel free to have open conversations about what that advising relationship will look like between you. The earlier the better: often conflicts arise when there are mismatches of expectations. Set shared expectations to avoid conflict (including internal conflict: stress, anxiety, etc).
Upvotes: 3
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2020/08/11
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<issue_start>username_0: I have just very recently accepted a full-time teaching position at a reputable college (hooray!). I've been employed as an adjunct the last several years with courses assigned to me generally well in advance of the academic term. This full-time offer however has come in only a couple weeks before the start of the next term. I've essentially given my other institutions only 2 weeks notice (only 10 days notice in the case of one of the schools) to find someone else to cover my originally-assigned course load (one campus had me assigned to 1 section, the other campus had me assigned to 3 sections).
It's now only occurring to me whether or not I should've given these institutions a heads up that I had an interview and was potentially leaving. I'm not sure as to the etiquette in leaving a teaching position so close to the beginning of an academic term. I honestly thought I would've received the results of my interview sooner than I did. I'm curious though if telling these institutions that I had an interview would've made them rescind their offers of employment (generally a soft offer is made in advance of the term, and a contract is signed only once the term begins). To summarize my question:
>
> Is it acceptable in this situation to simply provide notice once an offer was put in front of me, or should I have given advanced notice to my other campuses that I had an interview and merely the potential that I would leave? Would it be proper etiquette to give a warning to these institutions of a potential departure, or could that have resulted in rescinded offers of employment?
>
>
>
I suppose this is a problem that other industries don't run into; in normal businesses people can leave at any time with the work uninterrupted. In academia however, institutions need to secure a reliable person well in-advance of an academic term and it's generally unacceptable for a professor to give up their teaching appointment in the middle of a term. The institutions I'm leaving have rather large adjunct pools, so maybe it's not as bad as I'm worrying it may be.<issue_comment>username_1: I think it's generally agreed that it is unwise to tell an employer that you *might* leave, that nobody does this, and that nobody expects anyone to. You only tell them when you are *definitely* leaving, which you did as soon as you knew. You haven't done anything inappropriate.
Your old department head is surely not thrilled about having to fill your classes with 10 days to go, but it's their job to handle such contingencies, just as if you had been hit by the proverbial bus. You weren't under contract and so you're a free agent. I probably wouldn't expect them to hire you as an adjunct again, but it seems unlikely you'd want them to anyway.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Firstly, in academia this is an expected situation, although they are not happy, they just need to figure this out. It is very natural for you to accept a much better opportunity, especially when you are switching to a full-time position. You are not expected to tell them unless you have a definite offer and you have made arrangements to take it.
That being said, you should try to make it easier for them as much as you can. Do you know anyone that could take over - within the institution or from outside- Is there a TA that could take over, or can you ask some other faculty working on similar topics? Maybe you can provide them your teaching materials? Can you ask your new employer whether you can 1) start at a later date? 2) teach at the former institute at the same time (if location/time allows or remotely).
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/12
| 4,488
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<issue_start>username_0: I have studied at 4 universities, and in 3 different programs.
I always observed that when asked for a recommendation for a book to understand a topic easily and clearly, university-professors **always** referred to books that are **not** student-friendly, i.e. written for more advanced level than that of the student. Then, after several years, I discovered that there were easier-to-comprehend books available which could have helped me acquire better grades.
Is this intentional?
If Yes, why?
If No, is there anything wrong with the higher education culture of the country I am studying in?<issue_comment>username_1: Faculty (and people in general) do not have time to read multiple books that describe the same thing. So they will suggest the book they have read, not the best book.
Further, it is unlikely for two people to agree on which book is best.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Where I am (Germany), lectures do not "follow" a certain textbook, they cover topics listed in the curriculum. University students are expected to choose a textbook (or several) on their own which suits their style and covers the listed topics.
There is also nothing wrong with starting or also using a "lower-level" textbook (e.g. one from school, or one intended for students who take this subject only as minor side field).
Textbook recommendations will typically list a few popular ones (of which the local library holds a substantial number of copies), maybe together with "For the exam, the level of detail as e.g. in `$textbook1` or `$textbook2` is expected."
Literature or suggested reading lists often include large amounts of literature for those interested to dig deeper into particular topics than the lecture does. This is intentional.
I may add: like many of my colleagues, I bought books that are somewhere in between textbook and advanced reference book since I can use them longer throughout my professional life. Typically also *after* I had passed the respective exam, when I could confidently judge which one suits me. I usually learned with various textbooks from the library. Sometimes the literature recommendations were also along the lines "You won't need that level of detail for this course, but if you consider buying a book, consider `$advanced_book` since that is one you're likely find useful for a long time."
---
To give some examples (German, sorry): e.g. for inorganic chemistry a recommendation we got would be that the level of the Riedel (back then, ≈ 1000 pages) would be good for our 1st and 2nd year exams, but if we'd want to go for a book that "lasts us longer", the Hollemann-Wiberg (back then "only" 2000 pages small print on "bible paper") was recommended. I'd characterize the latter as a mix of textbook and reference book, possibly what @username_4 calls ADVANCED textbook. I certainly did a whole lot of learning where lecture notes were for the concepts plus reference-type books for more "data", and I hardly touched typical textbooks. But there were other subjects (e.g. physical chemistry) where I worked with several textbooks and I also worked through a whole lot of excercises from textbooks for engineers (though I'm "plain" chemist, not chemical engineer).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Note that you and your teachers might have divergent goals. Their ideal goal is having you understand the topic, as this is what matters in the long run. Grades and exams are only a tool to this end. After all, if they want everyone to get good grades, they could just make the exam easier.
But especially for beginner classes there are often a bunch of books that drill the standard exam problems, without properly explaining much of the actual topic. They might seem helpful to you, but for the goal of teaching a topic they are actually counterproductive.
Furthermore there is also the less obvious to spot category of books that offer simple, intuitive explanations for most of the topics, which seem easier and helpful to you, but whose explanations just turn out to be too superficial or possibly even completely wrong. Most professors have experienced having to waste time helping their students unlearn such bad ideas, so they will be wary of any books that seem to easy.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Note that if one asks for a "reference" book, that is exactly what one should expect to get: a reference, which is a book intended for those who already understand the material and simply need a reminder. This is different than a teaching book to learn from that holds your hand.
I'm also sure that some of it also has to do with the professor already knowing the material and forgetting what it is like to learn something for the first time. When you already know what something is trying to say, it can be very easy to be unable to comprehend what it might look like to someone who doesn't know what it is trying to say. If breadth and depth of material are your selection criteria when this happens, you end selecting a comprehensive book not written to hold someone's hand.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: One possible reason is that I feel the style of textbooks have changed in the last years, so that newer books are sometimes easier to understand (use more modern-day language and symbols, is friendlier to the reader etc.) (This does not necessarily imply that they don't cover as much details as the older ones or are more superficial)
But the professor, being older, does maybe not know about them or is used to the older style. And often, some old books are considered classics that all students should know regardless of whether something better came out in the recent years.
Additionally, another reason might be that your professors don't have any education in teaching and don't know much about it. Most of my professors thought the most effective way of teaching is to copy lecture notes onto the blackboard and read it out loud with a monotone voice, without any explanations or motivation because they assumed that having it written down means students know it. Those may also be the types of professors who recommend you a hard-to-read, but factually correct book.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_6: I've had pretty much the opposite experience, the recommended textbooks were often more beginner-friendly than the alternatives. For biochemistry the recommended book was the Stryer, not the Voet. For physical chemistry it was the Atkins, not the Wedler. And for organic chemistry it was the Warren, probably one of the best textbooks for learning the topic for beginners I've seen. And in most cases while there was a recommended book, the lecturers also provided some alternatives with a short description of how those are different and why you might want to read them.
My experience was in Germany, where the textbooks are generally recommended, but not required. You're free to choose a different one if you like. But my experience was that the professors did in almost all cases recommend the book they genuinely thought was the most appropriate and useful for the students at that level.
There are some cases where I'd argue that some textbooks are simply better than others. But there are also many where they simply take different approaches, and none of them is clearly better, they're just different.
I would take the recommendations seriously, but it's also a good idea to take an independent look at what textbooks are available. There are some topics where the differences are large between the books, and where it is worth it to look at other options.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: Also be very careful about WHAT you ask for, if you ask a prof. to recommend a book on say the Foundations of electronics, do not be surprised when it STARTS with Maxwell and the maths get worse from there.
The Problem is that "Foundations" has a very specific meaning in academia and it is NOT the same as "Introductory", I made exactly this mistake, surface integrals and partial derivatives are NOT usually first month of first year undergrad friendly.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: There is nothing wrong with the culture of the universities you mentioned. At least, not that is evident from your posts. This problem comes up with any expert, not just academic faculty.
Once you know a lot about something, it's hard to imagine not knowing it. Your professors know a lot about a subject. If you ask them to recommend a book, they do so from the perspective of having a very detailed technical knowledge of their subject. Those books *are* likely very good - but not for you.
"Teachers" don't recommend hard to comprehend books. Think back to your primary and secondary education. Those books were usually written explicitly for learners at a desired level of ability. But most professors aren't teachers in the sense that they were specifically trained to teach. Rather, they are experts in a particular subject matter who also have to teach.
So what can you do? Instead of asking faculty, ask your peers what books were helpful to them. Your peers won't be experts, which is a double-edged sword. On one hand, they can't tell how thorough, precise, or "correct" a book's material is. On the other hand, they will be able to tell you what they perceive helped their own understanding.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: *Hard to comprehend* is is a relative term. New students want lots of exposition, examples and informal explanation, while more experienced people probably prefer something which works good as a reference.
Compare a proper mathematics book, and a formula sheet. The formula sheet is useless for learning, but perfect as a quick reference. This example of course is rather extreme, but the general gist is there.
Professional people (teachers) tent to consult reference books, rather than books written primarily for teaching a subject, since reference books are more efficient for that. So, teachers will naturally be more familiar with reference books which are not student-friendly (but are professional-friendly).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_10: Depending on the standard of the university/college and the **reputation** of the professor, the other aspects to consider are their own standing/ego/reputation and their **tendency to stick to tradition** and not rock-the-boat, especially since they are representatives of the university/college. Recommending a "highly-respected" author/book would be seen as more appropriate, since **it would point to the high level of education or professional standing of the professor or institute**.
My professor used to recommend "reputed" books, which we couldn't understand anything from. When we told him, he'd say "*If you respect the book, the book will respect you and you will be able to learn*". That's some of the biggest nonsense I've heard. **My advice is that if you find it hard to understand concepts from a book, keep it aside and find books or tutorials on the internet that explain the concept well.** After years of completing college, when I wanted to refresh my concepts on differential equations and integration, I was shocked at the "famous", "reputed" engineering maths books I had with me. I couldn't understand a damn thing, because the author didn't know how to explain concepts! It was only then I realized that it was not because I was stupid, that I did badly in those subjects. The explanation in the books were just pathetic!
So yes, there is something seriously wrong with the education culture all across the world (and this is something that people have known for decades and done very less about). There's something wrong with the way academia is run. I find it very strange that dedicated, intelligent academicians who expand human knowledge and push the boundaries of knowledge to give us all the impressive technologies we use, have to go through the rigors of research work with constant danger of having their careers and reputation dragged through the mud (while being paid so less) for the slightest errors, but people who predict the future based on stars or people who talk to the souls of loved ones or those who perform "miracle-cures" in front of audiences or use pseudo-science to trick people, happily make tons of money. I wonder what would happen if researchers stopped being so meek and pushed back to demand scrapping the exploitative "publish or perish" system. Researchers also need to be offered a better status and privileges in society. As of now it's the corrupt bullies who are taking a large share of the cake and enjoying life while the hard-working researchers are exploited. Imagine what would happen if researchers went on strike and refused to do any research unless the exploitation stopped.
Hopefully, online education will change this. Learning and understanding concepts is more important. Not choosing a hard-to-understand book, just because somebody says it's written by a "reputed" author or of "high-standard".
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_11: *Note: English Google translation, original text in Portuguese below.*
In my opinion, I do not see an intention in the teacher to harm and / or delay the student's teaching. The fact is, that books with their various authors and publishers create an educational "weight" through the experience on which it is based. There are books that will be easier to be interpreted and understood, but this may be the book that will not pass the experience that the teacher wants for the class, simply because of the content or even the language used. For students from Universities, colleges, undergraduate students in general, a cultural content greater than that of previous educational levels is expected and for this, the collection of books and teaching must be differentiated. A young man who is in high school should not fulfill or perform a task for a student of higher education, except for the simplest questions. However, it is worth emphasizing the desire of some teachers to want to complicate more than it already is, Higher Education. The big question that should come to mind is: "has the teacher been able to transfer knowledge?" "Was there any use of the content presented?" It soon follows that, being a book with content that is difficult or easy to understand, we can make it easier or more easy, it just depends on the interested.
>
> Ao meu entender, não vejo uma intenção no docente de prejudicar e/ou
> atrasar o ensino do discente. Fato é, que, os livros com seus diversos
> autores e editoras criam um "peso" educacional mediante a experiência
> na qual ele se baseia. Existem livros que serão sim mais fáceis de ser
> interpretados e entendidos porém, este pode ser o livro que não irá
> passar a experiência da qual o professor deseja para a classe,
> simplesmente por causa do conteúdo ou até mesmo da linguagem
> empregada. Para alunos de Universidades, faculdades, graduação em
> geral, espera - se um conteúdo cultural maior que os dos níveis
> educacionais anteriores e para isso, o acervo de livros e de
> ensinamento deve ser diferenciado. Um jovem que cursa o Ensino Médio,
> não deveria cumprir ou desempenhar uma tarefa para um aluno de Ensino
> Superior, salvo as questões mais simples. Contudo, vale ressaltar a
> vontade de alguns professores quererem a todo custo complicar mais do
> que já é, o Ensino Superior. A grande questão que deveria surgir em
> nossa cabeça é: " o professor conseguiu transferir conhecimento?"
> "Houve aproveitamento do conteúdo apresentado?" Logo conclui - se que,
> sendo um livro com conteúdo de difícil ou fácil compreensão, podemos
> torna- lo fácil ou mais facílimo, só depende do interessado.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_12: In at least some areas, books that are easy to understand are not hard to find -- but they're usually not the same as the books that are *right*. If a student wants a book recommendation, I'll be much more inclined to offer a book that's correct almost everywhere over one that's simpler but will give them enticingly incorrect notions that are harder to correct later.
Teachers are people, too, and may often themselves prefer an easier source to understand, other things being equal. Certainly a resource should be as simple as possible, *but no simpler*.
Which is to say, what unskilled students would prefer to be given and what an expert in the subject believes would be better for them to have (albeit requiring more effort) are not always going to be the same thing.
My own subject area has a lot of "amateur" users in other subject areas - many of whom go on to write textbooks on it aimed at students in their own area of learning. While some of these out-of-area writers are widely read and highly skilled, many are not. Many of the textbooks that are written in such areas try very hard to make the basic knowledge of this out-of-their-area subject less technical/"easier" for the students.
Some of these books are extremely popular with students and teachers in their specific application area, gathering huge numbers of sales across many editions. Unfortunately, some of them are also quite brim-full of nonsense, and the ability to distinguish superficially plausible nonsense from the slightly less intuitive fact is fairly widely lacking; even when better books exist they may fail to generate much traction.
I try to point people toward "better" books, but it's not always successful.
One thing I have often told students is to use more than one book; it's not always the first book you look at that's the best one for you individually to learn from, and an additional source can provide useful perspective a single view loses. For my own learning, with a topic I'm unfamiliar with, I tend to start with looking through a wide selection of sources (if so many are to be had) before narrowing it down to a few to work from.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_13: At my (science) institution, the lectures / problem sheets / etc are entirely sufficient to pass the course. No recourse to books should be required. (At least that's the theory)
The reading list is primarily intended for **expanding the student's mind**, it is not intended to be a requirement that all students should read the book (and the library wouldn't cope with the demand for that). The book is there for those who want to read beyond the material covered in the course, and perhaps to see a different perspective on the material than the lecturer. It is therefore common to put books on the reading list that are more advanced than the lecture material - because the aim is to expand beyond the material in lectures, not merely repeat it a different way.
That is not to say there might not be a basic level book on there, but in reality only a few students will read it.
(Obviously it is different in subjects where books are the subject under discussion - in a class on the history of evolutionary theory it is difficult to get by without having read at least some of *On the Origin of Species*. But that's a primary source, not a textbook.)
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<issue_start>username_0: Can I publish an idea as a paper if somebody else has published this idea in an online forum or a blog?
I believe it's useful to publish good ideas academically because posts on forums and blogs are usually of low quality and have a niche audience. I'm sure some journals will allow publication, even though I'll cite the blog posts. But suppose I want to submit to some high-tier journal like Nature. Will the blog post detract from the novelty of my work then?<issue_comment>username_1: Whether it is novel enough to be published is up to the editor of a journal.
But you are in danger of plagiarizing unless you are very careful about citing the original idea. The idea isn't yours, but theirs. The "novelty" isn't yours, but theirs. The fact that you noticed that it was something new isn't the same as creating something new.
But even if you avoid plagiarism, you might be accused of scooping the originators if they have plans for more formal publication. I suspect that if they have a paper in preparation and complain to an editor you will be in for some problems.
The best way, I think, is to contact the original author(s) and ask them about publishing, offering to help and working out some details about authorship.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Let me start with answering whether you *can* publish an idea that appears in a blog, without getting into whether you *should* do it, or whether it is ethically acceptable.
The status of ideas published in non archival venues such as ArXiv is vague; this is even more so for ideas put in blogs/discussion forums (such as SE).
Different venues take very different approaches to non-archival publications. Some venues do not count them as prior work for the purpose of determining precedence and novelty, others do. In other words, the writer of the blog post may not have any real recourse if you take the idea and publish it. You could always claim that you came up with the idea independently and no one could fault you for it. As anecdotal evidence, the current consensus in some CS communities is that ArXiv publications do not count when assessing novelty (and blogs/forums are ignored).
To an extent, such publications are protected by two things:
1. Their impact: some non-archival papers have thousands of citations. It would be ridiculous to try and publish the same ideas because everyone in the community knows where they appear. Some authors don't even bother trying to publish these works and rely on their popularity to "protect" them from being scooped.
2. The prestige/community standing of the authors. If some big-shot professor puts up an idea on their blog/on ArXiv, it is less likely that their ideas will be plagiarized since their standing in the community ensures that no one will try to rip them off.
I personally think that these two protections aren't great - especially (2): this is because they offer big-name researchers (and their students/group members) an unfair advantage in terms of getting their results out first.
Now getting back to whether you *should* do something like this. The answer is a clear-cut **no**. First of all, you probably won't publish first: if someone puts a good idea on a blog, chances are they had already started working on it themselves and are just previewing parts to the public. In any case, taking an idea from a blog without referencing the original is plagiarism: it's unethical, permanently damages your permutation, and is just not nice.
Nothing is stopping you, however, from either reaching out to the authors, or elaborating upon this idea yourself and publishing the additional results (again, with reference to the original). This is definitely allowed.
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<issue_start>username_0: I’m a rising senior in a mathematics program, and I’m planning to apply to top US schools in maths in the fall. I’ve completed most of my undergrad coursework requirements, and I’m looking into what I should take for the fall.
I have a choice between Graduate Analysis I or Undergraduate Complex Analysis. Now, I find both of these to be very interesting, but what do graduate schools think when they look at my transcript? Will it be more advantageous to have the graduate course listed on there?
If I take the graduate course, it’ll also open up the sequel Graduate Analysis II in the winter.<issue_comment>username_1: The answer strongly depends on the programs you apply for. As a very general statement, I would say that getting a good grade on a more advanced/challenging graduate class is better than getting a good grade on an undergraduate class.
Grad classes carry several benefits in terms of the signal they send to prospective admission committees. First of all, they show that you are ready to handle independent studies and the advanced material that is given in these classes. Moreover, graduate classes tend to be smaller and offer more intimate interaction with the lecturer on a topic that they care deeply about (they probably involve their own research papers in the class) - this means you get the opportunity to receive a good reference letter from someone who can personally attest to your capability to handle graduate level material.
All of this is premised on the assumption that you can get a similar grade on both - failing (or barely passing) a graduate class sends a very bad signal to admission committees, as opposed to doing well on an undergraduate class.
So - be sure that you are indeed ready for the class, and the types of materials covered there. Good luck!
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This will vary based on the field, however, research does tend to be more important than taking a graduate level class. However, taking the graduate class may be of benefit if you have not gained much exposure from the field and it is something you may be looking to focus on if you go to graduate school.
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a PhD student, sending cold emails to potential PIs for postdoc positions these days.
I sent an email to this one PI that I've been interested in and asked him about the possibility of joining his lab as a postdoc, elaborating potential projects I would like to study in his lab.
He replied to my email saying that his lab is taking a different direction recently which hasn't been reflected on his lab website yet and asked if I'd be interested in this new line of research.
However, I'm not really interested in this new research. My interest in working with him was based on his past work. He wanted me to let him know whether I'm interested in this new direction. It was nice that he replied to my email and informed me of his new interest. Honestly, I don't feel like I would excel in this line of research (because I don't know much about it). Also, it doesn't sound fascinating to me. I tried to read papers about it (to get a better sense of what exactly it is), but they were so boring, and I couldn't even finish reading any of them.
The situation is a bit weird because I'm the one who first sent an unsolicited email and he hasn't offered me a job yet. So, it's kind of my rejection when there is no actual offers made in reality. I just don't think working with him would be a good fit (not only from my side but also from his side). There must be someone else who better understands and is passionate about the topic than I do. **In this case, how can I say "I'm not interested in doing your new research" in a polite way in an email?**
Any suggestions would be appreciated!<issue_comment>username_1: Don't worry too much, can happen, has happened to me and I am sure to others as well. Just be polite and emphasize *your* own preferences.
You could write for instance that you really appreciate their offer as you admire their work, but that you plan to specialize on topic XY.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Simply saying that you are more interested in the earlier research direction ('topic A') than the current one, should be fine. Thank him for getting back to you, but you don't need to say more.
No need, of course, to say you think that the new topic (B) is boring. But "Thanks" is all you need to express.
One thing that might happen is that you get a reply containing some lobbying for you to join. You should listen, but have no obligation to accept any offer, of course. The person might be a valuable contact in the future, even if you are in a different area.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I have studied at 4 universities, and in 3 different programs.
I always observed that STEM professors are not good at teaching. I suspect this is because they do not have [degrees in pedagogy like MEd](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Master_of_Education) and so on.
Do STEM professors generally hold training in teaching from faculty of education or not?
If YES, what am I missing?
If NO, why?<issue_comment>username_1: In the US, at least, there is seldom any requirement for *formal* pedagogy training for new faculty. Most of us "learned" how to teach by observing the professors we had ourselves and we normally tried to emulate those we found most helpful. We also got a bit of practice with some of the "art of teaching" by serving as TAs while in graduate school.
At some, but not all, universities, the student opinion of your teaching, as reflected in questionnaires at end of term, have some impact on tenure decisions, but normally aren't decisive. A good researcher may be a good teacher for advanced students, but not for beginners.
Some places are also trying to offer some help with online pedagogy at the current moment, but I don't have any feedback on its success.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: *Do STEM professors generally hold training in teaching from faculty of education or not?*
No. Even at institutions that privilege teaching over research, it is unlikely that professors would receive formal training from colleagues in the Faculty of Education. Many universities have some sort of support unit (i.e. a "Centre for Teaching Excellence") that provide training to professors as *professional development*. While there is probably more attention these days towards pedagogical issues, few places make this mandatory (apart from perhaps a few introductory seminars). In fact, there is unfortunately a bit of a bias towards seeing teaching training as remedial.
Why is this? For better or for worse, at many research-intensive universities, research takes priority over teaching. Faculty members wanting to get tenured and promoted need to be well received by their community of peers, often external letter writers, who will focus on research as it's the main way to evaluate a faculty member (i.e. if I am writing a letter from another university, it's hard for me to know if a professor is an effective teacher or not; but I can situate them in the profession much easier based on our community norms).
As comments have noted, most professors learn how to teach "on the job" in an apprentice model, similar to how they learn many parts of their job. Starting out as a TA and then increasingly gaining autonomy in the classroom (until they are thrown in the deep end as a professor, of course).
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I'm a STEM professor, and I *am* good at teaching (at least, that's what the post-course student questionnaires say).
Anybody who wants to get tenure in the Netherlands must obtain the UTQ, a teaching certificate for which one must demonstrate evidence of a well-defined set of teaching competences. This, of course, far from guarantees that tenured faculty in the Netherlands are all good teachers, but all tenured faculty will at least have had some formal training.
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a graduate student, and my fall classes start in a few weeks. I have already began reading the textbook for one class, and I have come across 1 or 2 things that I couldn't figure out. It's not the end of the world if I don't figure these out; for one, I can probably get an answer on math stackexchange. However, I like this professors field and would like to develop a little bit of a relationship with her. I would also like to show her that I am motivated. Would it be a bad idea to send an email with questions about the material before the class actually starts?<issue_comment>username_1: This might depend on how much you ask and how you ask it. Expressing interest in the course with questions can be a good thing. Ask if the professor can "point you to" a source where you can find the answer. Or, ask if they can suggest some way to think about the issue you are having. But my personal guess is that it is less useful to ask for actual answers.
When you express the question, make sure you indicate you are willing to work for the answers and not just seeking shortcuts.
Some might not welcome such questions and some might not give much of an answer (other than "wait for the course"), so don't necessarily expect an answer.
This won't help answer your etiquette question, but note that Wikipedia is generally pretty good about topics in mathematics. I've noticed few errors and they seem to get quickly corrected.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Would it be a bad idea to send an email with questions about the material before the class actually starts?
>
>
>
First of all, I don’t mean to sound harsh, but generally it’s a bad idea to be a person who asks disingenuous questions not because they want to know the answers to those questions but “to show [someone] that they are motivated” and because they “would like to develop a bit of a relationship” with the other person. It’s dishonest, and the thing about this type of dishonesty is, the people the dishonesty is directed at are almost always better at detecting it than the dishonest person thinks. So this approach tends to not produce the desired outcome, and can sometimes backfire in unpleasant ways. And more specifically, most professors have had the experience of having a student try to impress them in various ways that come across as insincere. It leaves a bad taste, which does not help a while later when the student conveniently shows up asking for a letter of recommendation.
Setting this aside, if you have questions you genuinely want to know the answers to, there’s nothing inappropriate about emailing the professor. Professors often enjoy discussing course topics with students and answering their questions. If your questions sound sincere and not like something you contrived just to show that you have something to ask, I’m sure the professor won’t be offended by your email, and there’s a good chance that she’ll answer it. Whether she will like you more as a result or not, I don’t think anyone here can predict, so again, if that’s your true motivation then yes, it’s probably a bad idea to send the email.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: For a moment, change your point-of-view to your professor's situation.
She receives an email from a future student asking about some topic that she'll most probably cover in her lectures. This student doesn't give her the chance to present the topics the way she wants, but ignores her efforts in preparing a course, tries to self-study it, and just wants to use her to fill some gaps.
This might not be the best way to establish a positive relationship.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: If you do choose to ask your professor, you would probably be well advised to frame your question in a manner very similar to how you would ask a question on one of these sites.
For example:
"I was looking at topic X and I am having difficulty understanding it - can you help?"
Is likely to not get a great answer, as it shows very little effort in understanding on your part (and is likely what will get taught to you at some point during the semester).
However:
"I was looking at topic X and I am having difficulty with the concept of Y as it seems to contradict Z... etc"
Would be more likely to get a response - i.e. you have attempted to understand this yourself and are able to ask a question that would get a concise and targeted response to explain what is wrong.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I agree with the other answers---professors are extremely pinched for time and wasting their time is one of the best ways to make a *negative* impression.
If you want to build a relationship with this professor because you are interested in her research area, a better idea might be to spend the next few weeks to start reading her papers and the associated background literature. Take notes, both about background you don't understand and are hoping to learn from her class (so that you can ask questions as the topics come up naturally during the semester), and about potential extensions/generalizations/new directions that you could work on with her as an independent study. If she runs a reading group or seminar, ask to join the group. Use her office hours, once the semester starts, to talk to her about your questions and ideas related to her research.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: First post. I didn't read all the replies but enough to know that I disagree with the majority opinion.
What they are saying is probably accurate as teachers are typically overworked and slogging through bureaucratic nonsense that is standardized higher education.
For a masters class though? You are paying this person...it seems reasonable to see what kind of value you are going to receive (potentially). I once had a Spanish professor in high school that allowed me to go as above and beyond as I wanted to at the time. Coincidentally this was further than even Spanish 1 & 2 after high school. So for me basic college Spanish was a waste of time and money because of this.
For a college course this would be added value. It's also helpful to know if they actually do have a passion for instruction (teaching). Myself, I'd probably just give you a series of links if I were lazy or confirmed the consensus of what you were able to find on your own (outside self-learning) if you had good questions.
I wouldn't be offended or put off by an "eager beaver" as it were, but I would probably find it annoying at some point and I might try and draw out "why" you are interacting with me in such a fashion. If it's too irritating that it would compromise how I instruct you (and others by proxy) then I might refer you to another teacher if one were available.
A 2 week trial period (or a month depending on when drop/add is) is not unreasonable for a large investment. To find great teachers takes a lot of guesswork, a lot of practical experience and providence of course. I would be open to scrutiny to this end and that is also how I look for instruction.
If "most" instructors aren't that way, that doesn't discount "every" one. It could be that you are quite limited in qualified instructors in a particular field and you have to take them "as is" but each learning source is a sort of interview and I'm not the only person surely who has this opinion.
I've had few great teachers. About a dozen good ones and the rest I wouldn't pay for if I had a choice at this point. I wouldn't recommend the taxpayers pay either for secondary school but that's a different topic.
Certainly judge your motivations for initiating conversation. If it's to have an "excuse" then judge the motivation of your excuse to initiate possibly. You could start with a simple introduction and go from there perhaps? The person's feedback can often go a long way and of course some interact fairly differently in person and during the term.
Thanks for the topic...it serves to broaden my instructing ability with scenarios I haven't encountered.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_7: Yes, it is a terrible idea. Not only because you are not asking for the sake of learning but to "show off" some motivation and interest, and secondly because your teachers are on vacation and you should respect their time.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm in the second year of an International Affairs undergraduate program.
When classes first began last year, I - like most of my peers - felt overwhelmed by the amount of text assigned for reading, which I averaged as 400 pages per week, the whole year.
I initially managed it by reading the texts faster than I should (thus not properly apprehending the text) and prioritising the ones with an obvious precedence and skipping others right away.
If that wasn't improper enough and made me feel lacking, we were briefed on how to do scientific reading in two of our disciplines. Basically we were 'taught' how to do a 'micro-research' on every text assigned to us, by first reading the text superficially, taking notes of everything unknown to us (authors, dates, events, places, concepts, word definitions) and then getting to know each of those, to just then go back to the text with the goal of apprehending and taking notes of the logical structure of the text, identifying its main theses and how arguments are presented, in order to be able to reconstruct the presentation the author gave accurately, either mentally, or when giving a speech or writing.
In theory, we should be doing that to every text. In practice, I felt like I barely had time to read the texts once and then I would go to the next. By the end of last year I assessed I had to at least double my reading skills to handle that amount of text. I maybe improved 20%, tops.
Now we began having online classes because of the pandemics. There was a lot of opposition from professors and students, but as a state university, costs were still running and there was a lot of pressure coming from the upper realms, thus, online classes began. Now, we're being given harder texts. I just finished watching a Political Theory class. I literally didn't understand any of the texts, neither the class itself made sense and my professor kept asking questions to me, it was frustrating.
It makes me feel somehow depressed and it makes it even worse when I see there are a few students who not only seem able to handle it, but are doing research and a lot of other stuff, I can't even imagine how they do it.
Edit: One thing that gets me beaten and very sick sometimes is how relatively unimportant authors that talk about the simplest concepts are the ones writing texts that almost demands me to become cryptologist. On the other hand, some of the authors presenting the most complex topics, e.g, Kant and Weber [especially Kant], despite being very demanding, seemed to be quite clear and straightforward in their argumentation. The problem here, again, was time. When reading Kant I had to skip almost all the other texts in other to complete it with a satisfiable understanding of the text. I got the 2nd best grade of the class in that discipline.
Edit 2: I also find it *interesting*, for lack of a better word, how some professors throw you in the lion's pit. For today's class we read a text by Italian <NAME> which is an answer to a critic of an earlier text. I felt totally out of context, as we didn't read the first text nor the critics, I was simply unable to understand half the text, as it was constantly referencing stuff we didn't read and would never be able to do it in time.<issue_comment>username_1: 1. You don't need to read from the first word of the title to the last word of the conclusion. You should learn how to skim through the large materials. Use a highlight marker to highlight important sentences, terminologies, dates.
2. If you find it the text lengthy, try replacing it with online videos or similar shorter texts. A book can be replaced by a single research article.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Though I have no way of knowing what your particular instructors are thinking about your reading assignments... in my own experience (in mathematics, which might seem wildly different from humanities, but in fact is not so much so, I claim...) with myself and my students, a large part of the point is to learn how to cope with bodies of information which one has not been able, or had time to, "master"... but have to discuss/use, nevertheless.
There's no simple answer, but there are obviously (as you perceive) many obvious failures of more-pedestrian line-by-line-reading approaches. Impossible.
Then what?
The answer to that is very complicated, in any subject, I think. But/and that is perhaps the genuine issue. So, yes, how *will* you deal with this? :)
EDIT: in some senses, there is no "solution" to this "problem". Rather, as perhaps was tooooo implicit in my earlier remarks, one must "let go" of (naively?) more-idealist notions of "reading" and "mastery" and so on. It's like "the train is leaving..." with no room for negotiation. Indeed, many of the earlier school-inculcated ideas about "perfect" understanding/reading, become useless and hopeless. (The US baseball analogue is something like, "even if you were a super-star as a kid and batted 1000 in Little League, you will be lucky to bat 300 in the major leagues... supposing you're lucky enough to get there at all")
A sort of "external" description of strategy is that the fundamental goal might/should be to "get to the end", rather than "being super-careful and getting as far as you can".
It is psychologically discomfiting, yes, ...
Another analogy is that "showing up is half the game". E.g., "showing up" at the scheduled time, rather than failing to show due to dithering about being ready...
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I studied IR and this was a problem I really struggled with. Given my course load I was ultimately forced to conclude that there was no feasible way to thoroughly read all of the materials assigned. I really didn't like this feeling of always being underprepared.
I don't know if this is an adequate answer, but a few comments:
* You will get a lot better at reading and writing quickly. 20% improvement is already really good! Some people are natively just faster at reading to begin with - it doesn't help to compare with them. You'll improve at your own pace.
* If you only have time to pass through an article once, I find the best way to do it is to make highlights and notes that clearly sketch the structure of the article. For example, focus on highlighting topic sentences and key quotes you might use for your paper. In the margin you can number the key points, etc. In this way, once I've read an article, I can look back at it and just read the highlights/annotations to reconstruct the whole thing, without having to delve back into each paragraph. This is also useful in discussion sections when looking for part of an article.
* You'll need to start shifting from high school mindset (do all the tasks assigned) to college mindset (do the tasks that are useful to your understanding of the topic). This was the hardest part for me. Basically: choose to carefully read the texts that seem important and influential, for example those frequently referenced and cited (Kant and Weber seem like a good place to start). You do need to do some readings in depth or you won't learn. On the other hand, if you feel some reading is useless/irrelevant/poorly written, spend a shorter amount of time on it (or, find a better alternative text covering the same topic). I guess it might be embarassing if you get called on for a text that you don't know well, but generally, the important thing is to make optimal use of your limited time in order to maximize learning. In your Kant example, it seemed like this proved true.
* Generally, I think some professors focus more on having comprehensive syllabi than on workload. From their perspective, they are adding value by pointing you to key texts that are critical in the field (and that you might have a hard time compiling for yourself). Sometimes, I got the sense that they simply didn't realize the impact on the students -- for example, assigning a whole book for reading when only 1-2 chapters were relevant for the topic at hand. Other times, we were genuinely just given references that were terrible and I could never figure out the reason they were included. Try to remember that the person compiling the course outline was *trying* to be helpful, and figure out what is *actually* helpful about what they've put together.
Finally, have you considered speaking with your professors in office hours? You can explain that you are struggling to keep up with the readings and ask if they have any tips for how you can best prioritize. They might have some helpful guidance about how you should be studying.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: My understanding is that for history/political science type majors this is not an uncommon amount of assigned reading.
Here is a trick for humanities reading: read the first and last sentence only of each paragraph. That is usually enough to give you an overview of the content of the paragraph, and you can then decide if you want to read it in more detail. Doing this for a whole article can give you some idea of what the article is about and how the author structures their argument while cutting down on the reading time dramatically. Make sure you write down some quick notes about what the article covers so that if you’re writing a paper later you don’t have to skim the whole article again to figure out if it’s useful.
This routine can help you learn how to effectively skim articles and you’ll find over time that you’ll get less regimented about it.
When trying to decide what information is most important to extract from your reading, it’s helpful to look for details that you can either connect to another reading or to discussions/lectures in class.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/13
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a master student. In the next year I need to start my work on master thesis. I have sent letters to two professors in the same group, stating my interest, and have asked if they have a suitable project for me. One said that he is retired and cannot take long term responsibility, but he invited me to join a seminar (closely related to my interest), funded by their group. The other professor also invited me to the seminar, but said nothing about the project.
I mostly believe that the latter professor has rejected me, but I am not sure, is my intuition correct?<issue_comment>username_1: It’s too difficult to tell as to whether or not the professors do or do not want you - perhaps they’d like to meet you first because your initial email was not enough for them to offer you funding. You should just go to the seminar to follow up on their invitation. In the mean time, you should expand your horizon to more than those two professors especially as the first one clearly is not interested in advising students any longer.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The first one has clearly rejected you for the reasons he gave.
Their seminar group is a place where their existing students might present and discuss their work, including PhDs and post-docs. This invitation essentially is for an initiation ceremony. If you like their work and are interested in making a project out of their research directions and they think you have the requisite background they might accept you in their group and the professor will work with you for your thesis. That is what I make out of this.
Be positive and enjoy a nice seminar. One should worry about things in their control. Best of luck!
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Joining the seminar is a chance to demonstrate your abilities to the professor, particularly if you are given a chance to present. At one point, a new student was introduced to our group by a PI who said "this is X, we are, um, reading papers together". Despite the apparent low level of initial commitment, X is now a PhD candidate in our group. Taking on a new student is a big commitment for a PI, so they may need further time to be convinced.
Joining the seminar also gives you a chance to get to know other students in the group, and they might have an idea of whether the PI is intending to take new students (or at least they'll know if he had just taken 5 new students in the previous year).
So I don't think you need to be so discouraged. As mentioned already, however, this doesn't stop you from reaching out to other professors as back up.
Upvotes: 2
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2020/08/13
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<issue_start>username_0: I am currently writing a paper that cites other works authored by me. I was wondering which percentage of self-citations is recommendable in a journal paper.<issue_comment>username_1: Write the paper you think it should be written and cite what you use, whether from yourself or others. Let the reviewers and the editor complain if they think you are being excessive. But there is really no need to self censor, especially when you have done important work in the field.
And in any case, this might differ by field, etc.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: If the self-citations are pertinent and useful to the reader, no amount is excessive. If they are not pertinent or not useful, any amount is.
Use judgment when assessing whether your readers will find references to your own work more useful than possible alternatives, if there are any.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: There is no problem with citing your own work, even in significant numbers, if the citations are relevant, and I wouldn't suggest removing any such references.
However, if a high percentage of the references are self-citations, that suggests that either you are not very familiar with other people's work in the area, or there are not many other people interested in what you are doing. Neither of these will give a favourable impression to reviewers, so it would be worth trying to find additional relevant references by other people.
Upvotes: 4
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2020/08/14
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<issue_start>username_0: I am doing Master Thesis which is now in a final stage. My Thesis submission is in around 3 weeks and i am almost done with documenting my findings. This is my first ever Thesis writing in my whole academic career. So I am already thinking about Thesis defence presentation.
I want to know that how to prepare for the defence presentation? and how to overcome or reduce stress regarding this?.<issue_comment>username_1: Take some of your friends and hold your presentation to them. Don't focus to much on the content at these trails. Instead use them get used to holding the presentation.
Your source of stress seems to be the fact that you have no experience. The only way to get it is to do dry runs in a low impact setting.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If you already know where you will present your results, get familiar with the equipment at your disposition. Know ahead about the projector; what is the image resolution and format ratio? Know about the switches for light, blends, audio (where applicable). If done on-line, get to know this techniques ahead of time, too.
Slightly different to the answer by `@username_1` I suggest you seek a test audience which includes colleagues of your present group *who already passed* a Master thesis. Not only that they (should) know formal requirements of the talk (e.g., formatting of the slides in general, identification of typos, friendly nitpicking on citing references if necessary). Because of their seniority to you, they may ask questions similar to the ones by a thesis jury after your presentation of the results. Ideally, they should know at least a little about *your field* you worked in (a.k.a., context), but not too much about *your work* actually done; otherwise, their lines of thought may be too similar to yours and thus possibly miss errors.
Give at least two test talks. Often, after the first test presentation of a thesis, you work on multiple errors, adjust the argumentation by different sequences of thought, and weed out omissions. There may be this much work that it may be difficult *for you* to see all the good already brought together. A second test talk thus is more than probing and rehearsing a revised version of your talk. It offers you additional ease when you eventually present your results to the jury.
Upvotes: 1
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2020/08/14
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<issue_start>username_0: Let's posit:
1. You're a university student. I don't posit degree level; you can be undergraduate or postgraduate.
2. You must *not* overstep the essay's word limit, whatever it is. You lose marks if you overstep.
3. Your word limit is too short to elaborate an argument or idea.
How do academics write that the word limit precludes elaboration? Is this common or professional? Something like
>
> The word limit prevents me elaborating this idea.
>
>
>
>
> I cannot elaborate this argument here given the word limit.
>
>
>
Or is this stupid? Will the professor already know the word limit precluded you from elaboration?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Will professor already know word limit occluded you from elaboration?
>
>
>
Yes. Assume that they will. Professors deal with word limits constantly. They are also responsible for reading the directions that state the limit.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> How to communicate that word limit prevents you from elaborate something in essay?
>
>
>
You don’t. You take the time and put in the effort to make your argument in the available space. If you do that, more likely than not the resulting essay will be a better piece of writing that does a better job of putting your argument across than if it had been longer. Thus, you will have nothing to excuse or apologize for.
And don’t take it from me, many famous thinkers have [expressed similar thoughts](https://quoteinvestigator.com/2012/04/28/shorter-letter/) about the benefits of conciseness (and the difficulty of achieving those benefits). My favorite one of these quotes is <NAME>’s reply when he was asked how long he takes to write a speech:
>
> “That depends on the length of the speech,” answered the President. “If it is a ten-minute speech it takes me all of two weeks to prepare it; if it is a half-hour speech it takes me a week; if I can talk as long as I want to it requires no preparation at all. I am ready now.”
>
>
>
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> How do academics write that word limit occludes elaboration?
>
>
>
We don't normally try to argue our way around them. First, because it would be unprofessional.
Second, because word limits, though inconvenient for the writer, tend to improve the quality for the reader.
We simply get used to word limits and learn to communicate efficiently.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Stock phrases you will hear are "is beyond the scope of this piece" or "is excluded in the interests of conciseness", perhaps with a pointer to where it has been discussed.
You might for example see something like "The fooing of bars became popular in 2025. The full process involved in fooing is beyond the scope of this piece, but the topic is reviewed in Jones et al., 2030".
Or even "The fooing of bars became popular in 2025. Fooing is a complex process (reviewed Jones et al, 2030)".
But probably if you are thinking that you can't fit something in then either:
* a. It's not that important and you can leave it out.
* b. It is important and you've included something that isn't.
The professor will understand how much can fit within a word limit, and therefore what level of importance is needed for inclusion. If you don't include a connected but unimportant topic, the professor will know why this is. Part of what you are being assessed on is judging which topics are important enough to cover in depth.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_5: Even if the professor didn't set the word limit themself, they're working in the system that did. They are well aware of the limit on word count and the restrictions that places on you *and every other student*. One reason for it is that they don't want to have to find the relevant material buried in paragraphs that could have been replaced by a handful of citations.
Instead I'll turn your question around: *Given a tight word limit, why waste some of it on excuses?*
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: Next to the excellent answers already given.
The word limit is not just a limitation, it is also there to teach you somethings:
* Prioritizing: What data does really need to be in here. Nothing is equally important, so prioritize and throw away the least important one.
* Writing: Knowing how to write clear and to the point can save you quite a lot of words and can make the paper easier to read.
Upvotes: 2
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