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2022/01/17	1,438	5,348	<issue_start>username_0: I have done my master's from an institute in Asia in 2021 and I planned to write for PhD in Pure Math in 2022 in France. One prof suggested me to also apply to 1 year Research Masters(M2) in France called Fondamentales Mathematique. I have to supply a cover letter for scholarship applications and I am confused on how to write them. My approach: > > Dear Sir/madam, I am applying to M2 Research in Mathematics program of > University of X because this program is very well suited to my aim of > doing PhD research in [Branch Y of Math] after completing master’s > studies. M2 program will allow me to gain more specialized knowledge > in [Branch Y of Math] and other branches of Pure Mathematics. > Although, I have completed my Masters in Mathematics in 2021 from > institute Z but ... . France has a lot of researchers working in > number theory and so it will also help me in getting in contact with > them and discussing PhD research opportunities. 2 paragraphs > describing my interests and motivation in [Branch Y of Math]. > > > 2 paragraphs describing work done by me in my Master's thesis in > institute Z in 2nd year of my master's. > > > last 1 para. > > > Sincerely > > > ABC > > > The length of the letter of motivation is 2 pages and 70 % of a page is taken by explaining the work I did in my master's thesis because I did very detailed study of 5 papers and I can't squeeze an explanation of that in less than 70% of a page. Is it a good way of writing a motivation letter?<issue_comment>username_1: I am not sure if using sir/madam is usual in France. That's Indian subcontinental style. Usually, in western countries, supervisors are addressed as Dr. . So, first of all, I would ask you to make sure of this thing. In the first paragraph, instead of saying France has lots of researchers, I would say more about the institution and/or the supervisor. This will make an impression that you are interested in the institute itself, not any place in France. The rest of the structure looks good. The overall letter will depend on how you write your experiences, motivation, and other staff. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I would not write “France has a lot of researchers”; you should specify which researchers you want to work with at the university you’re applying to. So while much of your cover letter will discuss your thesis work, you also need to include how your interests and goals intersect with the work and labs of your potential professors. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: General answer -------------- Points customarily expected, when applying to a master's program in France, are: * Are you a good fit for the master, from an academic point of vue? Do you have all the pre-requisites? Will you be able to follow? This is especially important for foreign students - if you already have a master, you should cover its contents quickly in your letter. Also, did you check what language the classes will be in? Universities with classes in English only are rare, so your knowledge of the French language should be mentionned. * Is the master a good fit for you regarding what you want to do next? This is where you talk about your research interests, why this specific master is intersting for you, and so forth. Points to consider ------------------ > > 1 Prof suggested me to also apply to 1 year Research Masters(M2) in France called Fondamentales Mathematique. > > > 1. There is no master called "Fondamentales Mathematique" in France, but there are masters in "Mathématiques Fondamentales" (it is a field, not a lab name!). What makes this specific masters program interesting for you, compared to all the others existing on the same topic? 2. Can you mention this teacher? Does he know the people on the committee? Did he already send students here? Letter structure ---------------- To go back on your specific letter, here is what I would suggest: > > Sir/madam, > > > > > My name is A, and I just obtained a masters in Mathematics from institute B, specialized in X. As I am interested in field Y, and intend to do a PhD in it, prof Z suggested I should broaden my knowledge of the field by coming to your program. > > > > > I am very interested in coming to your masters, as it teaches bla, bla and bla, which are essential to learn about Y. (You need to be specific about the masters!) I am also particularly enthusiastic about meeting researchers working on Y, and discussing with them about research and PhD opportunities (if you can, be specific about the researchers!). > > > > > Field Y interesses me because ... (though it's likely not the most relevant paragraph) > > > > > During my previous master, I have studied the necessary prerequisites (Add info about your grades and achievements here! This part is important and missing.) During my masters, I also did my master's thesis on ... Lastly, following classes in French will not be a problem, since... > > > > > If you can add a paragraph on what you can bring to the lab, like relations with researchers you know or worked with..., it's a plus. > > > > > A version of "Thank you for reading, I am at your disposal for any further information you might need". > > > > > Sincerely > > > Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
2022/01/17	1,239	4,874	<issue_start>username_0: I have recently started supervising MSc students in Statistics and I noticed a trend: students who produce a NEW small result are often more challenged by reviewers/markers of their dissertation than students who present and use an *OLD* Big result (e.g. LASSO, Random Forests, ...). The reason for this is that the contribution, even if new, is usually modest as this is just an MSc thesis. However, for old-results projects, students can present lots of formulas and theorems from papers they read (usually from famous people), and present a relatively simple application, which ends up being more impressive in the eyes of a marker. I find this a bit unfair, as usually the students who produced a new result have worked hard, but in a different direction (novelty). This has bugged me to the point that I am considering only assigning projects of the second kind (old chestnuts). Are there any guidelines or suggestions for assigning topics for MSc theses? Should I work harder in explaining markers about this strategy?<issue_comment>username_1: I am not sure if using sir/madam is usual in France. That's Indian subcontinental style. Usually, in western countries, supervisors are addressed as Dr. . So, first of all, I would ask you to make sure of this thing. In the first paragraph, instead of saying France has lots of researchers, I would say more about the institution and/or the supervisor. This will make an impression that you are interested in the institute itself, not any place in France. The rest of the structure looks good. The overall letter will depend on how you write your experiences, motivation, and other staff. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I would not write “France has a lot of researchers”; you should specify which researchers you want to work with at the university you’re applying to. So while much of your cover letter will discuss your thesis work, you also need to include how your interests and goals intersect with the work and labs of your potential professors. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: General answer -------------- Points customarily expected, when applying to a master's program in France, are: * Are you a good fit for the master, from an academic point of vue? Do you have all the pre-requisites? Will you be able to follow? This is especially important for foreign students - if you already have a master, you should cover its contents quickly in your letter. Also, did you check what language the classes will be in? Universities with classes in English only are rare, so your knowledge of the French language should be mentionned. * Is the master a good fit for you regarding what you want to do next? This is where you talk about your research interests, why this specific master is intersting for you, and so forth. Points to consider ------------------ > > 1 Prof suggested me to also apply to 1 year Research Masters(M2) in France called Fondamentales Mathematique. > > > 1. There is no master called "Fondamentales Mathematique" in France, but there are masters in "Mathématiques Fondamentales" (it is a field, not a lab name!). What makes this specific masters program interesting for you, compared to all the others existing on the same topic? 2. Can you mention this teacher? Does he know the people on the committee? Did he already send students here? Letter structure ---------------- To go back on your specific letter, here is what I would suggest: > > Sir/madam, > > > > > My name is A, and I just obtained a masters in Mathematics from institute B, specialized in X. As I am interested in field Y, and intend to do a PhD in it, prof Z suggested I should broaden my knowledge of the field by coming to your program. > > > > > I am very interested in coming to your masters, as it teaches bla, bla and bla, which are essential to learn about Y. (You need to be specific about the masters!) I am also particularly enthusiastic about meeting researchers working on Y, and discussing with them about research and PhD opportunities (if you can, be specific about the researchers!). > > > > > Field Y interesses me because ... (though it's likely not the most relevant paragraph) > > > > > During my previous master, I have studied the necessary prerequisites (Add info about your grades and achievements here! This part is important and missing.) During my masters, I also did my master's thesis on ... Lastly, following classes in French will not be a problem, since... > > > > > If you can add a paragraph on what you can bring to the lab, like relations with researchers you know or worked with..., it's a plus. > > > > > A version of "Thank you for reading, I am at your disposal for any further information you might need". > > > > > Sincerely > > > Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
2022/01/17	684	3,047	<issue_start>username_0: I work in the field of organization theory and labour sociology and to this point of my career, I have reviewed about 4-6 papers. I have been asked by a journal to review a paper. The journal's scope is Project Management with contributions from social sciences, business administration, but also construction/civil engineering. I read the proposed paper and found that the anonymization is inadequate. The author(s) cite preliminary work in plain text and also papers that are currently still in the review process. This allows me to narrow down the authorship to a circle of five people around a PI without doing any intentional research. While I don't know the scientists and their papers, I think this runs counter to the point of a double-blind review process. How should this be handled? Should the paper be reviewed normally and the editors be told that the anonymization was inadequate? Or should I refrain from a review altogether?<issue_comment>username_1: Ask the editor that sent you the paper how you should proceed. Give them a synopsis of your concerns. It is really up to the journal how seriously to take possible breaches of double blind protocols. If you think the knowledge you have would bias your review in any way then you could either reject the review or mention that as well to the editor. In the short term you might begin a review in case you are asked to continue. Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Inform the editors and ask them how to handle it. This is unlikely a rare situation, and they should have policies how to handle it. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Does the journal really require double-blind peer review? First, check the journal's requirements. Then, if the journal requires double-blind peer review, contact the journal editor, without doing any review, stating that the paper cannot be reviewed because it's not sufficiently anonymised. It's an editor's duty to require that a paper fulfills the minimum submission requirements, and let them contact the authors for a rejection or a resubmission. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Double blind does not mean that the authors and the reviewers must be anonymous. It only means that the Journal does not disclose the names. In particular, the authors can include their names in the text. Moreover, if you feel like it, you can disclose your name to the authors. I know referees (including myself) who have done it. There is nothing illegal about it. If you know that you would accept the paper if it is correct, and you have a question about it, you can ask the authors (although the standard way is to ask the editor to ask the authors). Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I recommend that you proceed with your review as normal (making sure that knowledge of the possible identity of the authors does not affect your evaluation) and add a section in your review that notes the deficiencies in the anonymisation. That will give the editor all the relevant information. Upvotes: 3
2022/01/17	5,339	20,244	<issue_start>username_0: I'm interested mainly in mathematical and related fields, in which several important and famous open questions exist (e.g., <NAME>). Almost every day a new "amateur" scholar (meaning, someone with no formal affiliation to a reputable research institute, or someone who does not have any track record of peer-reviewed publications in reputable journals or conferences in the area) publishes into cyber-space a new manuscript alleged to solve a major open problem in mathematics or related fields. Some established researchers then consider this a work of "cranckery" (i.e., an amateur attempt that is not only false, but is mostly meaningless and hence impossible to verify since the argument is so confused and unstructured that it is hard to identify any meaningful statement to verify). On the other hand, the amateur would usually claim that his/her proof is correct, and would feel frustrated that the established scholars ignore his/her breakthrough, perhaps because they are "outsiders", or that it is harmful for the "establishment" to acknowledge the breakthrough. *This leads to a simple question: is there a single example in the last 30 years in which such an amateur whose work was considered a crank when published, was in retrospect vindicated and proved correct?* Clarifications: examples of somewhat less known, but still established academics with a track record and an affiliation, who solved a moderately big open question do exist. I'm asking about a clear person identified as a "crank" whose work was then proved to be correct. --- EDIT: I decided to accept <NAME>'s answer as the closest to a complete answer to my question. There were many good and surprising answers that I didn't know about. But my criteria were somewhat strict, so none of those fall within the desired quest: an (1) amateur, i.e., someone with NO research affiliation (2) whose work of a mathematical nature was (3) considered a "work of crank" (even when extending the time limit to ~80 years back, to make sure "affiliation" and "crank" have the same meaning as today). The closest example is indeed <NAME>'s work that was dismissed as pseudoscience. But Shechtman was a researcher with a clear and respected affiliation. And as <NAME>'s comments, theories that are considered "crankery" at first can be vindicated in retrospect in the natural sciences, but much less so in mathematics. So Shechtman falls in both math and no affiliation criteria. Another great example is that of 1952, <NAME>, which I didn't know about. I would have accepted this I believe, had I not read in comments that Heegner was in fact considered a serious mathematician and not an amateur or an outsider. Yitang Zhang's example is also close, but although he wasn't considered an established researcher, his work when published was never considered "crankery" as far as I know, but quite immediately identified as an important contribution.<issue_comment>username_1: [This Riemann Hypothesis guy](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3321924/It-pays-good-maths-Nigerian-professor-solves-156-year-old-Riemann-problem-scoop-1million-prize.html) was not an amateur or a crank but he was not working at a major institution and bigwigs of his own métier had never heard of him. Over a century ago Gosset, as an experimental brewer at Guinness' (and using the pseudonym, Student, lest he be accused of publishing industrial secrets by his employer), published his valuable work on the t-distribution. I'd say there are quite a few "outsiders" (i.e not established names from universities, research institutes or national labs) but I doubt if many who have no professional qualification, e.g. at least a primary degree, would bother to publish in academic journals. Those disclosing their innovations indirectly, like people applying for patents, are often without any formal qualification in the relevant field. <NAME> is an example of this sort of thing. His ~ 5,000 experiments on cyclone parameters showed that there was a way to use cyclones to separate particles less than 20 microns from air. This was a direct contradiction of numerous "experts" - several of them apparently professors of computational fluid dynamics - who denied it was feasible. But what are you getting at with all this ? That someone seeking recognition for solving a major problem ought to prepare the ground for that by solving a series of less challenging - and therefore more easily verified and published - problems first ? That there is a sort of hierarchy or snobbery within the scientific community ? This is evident from the very manner of so many scientists inside and outside academia. And it's not confined to science either. You see it in how attention towards an individual is accumulated in the domain of sport, investing, community activism, the arts, even in religious affairs. Of course, it is stupid to overlook a potentially valuable contribution just because it comes from a newbee or someone whose previous contributions have been unimpressive. But it's all in the game of life and we have to handle it. But yes, it certainly is healthy when someone unknown in a field defies the "breeders' guide" predictions of his/her talent. It gets everyone back to the basic task of scientific inquiry rather than following macrotrends like some old pol. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: The correct answer is most likely “no”, but as with [Russell’s teapot](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell%27s_teapot), it would be next to impossible to prove that an example of the scenario you’re describing does not exist. By way of an argument to support my answer, that isn’t quite a proof of non-existence, I can suggest the following: for mathematicians it is usually very easy to recognize who is a crank and who isn’t. And a defining chracteristic of cranks is that when someone is a crank, they are a crank all the way; they can’t be a crank up to the time they suddenly start doing genuine (let alone groundbreaking) work. So the hypothetical situation described in the question is (essentially) impossible, almost by definition. Edit: as @MaximalIdeal points out, there do seem to be genuine counterexamples to what I wrote above (at least one, dating from 1952). I stand by my reasoning above as being the justification for my belief, but acknowledge that what I wrote isn’t universally true and in rare situations someone can be regarded as a crank but still end up surprising everyone with legitimately good mathematical work. Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I can think of some examples of people who were thought of as cranks and then had a great result, but they're mostly not "outsiders" and mostly not within 30 years. For example, my understanding (from stories told at a conference I attended) is that Apéry was widely thought of as a crank at the time he proved his [remarkable theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ap%C3%A9ry%27s_theorem). But he had a math Ph.D. and was a professor at a university. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Definitely not a "crank," as he was a PhD-holding lecturer at a small university (just didn't have the most prestigious publication record or anything), but [Yitang Zhang](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yitang_Zhang) may be the closest modern example of what you're looking for. His work is related to the (still open) twin prime conjecture which states that there are infinitely many pairs of primes with difference 2 (like 3 and 5 or 11 and 13). His theorem showed that there are infinitely many pairs of primes with difference at most c where c is an explicit constant given in his paper. This result was published in the Annals of Maths, often considered to be the most prestigious math journal. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: Galois is still the only example of an amateurish mathematician without even a high school diploma who solved a famous problem. He was getting no credit for this because famous mathematicians (Cauchy and others) considered him crank. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: Note: As <NAME> pointed out, the OP requested an example from the last 30, and my example below is from ~70 years ago. This was careless on my part so I apologize. Nonetheless, I think my post is informative so I will keep it up. I guess it goes to show you how rare these examples really are. Yes, a very concrete and relevant example exists. In 1952, [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_Heegner) published a proof resolving a very significant part of the [class number problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Class_number_problem). Some sources say he was an engineer while others say he was a high school teacher, but all accounts say he was someone interested in higher level math without being a mathematician by profession. Unfortunately, his proof was dismissed because it contained a few errors, and it was more or less agreed that his paper was not valuable. He died in 1965 before his proof was recognized as salvageable by <NAME> in the late 1960s. The result is now called the [Stark–Heegner theorem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stark%E2%80%93Heegner_theorem). Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_7: Unfortunately right now I can't think of an example from the past 30 years. These go back 150 years. * <NAME> was a priest when he wrote the defining papers of genetic inheritance. At the time his papers were [largely ignored](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel#Initial_reception_of_Mendel%27s_work), but today Mendelian inheritance is widely taught in high school biology classes. * <NAME> espoused the theory of [continental drift](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Wegener#Continental_drift_theory) and was met with ridicule, although it is widely accepted today. In his lifetime he was best-known as a meteorologist and polar explorer, not geologist; hence he was an outsider to the field. * [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Christofilos) developed strong focusing in accelerator physics that went unnoticed for several years until rediscovered independently by professionals. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: I'm adding another answer since it's fundamentally different from the other one I've written, being arguably not by an outsider, but it was groundbreaking and happened within the last 30 years. [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Li_Wenliang) was one of the first to identify that 2019-nCoV was a new virus, but his hospital and immediate supervisors warned him about "publishing untrue statements". As I write this, we are still dealing with the fallout of that discovery. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: This answer takes the following liberties: (1) The field is experimental, not theoretical. (2) The person had legitimate affiliation and wasn't amateur, but was publicly decried as being a crank by noted scholars. Nevertheless, I'm adding it because it seems to be aligned with the spirit of the question. [<NAME>](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Shechtman) is a metallurgist who reported for the first time the existence of 'quasi-crystals', an atomic arrangement which appeared to violate fundamental laws of crystallography. He was famously called a 'quasi-scientist' by the celebrated chemist & Nobel laureate <NAME>. His own team told him to read the textbook and not make ridiculous claims. These jibes are tantamount to accusations of crankery. Anyhow, the results were published and independently verified over decades, ultimately leading to Shechtman being awarded the Nobel Prize in 2011. Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_9: I'll go one better, and suggest an entire field that was regarded as crankery, but now is viewed as a legitimate field of inquiry: ufology. Prior to the American government releasing declassified video evidence of UFO encounters and then issuing official statements that they're real and of unknown origin, it was widely regarded as the work of cranks. Now, the [head of Astronomy at Harvard](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Loeb) is launching the [Galileo Project](https://projects.iq.harvard.edu/galileo) to try to record hard evidence of them, without requiring the use of military equipment. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_10: Research into mRNA-based therapy, including mRNA-based vaccines, was for a long time not considered positively by much of the scientific establishment. The word crank goes too far, but it appears the scientific consensus at the time was that this research was not promising. This continued well into the last 30 years. For example, [<NAME>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katalin_Karik%C3%B3) was demoted by the University of Pennsylvania in 1995 after several grant applications for mRNA-based therapy were rejected as her peers in the scientific community thought these to be not promising. She [persisted](https://www.wbur.org/commonhealth/2021/02/12/brutal-science-system-mrna-pioneer), but her key finding of a chemical modification of mRNA to render it non-immunogenic was rejected by the journals Nature and Science, but eventually accepted by the niche publication "Immunity" in 2005 (quote from Wikipedia). Today, she works for BioNTech and, since 2020, has received numerous awards for her ground-breaking work preparing for mRNA-based therapy, including COVID-19 vaccines. Further reading: <NAME>, Researchers looking for mRNA were ridiculed by colleagues. Luckily, that didn’t stop them.. In: MacLeans. [Available online](https://www.macleans.ca/society/science/scientists-mrna-covid-vaccines/). Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_11: It's not in maths, and it's just on the cusp of whether you'd consider it in the last 30 years, but... ### [Demonstrating that gastric ulcers are caused by bacteria](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_peptic_ulcer_disease_and_Helicobacter_pylori) The key research for this was done in the 1980s, and all these researchers were written off as cranks. It isn't too strong to say that the medical profession were close to unanimous in this, despite the evidence. Whether this counts depends on where you draw your 30-year line. Whilst major evidence was presented in the 1980s, in 1992 (30 years ago) the medical profession was still very largely opposed to this and to a large degree still considered them to be cranks. It took until the mid-late 1990s before it became more widely accepted, and the two key researchers were awarded the Nobel in 2005. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_12: An anonymous 4chan poster proved [a lower bound on superpermutations in 2011](https://www.quantamagazine.org/sci-fi-writer-greg-egan-and-anonymous-math-whiz-advance-permutation-problem-20181105/), and an upper bound was then proved by SF writer <NAME> in 2018. These have since been folded into a 2020 paper by [<NAME>](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00029890.2021.1835384), and validated by other mathematicians in the academy. A small but important difference from your question is the requirement that they publish "into cyber-space a new manuscript alleged to solve a major open problem in mathematics". The "manuscript" here was a 4chan post on an anime board, and it didn't claim to solve the superpermutation problem in general, just the specific problem of how to watch all of the episodes of a particular show in every possible order. <NAME>, though mainly a science fiction writer, is the sort of hard SF writer who is very technical, who has many scientists as fans, and has even collaborated on a few scholarly publications [in quantum computing](http://www.gregegan.net/BIBLIOGRAPHY/Bibliography.html#NonFiction). He posted it not as a LaTeX manuscript but as a [HTML page](http://www.gregegan.net/SCIENCE/Superpermutations/Superpermutations.html), on his personal website, in full late nineties [web brutalist](https://brutalist-web.design/) style. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_13: Everyone ... You might be shocked by this answer. It goes against the grain of the conventional wisdom. This answer is clearly the opposite of the accepted answer and OP's personal preference. But, do hear me out. The OP defines an "amateur" as: > > "someone with no formal affiliation to a reputable research institute, > or someone who does not have any track record of peer-reviewed publications in reputable journals or conferences in the area" > > > The rest of my answer focuses on amateurs who fall under the second category. The word "or" means that fulfilling only one of the two conditions is enough to identify an amateur and gives a precise answer. To give a precise answer and avoid controversy, I will further narrow down to the subset of true amateurs who has not only no reputable journal ppaers, but also has published some mistaken works. "Publish" here means making things public. It includes papers, preprints, presentation slides, conference papers, and webposts. I admit that I have been a true amateur. I have published some flawed works. I've made a lot of mistakes. I've made mistakes in an undergraduate paper that was later published in a college journal accessible to the public. I've made mistakes in the talks in my school (and those talks are open to the public). I've made mistakes in preprints. I've made countless mistakes in webposts. I am not a genius and it takes me a long time to understand a simple concept. I was and I am still a strict amateur. Yet, after nine years, I finally published in a reputable journal. Am I alone? Of course not, almost all of my friends were similar. We were all once cranky, freshy, and amateury. We were all once naive, inexperienced, and unskilled. We were all once unprofessional, clumsy, and sloppy. We all made some blunders. Some blunders were silly, some were serious. Maybe Sally made fewer blunders because she was talented. Maybe Joe made more blunders because he took too many naps. But eventually, most of us managed to publish at least one paper. While I won't say one reputable publication is something ground-breaking, it is certainly an achievement and break-through in our narrow fields. Before that paper, we had zero reputable publication. Our preprints got rejected everywhere, sometimes even without a line of comment. Yes, we were cranks. Yes, we made mistakes. Yes, doing research is extremely difficult. Yes, it is even harder to get established researchers to recognize our works. Yes, there are many dark sides and unpleasant realities every day everywhere. But, a true hero will never forget their dream. A true hero will never give up. A true hero will stand against many challenges. A true hero will see the light through the dark clouds. A true hero will fight for the truth. A true hero will inspire others with their passion. A true hero will rise above their doubts and fears. So let's finish my first sentence in the beginning of this answer. ... Everyone, in my small circle, was once an amateur, once a crank, once a misfit, stupid yet young, mediocre yet confident. But, you only fail when you lose hope. Everyone has been there. --- Update: yesterday the OP updated their meaning of "affiliation to reputable research institute" to "tenure-track faculty, permanent scientists, and similar roles". This means that, according to the OP's definition, all students, visitors, research assistants and all other affiliates without a publication in reputable journal are amateurs. So my answer strongly hold. Any students who made mistakes and later published a reputable journal fulfills all criteria. My answer applies to all students in fields that advisors are usually not heavily involved in student's research (for example, my small field), and applies to undergraduate students who does not have a very dedicated advisor. This answer does not apply to some scientific fields that advisors must be heavily involved and coauthor with students, and does not apply to extremely talented students who got their first paper quickly accepted in the first venue. Upvotes: -1
2022/01/18	4,103	17,794	<issue_start>username_0: I started teaching this year and what surprises me is how often students will just send you emails asking about stuff that I feel they should figure out by themselves. For instance, they will email me asking when the next lecture is (when they can simply look it up) or if they will get penalised if they submit an assignment late or even not at all! (why would they not!) Then, they also email me puzzling "academic" questions. For instance, I encourage my students to be autonomous and use google or search answers on websites like `stackexchange`. But some will email me (in the context of a statistical class) how to use the "google regression", or the "google R library", stuff you just wonder how they got there. Stuff directly from the meta-metaverse. How do you deal with such questions? (Giving this issue my assignments have very clear guidelines and clear marking.) My philosophy at this point is that they should figure these sort of things out by themselves, and I tend not to respond. I feel that answering this is encouraging them not to be autonomous. Is that a common teaching issue? Do you explicitly tell your students in class that they should not email you about this kind of stuff? What is acceptable not to reply to?<issue_comment>username_1: This will depend on the culture of your department. In my department, the "student experience" carries a lot of weight (for various reasons which are beyond the scope of this question). When students provide course evaluations how responsive we are to questions is a key factor. I try to be helpful without committing too much of my time. If it's something they should know where to look up I email them a link to the appropriate place to find the information ("You can find your timetable by checking the University timetabling website: https://xy.z"). Many students are not very organised and don't know where to find things, even if they should. I keep links to common resources to hand so I don't need to waste time finding them myself. If a student was doing some of their own research on a related topic to what I'm teaching I would try to be as encouraging as possible without committing too much of my time, but making clear that it is beyond the scope of the module. If they were very keen I might even try to recruit them onto a research project. It's a tricky balance but I don't think ignoring the emails is the best way forward in most cases. I have noticed (as have many of my colleagues) that some students use email in the same way as they text their friends, so a short message pinged over to you without thinking about it too much. If this is the case for your students it would be worth discussing with them communication expectations in a professional environment. In many cases, they genuinely don't know how. If a student seems to be taking advantage of your time you should discuss this with them so they understand boundaries and what is expected of them. As frustrating as communication with some students is I try to remind myself that they are young (especially undergraduates) and it's our job to teach them. That includes soft skills like how to communicate, etc. Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: You shouldn't ignore them without telling them which questions you will or will not answer. That is rude and makes it hard to understand when to reach out to you in general, which is not what you want. I see two ways to address this, one of them already [answered](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181365/69838) nicely by username_1, simple quick emails. The other one is, at the beginning of the new lecture series, to spend a few minutes clearly talking about communicating with you. You can address the topics that they can ask about, and also the the way that they can approach you and how to approach you properly. You can set clear guidelines, for example: > > For any questions on class schedules or homework assignments and grades, the answer should be in the syllabus. Questions like "when is the next lecture?" or "how is this graded?" will be ignored. > > etc. > > When you contact me, make it an appropriate message with proper greeting and closing. > > > So make it clear when they can expect an answer, and when they cannot. And of course, also put these communication guidelines in the syllabus. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: In Sweden, where I teach, there is a formal obligation on teachers to answer student queries within no more than three work days, even if the answer is trivial. The answer can of course be "you'll need to figure this out on your own" or "check the syllabus", but you can't silently ignore the question entirely. While this may not be a formal rule in your department or country, I suspect that there is at least an inofficial policy in your department as well. To be honest, I have a hard time envisioning a teaching environment where silently ignoring student questions would be considered ok. Try to see this from a student's perspective - not only do they not get their question answered, they also get no signal about why their question is not being answered. This way, they do not learn what are good questions to ask (although they may learn not to ask questions at all, since it's pointless - you may know that you would have been happy to answer a more intricate academic question, but how is the student to know that?). I should also say that handling things this way isn't even particularly smart from your perspective. You may save a few seconds by not pointing a student towards the syllabus, but you miss out on the opportunity to educate the student how to ask better questions, which may save you a lot more time (and nerves) in the future. Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: Yes, you need to answer student questions, directly or indirectly. But you also need to make it easy to do so if the scale is large. I have two suggestions. First, use what you have learned about student requests to update your syllabus with all generally needed information. I'll guess your needs improvement if you are getting questions that could be easily answered. You can even include something about how and when to contact you. Second, use a mailer that makes some things easy. Most mailers will automatically add a "signature" block at the end of any mail. Some (Mail on the Mac, for example) lets you have a large number of different signature blocks that you can easily choose from a drop-down. Write signature blocks that begin with distinct boilerplate suggestions. > > See the syllabus, please. > > Professor username_4 > > University of the Universe ... > > > Or > > See me during Office hours (details in Syllabus) > > Professor username_4 > > University of the Universe ... > > > Then, when a question requires a boiler plate answer, just select the "signature" that gives the answer. I have about thirty different signatures. --- A third suggestion, assuming that you also have a large scale but a number of TAs to assist in the course. Let each TA field questions from a defined subset of the students. In some places this assignment of student to specific TA is already in place so just capitalize on that. "Contact your TA first" is a general rule stated in the syllabus. The TAs can answer a lot of such questions and relay the harder (hopefully rarer) ones to you. You might even have access to a Senior TA who has a lot of experience who can serve as intermediary between the other TAs and yourself. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: If it's a frivolous question but only requires a simple answer, like a link to the syllabus, I would provide it and move on. If it requires more than that and I don't have the time to address it fully or have other concerns, e.g., about their preparedness for the class, I might respond with a suggestion they come to office hours, at which point there's a good chance they'll decide that also requires effort they're not willing to put in and that may be the end of it. If they do show up, that opens up the possibility for a deeper discussion of why they're having trouble with what seem like simple matters and what might be done about it. You can also set rules, e.g., edicting that students in a CS class should not send you their code via email with questions about how to fix their bugs, that you will only accept those questions in OH. Another good strategy is to use something like Piazza, so students can answer each other's questions without having to ask the instructor. I agree that even seemingly frivolous questions should get timely, respectful, and helpful responses. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Welcome to being an instructor :) What is colloquially known as "frivolous" or even "dumb" is merely a typical human pathfinding strategy: your students evidently believe it is the easiest to get answers from you. Odds are your assignments' guidelines are "very clear" only to you, possibly "clear" to the faculty and might not be clear at all to your students. Perhaps if you expressed the syllabus in a form of TikTok dance, it would get better traction. Jokes aside, maybe your university/department's website is hard to navigate. Maybe they got thrown off by unclear wording in some announcement which might have had nothing to do with your course specifically. Maybe the alternative would be a phone call and they tried to circumvent that dreaded source of knowledge. Do not take (almost) anything for granted. Seeking information is a skill, and great many people might fall into an "utterly lacking that skill" category for you. Interpersonal communication is a skill. Being consistently able to comply with well-articulated requests is a skill. You are seen as approachable - this is good; that gives you a teaching opportunity. Now, not all questions are being asked in good faith: some are obviously probing you for weakness ("maybe we could avoid doing some assignments, this teacher looks young, inexperienced and exploitable"), some try to offload minor work onto you. I find grouping requests together the easiest: someone is uncertain about the time of the next lecture? Send an email with the link to the website with relevant information to an entire mailing list and say that unless there are concerns about its validity - which then should be stated explicitly - students should just use that. Students start to bombard you with questions about grading and assignments? Take extra five minutes at the start of the next lecture addressing these concerns. Absolutely do try to address each and every email. But if you can do that, having a policy enabling you to not do so individually and potentially postpone some answers to the next class helps a lot: similar to SE, making the answer visible to a larger group of people can often be beneficial, after all. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: My own experience is that students, at the moment, are as "needy" as I've seen them. In recent times, in the US, at least, the "ground rules" have been changing frequently because of covid, and I personally think this has left the students relatively unsure about many things, and it's led to many questions of a type that I haven't seen before. I deal mostly with seniors, but I'm hearing from my colleagues that 2nd year students have never really learned to function as college students! So where does that leave us? I've chosen to double my efforts to be as clear as I can in advance -- better syllabus, better directions in class, better organization of the course structure in the learning management system.... You might ask yourself if there's anything you can do better to make things even clearer to your students. If you have TA's, maybe you can work to make them the first point of contact for students, and they can either answer the questions if they know the answers, or assemble the questions for you to answer. Also, I've really tried to encourage students to ask questions in discussion forums in the learning management system (they're encouraged to email directly for issues involving personal issues), and to follow the discussion forums. This allows me to allocate portions of my time to dealing with these issues in a way that doesn't constantly intrude into my time, usually in the evenings before I call it a day. Also, if one student has a question, chances are that somebody has the same question, and can benefit from an answer in a discussion forum before they can get around to emailing me. Often, when I get a question by email, my response is "can you ask that in the discussion forum?" Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: Assume good faith with 'obvious' questions. Maybe the student has some difficulty logging into the Student Portal to find class times and they've already raised a support ticket for it. Maybe there was some misleading information on there the previous year and they want to be sure. Maybe there's some rumour floating around about rescheduling. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: So… apparently no one answering thinks this is a teaching opportunity. If you’re tech support and you get ‘my PC crashed” questions the answer is always ‘did you troubleshoot?’… “What have you tried so far?” Someone who asks when the next lecture is, assuming it’s the same day and time each week should get ‘I recall you were at the last lecture.” or “How many have you missed?”. Treat them like a telemarketer and make their time-cost high. You could reply with a form letter containing a long story about self-reliance or perhaps reply with ‘Would you like an extra credit assignment instead?” Yes? Here’s a list of books about self-reliance. Read one and create a video, around ten minutes, summarizing the main points.” Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_10: I would like to deviate a bit from the other answers here. Although the answers and especially the accepted one are good, there is a clear problem in answering students emails: workload and time consumption. Assuming, as everyone says here, instructors must answer students emails, then the higher education system is simply broken: * If in a 200 students class, even only 10% of students sends you emails, every week, with back and forth emails. This can lead to about 50 emails per week for each course. So at each working day the professor or instructor needs to answer more than 10 emails, some of them complicated (I have experience with this), because they describe complicated scenarios relating to the course material. This amounts to more than two hours per day for answering emails, for each course you teach. This is clearly impossible, since then you cannot teach, supervise students, take part in committees, and definitely cannot do research and publish, or even think consistently. * This also means that professors/instructors today are much worse off than their peers 25 years ago, where no emails were available. Did any of us academics got the memo telling us that our workload has now increased 5-folds? I don't think so. Solution: This is my suggestion, and it is the usual legal/contractual practice: when students send email simply answer: > > Please visit my office hours. > > > Indeed, office hours were introduced precisely to put a limit on student-teacher interaction to make the workload tenable. Comment: Of course, sometimes you can answer emails if the class is very small, or in special circumstances, but don't make it the standard, unless your department demands this. If you are in such a department, then it is probably reasonable to say that your institute is more of a teaching one than research (unless you have lots of TA's doing this work for you, which is reasonable). Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_11: I think it is a good idea to define different mediums for communication to address different needs. Especially, if the students are not on campus and cannot resolve whatever questions they have in a face-to-face chat in the group. Everything falls to an email and you get swamped with frivolous questions. My solution is to establish a course Discord (or whatever chat tool students are the most used to) server. Let the students resolve trivial stuff among themselves. Chances are that multiple students have the same question and if all communication is visible, they may find their answer without even asking. I monitor the discussions to see what's going on and answer relevant questions myself. Importantly, if students are not using their real names on Discord their questions can be rude and entitled towards teachers. I find it important to react and set boundaries for what's acceptable. That is a teachable moment for everyone. Email is reserved for private and serious stuff. Let them know that they should not expect answers outside business hours and on weekends. I am also very strict on not answering any messages outside the announced channels. Furthermore, in the introductory lecture where you introduce assignments give them an example of how you expect them to approach the task. Sometimes students are used to the system where assignment contains all formulas, etc. and they just have to plug the numbers in. They are used to being evaluated on finding the correct answer. Let them know how the assignment descriptions are complete and it is their job to find the missing pieces. At uni level, students are often evaluated for how they have solved the problem, not what answer they got. I think it is futile to complain and expect students to come with perfect information-finding skills, interpersonal skills, etc. that perfectly match your expectations. Frankly, old professors are the worst at these skills. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/18	723	3,014	<issue_start>username_0: I am in the shortlist for a postdoc at a great place and I highly admire my future mentor. He will try to argue for my application in front of the hiring committee in a few days. The only concern I have is that this postdoc position is for 3 years. I have a girlfriend in another country and she cannot come with me where the postdoc will be. My long term plan was to spend 1 or 2 years as a postdoc, then some years in industry near my girlfriend and then the two of us to go back in my country, where I can easily find a permanent tenure-track position. I want to be honest with my future mentor and communicate the situation with him without losing the opportunity (the other potential offers I could have are way worse). In any case, I want to keep my good relation with the mentor. I see two main options: 1. Communicating the situation with the mentor right now. The risk is that it may look that I am not motivated enough and this could lead to me not getting an offer at all. 2. Share this with the mentor after an offer and 1 or 2 years spent at the postdoc place. Then, I will first have higher chances to get the position and second - if the mentor understands me, I will keep the good relation with him and he can even recommend me for another academic position where my girlfriend is (that could be even better, but I don't know whether it's possible given that I will still have 1 year of my current postdoc contract). Which option would you choose at my place? [Remark: Having a family is a priority for me. I am already 33 years old and I am afraid that if I lose my girlfriend, I will end up being single forever, as many people choosing the academia career track.]<issue_comment>username_1: Three years is the standard postdoc "term" in the USA. But you in fact can defer the appointment by, say, a year. And you can leave the position a year before it formally ends. Both are very common and happen in my department all the time. Just do not leave in the middle of academic year. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: I would suggest that you don't say anything prior to the interview. It might prejudice your case. Depending on what you hear in an interview (how enthusiastic they are about you) you might consider saying that it is hard to commit in advance for the third year for personal reasons. Or continue to keep that private. If you get an actual offer, then you can attempt to amend it in advance for, say, two years with an optional third. Their rules may permit such flexibility or not. Also, it is likely that you can resign a position early either by local law or by mutual consent. Long term employment contracts are likely to have exit clauses. Be aware of them. Universities in the US generally are able to set their own policies and the national rules/laws that do exist tend to favor individuals. My main advice is to keep your options open until you can't. A lot can happen both personally and professionally in a couple of years. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/18	801	3,168	<issue_start>username_0: I e-mailed a prof in France (Paris) on 10 Jan that my research interest align with his work and I would be willing to work for a PhD under his supervision in Pure Mathematics. I am a student living in Asian country. His reply was the following: > > Dear X, > > > Sorry but to get a grant for a PhD is very competitive in Paris. You need to be supported by a mathematician who knows you and is convinced that you have a top level. > I don’t know you and I have already 2 PhD students > > > How should I follow up to this email of his? Should I ask my referees to send him LOR? Should I send him a copy of my master's thesis? I have already attached my CV along with this e-mail. Edit 1: I also wrote at the end of the mail that if Prof. doesn't thinks that I might be a suitable for supervision then I shall be really grateful if he could write me back briefly about the skills I am lacking.<issue_comment>username_1: I suggest that you don't send a thesis. It is too much, too soon. Instead, find a sponsor locally who knows you well enough to be a fair judge of your likelihood of success in a competitive program. Have that sponsor contact the professor, preferably personally, with a recommendation. Even a LoR can wait until the initial contact is made. Given the assumed level of the Paris institution, someone with a known reputation would be best, but someone active in research certainly. After initial contact by the local sponsor, other things can be sent as requested and required. But let someone else speak for you initially. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: You don't. That email is a clear rejection, and any attempt at a follow-up will only waste everyone's time. If the professor were open to get to know you and to be convinced that you are a top-level candidate, they would have indicated so. Instead, they are pointing out that they already have two PhD students (and, tacitly, are thus not overly keen on investing effort in a small chance of acquiring a third). Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I agree with username_2 that this is a clear rejection. I work at a university in Germany, but I suppose the situation in France is similar. The problem is that professors get such e-mails all the time, usually from students who live in an Asian or Arab country. They send CVs, grades, even theses. Now imagine a professor who gets an e-mail like yours every few weeks. They simply do not have the time to check if one of these students might a prospective candidate. Open positions are rare, and if there is an open position, they select one of the master students they have already known for 2-3 years. This is what your professor means by saying that he does not know you. You are lucky that he answered you. I know that there are professors who simply delete e-mails like yours. Sending a thesis or a letter of recommendation will not help here. You are one among hundreds. If you really want to do a PhD in France, you have to establish a direct contact. If the university where you want to work offers a summer school or some postgraduate courses, try this. Upvotes: 5
2022/01/18	735	3,066	<issue_start>username_0: Last year, I reached out to several potential PhD advisers as I prepare for my PhD applications. One of the potential supervisors (let's call him supervisor A) with ties to the industry responded and offered me a short-term research position at their company (which I accepted) while I prepare for my PhD application at university A. However, I was recently contacted by another professor (supervisor B) at university B. I was able to interview with his team and successfully received a PhD offer. I am inclined to study at university B, but am hoping for a scenario where I can still work with supervisor A as an industry partner or co-supervisor. What is the proper etiquette in informing supervisor A about my other PhD offer at university B? Note that at this point, I have not formally committed to a PhD program yet despite having accepted the short-term research position with supervisor A. But there is the expectation that I would apply at university A and pursue my PhD there (to be fully funded by supervisor A). Will I be burning bridges if I decide to pursue my doctorate at university B? Considering that PhD is a major commitment, I would hate to turn down the opportunity out of decorum/politeness. What is the best way to bring this up with supervisor A? Would it make sense for me to invite him to be my co-supervisor at university B? Edit: I'm particularly curious about the ethics of switching gears when I've already given the impression to one supervisor that I'll be pursuing a particular PhD program. What's the best way to bring this up (email, direct 1/1 conversation) and how should I word it so as not to burn bridges?<issue_comment>username_1: Do not worry, do not overstimate the importance of your profile: you are just the preferred candidate if your supervisor will obtain fundings for the PhD position you have been somehow "promised". Take the best for you, other people will find the best for them without depending on you, because it does not depend on you. Reasoning by absurd: if you were so fundamental and relevant for the research you should perform for your PhD, you would have been a PhD student now. About inviting supervisor A to be co-supervisor of your PhD at B: yes, good idea, but first discuss it with supervisor B, then invite A (you may anticipate to your current supervisor A that you are going to accept an offer for a PhD from B, but you would like to keep him/her, if it is of mutual interest). Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I suggest that you don't inform anyone about other possibilities until you are ready to make a choice. This assumes that the choice isn't dependent on what A would say. But, take a good look at your priorities as well as your options. Keep your options open until you need to make a decision. Don't take actions that close out your options prior to your "decision point". If you choose to accept an offer from B then the advisor their will have a say in whether also working with A is advisable or not. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
2022/01/18	1,686	7,335	<issue_start>username_0: Tenure protects a faculty member's job from many threats; however, does it also generally guarantee a minimum salary? I am especially curious about fields, such as engineering, where there may be an expectation for the faculty member to bring in a certain amount of funding. If a faculty member did not bring in funding, would his or her salary be adversely impacted. Similarly, if a faculty member brings in lots of funding, would his or her salary be supplemented?<issue_comment>username_1: While there is probably a minimum for any given institution and you wouldn't be reduced below that for any reason, future salary increases depend most places on performance. There might also be a maximum. The limits might change from year to year, generally moving upwards for various reasons, such as inflation and cost of living. And there are wide differences between institutions and even between departments within a given university. Chairs and/or deans usually have some discretion on awarding increases, but likely little in lowering salaries unless a person requests reduced duties also. This assumes there is no misbehavior, of course, which is more likely to result in dismissal than salary reduction. I don't know, but suspect, that some laws affect the possibility of lowering salaries. In particular, there are some discrimination laws that might apply. Most salaries are set on an annual basis and some grants might provide some additional funding for an individual. Salary may depend on an annual (or similar) evaluation or self evaluation. However, at State Universities, the budget is influenced by political action. The budget for a department might be reduced, requiring difficult decisions to be made. But this isn't a performance issue, but a political one. Some departments are abandoned, though tenured faculty then are usually offered positions in other departments to the extent possible. And, at private universities, the budget may be dependent on outside factors that also require difficult decisions. But such things often involve faculty input in some way. Moreover, I think that salary reductions, if known would be disruptive and a stain on an institution for other than misconduct or financial exigency. And both of those often result in hits to institution's reputation. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I think there is no formal guarantee of a minimum salary, but, equally, it is my impression that in the U.S. there are few situations in which faculty have any formal contract whatsoever. For better or for worse. University administrations can unilaterally "furlough" people, or reduce salaries, for whatever reason they wish. As (perhaps not unreasonably) at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Likewise, insurance plans, etc., can be unilaterally degraded. An extreme case some decades ago, that apparently went through the courts, was a person on the medical school faculty somewhere in Chicago, who kept their position, but was given no salary. The courts decided that tenure did not entitle them to a salary... Happily for everyone, such a scenario does not seem to play out very often. (Also, in my R1 univ, there's no cost-of-living increase, anyway, ... Even after tenure, there's incessant adversarial stuff about "merit", which has an increasingly short-term, objectifiable sense... apparently mostly designed to give an excuse to higher-ups to not give a better raise.) Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: It depends on the position. Generally, tenure-track and tenured faculty positions with a teaching load are "hard money" - the university is paying you to teach classes, and you will be paid your contract salary, year in and year out, whatever it may be. You have the ability to supplement that salary - most research universities will pay on a "9-month" basis, which can then be supplemented with external funding for the remaining 3 months. You may also have the opportunity to take on additional compensated responsibilities, although more common are additional uncompensated responsibilities. It is generally accepted that salaries for tenured teaching faculty are protected as a requirement for accreditation. Other tenure-track or tenured positions are "soft money", where you are responsible for bringing in enough funding to cover your salary. These positions are almost exclusively research-only with no teaching responsibilities. In general there is a commitment for salary from the institution, although it is contract specific and is generally reflective of the level of the PI. In some cases, this can be quite substantial, as federal money has a hard salary cap (I believe this year is $174k), and well-established and well-funded PIs often have large monetary commitments from universities in order to exceed the federal hard cap. In other cases, the committed salary from the institution may be little more than a pittance. As there is no oversight body exerting pressure for fairness (like the accreditation agencies for teaching faculty), the contracts for these positions can vary wildly, even within institutions. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: University managing bodies are rarely committed strongly to academic traditions and ethos, and will gladly chip away both at your tenure - collectively and individually - and your employment conditions, salary and otherwise. Whatever guarantee you may have - if it is not upheld vigorously and in an organized fashion, it will disintegrate and be lost; and conversely, guarantees you need or desire, and are currently missing, can be fought for and won, although naturally at great effort. Thus, in modern times, and in most research institutions in most world states, the only thing guaranteeing your rights and privileges as a faculty member is a strong union: * At the individual institution, whether for academic staff only ([craft union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Craft_unionism)) or for all university employees ([industrial union](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_unionism)); and * At the country-wide/national level, both for academic staff at all universities and research institutes, and the general strength of organized labor. PS - I realize OP is asking about the US, while my answer is more general. but as @AnonymousPhysicist points out, the USA is an example of weak academic staff unions and deteriorated employment conditions, including, apparently, no reasonable all-US/per-region pay scales. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Faculty in the US are covered by university policies, their contracts, including a letter of offer of a position, state law, and Federal law. Federal law and any state law specifies a minimum wage. The minimum wage law applies to all employees, including tenured faculty. So yes, there is a minimum wage for them. Some faculty are expected to raise all of their salary and fringe benefits as well as other costs through sponsored research. This is a matter of university policy or their contract. It is likely that they are still owed the lawful minimum wage as long as they are an employee with the obligations of employment. Tenure does not guarantee employment. Every university has procedures for terminating tenured faculty, though the process might require several months. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/18	1,574	7,024	<issue_start>username_0: In India, the criteria for college admissions is very unambiguous and the question of whether you study in a prestigious institutions or not boils down to whether you score well in a standardized exam (e.g., institutions like IIT, AIMS, NITS etc....with some notable exceptions like BITS and VIT). In USA, there was a related idea with tests (e.g., the SAT, GRE) being used. I infer that these are 'benchmark' tests rather than competitive tests since there is no relative grading and marking is absolute. However, in recent times we can see that the country as a whole is moving away from considering test scores to seeing a student's essays and their personal accomplishments. This was heightened in 2021 where many top colleges dropped standardized testing requirements completely. This leads, in my opinion, to a highly ambiguous admission process. Between all these different philosophies underlying admissions, was any research put in attempting to find what would be objectively the best criteria / method to choose students? What were its findings? In essence, I am asking if there is some science which can be used to figure out what is the best admissions procedure. I am not asking for metrics based on personal feelings, but rather from systematic unbiased scientific studies. This post is in regards to any very competitive admissions process (college, grad school, internship, ...). In less competitive environments (e.g., lower ranked colleges), admission is almost certain if you have just have some minimum quals, and so any aspect of ambiguity is gone.<issue_comment>username_1: The comments already say this in so many words, but the reason nobody wants to answer the question is because your question is ill-posed. You ask > > Between all these different philosophies underlying college admissions, was any research put in attempting to find what would be objectively the best criteria/ method to choose students? > > > The issue is with the phrase "the best criteria". Everyone will have a different way of defining what the best outcome actually is, and many of the following (though not all!) could be considered "reasonable" definitions of best outcome: * The student population should be a representative sample of society, including adequate number of women, people of color, people from different income levels. * The student population should consist of only the best high school students based on exclusively academic criteria. * The student population should reflect in their chosen majors the anticipated demand for future employees in their disciplines. * The student population should reflect in their chosen majors the current demand for employees in their disciplines. * The student population should be chosen in such a way that it maximizes the future tax revenue of the state or country that finances the university. * The student population should primarily be composed of the children of the state or country that finances the university. * The student population should give underrepresented minorities a chance to catch up and undo historical injustices that have led to their underrepresented state. * The student population should be chosen in such a way to maximize future charitable giving to the university by only selecting those who will likely have large incomes. * The student population should be chosen in such a way to maximize near-term charitable giving to the university, by only selecting those whose parents have large incomes. * If you're a white nationalist, you would want to make sure that no non-white people get accepted. With a few minutes of thought, you will probably be able to add another half a dozen possible criteria. The upshot of this thought experiment is that it is not clear at all what the best goal actually should be, and as a consequence it is entirely unclear what the best admission strategy should actually be. There is almost certainly a large amount of research on admissions (which I'm entirely unfamiliar with), but it will not address your question about "the best way" -- it will only be able to address how different admissions choices affect certain outcome metrics. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: There's a plethora of such research, just look on Google Scholar with search terms such as "university admissions". Below are two example abstracts. [Theory-Based University Admissions Testing for a New Millennium](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1207/s15326985ep3903_4) > > This article describes two projects based on <NAME>'s theory of successful intelligence and designed to provide theory-based testing for university admissions. The first, Rainbow Project, provided a supplementary test of analytical, practical, and creative skills to augment the SAT in predicting college performance. The Rainbow Project measures enhanced predictive validity for college grade point average (GPA) relative to high school GPA and the SAT (an acronym that originally stood for Scholastic Aptitude Test but that now stands for nothing in particular) and decreased ethnic-group disparities in test scores. The second, the University of Michigan Business School Project, provided supplementary tests of practical skills to augment the Graduate Management Admissions Test (GMAT) in predicting business school performance. Scores on two types of measures of practical skills predicted performance inside and outside the classroom and explained variance in performance beyond GMAT scores and undergraduate GPA. The measures tended to exhibit less disparity across gender and racial or ethnic groups than did the GMAT. The findings from the two projects demonstrate the potential value of including a broader range of abilities in admissions testing. > > > [Implementing quotas in university admissions: An experimental analysis](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0899825614000359) > > This paper studies the implementation of quotas in matching markets. In a controlled laboratory environment, we compare the performance of two university admissions procedures that both initially reserve a significant fraction of seats at each university for a special subgroup of students. The first mechanism mimics the sequential procedure currently used by the central clearinghouse for university admissions in Germany. This procedure starts by allocating reserved seats among eligible students and then allocates all remaining seats among those who were not already assigned one of the reserved seats in the first part of the procedure. The second mechanism is based on a modified student-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm in which all seats are allocated simultaneously. In theory, the two mechanisms should lead to similar outcomes. Our experimental results, however, suggest that, relative to the sequential procedure, the simultaneous mechanism significantly improves the match outcomes for the beneficiaries of reserved seats. > > > Upvotes: 2
2022/01/18	419	1,886	<issue_start>username_0: I noticed for a few postdoc positions, they want you to apply both on mathjobs AND on some external site. I applied on mathjobs, but didn't apply on some external site. Will they look at my file? The external site didn't request anything that wasn't uploaded to mathjobs - sometimes just a CV. I should have paid attention more and I'm sure I don't have great chances at those places (I have applied to several other places) - but will they even look? Edit: I am greatly ashamed by my egregious error and accept full responsibility for my mistake including having my file rightly thrown in the trash with extreme prejudice.<issue_comment>username_1: Generally, this is because the university requires all official applications for its jobs be on the university's own site. If you do not apply on the university's site, the department cannot consider your application by university rules. It's possible the department has been able to set things up so that they can consider a late application on the university site. If it's available, I consider you do that immediately. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Actually, my experience tells the other story. I applied to school X on mathjobs without applying at the school's application site, and I didn't realize that until the department head of school X sent me an email last week and asked me if I'm still interested in their school, and reminded me to apply at their external site. It was already 2 months after the application deadline, though, I applied and they sent me an offer several days later. So, if a school really wants you, it doesn't matter too much (although I wouldn't do it again, and this is probably the only school that I forgot to apply at an external site). Of course, you should make sure someone in the school knows you have applied for their position. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
2022/01/19	301	1,363	<issue_start>username_0: I'd like to change the category of registered arXiv papers as I classified it wrongly. Is it possible?<issue_comment>username_1: Generally, this is because the university requires all official applications for its jobs be on the university's own site. If you do not apply on the university's site, the department cannot consider your application by university rules. It's possible the department has been able to set things up so that they can consider a late application on the university site. If it's available, I consider you do that immediately. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Actually, my experience tells the other story. I applied to school X on mathjobs without applying at the school's application site, and I didn't realize that until the department head of school X sent me an email last week and asked me if I'm still interested in their school, and reminded me to apply at their external site. It was already 2 months after the application deadline, though, I applied and they sent me an offer several days later. So, if a school really wants you, it doesn't matter too much (although I wouldn't do it again, and this is probably the only school that I forgot to apply at an external site). Of course, you should make sure someone in the school knows you have applied for their position. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
2022/01/19	1,539	5,627	<issue_start>username_0: Suppose that two researchers, say, <NAME> and <NAME> have proven an original mathematical theorem that I want to use. I would like to name it the Yubaba-Zeniba theorem. Is it proper etiquette to ask for permission first to use their names in that way or are names good to go in general?<issue_comment>username_1: There is no need to ask permission, and mostly likely they will be happy to have the theorem referred to with their names. The normal way to do it is state it as "Theorem (Yubaba-Zeniba [YZ])" and it's up to you how you then refer to it in the text, e.g., "the Yubaba-Zeniba Theorem", "Yubaba and Zeniba's Theorem", etc. The only caveat is if they have another, or many, well-known theorems, then I would either qualify it more (e.g., the "Yubaba-Zeniba Vanishing Theorem") or use the possessive form rather than "the Yubaba-Zeniba Theorem" or refer to it by the theorem number in the text to prevent confusion with their other results Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I suppose there is no formal need to ask for permission, but 1. I see no harm in doing so. 2. I see the potential for harm in not doing so. I wouldn't think of it as "asking for permission" but asking for "suitability." Situations where you might regret not checking with the authors: 1. The original authors, or other authors, have already started calling the theorem by another name. 2. Yubaba did not contribute to that part of the paper, and believes Zeniba should get all the credit. 3. The statement of the theorem made by Yubaba and Zeniba is a special case of a more general and widely applicable theorem, which was not included in that paper but perhaps has been proven elsewhere in the meantime. I've never been in this exact situation myself, so perhaps I am being overly cautious. I did once have the temptation to name an amazing insight after the person from whose paper I learned it, only to later learn that the insight was a relatively small generalization of a 30-year-old result I was not aware of at the time. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I generally agree with colleagues here that it shouldn't be a problem. But, it would be prudent to point that this can often go wrong. It is often the case, for example, that the people who popularise a theorem are very different from the people who first describe it, or first put the most non-trivial building blocks that allowed others to popularize it in the first place. Sometimes what is an incremental and what is a fundamental contribution is not clear. In your case it may be clear that these two, and only these two authors have worked on this problem; but in cases where it's not, particularly if the missing authors themselves (or often enough, their national bodies in posthumous situations) would consider them ignored pioneers of that work. I can think of many examples of people/nations with grievances of this kind. This is especially true in medicine, where people (or often, their birthplaces) try to eponymize diseases all the time. The most obvious example that first comes to mind to me (as a Greek person) is [Behçet's disease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beh%C3%A7et%27s_disease), which as the wikipedia page calmly states, ["is sometimes also known as Adamantiades-Behçet's disease"](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benediktos_Adamantiades). What this calm statement hides behind it is that the two wikipedia entries have almost been a battleground of edits between people of Greek and Turkish origin, defending what the correct name to use is, etc. You can see some of this still remaining in the talk pages, but these typically get cleaned out of view, hiding such battlescars! Tellingly, if you look for Adamantiades in the English wikipedia, you will be redirected to Behçet's disease; if you look for Behçet in the Greek wikipedia, you will be redirected to [Adamantiades-Behçet's disease](https://el.wikipedia.org/wiki/%CE%9D%CF%8C%CF%83%CE%BF%CF%82_%CE%91%CE%B4%CE%B1%CE%BC%CE%B1%CE%BD%CF%84%CE%B9%CE%AC%CE%B4%CE%B7-%CE%9C%CF%80%CE%B5%CF%87%CF%84%CF%83%CE%AD%CF%84) :) Behçet's disease is particularly interesting, given the information in the article: * It was "first formally first described by <NAME> and <NAME>, who published their findings in 1922" * Behçet, an eminent Turkish dermatologist and scientist, first (?) recognizes the three main symptoms of the syndrome in one of his patients in 1924 (but no publication is made at the time). * Adamantiades presents independent (?) work at the Medical Society of Athens in 1930, identifying the three major signs of the disease, and insisting in their classification as a single clinical entity. This results in a publication in 1931 in Greek and French medical journals. * Behçet subsequently reports his own research on the disease in the Journal of Skin and Venereal Diseases in 1936. So the implication here is: the two people who first really discovered this, are not even contenders for the name here; Behçet's largest contribution here was presumably being among the pioneers who described this disease, ostensibly not the very first, but certainly the most eminent, and the one who published in the most impactful journal, the one whose contribution actually reached the most eyes and had the most impact, and thus (perhaps rightfully) the name most now associated with the disease. So, yes. I think it's mostly ok, but just keep in mind there's always a small chance you might accidentally start World War 3 in a 'butterfly flapping its wings' kind of way if you're not too careful :p Upvotes: 1
2022/01/19	765	3,308	<issue_start>username_0: I heard back from a potential PhD advisor from University ABC saying that I am accepted into their program and he also stuck his neck out for me for getting a fellowship as well. I am still waiting for results from the other universities (some of which I might choose over University ABC). His tone from the mail was very happy and I feel I must reply back to him in a nice way. Is just saying "Thank you very much for your support and the great news!" enough? Edit: I do not want to be too enthusiastic as I might have to turn down this offer based on the results from other universities and I am afraid it might come off as me leading him on when I might not even accept the position.<issue_comment>username_1: Firstly, a huge congratulations on your acceptance. That's wonderful news. As a faculty member, I can say that I don't think you need to worry about being too enthusiastic. I would encourage you to say a bit more in your response and let them know that you are very excited. Also, don't worry too much about the content of this email, you're in! For the time being just enjoy it, and when you begin a program, focus on doing great work (and remaining enthusiastic hopefully)! Edit based on your edit: I would not temper your enthusiasm because you might go to another university. That's a given in any PhD admissions process that all advisors are aware of. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Rather than tempering your enthusiasm, I'd add to your message (after all the enthusiasm and thanks/appreciation is shared) that you plan to compare offers and respond with a decision once you've gotten responses from your other applications. If you know a date that you'll have those other responses by you can include that date, if not it's fine to be generic (and anyone should understand that a student applying for grad school does not control the timeline of other schools). You could ask if there is a deadline to respond if this isn't already clear. It's possible this will sadden the professor a bit if they're very excited to have you, but frankly, they have no ownership over you no matter how much they've "stuck their neck out". You owe them an appreciation for their efforts, not to deny all other offers. Most likely they will understand this; if they are the kind of person who is deeply offended by this, though, I would urge you that you do not want this kind of person as a supervisor if you can avoid it. Therefore, you do not need to worry about their reaction too much; if they have a normal person reaction, they will completely understand that any applicant should consider all their options before making a decision. If they react badly, well, you now have dodged a situation that would only get harder and harder to get out of if you found out later in your studies what kind of person this professor is. A final caution would be that at least where I am from in the US, official offers need to come from the institution, not the individual professor. An individual professor may very well have strong sway, but you need to have an official institutional offer in hand before you accept it and reject any others. It's possible things work differently if you are applying elsewhere and I can't speak to that. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/20	2,253	9,831	<issue_start>username_0: There are various sources in the internet in which different general questions one may encounter in screening interviews are reviewed. However, sometimes an applicant may face with some questions whose answers can be totally unexpected, and often opinion-based. In such cases, as the applicant (unfortunately!) can't read an asker's mind to know what perspective appeals them more, is there any strategy (for example, based on the clues captured during the interview) based on which an applicant's answer properly converges to what is expected to be heard? Example\: A while ago, I was invited to an interview (for a tenure-track assistant professorship position) conducted by a search committee of an aerospace department (in an R1 U.S. university). A panel member asked me the following question: > > We have a large body of undergraduate students who are potentially > interested in your field of research. What sorts of plans would you > have to successfully attract them to this stream of research? > > > I, initially unprepared to be asked such a question, thought for a couple of seconds and then (kind of spontaneously) responded like: > > Nowadays, the surge of coding and programming among undergraduate > engineering students is growing. They often, regardless of their > majors, get attracted to computing by learning some programming > languages. Since the background of the majority of them to do > cutting-edge research in my field may not initially suffice, I would try to > define some numerical projects for interested students through doing > which they can gradually get familiar with the principal components of > the theory in my field. Once they are equipped with some solid > background, as well as the magnification of their interests in the > field, I may hopefully plan deeper steps for the involvement of those > students to the mainstream research in my field. > > > The asker then rolled his eyes staring at me for almost 10 seconds when he finally said: > > Well... I don't know about that! > > > I don't claim that my answer was the best possible line of planning for what that question sought. What I am concerned with is some strategies to handle such not-that-much-standard questions so that the result would be less embarrassing that what happened in that experience. \ The quotes may not represent the exact word-by-word passage of conversation.<issue_comment>username_1: When an interview question is non-standard or otherwise unexpected, I fall back on two types of answers: 1. Reframe the question/your answer more generally. So, if a question is around how you would teach a particular class, you would answer by describing your teaching philosophy or your approach to syllabus design more generally. Often, by the time you have done this, you have developed at least a couple of thoughts specific to the class so you can end with some more specific information. So in your situation, you might start by giving a minute or two about why you are excited about undergraduate research and your general philosophy about working with undergraduates. Then maybe you would have a thought at the end about the specifics of the issue of recruitment. 2. Turn the question back around (Note this works at most one time per interview.) In this type of answer, you say something like "I think the norms and culture of the department play a big part in how I would approach this. I would probably start by checking what other faculty are doing and what has been done in the past. In general, my goal would be to align with the standards in the department. How are other faculty [handling the situation currently]?" Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If I were in your situation I would have asked for clarification instead of trying to answer right away. In your case, there is ambiguity in what the interviewer meant by > > successfully attracting [undergraduates] to your field of research > > > Are they talking about undergraduate research projects (your answer seems to assume this)? Or do they mean attracting undergraduates to graduate programs? In the latter case, is that at the masters or PhD level? At their home department or a different program? Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Sorry if this starts with jumping into the subject used as your example rather than giving the generic thoughts first - doing this as I feel something useful may be able to be derived from this. I would not try and attract all of "a large body of undergraduate students who are potentially interested in your field of research" to research in that field. I feel doing that would be prone to attracting, and having to deal with and tediously sort out later, a lot of people who are only slightly interested and/or just looking for "something" to do and who are not really excellent, or have the potential to or interest in being excellent, in the field or specialty. Also running increased risks of missing the really interested and excellent ones by drowning them in a mass of others, and/or turning them off by having to be drowned in that mass. Thus, if I had to answer that question I would along the lines of saying that I would specifically not try to attract all of these people to doing research in the field, but rather attract those that can be derived to be particularly promising. In order to achieve this, I would probably ... (plan designs here) I might or might not add, "of course in alignment with the policies of this school and department" but I feel I'd rather be inclined to not add that because I feel strongly that showing some determination and backbone counts more in a responsible position than offering to be a total push-over just in case. Also, it seems to me to be taking a side-path approach to follow the path you sketched out in your answer (get people to do X by getting them to do Y in an environment revolving around X then hope doing Y will make them good at doing X.) I wonder if these points may offer some of the expectable explanation of the eye-rolling you got. Avoid overdoing the urge to give a pleasant answer, if that could be an issue. Focus on what you would want to shape a situation into, or if there's too little time to make up your mind about that in a moment within an interview situation, on what you think a situation should helpfully be advanced into to create advancement to the field. That said, if you find in an interview situation there's something you are having too little time to make up your mind about in a moment, you may find you have just harvested from that interview situation some insight into the fact that there's a thing you simply haven't thought about yet. When going for a position where you will be able to shape things, I feel you want to have given a lot of explorative and constructive (quasi engineering) thought to the goals and designs you would like to pursue in shaping things, seen from both angles, i.e. both for the good of the field, school and department and, as well, what you as being who you are would really like to do in that quarter. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Another option to add to the excellent suggestions by [Dawn](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/56938/): * Decline to offer a solution — Just say you would think carefully about it: (This method should also be used sparingly.) Sometimes when you get a question about how you would solve a certain problem, the best answer is that you would not solve it by making a snap decision in an interview. Tell the panel that you are not inclined to try to develop a solution on the spot; in leiu of this, tell them about your decision-making process and how you would go about thinking about the problem and developing a solution. This is a particularly useful response if you have a demonstrated track-record of experience in the field, and a demonstrted track-record of making managerial decisions. (It is less likely to work if you are inexperienced and applying for an entry-level position.) By declining to solve the problem on the spot, and explaining your decision process instead, you can show the panel that you are a decision-maker who takes their time with a problem and is not going to be rushed into making a snap decision when that is not necessary. If you like, you can say to them that you are happy to implement your decision-making process after the interview, and come back to them in a day with some proposed ideas for a solution. This method can work well in some cases, if used sparingly, and if you can back it up by showing that you have demonstrated experience making decisions on these types of topics. Sometimes an interviewer may react sceptically if you have not answered the question, and press you for specifics on how you would solve the problem. In this case you have to decide if you can wiggle out some reasonable tentative suggestions (without looking wishy-washy on your original stance) or if you want to hold your ground. If they keep pressing you for an immediate solution you can even be brave and go further --- tell them that any candidate who gives them an immediate solution in an interview is doing them a disservice, since they are making a snap decision on an important matter instead of implementing a longer deliberative decision-making process. Reiterate your managerial experience with this kind of problem and use this as a basis to make an adverse judgment on the proposal that you provide a snap assessment of the problem. But beware: Depending on the attitude of the interviewer, this can go badly and sink your chances for the position (which has happened to me), or it can impress the hell out of them and make you the lead candidate (which has also happened to me). Upvotes: -1
2022/01/20	1,088	4,772	<issue_start>username_0: I'm halfway through my PhD in theoretical physics and so far, I have never written a paper on my own. At best I wrote short parts for an article published with my advisor. I am currently taking part in an international collaboration and we decided that I should try and write our paper. I spend about 2 weeks on it and barely reached 2.5 pages (two-column APS style). I sent my work to the advisor and he said that "it is not good". We only spoke shortly on a phone, so I expect him to give me some more feedback. However, he has given me feedback before and it hasn't been all that helpful. His main advice is for me to be more verbose which I just don't know how to do. How can I learn to write scientific publications? Any tips? Training ideas? Sources I can follow? I just feel that in a quite short time I should become an "independent researcher" and that should include the ability to write a paper on my own. With the current pace, I definitely won't achieve that by the end of my PhD and that gives me a lot of anxiety. I'm not an English native speaker. I'm not sure if that matters but wanted to clarify.<issue_comment>username_1: Your advisor is the first line for this. Becoming an independent researcher is immensely more difficult without a good advisor to steer you. Other common advice is: look at recent papers in your area, and imitate their style. If there are other more senior (and English-speaking) members of your international collaboration, then of course they will comment on what you write and help you make it better. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Before writing my first paper, I bought a book called "How to write a scientific paper". It was a great resource and helped me immensely in structuring the paper and other aspects. Maybe you don't even have to buy the book, but find one in your local library. That being said, developing a nice and concise writing style will take lots of practice, and it is completely normal to have problems with it at first. My university offers free scientific writing courses for PhD students, maybe yours does too? I have friends who took such a course and they completely recommended it for people struggling with writing. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: To extend on what username_1 correctly said - imitate (good) recent papers. I think that is, far and away, the most pragmatic and best way to get started writing scientific papers. The time to innovate will come, but it should probably not be when you are writing your first article and don't really know how to. Specifically: 1. Find one or two papers that are close to yours, not just in terms of topic but also (maybe even more importantly) in the applied research method and target community. Papers in the same journal / conference as where you are planning to submit are a good starting point. 2. Read this paper. Don't just skim it, don't only look at the tables for specific results, or the method for specific steps. Really read it. Go over each section, paragraph, maybe even sentence and ask yourself why this paragraph or sentence needed to be there. Make notes. Try to reconstruct how the authors are building their argument, what they report, what they don't report, and in which order. This is an exercise that many writing classes use, and it's incredibly useful as a beginning writer. 3. Set up your own paper draft in the very first iteration as a structural carbon copy of the paper you are imitating. Write headlines for all the sections and subsections the paper should need. Write detailed notes (maybe as TEX comments if you are using LaTeX) about the flow of your argument within in each section. Refer to the notes you made when analyzing the existing paper and don't be afraid to copy their structure and how they construct their story (but don't copy the words, obviously!). Make notes which figures and tables you are going to use where - if you already have them insert them, otherwise insert a placeholder or early version. 4. At this point you should have a fairly complete mental image in your head how the paper will eventually look like, and what gets explained where. Now you can start to draft the text. Since you already started writing (but your advisor felt it was no good) you can of course recycle some of the text, but try to do it only when the text is almost exactly what you wanted to write in this place and improve the text you are writing so that it fits the notes / outline you wrote above. Start drafting a short part of the paper first (e.g., the introduction - I like writing papers in order of reading, but opinions on this differ) and send it to your advisor to review. Rinse and repeat for the rest of the paper. Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
2022/01/20	2,893	12,319	<issue_start>username_0: I am in the third year of a STEM PhD at a top university. My supervisors have all been very happy with my progress since my project started in Oct 2019, and thanks in part to antidepressants and other lifestyle changes, I have shown a lot of positivity and enthusiasm and have done a good job of convincing others that I am doing A-OK. I tend to get very excitable about things that are worth pursuing although my supervisor has flagged up that I still need to tie up loose ends that haven't yet been finished (even though he hasn't explicitly told me what they are). However, in late November last year (2021) I went through a psychotic episode which landed me in hospital and required me to take some time away from my studies. As a result, I now feel very rusty on quite a few things (including both the content of my work as well as getting into a good working day) and that I need more guidance both with the content and what to be doing at any given moment. The department at my university have been very supportive and want me to succeed, however, I feel like my supervisor at this point could have done a better job of teaching me how to do specific things in research, rather than just leaving me to it. He is very helpful and knowledgeable when it comes to solving problems, but I feel he hasn't done the best job of enabling me to learn how to do things like teach myself content from lecture notes, read research papers, structure my workflow etc. In other words, I wish he "taught me how to teach myself" rather than just sending me a couple of things and leaving me to it, especially because I took several years away from graduate studies after my undergraduate degree. I have been holding my tongue since the start of the project when communicating things he does that are not helpful to me, because I don't want to be seen as someone who is difficult to supervise or who cannot progress without constant guidance. Given how rusty I am because of my nervous breakdown which has left me unable to do any work for a couple of months, I feel like I need some quite invasive intervention to help me to cross an important milestone in April, but I am struggling to think of a way to communicate this to my supervisor without eliciting any concerns. A recurring issue throughout my project is a general feeling of not having achieved very much, in particular having achieved much less than another candidate at a similar level would have done in a similar position to myself. I feel like everybody else in my cohort has achieved so much more than me, and that they are seemingly not having any problems meeting their deadlines and that they are able to progress independently of their supervisors. It seems like whenever I look at a hint that my supervisor gives, I still keep getting stuck and thinking "okay, what do I do now" and secretly wishing that I was told exactly what to do at every stage so that I didn't need to worry about getting the answer wrong. I have always had imposter syndrome throughout my studies but recently it has gotten to the point where everything feels like a haze, my mood has dropped and whenever I look at anything related to my PhD I end up having very low emotional stamina and I end up Googling things like "PhD low motivation" or "how to know if you're cut out for academia" or "alternatives to academia after PhD". Conversations with my father seem to be rather circular - in that nothing he says seems to satisfy me, and at my core there is this belief that by doing a PhD I am being educated beyond my own capabilities and that perhaps this episode is a sign that I have pushed myself too far. What are some tactful ways of communicating with my supervisor that I would like him to take a more hands-on approach to ensure that I make good progress, rather than him leaving the ball in my court all the time?<issue_comment>username_1: > > What are some tactful ways of communicating with my supervisor that I > would like him to take a more hands-on approach to ensure that I make > good progress, rather than him leaving the ball in my court all the > time? > > > Simply say so to your advisor in a tactful and polite manner: "I think I need at this point a hand-on approach because of the approaching deadline...". The point is that your supervisor may not be someone who provides a hands-on approach to PhD students, which is also a legitimate way of supervision. If this is the case, you'll need to work harder and find a way to be more independent in your research. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: > > What are some tactful ways of communicating with my supervisor that I would like him to take a more hands-on approach to ensure that I make good progress, rather than him leaving the ball in my court all the time? > > > Schedule a meeting, and explain this to him directly, in the same way as you are explaining it here. My experience with student/advisor conflicts has been that trying to be overly polite or indirect is not nearly as effective as communicating clearly what you feel isn't going well at the moment, and what could be changed. Of course the basic rules of human interactions still apply - don't be rude, don't assign blame, don't apologize, and stick to the facts of the current situation rather than establishing who did what wrong at what point in time. You are facing a crisis, you feel you cannot do what your supervisor expects you to do at this point in time, and you need more direct guidance to complete in time. Of course this does not guarantee that your supervisor will agree with you. No matter how clearly you communicate, there is certainly a chance that your supervisor feels they are helping you as much as they can or are willing to. But even in that case it is better to know for sure than to keep wondering if your supervisor is unwilling to help or simply not "getting" you. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: > > ... I am struggling to think of a way to communicate this to my supervisor without eliciting any concerns. ... What are some tactful ways of communicating with my supervisor that I would like him to take a more hands-on approach to ensure that I make good progress, rather than him leaving the ball in my court all the time? > > > You have a number of fairly substantial problems, but this one strikes me as the primary issue that is probably creating/aggravating every other problem. The house is on fire here, so you need to stop worrying about tact. You need to stop being concerned about how you will look to your supervisor and just be open and candid about your present difficulties and needs. Do not concern yourself with whether your supervisor or panel will or won't have concerns and do not agonise over the mode and nuance of your communication --- just tell them what is happening, tell them about the skill deficiencies you have identified, and ask them to provide you with some help or guidance on these issues. If that raises concerns with them (and it may well do this) then that is fine --- you don't fix a problem by hiding it or agonising over non-essentials. Once you adopt an attitude of open and candid communication (and reducing concern for tact and external perception) you will be in a position to start to fix your other problems. I see three main problems here: (1) you appear to be behind cohort expectations in your ability to self-learn; (2) you have lost some ground and forgotten some things due to time off; and (3) you are dealing with some psychological issues that are forcing time-off and negatively affecting your life and academic performance. Your supervisor already knows about the latter two problems, but apparently not the first problem. In regard to the first of these problems, I would expect that a student would be fairly adept at self-learning either at the completion of their undergraduate degree, or within the first year or two of a PhD program. To still be having serious difficulty with self-learning in the third year of a PhD program is unfortunate, but it does happen sometimes. In my judgment, you are substantially behind cohort expectations on this skill. This is not an insurmountable deficiency by any means, and I think you could catch up in a year or so if you were to disclose the problem to your supervisor, develop some strategies for improving your self-learning, and focus some attention and time on it. The last problem is outside my domain of expertise, and the second problem is solvable if the other two issues are addressed. Don't be too worried about losing a year or two, but don't treat it trivially either; a year or two of additional catch-up is not huge in the scheme of a career. Under these circumstances, it does not surprise me at all that you are feeling like an imposter and feeling awful about your degree. What you are feeling is probably rooted in genuine skill deficiencies that you appear to be concealing and hoping will go away on their own. If you open up to your supervisor about your skill deficiencies and make a plan to solve these, you may find yourself starting to make forward progress. If you can do this, you should start to feel better about your degree and it may assist both your substantive progress and your self-perception. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: I have a lot of empathy for your situation. I also started my STEM Ph.D. in Oct 2019 and also had a breakdown in 2021. One viewpoint that I'm noticing lacking in the other responses is the perspective of "managing up". "Managing up" is a term borrowed from the business world. In essence, how can you (as the employee) get what you need from your PI (the manager) to make your job easier and your life a little more peaceful? This concept is really helpful in academia since PI's aren't necessarily trained in being good managers. I really think this [business perspective](https://review.firstround.com/a-tactical-guide-to-managing-up-30-tips-from-the-smartest-people-we-know) is helpful. There are also resources [developed for graduate students specifically](https://grad.uw.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ManagingUpHandout.pdf) on the topic of managing up. Just a warning that some of the other articles on managing up from a business perspective that I've come across while writing this response are super toxic.. if you come across one of those please discard and pay it no heed. There's good stuff out there like (hopefully) what I've linked. Before you set up a meeting with your PI, I would recommend doing the following: 1. Write down (on a google doc or form your PI can eventually access and keep) what you'd like to talk about (i.e. "I need more help getting back up to speed"), including solutions that you can think of "Can I work with the postdoc in XYZ lab to see how this procedure is done before starting it myself? Can you help me write a timetable for this project?". 2. Put yourself in your PI's shoes-- look at the questions you've written and imagine how you'd answer those questions if someone asked them to you. Are your requests specific? Could they be broken down into steps that are more realistic for your manager to implement? Modify/edit as needed. 3. Understand that this is going to be an ongoing conversation. Expect to talk to your PI every 3 months or so to see how you're aligning with your timeline even after your deadline in April. Managing up requires knowing what exactly what it is you need and asking for it. If you're not sure what it is that you need, start with listing the things that you know and the things that you don't know, and brainstorm how to get there. If all of this sounds too exhausting... I hear you. But your therapist may be able to help you with these steps. The TherapistAid webpage has worksheets that have tips for [communication skills](https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/soft-startups.pdf), and tips on [goalsetting/building habits](https://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-worksheets/goals/adults). All of these things were really important for me during/after my episode. It sounds like you're taking care of yourself, reaching out to support, and doing the right things. I'm inspired by your story and wish you the best of luck. Again, best of luck and let us know how it goes. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/20	609	2,549	<issue_start>username_0: As I begin writing up my work in earnest during my final year of a PhD in computer science, I'm wondering about how much and how often to share my work-in-progress thesis dissertation with my advisers. I'm asking in the sense of what's healthy / sensible. There must be a balance between the "present soon, present often" mantra and the "deep work/flow" approach. The former might avoid wasting efforts if I spent a month writing something which then needs tearing up and starting again but it might mean there is frequent re-thinking and tweaking at the expense of getting a significant chunk done. I am used to collaborating on papers "live" using [Overleaf](https://overleaf.com) or git so that all stakeholders can at least see (and usually contribute to) the progress of the project. I know lots of people use things like Google Docs or equivalent with the ability for a reviewer to comment on sections. I guess in the olden days you'd print off a chapter at a time and hand it in, hoping it came back with (just the right amount of) scribbles on it from your adviser. I am also aware that PhD thesis is very much about one's own contribution and is not a group project (in terms of writing at least). So I appreciate that if the advisers had access, we would need to have clear "ground rules" in terms of them just pointing things out that need work. I'm interested in people's experiences. What worked well? Any pitfalls to avoid?<issue_comment>username_1: This requires a consultation with your advisor. The best thing is to work out something, whatever it is, that is mutually agreeable. Certainly, though, consult with them when you are stuck and can't seem to get unstuck. Consult with them when you have major insights that might lead to other things or a better overall result. They may or may not want to see the actual writing periodically, but an update every week or two on progress is pretty typical. But don't hold it back until their acceptance of your work becomes critical and some disagreement at a late date sets you back. I've seen that happen. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: My advisor and I emailed LaTeX files back and forth. We even had a macro for his comments to appear in the margins. So he could edit or make a comment. Now there’s Overleaf, so you’ve got version control, too, and email is out of the loop. That seems less annoying. If you can both handle LaTeX, I’d recommend trying a chapter In Overleaf. If that doesn’t work, try some other co-editing software. Upvotes: 0
2022/01/20	1,590	6,908	<issue_start>username_0: I like to know what the citations are as I read and prefer parenthetical citations. Personally, I find number citations highly disruptive to actually use, since I need to flip to the references every time if I want to understand what they refer to. Why do prestigious journals [1, 2] use numeric citations? Is it simply to reduce word count? --- References 1. Science 2. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences<issue_comment>username_1: * Citation styles are primarily arbitrary. * Citation styles are mostly based on tradition, rather than logical reasons. * Concise citation styles, like numeric citations, require less copyediting which saves the journal money. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: The citation style is a matter of personal preference. proof: I prefer the numerical citations (especially if they are in superscript). Numeric citations are easier to skip, allowing me to focus on the content of the paper. I find the long author-year citations in the middle of sentences and paragraphs very disruptive because they take up space and force me to search where the sentence or paragraph continues. Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: I believe the advantage is mainly shortening the text. This can be substantial in some cases. If a short paper wants to mention 20 studies, then often the references can be reordered so that the reference looks like [3-22] instead of several lines of text listing all the first authors. For longer papers, this reordering is not usually possible, so [3-22] is followed by [3,4,5-7,40]. Also, the cost of flipping to the end of a longer paper is higher. I can live with this style. What I hate is when titles are dropped. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: I think there are a lot of good answers already, so this is superfluous, but it sums up my sentiment: If I have numerical references, I can easily skip them when reading a paper and I can easily find them in the bibliography. They are also easy to note down on a piece of paper. It is easier to find reference 124 then to search for a name in a long list of authors... - Add to that, numerical lists are typically created by tools while some authors insist on handwriting author-year references. Great if the reference you are looking for doesn't exist... The author-year reference then brings along the issues mentioned by other contributors: Does it become part of the text or it is a label? If I write it as if part of the text it impacts the writing style. Then how do I add a long list of authors? And as others have pointed out, whom do you list? The first author? (The robust approach) or the group leader (recognizable name). My personal BibTeX libraries are internally author-name(-a/b/...) which works, but means you are potentially referencing a "nobody". This then might even impact reader interaction where you will be more attentive to a recognizable reference than an unrecognizable one which is objectively obviously wrong. So numerical references provide a wonderful opportunity to attribute work neutrally in the written manuscript. And on a comment to other responses: I agree that references without titles are problematic as most papers can be found with a title and an author, but random jumbled number with cryptic abbreviations are sometimes wrong and universally harder to find... (Even worse if the literature of interest spreads over a wide field of journals and sub-disciplines....) Fortunately "digital paper" is cheap and modern papers are no longer impacted by the inherent cost of printing physical books, so this is less prevalent than in the past. (Though still an issue...) Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Well, this is probably one (yet unmentioned) reason for doing it - however, it usually makes sense not for journals, but for academic graduation papers like theses etc., since many of them impose restrictions on the total count of citations used. (For example, in one of the Russian universities, the formal requirement for a postgraduate thesis was (as of 2021) using no less than 120 references.) Using numeric style, the task of complying with these requirements is easier for both the author and the verifier. Otherwise, the bibliography should at least still be kept in a numbered list (or should we employ manual counting?). Another minor reason is that numeric citations are unambiguous, while "author-year" ones are not (it is not uncommon to cite several papers written by the same author(s) and published in the same year (maybe even in the same journal)). Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: The main benefits are: 1. Conciser text. 2. Better readability once without all the [........] intrusions. 3. Less foreboding content when "big name" authors (as distinct from their observations and hypotheses) are not in immediate view while reading. The latter is especially important for graduate students who might be afraid to consider ideas in conflict with those of established researchers. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: ### Because they shouldn't matter The author's text should explain their argument. That means their text must (or at least should) state their starting point facts or postulates, and then move from those onto their own work which builds on that base. If you need to know what "Ref123" is about in order to follow the author's reasoning, then the author hasn't written their text well enough. This is something that their reviewers should feed back on before it gets published. Of course the author can assume the typical knowledge of the field and terms of art. But anything more specific to their work needs to be stated explicitly in their text. Where references matter is for people who want to check that the starting point facts or postulates are actually correct, that the author is using them correctly, and that there aren't implicit assumptions which would cause problems. If you get to the point where you're checking this though, then you've already absorbed the author's work to the point that cross-referencing will not be a big deal by then. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: The other answers here discuss the benefits of numeric citations, so I'm going to mention a drawback of this style (compared to author-date style citations). Sometimes when you're reading a paper, it's nice to see the historic progression of the references, to get a sense of how the subject has developed over time. This is particularly useful for a literature review or history of the subject. In such cases the numeric citations are annoying because you don't get to see the years of the work as you read through the discussion. (You have to keep looking back and forth at the references to get them.) Contrarily, if you use author-date style citations then this gives the reader chronological information as they read through your work. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/20	545	2,436	<issue_start>username_0: I am looking for some clarifications to how graduate committees' proceed. Looking at GradCafe it seems that some mathematics departments sent e-mails admitting students to their PhDs already, even if the final official letter will come in February only. Indeed, the accepted students write "unofficial email from the Graduate Program Administrator." My questions are two: first, what is the graduate program administrator? Moreover, if I haven't received an email from this department in this unofficial email shift, does it mean that I have not been admitted and that I will be (at best) waitlisted? Thank you in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: The "Graduate Program Administrator" is... the administrator of the graduate program. For larger programs it's likely to be an office person who manages graduate admissions and recruitment, grants and funding for the graduate program/students, etc. For smaller programs (or simply programs organized differently) it could be a faculty person. It's a real, credible position, but an unofficial offer is not the same as an official one. If you haven't received an email updating your status, you don't know your status. Probabilistically, if other people have gotten an email from that particular institution and program saying they're unofficially admitted, yes, it is less likely you will be admitted if even just by simple probability (like a shell game where some of the answers have been revealed), but you can't know anything for sure. Every department does it differently. Perhaps they emailed some "definite yesses" early and are debating about the rest or are waiting to learn about the certainty of funding from elsewhere in the administration. It's not worth your worrying about things like this that are now out of your control. Just wait until you hear about your own status. I'd highly recommend against trying to scour the internet for hints as to what will happen. It's just not a good use of your time or mental health. Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Just anecdotally I got a "you should probably be admitted" text from my current advisor at the end of January last year, followed by a formal admissions offer later in April. I also had to contact the school to have my admissions form processed, as the staff were working from home due to COVID, so it took a couple moths longer to send out letters. Upvotes: 0
2022/01/21	1,085	4,972	<issue_start>username_0: My company has tasked me with writing a paper to be published on some of our software. The what and why isn't particularly relevant to the story except that it's purely software driven approach. No major dataset or time consuming experiment. All the relevant time was spent on software development. When the code was originally written (some of it years ago) I was only a junior developer with minimal contributions to these sections of the software. The original author left the company several months ago and I'm now the technical lead. I feel more then qualified to write a good paper on the technical aspects as I've spent plenty of time with the code base. It feels wrong to make myself the author on the paper though as it's not really my work or ideas. When had it been written months ago with the original architect they would have been the author. Worth noting that none of the paper has been written yet and none of the major contributors are left at the company. High turnover what can you do. What is the accepted way of giving credit to the original inception of the idea and developers, but who can't be part of the paper authorship? Are they still listed as authors?<issue_comment>username_1: Authorship in academia does not literally mean "writing the paper". Authorship means: * having made contributions to the research (how large a contribution needs to be for authorship depends on the field) * having read and agreed with the contents of the publication From a purely academic standpoint, your ex-colleague should at least be a co-author of the paper. Of course you cannot add them without their permission, so you should contact them, see if they agree to have their name listed as co-author, and share the draft of the paper for their approval before submitting it for publication. Of course you should have permission from your company before sharing the paper. Because the published paper will be public, there should be no reason not to share it with your ex-colleague. This does not mean they require access to the current code, just that they agree with what is written. Finally, it seems odd to publish an academic paper that is exclusively about software without making the software available. For all the reader knows the software consists of a magic wand and some tea-leaves. Readers should be able to reproduce the results, and if they can do so without the software, so can your ex-colleague. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: #### Contact potential co-authors at the beginning of the project Firstly, it is great that you are thinking about this --- too many people start projects like this without thinking about the credit they ought to give to other contributors. To avoid getting into a mess, or an authorship dispute, I recommend you take the time to contact relevant contributors and agree on authorship terms before you start writing this paper. If you are the one writing the paper then it is certainly reasonable for you to be an author, even if you had little input into the code. Similarly, if there are other programmers who contributed to the code, it is reasonable for them to be co-authors even if they don't add much to the paper. (I'm assuming that your paper is about the code, such that contribution to the code constitutes a significant contribution to the paper.) If their contribution falls below a level that warrants co-authorship, you might still want to add them to an acknowledgement in the paper. As the other answer here points out, there are all sorts of contributions to a paper that can warrant authorship --- it is not always just about who wrote the actual paper. So you will need to make a judgment about what contributions warrant authorship. The best thing to do here is to make a list of all the people who you think have made a sufficient contribution to the code to warrant co-authorship, and then contact them to see if they would like to be co-authors on the paper. If in doubt, contact them anyway and see if they think they've contributed enough to warrant co-authorship or acknowledgement. (You might ask them to have a hand in writing/reviewing the paper, or you might decide that they warrant co-authorship credit even without this.) Have a meeting with all of them and make sure you all agree on the authorship of the paper --- i.e., you all agree on whose names will be on the paper and the order in which they will appear. Also make sure that everyone knows and is comfortable with their role on the paper going forward. If you are unable to contact one of the contributors, or if they are non-responsive, then you probably cannot add them as a co-author (journals generally require all co-authors to consent to publication, except possibly in the case when a co-author is deceased or incapacitated). In this case you could add the person to the acknowledgements instead of as a co-author, and note their contribution to the code. Upvotes: 0
2022/01/21	481	2,076	<issue_start>username_0: I am applying for Masters programs and I am trying to get my letters of recommendation squared away. One of the professors I asked has failed to respond to my emails. I sent her an initial email a month ago, and a follow-up email at the beginning of this week. This professor seems like my best option for a recommender, so I'm very reluctant to try to find someone else. I truly cannot think of a reason why my advisor/professor would decline to write me a letter, but I wish she would at least answer yes or no. Should I continue to contact her? Should I try calling during her office hours? See if I can set up a Zoom appointment with her? Or, should I find someone else, even if this would just be someone I took a single class with?<issue_comment>username_1: There may be some reason that the professor can't contact you. If you call the department office you might learn something, but you can have a message delivered and be assured that the professor actually gets it. A month is a long time. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Since this professor was your advisor, and also had you for several courses, this is a situation where it is certainly reasonable to expect a response from her (even if the response is that she can't write the letter for some reason). You have waited a substantial amount of time and sent multiple emails, so I would suggest following up with a phone-call (or ZOOM/Teams call, etc.) or a visit to her office. It is certainly reasonable for you to escalate to closer forms of contact to get a response here. Knowing academics like I do, there are a million reasons that she might not have responded. Perhaps she has just forgotten about it and has an inbox so clogged that your email is lost in the mess. Perhaps she is under the mistaken expression that you are going to take longer to finish your program, so she has plenty of time. It is possible that there is some reason she can't write you the letter, but if there is then she can certainly explain it to you rather than being non-responsive. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/21	1,901	7,874	<issue_start>username_0: I'm an English/Philosophy student who is hoping to pursue graduate school. My trouble is that I'm interested in too many things. I've taken classes in almost every subfield of Philosophy and English and enjoyed them all immensely, and I can't imagine picking between them. My question: is there still room for exploration in graduate school? Could I be in an English program (say) and still be able to study Philosophy, or work in vastly different subfields of English simultaneously? Is one encouraged to 'specialize' right out of the gate? Edit: I should rephrase my question. I understand the various commitments involved in earning a PhD, such as having to complete specialized research. But is it possible to work in another field simultaneously—publish in that field, especially—or are there professional barriers put up? This applies to life after grad school as well. Related question: will there be time? Assume I am very motivated.<issue_comment>username_1: #### Please come to graduate school — we need students like you. It's great that you are interested in all the things; you are not alone. There are other graduate students and academics who are interested in all the things, and it is a healthy sign of someone who has a broad interest in their field. Now, you can't really write a dissertation on "all the things", so at some point in your graduate work you are going to have to narrow things down to a topic that is sufficiently demarcated that you can do some novel and substantial research on it. You are going to have to specialise and go deep in your research on a particular topic. But since you are interested in all the things, it shouldn't be too difficult to find one thing that is interesting enough for a program of research. Depending on the particular university, in a PhD program in graduate school you may or may not be expected to specialise "right out of the gate". At most universities you would do a year where you are either doing broad graduate-level coursework, or reading broadly over your field. In this period you are expected to be on the lookout for topics for a dissertation, but you are not expected to specialise right away. However, as you progress through the program you will be expected to choose a topic, begin to specialise in this topic, and study deeply into this topic in order to make a substantive research contribution in it. There are some universities where you will be expected to give a PhD proposal at entry and in this case there may be an expectation of earlier specialisation. If you're unsure, talk to the graduate coordinator at the university you are interested in and find out the process they use. As to whether you can simultaneously study other fields, yes you can, but your time for this will be limited. Doing research in a field takes quite a lot of discipline and effort (particularly when you are first learning it) and so you may find that your spare time for studying other fields gets squeezed down a bit. Ideally you can progress your PhD research in a specialised field while also having some time available to learn about other things. (In fact, the latter can be a good way to take a break when you need it; do specialised study in some subfield of English, and then take a break by reading a philosophy book you're interested in.) Note that even once you have chosen a topic for your dissertation, you will specialise in this topic during your PhD candidature, but you can move into other topics later. If you've read widely this will help you to get research ideas on all sorts of topics in your later career. There are many academics and other researchers who have done a PhD dissertation in one topic/field, but then moved away from that or branched out in their later research. There is absolutely room for you people like you in graduate school. In fact, I would say that it would be lovely to have more students like you. Please try your best not to lose that broad interest and love for multiple fields of inquiry, even if you spend years forced to specialise in particular topics. I'm a fellow "jack-of-all-trades", and I'll be honest that it does make it harder to advance in academia. (Academia primarily rewards high levels of output in a specialised subfield.) But it's certainly not impossible, and it's sometimes nice to be that guy with very broad knowledge across multiple fields. As a caveat on the above, I suppose I shouldn't be too gung-ho on you coming to graduate school, since I don't want to ruin your life. Graduate school can be difficult for many students, and a graduate degree in English/Philosophy is arguably a terrible career move compared to entering the workforce. Moreover, there is a fairly substantial overproduction of graduate research students at the moment, which bodes poorly for future job prospects and social stability (see e.g., [here](https://www.nature.com/articles/472276a) and [here](https://www.economist.com/christmas-specials/2010/12/16/the-disposable-academic)). Nevertheless, if you love your subjects enough, and are prepared to make less money and have worse job-security than your peers, then by all means come on in. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: It depends a bit on what you mean by "specialize". In the US, at least, one joins a department for doctoral studies. The department is, itself, normally specialized, either English or Philosophy. There are some exceptions, in which the purview of a department is broad: Cultural Studies, or even Anthropology, which has many aspects. You also normally work with an advisor who is very likely to ve specialized in their research interests. Some older professors may have branched out a bit in those interests as their career matures. But mostly, there is a push toward specialization. In math, for example, math isn't enough. Math analysis isn't specialized enough, you have to close it down to get a dissertation written. Now for exceptions. It is possible in some places to get a degree that is "multi-disciplinary" but you will need to carefully search that out when you start to apply to grad school. Not everyplace will accept it. You would likely need more than one advisor (each with a specialization) and your dissertation topic would still be specialized in some way though of interest to both fields. Mathematical Philosophy, for example, is recognized, as is the History of Philosophy. But, even though you may need to go narrow and deep for a dissertation and a doctorate, you don't need to give up all other interests. I know many mathematicians and computer scientists who are also musicians, for example, both classical and (very) hard rock. But to do the research and write a dissertation you need a strong commitment to something, no matter what it is. And, if ideas and how they are developed and verified appeal strongly to you then graduate school is probably much better than most alternatives. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: > > Does one have to specialize in graduate school? > > > If by "graduate school" you mean a PhD, then yes. A PhD is awarded for specialized research. A masters or professional doctorate is often somewhat less specialized. > > Is one encouraged to 'specialize' right out of the gate? > > > It varies, but normally in the United States you can postpone specialization for a few years into a doctorate. In other countries, a masters is completed before the specialized doctorate. > > enjoyed them all immensely, and I can't imagine picking between them. > > > I suggest that you do not need graduate school at all. A PhD is not for learning content. It is for learning to do specialized research that creates content. If you have a bachelors degree, you can, or at least should be, able to to learn on your own. Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
2022/01/23	1,139	4,610	<issue_start>username_0: I currently hold a position as a permanent senior researcher at the 2nd largest university in Norway. However, I don't teach. I see that as an issue/shortage in my career which could be questionable if i move out to other countries. The good thing is that i was offered a permanent associate professor position but with 30% research and 70% teaching. In terms of salary, they are the same. In terms of the institute level, it is university college. I asked my colleagues who said it is a good opportunity. Some say you might sink in teaching and would be hard to survive writing publications. For my thoughts, i believe developing a course could take time in the initial design phase, but then will be easier by the time and quicker. My other colleague advised to negotiate my current employer to offer me the position ( which i did), but if they don't, just leave and go. What would be your advice for me? Thank you!<issue_comment>username_1: Obviously we don't have the full picture, so no one can truly advise with certainty what to do. But as a general rule, I would be very careful when moving from a full permanent research position in a top national university, to a 70%(!) teaching job. Permanent only research jobs are rare and valuable. Mostly-teaching jobs are very common, and they turn quickly into a very hard and tiresome labour (for many at least). Indeed, I am unaware of any good university with core academics having 70% teaching. 70% teaching usually means a teaching-focused faculty member who is not supposed to do research apart from "educational scholarship". Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: > > For my thoughts, i believe developing a course could take time in the initial design phase, but then will be easier by the time and quicker. > > > That is correct, but when you have a 70% teaching position your teaching duties are likely to be above and beyond designing and running specific courses. Depending on the context and the requirements of each institution, other items may be on your plate, such as: * Designing exams, assignments and exercises and renewing them regularly. * Holding perusals and office hours. * Assuming an academic directorship position, so that you coordinate teaching at the programme level. This involves considerable more administrative work (e.g., course evaluations, follow up meetings, accreditation meetings, etc). * For large classes and complex assignments, grading (and giving good feedback) could take considerable amount of time. * Thesis supervisions. Other contextual factors may come into play. If the majority of faculty are research-based, you might be the most obvious person to cover ad-hoc needs (e.g., if a person leaves and someone needs to cover his\her courses temporarily). Further, the courses you are allocated may change more frequently depending on your unit's needs (and thus you will have to repeat the initial design exercise more often). More generally, if you want to continue your career in research, this might not be the best option for you. It depends a bit on the circumstances, of course: * How big are your classes? How many hours of teaching / ECTS a course has? * Do you have teaching assistants? * How is the general supply of teaching in this unit with respect to teaching demand? How interchangeable are the topics across faculty? * Is there a culture of understanding in case you want to take some extra research time, provided you fulfill the teaching requirements? * How precisely are your activities billed? Are you supposed to have ad-hoc responsibilities? * What is the breadth vs depth of your teaching portfolio? Are you expected to teach the same course in 4 audiences, or 4 different courses in a single audience? If you can keep the same courses, have teaching assistants, you are not involved in admin duties, you manage to create synergies among your courses, and your supervisor agrees, it may indeed be that teaching takes less than 70% of time. I would be careful, though, because these are too many assumptions. > > I asked my colleagues who said it is a good opportunity. > > > I do not mean to question your colleagues' judgement, but are you sure they have the full picture? Or is the grass greener on the other side? > > However, I don't teach. I see that as an issue/shortage in my career which could be questionable if i move out to other countries. > > > If your original motivation is to obtain some teaching experience, you may be better off with a visiting faculty position or a fixed-term teaching contract. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/23	840	3,653	<issue_start>username_0: I just received a 15 minute Ph.D. interview invitation from USC. In the email, they said that they are interviewing to better understand my background and experiences. I was notified just two days before the schedule. The interview will be on Zoom. Hence, currently, I am working on my answers. My question is since they haven't asked anything, I don't need to create a PowerPoint presentation for them right? I have heard that some universities specifically ask for that. They don't expect that if they haven't asked, right? My slot is just 15 minutes, therefore I don't think there's time for this, and I would rather focus on preparing my answers right now. This is my very first interview and I have no idea how the process works in the USA. On top of that, I'm super nervous. Any tips are welcomed.<issue_comment>username_1: Interviews can vary, but I'd be prepared to articulate two things -- * Your interest in the program. What attracted you to this program, out of the hundreds of graduate programs out there? * Your background. They might ask about coursework. Don't just say "We used Book X and got through the first seven chapters"; be ready to give an account of what you actually learned. If you've done research, then be prepared to talk about that. On the one hand, it's good to have a short "spiel" which you've prepared in advance; on the other, be ready for the possibility that the interviewer might steer the conversation in a direction other than what you anticipated. The interviewer is likely to have read your personal statement, so I'd be ready to talk about anything there. I wouldn't prepare a slide presentation unless they ask for one. You might give a copy of your personal statement to a friend and ask them to give you a "mock interview" for practice. And try to get some exercise and enough sleep the day before. Good luck! Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: They won't expect what they haven't asked for so I wouldn't feel the need to make any presentation. Their main interest is in getting a feel for your readiness to do research, your desired subfield (Perhaps that is already in your SoP.) and who you might want to work with if you have an idea. Your comment suggest you are probably good on the "readiness" issue. If you have a problem to suggest that you'd like to explore that would be a plus, but not essential. Their secondary interest might be in your flexibility if some of your desires can't be accommodated. And third, just a general, quick assessment of your personality and perhaps language skills (the latter as an international student). My advice is to relax and be natural. And also, be honest in answering questions. You aren't expected to already know everything there is to know. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I don't think you need to prepare a presentation unless they asked for one. I attended a PhD interview (20 minutes) two weeks ago and experienced similar anxiety. I am an undergraduate research assistant at my current university. The interviewer (a professor) started the conversation by asking me about my research. I feel like the conversation is more like a discussion about my project. He followed up with some questions after I explained the central concept. So my suggestion is if you have research experience and you've included that on your cv/ps, definitely go over what you've written, and be prepared to explain your project and the part you are involved in. Also they might ask you which kind of project you want to do as a PhD student, and give you an opportunity to ask questions about their program. Best of luck! Upvotes: 3
2022/01/23	3,489	14,718	<issue_start>username_0: Due to covid-19, most of my classmates and I haven't seen a lab (Physics) for more than two years. Now, I'm in the second semester of the master's program, and soon it will be PhD. Right now, we are just watching videos and writing reports in the name of the lab course. Although I understand that the situation is like this due to Covid, it cannot go on like this forever. I'm asking for possible ways to recommend to the university how to tackle this problem without avoiding lab classes. It might be possible that there are better ways that we don't know.<issue_comment>username_1: I teach experimental classes about measurements, and indeed there are solutions to allow students to do experiments in pandemic times. The applicability depends on the willingness of the university and the professors to invest money, time, imagination and effort in these solutions. Even though these solutions might not give the real experience they are much better than watching videos. A few examples (the first three and the last were actually tested at my university): 1. Nowadays many instruments can be controlled remotely. So an instructor can setup the lab benches in the university for the experiments and the students can run them remotely. This can be used if the experiment is complex and requires specialized instrumentation (e.g. an optical or quantum experiment). It's worth noting that also much of the experimental research that I performed in the last two years was performed remotely in this way. 2. On the market it's possible to find portable data acquisition boards and generators for educational purposes which are reasonably cheap and that could be lent to the students, together with other material to implement at home various experiments ([this is an example from Digilent](https://digilent.com/shop/analog-discovery-2-100ms-s-usb-oscilloscope-logic-analyzer-and-variable-power-supply/)). It's also possible to find software that turns your PC into a measuring instrument ([a free example is this one](https://www.sillanumsoft.org/)). 3. It's also possible to find various smartphone apps that can turn your phone in a measuring instrument with which to make physics experiments ([Phyphox is a good one developed by a university](https://phyphox.org/)). 4. There are also books that suggest how to use [Arduino](https://www.arduino.cc/) and smartphones to make physics experiments ([an example](https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-65140-4); disclaimer: I haven't read it). 5. Another possibility is to allow the students to perform the experiments in person but making shifts to reduce the number of students simultaneously in the lab. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: ### Move to another university for your PhD If your university has been closed for two years in a row, there is little chance that you will get a good PhD education there. Use the chance to find a better place. ### Contact the student union For the remaining part of your Master studies, you can try to contact the student union (assuming you have one). If enough students share your view, they may be able to push for on-campus lab courses. If that does not work, then you can suggest the options in [the other answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181525/112007). Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: This is a long term solution only and is only applicable to such things as coursework and where the science is well known with predictable results. It won't work, most likely for doctoral level research experimentation. But, it is possible, though costly and time consuming, to build realistic simulators that let a student learn both lab technique (perhaps imperfectly) and how the science works. A truly realistic one would introduce random effects as occur in real experiments, of course. And, such things will only take you so far. But, at the moment, the need for such things has only been obvious for a relatively short time; too short to expect that such simulations are readily available. Some do exist, I'd expect, but not with the necessary sophistication to foster insight in students. There are probably some adequate simulations available in physics and chemistry, for example. Biology and pharmacology are harder. But these are, again, helpful for coursework, but likely not for serious research. And, the people who know best how such things work aren't the same people capable of creating such simulations themselves. It is, itself a team process with a number of different skills contributing. I suspect that the need for this will continue into the future, whether we finally find a cure for COVID or not since the disruption has caused people to rethink how courses are delivered. We might not ever go back to the pre-covid world. Some inducements are probably necessary to get people to build and refine such simulations. And some inducements to get professors to consider using what is currently available in the short term. --- Other solutions are possible at the fringe, though also difficult to use. Labs where only a single person works are probably too expensive in most cases. Housing a group of experimenters together so that they become something like a "family" is also probably too radical to adopt, though some sports leagues do this so that the game can go on. At the moment, we need to "think outside the box" but also plan for a possibly disrupted future. Personally, I doubt that Omicron is the last of the variants and there is no guarantee that the next one will be of less concern. It might require some push from university administration to get some collaboration between various professors in the experimental sciences and those in computer science. Some of the simulations would be good upper level student projects in CS. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_4: I'm a recently retired physics professor at a community college in Southern California. Our lab courses are lower-division undergrad classes, so our situation does differ from yours. But in case it's helpful to someone, here is some information about what we did to adapt from fall 2020 to fall 2021. With persistent administrative advocacy from our wonderful dean, we got funding of $200 per student to give out lab kits to our students. Here is the LaTeX source code for the manuals, which is under a CC-BY-SA license: <https://github.com/bcrowell/lab_manuals> . The relevant source code is in the subdirectories share, covid, and figs. I no longer maintain these lab manuals, and AFAIK the PDF files are no longer online. I would say that our success with this was mixed. About half the faculty of our small department (including one adjunct!) worked hard over the summer of 2020 to create and test the kits. It was relatively easy to come up with lab activities for the first-semester freshman mechanics course. The second-semester electricity and magnetism class was harder, but we were able to do it through various expedients, such as using cheap automotive digital oscilloscopes. For the third-semester class it was not as practical. Student success in all of these classes was extremely poor in my experience. Partly this was simply because student success in STEM classes was extremely poor during online instruction -- classes with decent success rates were those where instructors just gave everyone an A because of covid. Students found it very difficult to do the labs at home. I sat in zoom with them and had them point their cameras at what they were doing, but it was just incredibly awkward. I'm proud that at least some of us in my department worked hard to at least provide the best-motivated and strongest students with a pretty decent educational opportunity. The weaker students just couldn't do it. > > Although I understand that the situation is like this due to Covid, it cannot go on like this forever. > > > From your username and the India tag, I'm guessing that you are a Korean student who is in grad school in India. I don't have enough familiarity with the conditions there to say what is appropriate. Here in the US, most schools have already been back in person for 6-12 months, but this is a rich country with universal access to vaccines. Given your own sitution, it might make sense to take a leave of absence for a couple of years, or try to transfer to a school in a country where the epidemic is already transitioning to an endemic phase, and schools have in-person labs. It's absurd to imagine completing a physics PhD without doing any real labs. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Half-answer short of time and equipment to write a proper one. If someone would expand on this more I'd be glad to give all credit and remove my answer. Depending on the focus of the lab, you could move the lessons onto a simulated platform. There are multiple solutions, varying in ease of use, coding difficulties, and being free or not; but this is often doable. As an example, I'm a member of the team that develops [VINYIL](https://www.panosc.eu/work-packages/work-package-5-virtual-neutron-and-x-ray-laboratory-vinyl/) (Virtual Neutron and x-raY Laboratory) which basically consists of two fully open-source Python modules: SimEx for optical/x-ray, and McStasScript for neutron beamlines. Using these, you can simulate complex experiments from start to end, including all parameters, noise, artifacts and limitations of a real-life instrument, all this in an easy to follow Jupyter notebook. All I mean with saying this is that there are certainly very advanced yet easy-to-use tools to simulate an experiment with all the associated quirks, at a level more than sufficient for a student lab. I know of such tools in my own field, but there must be similar ones for many of your experiments. Moving to simulations and developing the corresponding codes needs a substantial effort, probably involving TAs and colleagues, for sure; but once it's done, you get a zero-equipment lab class that can be online without an issue. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I teach physics labs at a university. I can tell you exactly how to get a good lab education within pandemic restrictions because we have been doing it to great success. --- Option 1 (moderate risk, low instructor effort): * Set up the labs for a small group of students to be allowed in with safe distancing practices. * Find out from the students which ones are able to come to campus. * Set up groups of students so that there is at least one student in each group that can be on campus. * Only one student from each group comes in. The rest in the group connect virtually to that student at the time of the lab. * The students at home are responsible for the majority of data collection as well as deciding the course of action to take in the lab * The student in the lab is only responsible for operating the equipment and reporting results. They should not be deciding next steps or thinking about what to do. * Adjustable webcams are necessary for the students at home to get a good sense of what is happening. This method is what I use in most cases. It is important that the student in the lab not be the one to decide their course of action. We find those in the lab learn the best regardless because they get to handle the equipment personally. To keep them engaged and thinking about the lab (and thus, maximize their learning potential), the students at home should be responsible for most of the thinking about what to do. This also helps the lab go faster. Thinking takes longer than not thinking, so if the student in the lab has to operate the equipment AND do the thinking, it will take forever. The students at home aren't doing much anyway, let them do the mental stuff. When I used this method, the student who came in always learned as much as or more than pre-pandemic times (understandable given it is no different to them). The students at home report nearly as much learning as pre-pandemic times and scored well on lab tests about comprehension of concepts and equipment. This is the ideal method for me, if you can have at least a few students in the lab. --- Option 2 (low risk, high instructor effort): Okay, the instructors will hate me for this, but I've done it and it works. * Very similar to option 1 except no students come into the lab. All students in each group connect virtually with instructor/lab staff on site. * Instructor, TA, or lab technician (whatever is appropriate for your situation) operates equipment for each lab group individually. * They may guide students if necessary, but should only do exactly what students tell them to (collect wrong data if so instructed). * Students must decide how to proceed and what to collect. Lab staff are only there as "virtual-presence device" * Each lab group needs to be scheduled at individual lab time. This takes a large amount of work and time from instructor/lab staff. When I used this method, the students noted that it felt a lot like they were actually in the lab doing it themselves. They had to be just as engaged and learned almost as much. It lacks an actual hands-on component, but is suitable if an in-person presence is impossible. --- What if you can't get anyone on campus to operate the equipment? I cannot stress enough that you cannot offer any reasonable laboratory education without any party having at least some access to the laboratory and its equipment. A lab course minus the lab is a nothing course. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Faced with the same challenge for chemistry labs, a colleague and I developed "Quarantine Chem Labs" a set of experiments that can be carried out with stuff commonly found around a home or apartment. You can see videos of the experiments on our YouTube channel: <https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAtdv_YQrTu6shv3QHo7URA> and full write-ups suitable for distributing to students on the companion web site: <https://quarantinechemlabs.wixsite.com/mysite/labs> Most of the labs have a distinct physical-chemistry flavor and could be suitable for physics classes as well. I know of a materials science Prof. who has done something similar. He has students produce stress-strain curves by placing strips cut from a plastic bag under load. He also has them grow crystals, etc. The concept translates well to mechanics. Lots of "measurement devices" are readily available. Most everyone has access to a ruler, and a protractor, and has a stopwatch on their cell phone, and a camera... It's easy to make a pendulum with a length of string and a keychain. E&M labs are little more challenging to devise, but with some of the Quarantine Chem Labs address this challenge as well. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/23	261	1,143	<issue_start>username_0: A friend (1st year PhD student) is facing some technical issues with writing a code (Computer science) that she finds difficult. The supervisor does not want her to get any help from lab members. Should I, as a postdoc, help her "secretly" code her programs?<issue_comment>username_1: Actually no, unless the supervisor gives you permission to do so, in which case it isn't secret. You can point her to resources she might need, but if the supervisor thinks she needs coding experience then your "help" is actually not help at all. You could ask the supervisor whether they would agree to your offering general help such as coding instruction and what the limits of that should be. You also put yourself at risk if it is found out. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: No. You'd be engaging in an academic violation. Submitting work that's not your own but representing it as entirely your own is called plagiarism or, perhaps in this case, cheating. You'd be helping and encouraging her to do that. Helping someone commit an academic violation is also considered a chargeable violation at most schools. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/23	415	1,439	<issue_start>username_0: I always thought that Dartmouth was the British version of Westpoint. The British officer training school, but now in my googling it seems Google assumes I'm searching for the US university. I was wondering what the relationship with the two Dartmouths were?<issue_comment>username_1: There is no relationship. [Dartmouth College](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dartmouth_College) (founded 1769) is named after [William Legge, 2nd Earl of Dartmouth](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Legge,_2nd_Earl_of_Dartmouth), not after the [Britannia Royal Navy College](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britannia_Royal_Naval_College) in Dartmouth (founded 1863). Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Lots of places in America are named after places in the UK. See the York that made the New York new. As I understand it was common for groups of colonists to name places in the 'New World' after places they came from. Pretty much every place name in Britain seems to appear in the US somewhere. Dartmouth is a region of Devon, where I happen to live. Literally 'The mouth of the river Dart' which runs from Dartmoor through Paignton. With Devon having quite large ports nearby (Plymouth) and also being on that side of the country, it was a convenient place to launch colonial ships. There are also Dartmouths in Australia and Canada. <https://geotargit.com/called.php?qcity=Dartmouth> Upvotes: -1
2022/01/23	867	2,825	<issue_start>username_0: What sort of software can I use to make block diagrams, such as those used in machine learning papers? For example, this graph: [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/evL65.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/evL65.png) From the paper: <https://aclanthology.org/2020.emnlp-main.676.pdf><issue_comment>username_1: I'll jump in with a recommendation of how I would create the picture for my paper. Of course, reasonable people might disagree. I write my papers in LaTeX, so I generally want a system that works well with the toolflow of LaTeX. Therefore, I recommend TikZ. It's a compilation process, where you write source code for the drawing you want and then after compilation you get to see the picture you created. Then, you get to debug why the picture isn't quite right, fix your source code and repeat. It isn't for everyone. There is a steep learning curve. But, I find there is lots of satisfaction in being able to control every aspect of the drawing. I want my arrowheads to look like this, and I can get them to look like that, not the way that the Powerpoint developers thought arrowheads should look. Same argument for colors, paths, shapes, text, shadows, alignment (especially alignment) ... everything. And, it's free and likely to be supported for the rest of my career. Not sure I can say the same for pictures drawn in other tools that I might want to use 40 years from now. Also, there is an excellent StackExchange group (and plenty of others) that will give you quite particular help. It's a great community! As for the picture you show, there doesn't appear to be anything special that would make it impossible to draw in TikZ. I wish I had a bit of free time to crank out the code for it and show you it is possible. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I have made quite a few figures and graphical abstracts for scientific papers and have two recommendations that are user friendly and do not involve a steep learning curve. The first is [Adobe Illustrator](https://www.adobe.com/products/illustrator.html?sdid=KKQLQ&mv=search&ef_id=CjwKCAjwsJ6TBhAIEiwAfl4TWFiwR-m_HXnzJBn43fhK2o7IQlnO8Ebypgc7mu455ZHeypVyjR8a2hoCFzcQAvD_BwE%253AG%253As&s_kwcid=AL%213085%213%21442365416609%21e%21%21g%21%21download%2520adobe%2520illustrator%211711729640%2170905754310&gclid=C<KEY>), a vector graphics editor with intuitive but powerful tools. It can be purchased for a monthly fee and used on most desktop computers, laptops or iPad. The second is [Procreate](https://procreate.art/), a raster graphics editor app made exclusively for the iPad. The app can be acquired through a one-time purchase and is a great option for those with an iPad and Apple pencil. Upvotes: 0
2022/01/24	748	3,246	<issue_start>username_0: I have a paper under its second round of review with some minor revisions only since only one of the referees asked for some clarification. Now it's been like 40 days with the referee. Somewhat unexpectedly long for such a small amount of revision but maybe not yet too abnormal(?). But I do need the result, the earlier the better. I notice that the submission system just has a button for sending correspondence to editor for each manuscript. I was wondering about the following. If I used it to simply inquire the status would the editor somehow urge the referee a little and what should I say exactly? Or in other words, I often hear that people contact or inquire the editor about the manuscript status during the review and it sounds like a very common practice. Since the status is basically online I didn't see the point until I came into this and started to wonder if this is the point, i.e., once you inquire there's a good chance that the editor will contact/urge the reviewer. Surely the reviewer can still take his/her time but there's at least a kind reminder sent.<issue_comment>username_1: A period of 40 days with a referee is not excessive, even for minor revisions. You can contact the editor if you wish, but it is not clear to me why your preference for faster progress is their problem. If you can explain some compelling reason for needing your publication fast-tracked (ideally one that is sufficiently unusual that it gives good cause for the journal to treat you differently to other authors) then that would be fine, but otherwise it might just make you look like the [squeaky wheel that wants the grease](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_squeaky_wheel_gets_the_grease). If you decide to contact the editor, the main thing you need to do is to give a compelling reason why you need the review process to occur faster than it would usually occur. This will immediately raise the question of whether you should have submitted your paper earlier, and so you should also explain why it wasn't possible to submit earlier. If you have some exogenous deadline you are working to, explain your deadline, and ask if the editor would mind contacting the reviewer to make them aware of it. If you can't give a compelling case on these points then you should be careful with your contact, and consider waiting until a more standard review time has elapsed. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Think about it from the point of view of the editor - they often have several manuscripts on hand, and they're also working full-time on another job. So they might not look at your manuscript for a long time. If you nudge them, then they'll look at your manuscript. They'll wonder if they should, e.g., nudge the reviewer too, or if the revisions are actually minor enough that they can check the revision themselves. A lot will depend on how long the average review times for your field are. If 40 days is a long time (how long did it take for you to get the first decision?) then it's more likely they'll do something. If you do contact the editor just say something to the tune of "it's been 40 days since I submitted the minor revision, can I check what the status is?". Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
2022/01/24	546	2,390	<issue_start>username_0: I am currently a PhD student. I received a postdoc offer from the host institution in my NSF postdoc fellowship application, and later received the NSF offer. My advisor mentioned that I might be able to ask the department to "combine" the offers in some way -- for example, staying for a fourth year. Is this a reasonable request to make to the department chair, or is this asking for too much?<issue_comment>username_1: If I read your question correctly, it seems that you want to know if it is appropriate to ask the department offering you a postdoc to delay its start so that you can first fund through an NSF grant. Given that interpretation, then yes, you can ask, and I'd guess they would be interested in going along, though the term might need to be negotiated. There are advantages for some departments to delay expenses and, if they are interested in you (seems obvious) then having you around for longer might be good for them. But, your status might need to change at some point from NSF funded postdoc to university funded postdoc. And, how firm a commitment might be would need negotiation. You'd also do well to seek a more permanent position all along the path. But, it is certainly appropriate to explore with the department head (and maybe the dean) what options you have. Good luck. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Sure, it’s reasonable to ask. In general, combining NSF postdocs with other types of funded postdoc positions is pretty standard and done quite commonly (for example at my department, when I was a department chair, we had a couple such arrangements I think). Departments are generally quite happy trying to make such arrangements work, since an NSF postdoc both saves them money and is evidence of a person with a lot of potential to do good work. (On the other hand, the department will likely have their own considerations and sets of constraints, so of course it’s not guaranteed that they will agree to any suggestion.) With that being said, it is likely not in your interest from a career advancement perspective to stay as a postdoc in the same department for four years. I’d suggest consulting with your advisor and future postdoc mentor about what sort of arrangement would actually benefit you the most, and then discussing that with the department. Good luck, and congratulations on the postdoc! Upvotes: 3
2022/01/24	973	4,251	<issue_start>username_0: In an attempt to follow best practices in open sciences, I drafted, published, and shared a protocol for a systematic literature review. I have since completed the data collection and extraction process of the review, and I am now moving into the data analysis and manuscript preparation for submission to an academic journal. *To what extent can text from a public* (open science foundation, OSF) protocol be reused (with significant modification) when drafting a new manuscript for submission to an academic journal?** This is most applicable to the abstract, introduction, and methods. All of these sections will be modified and expanded upon, but I do like the phrasing of certain sentences and organization of the paragraphs. For example, imagine the two following paragraphs: Original > > Cats are generally known to have four legs. It has also been observed that cats have fur. Cats come in all shapes and sizes, but are generally between 7 and 14 pounds and stand between 8 and 14 inches. > > > Modified > > Cats are generally known to have four legs. However, outside events may render the cats with fewer legs. While most cats have fur, specific breeds of hairless cats are known to exist. The shapes and sizes of cats have been thoroughly studied. Garfield et al. found that cats weigh in between 7 and 14, whereas a population study by Pussinboots found that most cats stand between 8 and 14 inches. > > > I have found some peer-reviewed commentary on this issue [here](https://systematicreviewsjournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s13643-021-01675-9), although I understand it may be a journal-to-journal issue.<issue_comment>username_1: Surely you can reuse any source (whether public or not), and you have to cite the original and quote the parts you use verbatim. If you don't cite or don't quote properly, it would be plagiarism or a violation of copyright or both. Whether your modifications together with the remainder of your manuscript have so much value that they justify the acceptance of your submission is a completely different question. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Quick answer: there should be no problem at all. More details: There are three potential issues involved, none of which is usually a serious problem: * Plagiarism: If you (or your coauthors) are the author of the original protocol, then there is no plagiarism involved. But see the next point… * Multiple submission (often misleadingly called "self-plagiarism"): A journal will always require that you submit original work to them. It is considered a serious ethical violation to submit the same work to two different publications while pretending that the second work is completely original. But this is very easily resolved in your case. There is no problem as long as you take care of two things: the second work (your entire final journal article) should add significantly more original material relative to the first. This is no problem in your scenario. Second, you must absolutely explicitly explain the entire situation in the cover letter when you submit the journal article for consideration for publication. Give the full citation to the original protocol and summarize the differences between the protocol and the full final article. As long as you do these two things, no editor should have any problem. * Copyright violation: This concern comes into play if you signed over the copyright of the protocol when you published it. If you did not, then there is no concern here; you can redo anything you want with it with a new journal article. However, if you did sign over copyright, then check the original protocol publisher's terms in the copyright assignment form that you signed. Almost always, such forms permit republication or extensive borrowing of your own work as long as you explicitly cite the original publication. Thus, this is rarely a problem. And if you are not sure whether you signed over copyright or not, ask all your coauthors. If no one signed anything, then the copyright remains with the authors. The publisher must explicitly get you to sign something, or else they do not automatically get your copyright. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
2022/01/25	510	2,193	<issue_start>username_0: The prerequisite for the Calculus class that they accepted was the Finite Math. They accepted my Calculus class with an A. My precalc II and calculus class should suffice the Finite math, right?<issue_comment>username_1: Sorry no. Finite Mathematics is quite different from the earlier courses. It is required for a reason. The thinking patterns are not the same. That is, I think, the most important point. Continuous and discrete math require different thought structures. If you don't get a good grounding in both then you limit yourself. Note that Finite Math as a prerequisite for Calculus is (or was, at least) relatively rare. And in some places that do it, the FM course might be too elementary for future needs. But the important point is that for some majors, especially math and computing, a solid course in finite math is essential. It is useful both in theory and applications. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: General requirements, core curricula, and degree plans all vary from university to university. For the sake of accreditation, there are common patterns (e.g., at least one first year composition course, at least one math course), but the exact courses required or the prerequisites built in may differ in unexpected ways. When transferring, it is always important to look at both catalogs and anticipate potential issues. It sounds like you're in a situation where you've taken math courses, the course credits do transfer, but what you took is not directly equivalent to an additional requirement, Finite Mathematics. Usually, this means you have to take that course at the new university, even if it's technically a prerequisite for a course you now have credit for. Occasionally, if the title and content of the course you took are close to a course at the new university (e.g. "British Literature to 1660" and "British Literature 1") and an automated system rejected equivalency, you can appeal to a university registrar with the syllabus and have them review whether the course is worth direct credit. That said, I agree with username_1 and doubt they would treat Pre-Calculus II and Finite Mathematics as equivalent. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/25	675	2,888	<issue_start>username_0: I teach at a community college in a large city in the U.S. In any testing session (esp. lower-level, non-major courses), inevitably, one more students will arrive at the start time or a few minutes late, and say they don't have the expected equipment for the test -- no pen or pencil, no calculator, no formula card (in cases where that's expected). What's the best way to handle this? Some options for the instructor seem to be: * Come prepared with a stock of extra pencils and calculators for distribution in these cases. * Ask students already in progress on test if they have extra pens and calculator to loan out. * Ask student to wait until another student finishes and then loans them equipment. * Send student to bookstore to purchase pencils and calculator (not always open). * Declare that the student cannot test at all. What is most efficient and fair to everyone involved?<issue_comment>username_1: Sorry no. Finite Mathematics is quite different from the earlier courses. It is required for a reason. The thinking patterns are not the same. That is, I think, the most important point. Continuous and discrete math require different thought structures. If you don't get a good grounding in both then you limit yourself. Note that Finite Math as a prerequisite for Calculus is (or was, at least) relatively rare. And in some places that do it, the FM course might be too elementary for future needs. But the important point is that for some majors, especially math and computing, a solid course in finite math is essential. It is useful both in theory and applications. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: General requirements, core curricula, and degree plans all vary from university to university. For the sake of accreditation, there are common patterns (e.g., at least one first year composition course, at least one math course), but the exact courses required or the prerequisites built in may differ in unexpected ways. When transferring, it is always important to look at both catalogs and anticipate potential issues. It sounds like you're in a situation where you've taken math courses, the course credits do transfer, but what you took is not directly equivalent to an additional requirement, Finite Mathematics. Usually, this means you have to take that course at the new university, even if it's technically a prerequisite for a course you now have credit for. Occasionally, if the title and content of the course you took are close to a course at the new university (e.g. "British Literature to 1660" and "British Literature 1") and an automated system rejected equivalency, you can appeal to a university registrar with the syllabus and have them review whether the course is worth direct credit. That said, I agree with username_1 and doubt they would treat Pre-Calculus II and Finite Mathematics as equivalent. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/25	598	2,652	<issue_start>username_0: A potential PhD applicant has contacted me for an informal chat about a PhD project I am offering. The candidate mentions he wrote an MSc dissertation under the supervision of Prof. X. I happen to know Prof. X, and I was wondering if I can contact my colleague and ask for an informal reference on the potential applicant before suggesting moving forward with the application? Are there any ethical impediments for doing so?<issue_comment>username_1: Don't reach out before the interview. In regular workplace interactions, such a reference is usually performed when the applicant has given consent to such an inquiry with a previous employer. Now this is not the exact same situation, but I would have a chat with the student before asking their supervisor, and ask the student whether they are okay with that. This way, you will have an unbiased view of the student. You do not know the relationship that the student had with their former supervisor, but this way a negative (or positive!) opinion will not influence your first impression of the student. If the student is not okay with this request, by the way, this might also already give you some information. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: This is a US centric answer. It sounds like the professor's name was only mentioned in passing. It might be different if the potential student said that the professor actually asked you to make contact. But even then it is a bit dicey. It would be improper for that professor to talk to you without the student's permission for the usual reasons of privacy. If you contact them "out of band" you would put them in an uncomfortable position and if they don't recognize the conflict then it might be worse. You could, instead, ask the student to ask that professor to contact you. Or you could ask the student for permission to contact the professor and then communicate that permission to the professor. Respect the student's privacy rights. If not the US then the same ethical rules apply, I hope, though they might be supported by law or not. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: Yes Chances are the potential PhD applicant expects you to contact them. That's why they're mentioning them! In fact it's possible Professor X recommended the student contact you. Besides, even in the (in my opinion very unlikely) event that the student doesn't want you to contact their MSc supervisor immediately, they should know that you will need to contact their MSc supervisor eventually. After all, recommendation letters are a staple of PhD applications, and the thesis advisor is an obvious letter-writer. Upvotes: 3
2022/01/25	954	4,063	<issue_start>username_0: I am a junior researcher in mathematics. My paper is accepted in the Journal of Statistical Physics, which I am the only author. When I submitted the paper, I considered the journal as an upper good journal as some great mathematicians have a paper on it. But, now, I find out the journal is not Q1. To be honest, I feel so bad as I submitted my paper in such a journal. I thought the journal is better than the nonlinearity journal, where the journal is Q1 and my paper could have been published. I don't want to make such a mistake again (i.e. I want to submit the paper in a good journal). What I should do? My policy was to look at where the great machinations publish a paper and compare it with my papers, and then I submit the paper. P.s: I have neither a good supervisor not mentor to ask my question.<issue_comment>username_1: I am assuming that with "Q1" you refer to the Scimago rankings. These are rubbish for mathematics, and its best to ignore them unless forced into them by clueless administrators. Your original strategy of seeing where people you highly respect publish is a good one. In addition, discussing with colleagues what journals they deem to have high standards gets you a clearer picture. Most people will perceive significant quality differences between journals they actually do publish in. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Rankings are a very good way of approximately ranking a huge amount of data fast, by using an average over many rankings. Example: * If you have 1000 journals and you want to distinguish between top 50 journals and bottom 750-1000 journals, you can do this quite easily using an average of rankings. * The same with ranking universities. No matter which rankings you use, you will always see that MIT is one of the top ones, while "kangaroo University", is at the bottom. Rankings are NOT good, if you want to distinguish between a medium level journal and slightly lower journal. Or you want to know if university in place 450 is better than university in place 600, etc. It doesn't work in high resolution. This wouldn't work. Conclusion: Q1/Q2 in SciMago is an unreliable measure that you shouldn't trust. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: All great mathematicians have (basically by definition) written some great papers. It doesn't follow that all of their papers are great. Some of them might not bother to write up and publish their mediocre work (and some of them do), but almost all of them will still publish their merely good papers. Those merely good papers end up in merely good journals. Indeed, most great mathematicians are publishing more merely good papers than great papers. If your paper is about the same quality as several merely good papers by great mathematicians in a given journal, then you made the right decision to publish in that journal. If your paper is better than that, perhaps as good as the merely very good papers of some great mathematicians, then maybe you should have aimed higher. Frankly, at the level your paper is at, it doesn't matter much. If you could have made it to the top journal in mathematical physics (or some other appropriate subfield), or a decent general journal, that would make a difference, but I'm guessing you're not judging your paper as being good enough for that. People in your subfield can read your work (or at least the introduction) and judge for themselves; people not in your subfield (like myself) will see both your choices as reputable but not great journals. At a research university in the US, publications in journals like this will be thought of as contributing to your body of work, but generally not good enough to be the paper that gets you hired. I am assuming you can generally tell the difference between great and merely good work (even if occasionally your judgement of a specific paper differs from that of everyone else). If you can't, and you also don't have a mentor, you have bigger problems than figuring out where to submit your papers. Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
2022/01/25	5,428	22,880	<issue_start>username_0: Suppose a person X asks person Y to explain some material from a course. Person X shows Y some homework that counts for a third of the grade and asks for help. They go through the homework, with Y first showing X how to solve each type of exercise, then they solve it together with X taking the lead (doing the calculations, with an occasional nudge or a piece of advice) and with Y checking that no mistakes are made. Is this cheating? If so, is it a clear case of cheating, or would you say it is more of a gray area? On one hand, X did not do the homework on their own, but at the same time, X would not be able to do it on their own, and this way X learns how to do it (and homework is for learning, after all). The same material will appear on the final exam, counting for the rest of the grade so getting help with the homework will not make X pass the course on its own. Is what Y is doing wrong?<issue_comment>username_1: If this is done without guidance and permission of the instructor, then most places would consider it to be cheating. General help is fine in most cases, but specific help on graded material needs a prior OK. In my personal view it is not a gray area at all. The reason for this is that such homework is intended to bring skill and insight to the student. Reading answers is a very different thing than creating them. Watching someone else and following their insights is much less likely to result in the insight in the student given the task. The purpose of homework is not to get answers, but to elicit a mental change in the student. Student Y isn't helping X learn, in fact, just helping them get answers. Not deep learning, anyway. In your scenario the problem is that X is pretty much denied the opportunity to get insights from wrong turns and mistakes. If you are "nudged" to the correct path you won't learn "why" some things don't work. I'll note that some tutors do this sort of thing, but it should be with the knowledge of the professor. And doing it on graded assignments is especially problematic. If you ask a professor for help, rather than another student, you are likely to get a very different response. They may give a (minimal) hint, they may try to clear up a misconception that is blocking you. But they won't just lead you through the solution. I'm a big believer in working in pairs, actually, but that only works for certain kinds of things. If it blocks insight development in either partner then it is counterproductive. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Graded assignments come with expectations of how the work is to be done. If the assignment doesn't state exceptions, e.g., that students may have partners, you should always assume the work must be done individually, with no help from another student. Violating that expectation would be cheating, an academic violation. If you help someone cheat, that also is an academic violation at most schools. It's fair game to help them understand the material, e.g., going over lecture slides together, but the moment you start helping them on a graded assignment they should do on their own, you've both crossed the line. You should decline to look at or discuss the assignment. Instead, send them to the instructor or the course staff during office hours. If they give away the answer, that's on them. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: > > X would not be able to do it on their own > > > This is precisely the rationalization that leads many students to seek an excessive amount of outside help with homework problems or look up answers online. These students rationalize this behavior by claiming that they are better off because in this way the work at least gets done (which presumably equates to “learning” taking place), whereas if they tried to do it all themselves some or all of the problems would remain unsolved. So this looks like a form of progress “on paper”. What those students are failing to grasp is that by not doing the work themselves they are missing out on a major part of the educational benefit that doing homework is meant to provide in the first place. It is perhaps a counterintuitive fact, but actually it’s the case that trying and failing to solve a homework problem is still often a more instructive and more educational experience than getting the kind of help that “Y” is giving in your scenario. So this rationalization for why getting a lot of help makes sense is faulty. In fact, it’s doubly faulty, because I think even the original premise that “X” cannot do the work themselves is ~~almost certainly~~ usually incorrect. (Edit: yes, some lecturers assign homework that’s much too difficult, which would change the calculation and make what I wrote less valid.) The upshot of this analysis is that professors will often prohibit the sort of behavior you are asking about, effectively defining it as cheating. And they do this precisely to protect students from their own self-defeating urges to take the easy way out and not follow the (more difficult) path that leads to true learning. Of course, defining it as cheating involves a trade-off, and in some hypothetical scenarios might actually deprive a student from a genuine benefit they might gain by consulting with a friend, as well as making the learning environment appear a bit more adversarial and annoying to the student. It’s not an obvious choice if it should be considered as cheating or not. But considering it as cheating is certainly reasonable, and, needless to say, if your professor declares it to be cheating and you do it anyway, then what you are doing is a form of cheating. Edit addressing the comments: in the comments people are raising several possible issues with what I wrote: 1. There’s sometimes not enough time to do all the homework yourself, because students take several classes but each lecturer assigns homework has unrealistic expectations that students will focus on their class (as pointed out by @infinitezero): true, this is sometimes a real problem and it’s absolutely true lecturers sometimes have an unreasonable tendency to want to monopolize their students’ study time. Well, my verdict that it’s reasonable to forbid students from getting outside help on homework assumes a lecturer who assigns a reasonable amount of homework, in line with their university’s guidelines for the number of hours a student should be studying outside of class time given the course’s number of credit hours. If this assumption is not satisfied, then it’s certainly possible that no matter what rules the lecturer makes, the students would find themselves in a position where they may be required to “cheat” just to survive the course. In that case, from an ethical point of view the students cannot be considered as cheating for using such a survival strategy. 2. The adversarial environment is a serious issue (comment by @PasserBy): I agree. Making many rules about various things being forbidden or considered cheating can make students feel like they are walking on eggshells and in my opinion can really spoil the fun of learning. I believe in treating my students with respect and not making them feel like I am constantly suspecting them of bad intentions. Most of them truly want to learn. So yeah, definitely the anti-homework-help approach, while motivated by good intentions, and justified at some level, also has a cost that should be factored into the calculation of whether the approach makes sense. 3. If we take the answer’s logic that doing things on your own is good to an extreme, why do students need to go to the course in the first place? (comment of @ilkkachu): true; my logic only holds up to a point, which is why I was referring only to students getting an excessive amount of help as a problem (see also: [this answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/139665/40589)). Lecturers generally understand that a little bit of help to resolve confusion and mental obstacles can be a good thing, and will usually not make a fuss about such things. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: There's always a limit. Surrounding that limit is a grey area. If I do 99% of the homework for you, and let you fill in the three obvious blanks, it's cheating. If I explain the concepts and you apply them, it's not cheating. If I help you through the first couple problems, then let you do the next five problems with minimal help, then by the end of the twenty-problem set you're doing them by yourself, it's "cheating", but not really. Why? Because the point of homework is to learn. If my helping you prevents you from learning, then it's not helpful, and I'm depriving you of the knowledge you're supposed to be gaining. If making you do it completely on your own prevents you from learning because you just stare at a blank page for an hour and give up, that's not helpful either. Ideally, teachers would teach and that would be enough. But sometimes, students aren't quite there yet, or teachers have the wrong teaching style for that student, or teachers rush a bit too much, or some outside problem distracts from the teaching. At that point, outside help can be needed. Now, I could take the time to create a lesson plan, invent my own homework problems, etc. That would be better, and is what I tend to do with my nephews. But they're in grade school and junior high, and I can do most of their homework in my sleep. And the homework tends to only have one or two problems of a given type. When it comes to higher-level stuff, I'm not going to always know it as well, or have the time to invent new problems out of the blue. At that point, the goal is to get you to understand enough to get through the problem yourself, with the understanding that you'll probably get tested on this later. If you're struggling with the homework, there's a good chance you're going to struggle with the test, so you should probably get more help between now and then. Note though, that there's a huge difference between "do these 20 nearly-identical math problems before doing 20 more tomorrow" and "conduct a semester-long, scientific study of bugs that takes dozens of hours for one report". Me doing three of your problems for you on the former is of little consequence if it helps you learn, while doing the only problem for you is half your grade on the latter. There's also a big difference between the student who hasn't even bothered reading the text, and the student who's spent 20 hours on the first problem and gotten nowhere. Clearly, the first student needs to put reasonable effort in, while the second student either needs to go back and do the prerequisites, or get a teacher who does better with homework assignments (and that isn't hypothetical: I've had homework not even the teacher knew how to accomplish, and homework that had nothing to do with either the lecture or the book lesson). A typical scenario falls somewhere in the middle of those extremes where reasonable help is reasonable. And in general, everyone gets help with graded homework in subjects they're less familiar with (and most homework is graded). I don't think I've ever seen a course where anyone would even blink at getting help as long as the student did most of the work themselves. Especially when there's a test that counts for far more points where the student doesn't get any help at all. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I'm going to differ from the other answers thus far and say this is not cheating. The reason is because when students ask for help from TAs and lecturers, the kind of help they get is very similar to the one described. Take, for example, this (artificially simple) problem: > > Compute 5^5. > > > It's a very simple problem - just write out 5^5 as 5 x 5 x 5 x 5 x 5, put it into a calculator (or pen and paper), and you're there. If a student working on this problem were to approach a TA or lecturer for help, what would the TA or lecturer say? Presumably they would say what I wrote above ("just write out 5^5 ..."). They therefore show X how to solve the exercise. They are then likely to suggest X attempt actually solving the exercise, and if X makes a mistake, they will probably point it out. Therefore they solve it together with X taking the lead (doing the calculations, with an occasional nudge or a piece of advice) and with Y checking that no mistakes are made. So no, this is not cheating, and Y is not doing anything wrong. But I would hope X actually learns to solve similar problems without Y's help, or X is going to flunk the final exam. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: It's a grey area, because it depends heavily on the specifics of what Y's doing. I was a tutor in the computer science section at my university's tutoring center (so, mostly helping first- and second-semester programmers come to grips with C/C++). The center was provided by the university; presumably, all faculty knew about it, and I don't know of any who discouraged its use. This is more-or-less how we were trained to help fellow students who came in for help, with two important caveats. First: in step 1 ("showing X how to solve each type of exercise"), we tried hard to not use any of the actual questions from the homework (not least because there was often just the one exercise: "finish the program"). So, we'd talk about what the missing code needed to do or about the concepts that it involved. At this point, we would mostly work on a whiteboard to illustrate the concept rather than actually writing code in an editor - the person coming in for tutoring typically didn't understand some important concept, and neither the lecture nor textbook explained it in a way that made sense to them, so they "just" needed help understanding the core concept. Second: in the last step ("Y checking that no mistakes are made"), we did not point out the specific problem, but may have called out that the final answer was wrong, possibly with a leading question. At this point, the student typically came in with code that didn't work and little idea why it didn't; we had the great advantage of being able to be their [rubber duck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_duck_debugging) (often, explaining what the code is supposed to be doing helps the programmer see where that differs from what it's actually doing; explaining to something with a face can be psychosocially easier than explaining to a brick wall, and rubber ducks are cheap). When rubber-ducking was insufficient, a leading question or two often got the person onto the right track. That said, there's definitely a slippery slope here. It's really easy for Y to fall into just doing X's work for them. We were specifically trained to not do that, and warned of the slipperiness of the slope. tl;dr: it's fine if X is actually learning the concepts and Y really is just helping X understand and pointing out that (but not where!) errors have been made. It's a problem if Y is functionally doing the work and X is just punching numbers into a calculator or something. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: This is an interesting and complex issue, and not one answered by "Yes" or "No". It's also a very common one - what you describe above happens to some degree with nearly every class in every school. The point of homework is to show that the student learned the material, and to reinforce the concepts. The former is more true at the university level, while the latter is more true at the high school or earlier levels, but both are true to some degree at both. Grading is intended to show how well the student understood the material. Anything you do to help someone learn the material, without affecting the actual result of grading, then, should be acceptable. That means, if a student asks for help understanding a homework question, there's no issue with showing them the concept - so long as you work a substantially different example. In grammar school, if homework is solving 6x3, showing the student how to skip-count in 4s to solve 8x4 would be totally fine, for example. Where it gets complicated, though, is when you're in university, and the concept is more of a way of thinking, or problem solving, rather than just a direct method of solving problems. If you're doing a proof, it's pretty likely that any example you show will give away something - the point of the proof is to figure out what tool from your toolkit to use, and to identify what elements are in the proof. Both of those are critical thinking, and require having those tools - but telling the student what tools are relevant is probably going over the line. Ultimately, I always found this a very hard line to tend. When I was in high school, in a college level chemistry class, I would do homework with my then-girlfriend, who was not as strong of a chemistry student. I wouldn't give her answers, but would point out ways to solve things when she'd get stuck. This led eventually to being told we had to stop, because it appeared like cheating - we'd always have the same answers, or at least close, and it was obvious from the tests that there was a difference between test and homework performance. As a high school student, this felt unfair, but as an adult it makes sense; I wasn't a trained educator, and she was losing out on some of the self-learning that is normal for homework - and the teacher wasn't finding out accurately what her true level of understanding was, since she was missing some of the critical thinking steps. What I'd do, if I were you, is instead of helping with homework, study independently of the homework, before doing the homework. Go over the concepts together from class, make sure you understand all of the instructor's examples. Then, do the homework separately. That lets you get the most important part of the value of the homework: finding out how much you understand, before you have exams, and also learning through having to find the answers independently. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_8: > > Is it cheating to get help with graded homework? > > > Your whole premise is wrong here. Homework should be considered as a service to the student, allowing them to practice what they've learned and perhaps cover additional material / aspects of the same material. If you don't do your own homework, you're mostly cheating yourself out of the benefit of the homework. (I could write a long tirade about who actually benefits from numerical grading and aggregation-of-grades for students but this is not the right place for that.) > > Suppose a person X ... etc. etc. ... and with Y checking that no mistakes are made. > > > Is this cheating? > > > Huh? Of course not. > > Is what Y is doing wrong? > > > Generally no, but possibly in preventing X from developing their sense of self-reliance. Which is not teaching, but is often not the right thing to do pedagogically. Although often it is the right thing to do, if the alternative is X just giving up. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: I'm only a layman, so consider this a layman's assessment. The purpose of homework is to familiarize the student with the material; to increase understanding. If the help given furthers that, then it's serving the purpose; if the help given hinders that, then it's subverting the purpose. So to a large degree, it depends on just how "hand-holdy" the help is vs. how much the student struggles. Having said that, this is why homework should not be a massive portion of the grade as in your example scenario, because that encourages point-gathering by any means necessary, and actual understanding can start to look like as a secondary consideration. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_10: There are two separate issues here: * Has the student completed the assignment? * Has the student behaved unethically? The first question is, as others have pointed out, instructor-dependent. If the instructor permits the students to work together, it's fine. Otherwise, it isn't. So you should ask for clarification in advance. The second is much easier: the only potential ethical problem that could happen here is academic dishonesty, and it's trivial to guard against that: Acknowledge any help you received. The instructor may still not give credit for the assignment if they wanted you to work on it alone, but there's no potential for misconduct if you fully disclose all help you received. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_11: This is complicated, as all the responses have been showing. Claiming credit for work that isn't your own is plagiarism -- period. However, we all certainly want students to learn from other students. Here's my approach. First, I don't like using homework as an assessment. I have other assessments. I assign homework because I want my students to go home, think about material, and experience applications that are illustrative and promote understanding of the material. Homeworks are thus part of the education, not the assessment. Here comes the first problem with this: if homeworks are not part of the grade, some students (often the students who need it the most) won't do them! Thus, I need to make homeworks a small part of the overall grade. Usually, a chunk just big enough to take an A down to an A- is good enough. Now, for the copying part. In my syllabus, I say copying will not be tolerated, but I encourage the students to work in groups, suggesting that they go have their discussions about the approach of the problem, WITHOUT WRITING IT DOWN, then at a later solo period, they should write up their homeworks. I think this is an approach where students can learn from each other, and actually do enough work on their own homeworks that they can claim ownership of what they turn it. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: This is homework, not a test. Tests have to be taken strictly alone, and there are typically safeguards enforcing that — even in Covid times, when they are taken remotely. Homework, by contrast, is not as strictly regulated, which is reflected by the missing enforcement. If a student does not know how to solve a task they can look at their notes, read the textbook, watch a YouTube video or ask a tutor, like in your example. All of those are legit and even encouraged because, as you say, the homework is an opportunity to learn. In the end nobody knows what happens at home. Of course the idea is that the student is the actual homework author, but the exact conversation happening between the student and tutor cannot be controlled and regulated. Plagiarism or outright copying from a fellow student is forbidden though. That rule is enforceable and will typically be enforced, after the fact. What you describe is prototypical tutoring which is encouraged, common and helpful. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/25	1,047	4,505	<issue_start>username_0: Does anyone have any experience with this? The coordinator of my program told me that he will schedule a meeting with my supervisor, the coordinator, and myself and that during that meeting they will come up with specific tasks which I need to complete. However, regardless of how "objective" those tasks are, my supervisor is not happy with me and I know that he will not let me 'pass' those meetings. He will do anything he can in his power to show the coordinator that I am not a good student. Has anyone gone through a procedure like this? Does the supervisor always kick the student out?<issue_comment>username_1: We don't know the details, of course, but in the end you do not have a right to be supervised by a specific professor. If a professor does not want to be your supervisor (any more), then there is relatively little you can objectively do. There is a kind of "code of conduct" that professors see students they have accepted as advisees to graduation, simply because it (i) doesn't look very good on the department if someone just willy-nilly decides they don't want to do it any more, and (ii) because it creates a hassle for the department to then figure out what to do with the situation. As a consequence, it doesn't happen very often that a professor un-assigns themselves from being adviser. But it happens (and I have done it myself) if there are good reasons for it -- a typical one being that the student turns out to be on a trajectory where they have no chance to graduate with the degree they seek (and don't take the hint that it is best if they looked for a job elsewhere, outside grad school), or if there are substantial personal disagreements between student and faculty. You do not say why your adviser wants to un-assign themselves. It is, also, strictly speaking not part of your question and so need not be answered. But I would strongly recommend to walk around the block a half dozen times and think hard why you got into this situation. Your question very much reads like "my adviser is unreasonable and wants to kick me out of the program". But experience shows that most advisers are not in fact unreasonable, and that there are good reasons why they do not want to advise a student any more; it would be good for you to consider what these reasons might be, and what needs to be done to address these. Completing the tasks required of you might be a good first step. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: > > The coordinator of my program told me that he will schedule a meeting with the 3 of us and that during that meeting they will come up with specific tasks which I need to complete. > > > You do not mention any formal process and it just sounds like a meeting to decide what tasks you should be doing. I don't see an issue with this. It may be as simple and non-threatening as it sounds. From comment... > > My supervisor is young and new and my lab mate and I are the first students he sees. > > > So maybe your supervisor is finding this just as difficult and challenging as you are. They will have a lot of things to do apart from supervise and may be finding it overwhelming. You think you are being ignored (or something like that) but it may simply be that you are a task too much for your inexperienced supervisor. It may be that issues outside of their control (and of which you know nothing) are making it much harder for them to deal with you than you understand. Keep an open mind. In comments you mention a lot of distrust between you and your supervisor. That's unhealthy at best and self-destructive at worst. It is not all clear that you even wrote an email explaining the issues from your point of view to your supervisor or their boss. Don't assume verbal communications have any weight - they are often interpreted and/or remebered differently by the parties involved. You have an extremely negative view of your supervisor at this point and, right or wrong (and we don't know), it really is not practical for you to continue with your own viewpoint so negative. If you cannot adopt a more positive mental approach (and maybe you have good reasons - we don't know the reality) then you need to consider changing supervisor or even seeking an amicable parting of the ways from the institute and possibly reapplying elsewhere. If you do find yourself with a new supervisor or seeking a new opportunity elsewhere the you need to start with a clean mental and emotional plate. Upvotes: 3
2022/01/26	2,582	10,676	<issue_start>username_0: I would like to ask for help since I am on the verge of finishing my PhD Math degree but I am worried that there are almost no jobs which I qualify for. I am an international student in the US and my field of research is in cryptography but my programming skills are not up to par of course to CS majors (I only know how to program on a basic level in Python, C++). Basically, my skill set is more of a pure math major and not of an applied math major. My worry is that since there are almost no academic job opportunities out there for me since I see that most of the academic positions available are in applied mathematics not named cryptography and if there are cryptography jobs out there, certainly I am not the most qualified since I see myself as not really a computer science major. When I look up for industry jobs available, it's either exclusive to US citizens (like In the NSA) or those jobs are looking for applied mathematics majors like those who know data science, statistics, machine learning among others. I am already "old", I'm turning 33, having a mediocre resume that does not stand out and as time goes by, it seemed that taking the PhD route is a bad decision. Any advice?<issue_comment>username_1: > > it seemed that taking the PhD route is a bad decision. > > > Maybe it was, but you can't change the past. You can only change the future. Things to do now: * Figure out what else you learned. It might seem like you didn't learn anything, but you must have, since earning a PhD is not trivial. If you didn't use Python or C++ for your PhD, what did you use? If you studied cryptography, do you also know how to secure a system against hackers? If yes, you could try searching for jobs in IT security. * Approach your university's career center, preferably sooner rather than later. They'll be able to offer more personalized help. * Look up jobs that require a degree in your broader field. In your case, that would be mathematics. * Consider searching for non-US jobs. There is no requirement you stay in the US. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: username_1's answer has some great advice, I won't repeat it. --- Have you considered any analyst roles? In particular in government. I was probably in a similar position after completing a Neuroscience PhD and after taking up programming and a bit of web development, applied to be a Civil Service Analyst (UK). Here, the civil service don't look at your career history, the interview is more like a test. But, from all the analysts I've met, many of them come from PhD's, mostly due to a broad understanding of statistics and bits of programming. It might not be glamorous, but it pays the bills and problem solving is probably more important than your technical skills. Python could lead you towards Data Science rather than straight up statistics. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Crypthography is a hot topic and security experts are very scarce. You might not quality for the actual job offerings, but you might find some employer willing to invest some months into you, to get a loyal and qualified worker. There are many jobs to design systems, understand what signatures and hashes are for, avoiding bad patterns. That is what an average programmer is not capable to do. This will be your job! These problems occur in everywhere: cars, planes, satellites, weapons, coffee machines, communications. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Your plea for help sounds like a classic example of needing to adjust your perspective and expectations. What were your expectations when you started your PhD? What were your goals? If you just wanted a good job and future in the USA, then take courage because the world is still your oyster. You just need to change your perspective. Have you tried looking for jobs in "less prestigious" universities? If you look outside BIG city universities, there are plenty of middle of the road universities that maybe are in less famous locations but are hidden gems and you may have to teach some but you'll have a cool low stress job that is yours for the keeping. Not to mention, these locations are usually lower cost of living and you end up financially set for life at a relatively young age. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Doing a PhD in mathematics compared to programming at a normal level is like comparing flying a jet fighter to driving a car. You might not know how to drive the car, sorry program, but you would have no problem learning it if you wish to. As very few math PhD-s are expected to apply for jobs, it is very seldom written as a requirement or even as a positive thing. But send out your CV to a bunch of the places you might like to work at -- the worst that can happen is that they say thank you. Searching jobs is like marketing a new flavor of ice cream, if no customer knows it exists, no-one is going to ask for it. Same for you, no potential employer know you exist until you tell them. So, as the saying goes, just do it. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: A math PhD plus some basic experience in programming is enough to get a good job as a data scientist. Python is the key language for machine learning which is another plus. You might not qualify for a job at Google but that is because everyone wants to work there. There are a lot more companies out there looking for people doing data science and data analysis that there are people qualified to do it. Your math PhD is generally seen as sufficient proof that you are one of the people qualified for that or at least can easily be training to be. Apply to lots of data science jobs, point out your math PhD and don't worry if you don't satisfy all the stated experience requirements. This is a wish list and in this field most companies can't get everything they want. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Let me offer a satirical spin on other answers, comments and opinions of the majority: * You can try to become a teacher at a second-rate college in the middle of nowhere. However, with over 500 applications per spot, your chances are very slim ([link](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181610)). * You can try to get into data science, but with plenty of competitors who have more relevant qualifications, you may need to complete another degree before you can even start thinking about it ([link](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181618)). * Of course, there may still be some companies left willing to hire mathematics graduates for standard coding roles. However, given your lack of experience, most professional programmers will not let you anywhere near their code, so you might be out of luck ([link](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181614)). * Of course, you could always try to become a cashier or a gas station attendant, but with the looming new wave of the pandemic and ever-increasing store automation, the odds and time will be against you. * But fear not, there is no requirement for you to stay in the US. As they say, the (3rd) world is your oyster ([link](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181597)). P.S. Oh, and don't forget to check out the incompetent staff at your university career center, who will surely have no clue about how to help you to find a job ([link](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181597)). --- I sincerely hope you do not take any of this too close to heart. The truth is that with a research-level degree related to cryptography you should be in a much better position on the job market than almost anyone else (with the exception of ML experts), provided that you are willing to diversify slightly and pick up some new skills along the way ([link](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181608)). Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: You may find that there are research organizations interested in Cryptography at both the really large software companies (Microsoft, Google, Facebook, ...) and at some of the "Security" companies (RSA, etc.). I expect the competition for these positions to be fierce though. Try to find some names at these companies. In many cases, they will be publishing papers just like they would do if they worked at a university. Read their work. Try finding reasons to ask them questions about their work; building up a network is likely the best path forward. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: Tons of things to do, crypto [e.g. zero knowledge chains] and finance stand out. Even privacy for internet marketing etc. Obviously also all the other tech firms if you want to brush up your programming and data skills. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_10: In addition to what has be written, two ideas: you can try out some internship positions. There are many for data-science and probably not a few in engineering or cryptography. Less tech-oriented, the big investment banks offer internships as well. If you decide on going into data-science, spend a few months learning practical and theoretical stuff; in an interview, your mathematical understanding will score you points above the average applicant. For example, I doubt the average data-scientist today could easily read the book Elements of Statistical Learning - try it out. Second, consulting firms take PhDs quite often into consulting/analyst roles (though they take MBAs in a higher ratio). If this is foreign to you, you can try out some practice case-interviews to get a feel, you might like it. As is often the case, you'll benefit from having a connection to put in a good word. I'd suggest workshopping your CV and polishing it for every position. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_11: As someone who has a Ph.D. in EE but does research in cryptography, I am going to say that there's plenty of space to do research cryptography as long as you can bring a nuance of what you know to the field. Over on [https://crypto.stackexchange.com](https://crypto.stackexchange.com/users/32361/b-degnan), I primarily answer questions regarding semiconductor implementations as that's the nuance I bring to the field. Also, it's worth mentioning that I do not do classified work. This is an important aspect because I often work with international students as collaborators, whereas, many of my colleagues who do not draw that line often cannot discuss their work or travel. Back to the original question: I believe that there is a space for anyone who can contribute to any field, but you'll have to show that you can add some value. See if there's something in <https://eprint.iacr.org/> that overlaps with your interest. That will give you leads on companies and groups who could possibly use work and where you could contribute. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/26	299	1,296	<issue_start>username_0: I'm trying to prepare for undergraduate research by reading papers that are similar to what I will be working on, but I am having trouble understanding much of what I am reading. I have taken one econometrics course and next semester will be aiding a professor in a project applying econometrics. I want to be more well versed in the subject so I can be of bigger help but the papers I'm reading I really don't understand. Some of them I understand partly and others not at all, does this mean I'm unprepared or is this normal for undergraduate researchers? I haven't participated in research before this and I'm getting some feelings of imposter syndrome before I even begin.<issue_comment>username_1: For an undergraduate there is nothing unusual about what you are experiencing. You are at the beginning of a long climb that you haven't attempted before. Things are likely to get easier in the doing of it and you will have the advice of the advisor to work with. Relax and do your best when the time comes. Every new researcher starts out in the same place. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: You are not supposed to be prepared for undergraduate research. The purpose of participating is to help you become prepared. Allow a few years for it to work. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/27	449	1,973	<issue_start>username_0: I am writing a new paper based on my old paper. They are very similar, but different in three 1) They study the different problems. 2) The method changed 50%. 3) They have totally different experiments. I think the new paper should be considered innovative and publishable. However, due to the similarity of these two papers, I want to use my old paper as the template for convenience. I have rewritten the language and remade the figures and tables based on the original paper, so I can guarantee that basically nothing is the same. There are maybe at most 5 identical sentences. But, anyone who has read the two articles carefully will know that they are highly similar. So is it counted self-plagiarism? Is it dangerous to do so? What is your advice on this?<issue_comment>username_1: Given your points 1-3 it seems unlikely that anyone would consider it self plagiarizing based only on the structure. The exception would be if your structure were, somehow, creative or innovative and contributed to the scientific/academic advance of the paper. A lot of papers have the same, more or less, traditional structure. There are even templates for such things. It seems like you are just using a different template. I don't see any issue. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Don't do that. Don't write a new paper by modifying an old one until it is entirely different. Not for plagiarism reasons - the reason is that it will almost certainly hurt the presentation of the new paper. Start from scratch, and the presentation will be much more natural for the new paper. In my experience starting from something to make something else - and be it even a shortened version of a paper - rarely gives the best result, and is typically quite far from it. (As a comparison, it is extremely hard to fix a badly written paper carefully - it is much easier to rewrite it from scratch. Otherwise, you will always bound to the old structure.) Upvotes: 2
2022/01/27	1,549	6,592	<issue_start>username_0: I applied for PhD at some top US universities (Electrical & Computer Engineering dept). I received an email from a professor at one of the places, about a position in his group, to work on a very specific topic. If I am interested, an interview could be set up to discuss things further. However, I am not interested in this topic at all. From the email, it is clear that funding is available only for this topic. Question: If I reject this offer, does it hurt my chances of getting admitted by a different faculty member at the same department? My question is based on the following assumption: Faculty members sit together and pick a few candidates each, from the pool of applicants. The faculty member who contacted me had picked me. Therefore, if I reject his offer, I would not be considered by the other faculty members, because they have already picked other candidates. Is this how it usually works?<issue_comment>username_1: It seems unlikely that it would hurt you generally and if the professor had such an attitude that it would, you'd be in trouble there anyway. Someone would need an especially vindictive personality to behave like that. Most US doctoral admissions is handled by a committee and most students start with no thesis advisor. Funding is also normally through TA positions. So, I think the one opportunity may have been special. The funding available from the professor was most likely via a grant for a specific project. And, you might still be subject to decisions of a committee even if you wanted to accept. Professors aren't normally "officers of the university" with power to act on their own. It isn't normally like your supposed scenario. An admissions committee will be composed of a few professors from a much larger number. Sometimes it is given as a "reward" to people recently tenured. For more on how admissions works in the US, see the answer for the US here: [How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368) --- For completeness, there are a few departments at a few universities in US that use a different system. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: > > My question is based on the following assumption: Faculty members sit together and pick a few candidates each, from the pool of applicants. The faculty member who contacted me had picked me. > > > As username_1 said, in the US, candidates are normally chosen by committee, and there is no one-to-one matching between students and advisors. This is different than the situation in Europe. > > Therefore, if I reject his offer, I would not be considered by the other faculty members, because they have already picked other candidates. > > > Things will vary widely across academia, so it is hard to give general advice (and I'm not familiar with EECE departments, so take my advice for what it's worth). But the committee does generally try to ensure some rough alignment between the students' interests and the department's needs. It could be that the department is only interested in you because you seem like a good match to this project / advisor, and so declining this project would probably result in your not being admitted. Or it could be that they really like you and are offering you this opportunity on top of a forthcoming admissions offer. It is really impossible to say what they might be thinking, but it's certainly possible that rejecting this offer could reduce your odds of admission. > > If I am interested, an interview could be set up to discuss things further. However, I am not interested in this topic at all. > > > Still, I'm not sure any of this matters. You are not interested in the project, and getting an offer of admission based on your willingness to work on this odious project would not be very useful. So, I recommend being straightforward with them: perhaps you are willing to meet with the professor and discuss further, but your initial reaction is that the project doesn't seem like a strong match to your skills or interests. If this means they don't admit you, that's better than getting admitted but not being able to find a suitable advisor once you're there. By the way, you might want to keep an open mind with respect to the project. Sometimes working on a less interesting project with an awesome advisor is worth it. And sometimes apparently uninteresting projects turn out to be connected to things you are interested in. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I am currently a professor at a US university. After reading username_1's and username_2's responses, I want to clarify that this: > > Most US doctoral admissions is handled by a committee and most > students start with no thesis advisor. Funding is also normally > through TA positions. So, I think the one opportunity may have been > special. The funding available from the professor was most likely via > a grant for a specific project. And, you might still be subject to > decisions of a committee even if you wanted to accept. Professors > aren't normally "officers of the university" with power to act on > their own. > > > is not universally true. It is certainly true in some places. However, I have worked at 2 R1 universities and in both cases, the committee part of admissions decisions is more of a quality check. At both universities, faculty identify and request to admit a particular set of students to work in their lab and with the understanding that they will be the primary advisors. Students are admitted with this understanding. Whether this would affect later applications to faculty positions...I would say that it is unlikely, but not impossible. As username_1 suggested, one route to retaliation would be a vindictive person. This is possible, but faculty positions are committee decisions in pretty much all cases Any objection of a candidate would have to be justified and the others on the committee would have to agree. This scenario you're concerned about is thus possible, but super unlikely. In most cases, having wanted to admit a grad student, missing out, and then having them apply later as a strong faculty candidate would probably bias me towards, rather than away from admitting them. I would ethically have to suppress that tendency, however. Bottom line, your instinct is right. Go to the program/advisor that fits your interests most closely. Grad school can be pretty fun if you're doing something you're really passionate about and pretty awful if you're doing something you hate. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/28	3,138	12,909	<issue_start>username_0: I did my PhD and 1 year postdoc in mechanical engineering from a top 20 world ranking school. Though it took me longer than others to get my PhD (5.5 years), I published 5 first authored papers there. Subsequently, during my postdoc, I published one first authored and two co-authored papers. I think I have a decent research CV. I have fair chance of getting a tenure track position in a low ranking university in North America or something in my home country. For the past few months, I have been working as a sales and support engineer in a company that makes high-end scientific equipments. I don't do research, but I help other researchers setup the equipments in their labs, troubleshoot issues with their million dollars equipment and work towards selling products to different universities in North America. The job is decently paid, full time remote with good working hours. I might have to visit few sites in the future but at the moment it's completely remote. You can say that my job is of a highly qualified customer support, where the customer is university, scientists and academics. So, I do get to use my PhD research experience in understanding the challenges faced by the clients. I am somewhat enjoying my new role. There's lots of growth within the company and I can move to management in the future. However, back of my mind, I feel that I am doing something wrong. Since I have done a PhD, I should work in a research field. I should work as a research scientist in industry if academia is not my thing. I should try for tenure track position as that was my goal during the start of my PhD. Being a scientist was my childhood dream, I should not let it go. However, I am not finding any appeal in research anymore. Even though I am sure I can be successful in my field, I don't enjoy it anymore. I like doing research but the aspects of writing a paper, grant, teaching, lack of technical skills in many areas makes me loose interest in the career path. Is it wrong to not have any research ambitions?<issue_comment>username_1: The short answer: no, it is not wrong. From what I can gather from your question, you started your PhD around 8-10 years ago. That is a long time, and a lot of things can change on the way, including your outlook, your amibtions and your goals. You have a great job that you like where your PhD experience comes in handy. A lot of people with PhDs end up working in the industry, for various reasons. One is the sheer number of PhD holders compared to the relatively small number of professor positions. I attended a talk a while ago, where the speaker revealed that in Switzerland, the number of professorships is about equal to the number of people that complete their PhD every year - yet a professor keeps their position for many years, making it impossible for every PhD holder to get tenured. See also [this related question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/126809/why-are-some-phd-holders-unable-to-become-professors/126812#126812) for more info on this specific aspect. So you are definitely not alone in not following a research career after PhD. If you love what you do now, keep doing it! Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: It might seem "wrong" after spending many years in academia, where one often looks downwards at industry as a place where one cannot do real research or where people go for the sake of earning lots of money. Neither of this is true, but, more importantly, many of the people getting PhD and even doing a postdoc do not end up being professors in academia - there are simply not enough professor positions. Thus, leaving academia for industry may be both rational and intellectually/emotionally fulfilling. Moreover, the chances of finding a job in industry are usually decreasing with gaining postdoctoral experience - not because of the experience itself, but because these people are considered less adapted to working in industrial environment. Finally, my own observation is that in Europe there are less expectations from the PhD to continue in academia - in fact, doing a PhD in Europe is often just a step towards finding an employment in industry, and a year of postdoc is done to finish one's research project or as a temporary employment before securing an industry position. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: There is nothing wrong with wanting to redirect your life at any point. But, it is also possible that you have a severe case of burnout at the moment. This comes to many people somewhere along the line. Academics coming out of intense programs are pretty prone to it. It might be helpful to talk to a mental health professional about what you are experiencing, just to reassure yourself that you are making good choices. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: It had better not be wrong; otherwise there is an inherent structural imbalance. At least when it comes to academia. In academia, the supply of new Ph.D.'s far outstrips the demand for tenure track professors in North America. Competition for these jobs is very fierce. And even non-tenure track positions are hard to come by. Many people find they have to work at several universities to work full time. These part time positions are becoming more common as universities try to save money. Even if you could somehow get a position, you still have to spend a great deal of time writing research proposals and begging for money. Getting research funding is by no means a sure thing. And if you are unfunded you won't get tenure. I have been working nearly 20 years now in a field that is not the same as my Ph.D. area. The pay is good and it feeds my family. The position itself is reasonably secure and I don't have to spend most of my time chasing for research money. It works for me. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: If more often than not you wake up neutral or positive about going to work, then you are probably already better off than most people. Don't be fooled by the notion that is easy to pick up in school from some academicians that academia is somehow "better" or on a higher plane than industry, and that there's a boolean choice. The reality is that there is a continuum1 between the two, and if we are lucky, we can get ourselves to some point where we are comfortable for a while. I always tell people that a job/position needs to have at least one of the following to be good for you, and if you've got at least one and don't want to move at the moment, be happy with it: * money * learning * fun It sounds like you like your current activities, and have acceptable compensation, so you've got at least two of the three, and I have a strong hunch that you are learning from your customers' applications, so you might have all three! ### You've got time to explore this further This means that you've got (plenty of) time to think about this, and explore your thinking further. * Do your own feelings suggest that you are missing something? * Have you internalized someone else's viewpoint? * Have you gotten so good at your current responsibilities that you're getting a little bored or unchallenged and would like things to be hard/challenging again? ### Tell me more about this continuum! > > However, I am not finding any appeal in research anymore. Even though I am sure I can be successful in my field, I don't enjoy it anymore. I like doing research but the aspects of writing a paper, grant, teaching, lack of technical skills in many areas makes me loose interest in the career path. > > > There is plenty of research going on in industry! Does your present company have a research division? If so, what do they research? Do your customer's companies have research divisions? If, so what do they research? Does anything sound interesting? Can you go to a library and pick up some back issues of trade magazines/journals (not the academic type) and read feature articles or news items about state-of-the-art work? Does anything sound interesting, something you'd like to? Did you see something that piques your interest? If it's no, no, no, no then keep doing what you are doing: solving customer problems and learning, save your money, and think about how you might best change your career in five or ten years. If there's a yes in there, then dig further and explore how you feel about it, and wonder if there is a career move that might make sense. --- 1with probably more than one dimension Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: We can't tell you what is wrong or right. I think in this case, we can only share our personal experiences which would vary from one person to other. So in the end, the choice is yours obviously. First of all, it's totally fine to miss the academia and research in its essence. It's also totally normal not to feel motivated to do any research after getting a PhD or postdoc. These are common traits shared by many people. You said being a scientist was your childhood dream. So I must ask this: during PhD or postdoc era, did you really feel that you are living your dream? Did you say to yourself then, this would be something that I want to do for the rest of my life? A rough comparison between how you felt then and how you are feeling now, might give you a good idea about whether you are in the right path. And one last thing; as I said, it is totally fine to miss the academia's atmosphere. That is part of what makes us human. When we move from one situation to another, there are some memories left over that might make us feel good or bad. It's like when we are adults and miss the joy of childhood (or something like that). By the way, you can still do research in your own time. It's not like the only source of knowledge is in the academia. Most of the abstract materials used by researchers are also available for non-academic people. Yes you might miss the labs and their equipment, but if you are motivated enough you can still find a way. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: You're finishing a PhD in mechanical engineering. The whole point of engineering is to do useful things. In your new job, that's exactly what you're doing. How much of your PhD research will ever find a use in the real world? I'm an EE with a Master's degree and 30 years industry experience. I see literally hundreds of research projects from universities that will never go anywhere because they are impractical for one reason or another. Nothing is better for an engineering professional than real world experience. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: When I was in academia there was a vibe that if you left academia you had somehow failed. I left academia 8 years ago and am much happier and (ironically) freer to pursue various intellectual pursuits, such as writing and learning about different things. Academic jobs are just jobs, regardless of the vibe senior academics create. If you are not fulfilled you should look for a different job. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: Like some others have already said there is nothing wrong with you choosing a job that your enjoy doing. Also I would like to add it is perfectly normal for you to doubt your decision given how much you spent on your studies. From personal experience I graduated from my PhD degree in 2010 and went to industry straightaway. That was the choice I made. Being in industry for the last 11 years has shown me as someone with a PhD my main skill is to learn new skills. That is what many years of staying in academia has thought me far more than the filed I was studying in! I use that to the maximum in my career now and anything new I want to learn. I promise you whether you stay at your job or pick a new one. This is the most important thing you will be good at learning new concepts and acquiring new skills. And that my friend is gold! Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_10: Feelings are never wrong. They just are. A lot of people feel the way you do -- that is how your company is able to provide the services that it does. We get constant messaging in graduate school that a life of research -- a "life of the mind" -- is the only fulfilling life, but that is not true. That messaging is so strong in large part because you are surrounded by older people who have chosen to pursue a life of research. The ones who felt differently left. I would suggest to you that you might enjoy a research position in industry, or perhaps a research scientist position in academia. In both of these situations, you will not have to write grants, and you will have more flexibility to work remotely. You will also be paid more in industry than you would be in academia, so keep that in mind if the salary of a research scientist is not enough for you. You have time to figure this out. But if your question is whether you're wrong for not wanting an R1 tenure-track position, the answer is "No." Upvotes: 1
2022/01/28	1,895	8,022	<issue_start>username_0: I'm in my last year of my BSc, and I have a couple of things that I am really interested in, and I am hoping to do a MSc and then a PhD. My adviser explained that a PhD is very focused, and it's likely that my future academic career will be mainly in that general topic. The thing is I like two very different topics. One is high level (machine learning), and the other is low level/theoretical CS (systems, parallelism, quantum) or at least that's kind of how these fields are grouped together at my university. I wouldn't mind doing a PhD in either of these fields, but I would like to have opportunities to work with the other field at some point in the future. And the way I see it, these are very different spheres of CS. So my question is how broad or narrow is your research area after your PhD. Do you get opportunities to work in different areas? I know there isn't a physical barrier stopping me from exploring different fields, but how difficult is it to get such positions when your PhD is in a different topic? How far can you deviate from your initial research? At present I have better research experience with low level computing, as my dissertation is on parallelism and quantum programming. And I expect it would be easier for me to get admitted to a PhD with a proposal in this field, since I can demonstrate experience. But I like to think that at some point after the PhD, I can also do ML research (like in a postdoc or as an RA). For context, I intend to continue my education in the UK.<issue_comment>username_1: Most doctoral dissertations are very narrow and very deep. There are exceptions such as, perhaps, in the philosophy of mathematics and a few others. There are some interdisciplinary, often applied, dissertations, but most are on a single topic in a single field. If you study CS, for example, and get a doctorate there, then your first employment is most likely to be in CS and people will expect that you do good work in that field. But even CS has a lot of room to move around in, so you don't need to get stuck in the deep and narrow hole it was necessary dig to get the degree. A better metaphor, actually is that you extend the range of the known in a narrow but spiky way, pushing out into the unknown as far as you can, but usually over a narrow front. But, once you have a secure position, the world is yours, and sometimes you are forced to switch fields. I studied math but needed to switch immediately to CS for want of any opportunities in math. My dissertation was so narrow that only about half a dozen people in the world were interested or could easily follow it. I finished my doctorate so long ago that it was unusual for a mathematician to know how to program, and I had to learn that. But even in CS, I had broad interests that morphed over the years. At one point I was a language maven and usually taught the compiler course. But I was also interested in human aspects of computing and wrote in that area. One of the nice things about study, especially graduate study, is that you learn how to learn. You can always push that button so that you don't get bored. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There's a Piled Higher and Deeper comic that addresses this: <https://phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=2031> The PhD tends to be the narrowest area you work on in your academic career; if you stay in academia your area of focus will tend to broaden, and senior academics often have a remarkable breadth of interest. However, part of this breadth often comes from an ability to leverage skills in one area to apply to others. The more interdisciplinary your area of research, the easier it is to find opportunities to apply your knowledge to distinct areas. I did my PhD research focused on one specific brain slice preparation, mostly studying a connection between one part of the mouse brain (auditory thalamus) and another (auditory cortex), using pretty much one family of techniques: patch clamp electrophysiology and a bit of calcium imaging. As a post doc I continued this work, and added some mechanisms of anesthesia. Now I'm an academic scientist and study cortical networks in human subjects, consciousness, sleep, anesthesia, neuroinflammation, psychedelics, clinical anesthesiology and critical care; I guess I don't do brain slice studies of mouse auditory cortex anymore, though. I'm unusual in that I've stayed in the same lab most the entire time, which has both broadened and narrowed my interests (gives me more freedom to get my toes in everything going on; though I'm also more constrained to my PI's interests than if I were independent). I do think you are likely correct that it's easier to start low-level and expand to high; AI/ML is a very hot area, but also very saturated. If you can find applications for ML in the lower-level projects you work on, you may be able to find a lucrative niche. If you go for future jobs in industry, you're going to find a lot of opportunities in AI/ML even if your specific background isn't in that area, as long as you maintain some competency there. If you go for a future in academia, your limits at the professor level are pretty much bounded by what you can justify in a grant (of course, you should be aware that a minority of people who enter academia aiming for a PhD will reach a professorship). Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: PhD is quite narrowly focused A good PhD usually involves publishing several research papers in major journals. Working on a paper with an original subject as the first author is quite a lot of work - in terms of studying the relevant literature, doing calculations or measurements, writing this up, etc.; and takes from a few months to a few years. In this respect one is pretty narrowly focused. And, even if one manages to write several papers during the allotted time (whether it is doable largely depends on your field), they are likely to be on related subjects or subjects falling withing the same sub-field (or sub-sub-field, or sub-sub-sub-field...). After PhD the world is wide open There are different reasons why it does not restrict your future choices: * Your future postdoctoral or industrial employment will likely have nothing to do with your PhD thesis, even if in the general area where you specialized. (there are exceptions, where people continue to work on the same subject for decades. Some subjects do require this, but one have to be sure to start in the right field, where such focus would not be boring and would not impede the career.) * You can actually seek postdoctoral jobs in different sub-fields or even different fields of science - the drawback is that you will be a novice, with no prior experience, but the excitement for learning something new may worth it. * Switching between fields is actually rather common. There are also many interdisciplinary fields, such as bioinformatics - where people with biology background learn some math and programming, people with computer science or physics/math background learn some biology. Among other such fields one could mention quantitative finance (always hot and very demanding in terms of math) and environmental science. Transferable skills Note also that the most important things that one learns during a PhD are not the knowledge related to the subject, but general skills like: * conducting research * studying scientific literature * creating figures and presentations for communicating your results * writing scientific papers. Many PhDs and their supervisors fail to see the importance of those, but this is actually what makes people very valuable outside of the academia (where your narrow research subject may be of little interest). In some countries the PhD is actually geared towards acquiring more transferable skills, rather than doing groundbreaking and/or independent research (although much always depends on the specific research group or supervisor's personal approach). Upvotes: 0
2022/01/29	674	2,866	<issue_start>username_0: I have a few months to go in my MASc program in Aerospace Engineering. I'm not tight for time or anything, but I'm curious if anyone has tips on how to manage results. My research is highly algorithm-centred, and there are a lot of little knobs and dials on the algorithm that I added as I went along, and I'm still tinkering with it. I know what they all do, but there's no way I can do a detailed analysis on the effect of each setting. My advisor says it's important to have the results in say figures and charts etc exactly reflect the algorithm as written, which I agree with. But how will I know when the algorithm won't change anymore, that this is how it will be, and these are the final results? Otherwise I'll end up creating the figures 10x over. I could leave the figures out till the very end, but often the discussion is around features in the figures. I know there's no silver bullet, but wondered if anyone had good tips on managing that sort of problem.<issue_comment>username_1: I had a similar algorithm-centred thesis for my MASc. To keep the results manageable, I had to pick a certain easily-justified position for all knobs and dials to be my "baseline" setup. This let me still explore the algorithm design space as the thesis due date got closer, but treating each new result as a special case with a short associated discussion. If you can, it may be useful for your reader and easier for you if each knob and dial can be discussed in its own section. If there's stuff you could have explored in more detail, it's normal to acknowledge that at the end. A hard time limit for master's research is always going to cut you short. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: When I try to present my results, either by text or even more by graphs, plots, figures, I often find questions or issues I have to investigate. So not writing a draft and creating the graphs, stresses me after I finally do so. To address your problem with doing graphs over and over, you have to automate its generation. I wrote all of my theses with LaTeX so TikZ and its plotting functions were an obvious choice. But you can do the same with matplotlib (Python), Matlab, R, Excel, LibreOffice Calc, Chart.js (JavaScript): Write scripts that read input files or where you have to copy/paste your data. The plot is automatically generated, including postprocessing, scaling, labeling etc. It is some work, but it pays off! And it adds transparency, because you can always proof that the graphs were not manipulated - or it would be obvious because it is written in your code. Store the code together with the raw data - just in case. After the final review from my professor, I was asked to drop one data set. I could do this within a couple of hours and it was not stressfull, as 80% of my graphs were automated. Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
2022/01/29	1,022	4,480	<issue_start>username_0: QUESTION: I’m curious to know: how much does success in writing funding proposals for NSF as a PhD student affect your application for a tenure-track faculty position in the US? Especially if you were not the PI (due to citizenship reasons and school regulations) but your PhD adviser was. The fact that you did write the proposal is corroborated in your advisers’ recommendation letter and the fact that you did secure funding from NSF on a recent proposal is stated in the research statement to demonstrate that you do have experience in submitting proposals. --- EDIT 1: The wording of this fact in my research statement is as follows: As a PhD student and with assistance from my adviser, I drafted the proposal X that was awarded funding from the Y Division of the NSF. I then go on to briefly explain what published research the award supported. --- EDIT 2: Based on your experience how often and to what extent discussion of proposals is included in an applicant's material? I assume the committee would be interested to see the evidence that the applicant is capable of drafting a competitive proposal. Do they by any chance search for the proposal online to see the amount of money it was awarded? Maybe that is a factor on the importance of the proposed study! --- EDIT 3: This is with regards to an issue brought up in the comments: The discipline is plasma science and engineering. As I mentioned in the (original) question I could not be a PI/co-PI due to citizenship restrictions and school regulations. Also, the ideas developed in the proposal were not 100% mine but maybe equally shared between the two of us. The draft also went through multiple revisions by my adviser. --- EDIT 4: The issue of abusive behavior and circumventing rules have been brought up in the comments. I have not experienced any such behavior (unless I'm being abused without knowing!). Furthermore, per NSF's survey emails I have been listed as a contributor based on this excerpt from the email: You have been identified by the Principal Investigator/co-Principal Investigator(s) as contributing to the following NSF-supported project. Before starting the process of drafting the proposal I was directed by my adviser to read NSF's Proposal & Award Policies & Procedures Guide (PAPPG) and to my knowledge rules were not broken (I understand circumvention is different).<issue_comment>username_1: Getting funded is a plus, but simply writing proposals isn't the same thing. The NSF considered more than just the writing, including the reputation and background of the PI. It isn't the sort of thing that will guarantee you a position, but it is one positive thing among others that will earn you a position. Don't try to base your application entirely on that (though I'm sure you know that, already). So, a small, but definitely positive, contribution to any application. Getting funded on your own would be a different matter and much more positive. Deans, in particular, love that funding inflow. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As <NAME> pointed out, your advisor should be writing their own proposals and not having PhD students do it. The best way for you to benefit from this situation is for your advisor to describe your contribution to the proposal in the letter of recommendation. If the advisor makes it clear that you went beyond what is expected of a PhD student, this makes you look good while probably avoiding making your advisor look bad. In summary, do not discuss your contributions to the proposal yourself. I do not see proposal-writing as likely to be decisive in hiring at the assistant professor level or below. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Grant writing for a Ph.D. student is a plus as mentioned in the previous comments. But it does not pave the way for you if you have not done a good job in publication, teaching experience, and research. I suggest that this item even should not be emphasized too much because the search committee might think you are diverting them from the main elements by listing something that nobody expects from a student. I would suggest you mentioned it as a simple experience, because funding is not all about the writing and even the idea. It has more complexity such as, as mentioned in the previous responses, the PI, his/her reputation, the ranking of the school, the panel, the referees, and many many other factors. Upvotes: 0
2022/01/29	6,690	28,599	<issue_start>username_0: For almost 6 years, I have given courses on different CS topics at my university. This year, I decided to make my lectures and tutorials for a specific master course as perfect as possible, so I and my team (tutors) put an enormous effort (compared to previous years) to provide: * clear and informative slides, * explanation on a digital board + the slides (the only course providing recorded slides and board), * diverse examples, * the best possible video and audio quality, * exciting and interesting weekly tasks, * we even covered the fundamentals of linear algebra and math in general as a bonus because I noticed that my former students had a problem understanding some topics because of this. * we also made the course hybrid: online, on-campus and recorded (the only course provided with this format at our university). As I have taught the same course for 4 years, I would say that this year's version is at least twice as good than the first version. I not only base this on what I mentioned earlier but also, 1. I have mastered the topic very well now, 2. I prepared the weekly tasks from real-life examples (this makes them of course much more difficult but better to learn), 3. My courses have become very well organized and transparent (compared to previous years), 4. etc. However, year after year, the student evaluation becomes worse based on strange reasons (e.g. the topic is difficult, we had to search by ourselves to understand\, etc). EDIT: One of the common reasons given is that they could understand some topics better when they watched YouTube videos. For the university level (masters degree), I believe I have to explain on a higher level and not like 3brown1blue videos. Consequently, the evaluation of this year is very bad compared to the first one from 4 years ago (which was relatively good). I am wondering now whether I should go back to the old style, which I personally find bad and not very conducive to learning, but the students seem to like. Or should I continue improving my course regardless of the students' comments? Note that as a junior lecturer, the evaluation would help me to get promoted. \By providing diverse examples and tasks, of course, they need to search by themselves and that was as intended. I think this is a legitimate learning technique as we cannot cover 100 percent of the topic in the course.<issue_comment>username_1: You seems to have done an impressive update to your course, and this is what really matters: you should not adjust the course contents based only on negative evaluations of others. Students will adjust their expectations to meet the expectations of the instructor, and changing the contents may lead to negative feedback since the students will “naturally” compare the course to the previous year. The key is to assess if your expectations are realistic. Constructive students feedbacks is one way to assess if your expectations differ from those of the students, but it is not the only way. Presumably you can compare the contents of your course with what is offered elsewhere, and judge if your course is an outlier in terms of contents and workload. You can also discuss your evaluations and mode of delivery with colleagues to see if the criticism is specific to your course or a cultural feature of recent cohorts critical of all courses. If indeed you judge that the negative comments (which presumably do not originate from a militant subset of disenchanted students) and other indications point to a problem with the contents, then make the adjustment. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Does your university have a center where you can go to have your syllabus evaluated? For example, at the universities I have taught at, there are Centers for Teaching and Learning (or some variation upon that title), where you can have your syllabus and materials evaluated by administrative staff focused on pedagogy. There might not be anything "wrong" with your course, so I suggest having an external reviewer look at your materials might help. On a personal note, for an online course I teach, I've ended up adding a lot of different materials to accommodate a variety of learners and learning styles over the years. However, by adding more videos, lecture notes, and activities in addition to the standard lecture and slides, some students have felt overwhelmed by the sheer variety of course content. So while I thought I was making my course more accessible to some, it was becoming less accessible to others by bringing in too many types of content. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: > > \By providing diverse examples and tasks, of course, they need to search by themselves and it was intended. I think this is a legitimate learning technique as we cannot cover 100 of the topic in the course. > > > 1. Structure the content into a tree by section and then subsections to reduce search time of content. 2. Provide a digital quiz for each section, and subsection to document a distribution of student knowledge. [Any distribution other than a normal is bad to see for a section] 3. Address all sections with a large percentage of quiz mistakes a review in class at a special time. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: One observation, based on my own habit of completely redoing classes, is new syllabuses suffer severely from lack of tuning. In practice, a "worse" syllabus which I've taught a few times before is as good or better than a new "better" one. I'd say to put a moratorium on "improving" the class. You've taught it this way once, you've seen what didn't quite work and so on. Use that to make tweaks to smooth it out. One thing that jumps out -- real-world examples. All students say they want them, but as you wrote, they always involve way too much domain specific knowledge. The actual thing you're trying to teach gets lost in the mess. Cut them and go back to the old "teaching" examples. It's not a complete loss -- when students complain you'll be able to say "yeah, we tried that -- didn't work". Then just work on general smoothing. If lots of students loved a certain 3rd-party video, go ahead and add a link to it. Think back over test Q's you were sure more people should have known, but didn't. If students were weak on a topic they needed later in the course, expand it a bit and cut one of your darlings. I love teaching recursion, and did it at the end of 1st semester intro to programming, but it's tough to give a good assignment on, students needed more work with arrays, so it was cut. A longer-term project is to look at previous, or even concurrent, courses in the major. Some things in the old syllabus may have taken advantage of those topics (maybe they all wrote small bash scripts, but have never seen HTML), or meshed better (and even if you wrote the old syllabus, it may have meshed coincidentally). One of the hardest things for me is to look over my shiny new baby syllabus (and the rest) and realize I had some good ideas, but also a lot of wishful thinking. And thinking it wouldn't need lots of tweaking was pure hubris. I feel like teaching ComSci at least has a metaphor for this -- writing a new program is fun. But you don't have a product until after the drudgery of debugging, adding nice interfaces, and so on. Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_5: Are you sure that you are measuring the quality of your course and not something else? The last two years are special (corona), maybe that affected evaluations * 6 years is a time in which the curriculum in the schools can change * 6 years is a time in which the perception and expectation of students change, maybe there are good lectures on youtube or theattention span has changed * 6 years is a time in which the composition of your audience may change - maybe CS became more popular So before drawing conclusions, talk to your colleagues to get a reference value for how critical students may perceive something. Check if the curriculum in school of your audience has changed (if homogeneous enough). After you actually verified that you can actually read something from this, break it down. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: I think many answers here miss the most basic thing. The thing is to talk to students and ask them what their problems are when trying to perform on an evaluation test/ what they find difficult. The quality of the course as a course itself should by determined by what the student gets out of it, not of the material or Individual components. You may have the best material in the world or the best presentation in the world, but if the students don't get it (over repeated testing), then that material has some fault in it preventing it from being useful. You also have another thing to check, the actual question papers. See what the students are writing, what they can and don't answer , and, if you've talked about these things in class or not. Also secondly, you don't have to just make it abstract because it's a higher level. People are people whether they are studying in UG or masters. If you can present the topic in a nice and easy to digest way, then even masters student would get more from your lecture than if you didn't. Two key examples of this I found are <NAME>'s book on Visual Differential Geometry, and Complex analysis. Sure, it doesn't really teach either of these topic in the conventional sense, but reading these books, the student can develop a real passion for these subject and that can propel them into studying and working through a dry rigorous text. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: Your Premise Is Broken. ----------------------- If someone explained to you that he had refactored a program and now it ran slower, you would not call that an improvement. Yet you make an analogous claim in your question. To the extent that student evaluations measure quality (which is a BIG, BIG caveat!!), your course is lower quality\* than it was before. You had something that worked, and you "fixed" it until you no longer had something that worked. Your starting point has to recognize that. You denigrate, "the old style, which I personally find bad and does not help to learn but the students seem to like it." I think you should strongly consider that you may not have a good perspective on what helps your students learn. That can be true without any failing on your part - several of my favorite professors from undergrad were objectively terrible at gauging the level of understanding. Fundamentally though, if quality means good student evals, your effort was counterproductive. Sorry. --- \Alright, look: "quality" is totally undefined. You could define quality to mean "maximizing the number of examples that use pineapples", and then you could legitimately have a higher quality course, but your metrics would not really lead you anywhere useful. I'm assuming that you're going with something like student satisfaction as your measure of quality, because otherwise mentioning the student evaluations is a non-sequitur. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: Dumbing down your classes and assigning less difficult HW is one way to increase your evaluation scores. So, if you're after higher scores, go with the flow. Students don't see courses the same way, and putting in the time and effort is rarely worth it from the evaluations prospective. You'd have to change the system to achieve what you're striving to, which is better professionals. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: I remember reading that among the studies that compared student evaluations of their teachers with student learning, only one study was really scientific, in that it 1) measured learning by an external, independent test (not by the grade), 2) was longitudinal, i.e. tested students \before \* they took the course as well as after, and 3) also measured student performance in later courses, for which the given course was a prerequisite. There was a slight negative correlation between student performance measured this way, and student evaluation of the teacher. In other words, hard work is arduous, but it pays off. I believe there is far too much emphasis on positive student evaluations. EDIT: @CuriousFindings suggested I add references. I am not sure if any of these 3 is the article I was trying to remember, but they all seem highly relevant: [Student Evaluations of Teaching Encourages Poor Teaching and Contributes to Grade Inflation: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis, <NAME>roebe, 2020](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01973533.2020.1756817) [Why Good Teaching Evaluations May Reward Bad Teaching", <NAME>ebe, 2016](https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Why-Good-Teaching-Evaluations-May-Reward-Bad-Stroebe/3d37a5eab988e67d1bcb75a7c7f1e28798611d02) ["Student evaluations of teaching (mostly) do not measure teaching effectiveness", <NAME>, <NAME> and <NAME>, 2016](https://doi.org/10.14293/S2199-1006.1.SOR-EDU.AETBZC.v1) Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: If you'd like to better understand student reviews, you'll have to ask them. Ideally, in a conversation with a few of them, rather than a survey that doesn't let you ask clarifying questions. As a Master student in CS myself, I'll go over your bullet points to give you my thoughts, but keep in mind that I have not experienced your course. > > For the university level (master degree), I believe I have to explain on a higher level and not like 3brown1blue videos. > > > There are some very high-quality videos on youtube. They don't go in-depth as much as the university course should, but they are amazing for understanding the rough idea. In my experience, a lot of lecturers don't give an introduction and overview, they jump straight to the rigorous math and leave me wondering what exactly we are doing, why we are doing it, and whether this is something I should be able to follow or even come up with myself. Personally, I prefer learning with just youtube and blog posts, plus the university course's exercises + solutions over a live lecture that I can not pause, vastly. All I need for that is clear keywords on the slides so I know what I need to google and how much I need to grasp of it. > > clear and informative slides, > > > which you are covering well. However, other students who prefer a live lecture will gain less from the "informative slides" and would prefer them to be light on unneccessary details. "A good talk has very little text on the slides" vs "Good lecture slides make the actual lecture redundant". Now one solution is of course to have a lecture and a different script for self-studying. Which is generally nice, except > > explanation on a digital board + the slides (the only course providing recorded slides and board) > > > Make sure that it is clear which parts need to be looked at as necessary and sufficient for the exam. One course I had this semester provided additional video recordings as replies to some student questions, had lecture slides, video recordings where the lecturer stated more than was written on the slides, exercises that seemed to deviate from the lecture, graded projects that were fully off-topic in my opinion and distracted from actually learning anything, and reference material book chapters. The book chapters were all very good! But reading the reference material from just a single day's lectures would already take me two weeks. And when I asked what was relevant for understanding, and what for the exam, the answer was that all material might contain something the other stuff does not was very unsatisfactory. So please make sure you aren't overwhelming your students by giving them a lot of "helpful material" that they then have to work through in addition. (Or think that they have to). > > we even covered the fundamentals of linear algebra and math in general as a bonus because I noticed that my former students had a problem understanding some topics because of this. > > > This is great for the struggling students, and boring for the ones that already got it. Perhaps some students are giving you worse reviews because of this. If you can start this kind of lecture with a slide that summarizes what will be covered to allow students to see if they need this lecture or not (and tell them this is the intent), that could help. > > diverse examples, > > > "Do I really have to look at those? I already got the main concept but maybe the exam will ask about this specific example..." One thing you have not mentioned yet is how clearly you state the goals. I find clear goals very useful, such as: * What is relevant for the exam (Exams are often just barely related to the actually interesting topics. Because the interesting part is harder to actually test.) * What is just additional info for those interested * What is not even really meant to be understood? (e.g. some proofs on the slides) * What are students supposed to learn in * This course * This lecture session / This exercise the best possible video and audio quality, exciting and interesting weekly tasks, > > we also made the course hybrid: online, on-campus and recorded (the only course provided with this format at our university). > > > I love that! With all the thought you are putting in, you probably got this right. But for completeness: Hybrid can be a terrible experience compared to online-only. Things I've experienced that are negative examples: * Lecturer used laptop microphone for zoom, and worn microphone in the room. So everyone who was there in person understood perfectly fine, but whenever the lecturer walked one step to the side, we wouldn't hear anything online. * Chat was not monitored. I find one of the biggest advantages of online lectures how easy it is to interact with the lecturer. I can simply unmute myself and ask when something is unclear. Compare that to raising your hand for ten minutes, then yelling "sorry?!" and still not being noticed, in the lecture hall. But even with this pro gone, just having a chat that the prof notices works well. Having a TA monitor the chat instead is alright too, but then no interaction is possible anymore. * Lecture took place in-person only, exercise session directly afterwards took place online-only. > > I master the topic very well now, > > > That's great, but does this make the course harder as well? It sounds like you did a lot of additions that would be very useful for learning the topics of your course. But sadly, your course is probably less than a third of the total credits students are supposed to take in one semester. Where every lecture already is more effort than it is supposed to be. If I feel like I have to put in nights and weekends to fare somewhat okay in your course, that will negatively influence my review of your course. Also, is your presentation still aware of the difficulties that people have with the topic when they first encounter it? Perhaps you've mastered your topic too well and assume things are obvious that you yourself also didn't grasp instantly. > > we had to search by ourselves to understand > > > Keep in mind that this can mean multiple things. Maybe you did explain it in a way the did not understand, yes. Or maybe you explained things that were too obvious so it was confusing because it was not clear why you were even explaining in the first place. Or maybe it just took a while to really grasp it and reading it up online worked, but watching the lecture a second time a week later would also have worked... This is looping back to my initial advice: Perhaps you can ask some of the students how it's going. For example, you could casually do some small-talk with students in the break when there are no more questions. One time a lecturer did this and realized thanks to that that we actually had none of the ~five prerequisite courses he assumed everyone must have taken before his lecture ... he didn't realize that CS students didn't even have the option to take those prerequisite lectures and still his course was one of the recommended three to us. He also started to summarize in between subtopics "What did we do. Why did we do it. What do we want to do next. How will we do it." after our casual feedback, and that made it a lot easier to follow. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_11: > > EDIT: One of their common reasons, is that they could understand some topics better when they watched youtube videos. For the university level (master degree), I believe I have to explain on a higher level and not like 3brown1blue videos. > > > Based on this student feedback, it might be the case that students are lacking some preliminary or basic knowledge of things you are assuming in the course. It is okay to use your notes to explain things "on a higher level", but you should ensure that students who lack preliminary knowledge have access to resources to learn the basics before they get to your "higher level". Students often lack competence in preliminary topics that are assumed knowledge in a course, even if they have passed a previous course that taught that material (often due to forgetting things, etc.). Often in my own teaching I have found that it is useful to include some preliminary notes/resources to assist students to learn or refresh knowledge of topics that are taken as assumed knowledge in the course. One thing that would be reasonable to do here is to pick a bunch of online videos that explain preliminary or basic concepts well (perhaps ask the students which videos they found helpful) and give links to those resources to offer students a refresher on those topics. Don't be afraid to incorporate outside resources if these are good quality and freely available; this can be a useful supplement to your own course materials. In particular, you can then frame your own notes and resources in a way that quickly goes on to higher-level concepts. This can allow you the freedom to focus your own notes on important substantive material in the course, while also offering guidance on resources for gaining preliminary knowledge. Even if your students find the videos more helpful than your notes, if they find those videos through links you have provided, they are likely to give you credit for that in their evaluation of the course. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_12: This is touched on by username_9's answer, but the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) is discovering that people are remarkably bad at determining how well they are learning. The vast majority of students will say that they are "a visual learner", by which they mean they want to sit back and watch an entertaining lecture. SOTL, on the other hand, consistently shows that the best way to learn is to roll up your sleeves and struggle through the material. Needing decent course evaluations for your promotion is the big downside of refusing to cater to students wishes. The best counter to bad evaluations that I can think of is if you can provide evidence to your promotion committee that students are learning better under your revised course than the previous version (providing evidence to your students that they're learning better can also help their attitude). If there is a subsequent course that a large portion of your students take, you could see how their grades from one course translate into grades in the next course. But for a graduate level course (my interpretation of "master"), finding a subsequent course may not be feasible. If you don't have a subsequent course, you could use performance on the final exam (or specific questions) as a gauge for their learning. The difficulty here is comparing that performance across terms. Even if you repeat a question, if it matches too well with a question from their homework, that will inflate those scores on the final exam. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_13: > > I believe I have to explain on a higher level and not like 3brown1blue videos. > > > Why? Your job is to help students understand. It's not beneath their dignity - or yours - for you to speak at a "low" enough level for them to easily grasp the concepts. I'll bet that in earlier iterations of teaching this course, when your own understanding was less solid, your explanations were easier for the novice to follow. As you increasingly mastered the topic, things that now seemed obvious to you (but aren't obvious to the novice) "fell out" of your explanations, and those tiny omissions made it increasingly difficult for each new crop of novices, i.e. the new sets of students, to follow. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_14: All the students are not always right. That is what one can say about evaluations. But you should try to do the best you can for them. You are doing a job, but you are also training the next generation of productive citizens. If improving the course keeps you on track, and may help the students in the long run, I suggest continuing to do that. (It is definitely true that students need review on math. Mathematics teachers can tell you that, since we constantly review lower level topics in higher level classes.) Experimenting can also be useful, if you keep the correct framework in mind. Do not change just out of exhaustion. But try to find the time to plan for changing things up, and see how it goes, including how you feel about it. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_15: I think that it is very important to acknowledge both limitations and importance of the student evaluations. There can be reasons for bad evaluation results that you either can't do anything about (such as general frustration about the impact of the Covid situation on the university experience), or where students have certain expectations that I'd proudly disappoint (such as all too detailed information about what will be asked in the exam and how certain potential questions should be answered). However there is also very worthwhile information in the student feedback that may help you to understand why your singing and dancing latest update of the course doesn't work quite as well for the students as you think it should. It really pays off to read the feedback with an open mind and to develop an opinion about everything that is written (like, as I said before, "the students may have a point but I can't do anything about X" or "feedback Y reveals that the students have an expectation that I think is inappropriate, and next time I will say straight on that they shouldn't expect this", or "I wasn't aware that Z is a problem but according to the students it is, and I should do something about it"). Always have in mind that what the students write is their perception (sometimes by the way there are rather unique perceptions that are not shared by most other students). It is not "true" in any objective sense, and there may be reasons to create "dissonances", i.e., to do something for better learning that leads to some students being unhappy (as written in another answer, students are often not good at assessing how well they're learning, and they may sometimes learn more and better from a course that they like less). On the other hand, ultimately you do your work for the students, so their perceptions are important and shouldn't be discounted without good reasons. One thing that I often do is a personal feedback survey, which the students can fill in anonymously, only asking as open questions "What do you like about the course?" and "What do you think can be improved?" after maybe 1/3 of the course (the official evaluation comes much later), just to see early on how they think it goes and to maybe change something, or to openly give reasons for why I'm doing something that some students don't like. One issue that apparently hasn't been mentioned yet is that there are some psychological factors that are very important for making the students feel good, like whether they can perceive your passion for the subject, whether they feel encouraged to ask and contribute in class, whether they feel valued for their contributions etc., or rather negatively, whether you make them feel that you are frustrated by their lack of appreciation for your wonderful course. You can have the best course preparation in the world, still if you make students feel embarrassed and stupid when you see them making mistakes (in class or in exercises), and they're then scared to share their thoughts, this will not go down well (and rightly so). Upvotes: 1
2022/01/29	549	2,091	<issue_start>username_0: During my BSc, I had an overall OK-ish relationship with my adviser. For clarification, my adviser was not a supervisor (I've seen the words being used interchangeably in some countries and unis). He was just someone I went to if I had questions or concerns about my course. At the end of my degree, I blew up an internship interview with him, and I am worried if this will affect my chances of getting a PhD in the same department (but in completely different research group).<issue_comment>username_1: Unless the professor you mentioned is on the hiring committee for your PhD, I’m not sure what can be done. Don’t write an email! I teach undergrad and grad students, so I want to put myself in your shoes. I tried writing out your problem, but it feels silly: “Dear Doctor So-and-So, I’m not sure if you remember me but I wanted to let you know I’m applying for a PhD at Your Uni with Dr. Other Person. I wanted to reach out because I interviewed with you a few years ago for an internship but my wifi was cutting out and, during the interview, I soon realized the internship didn’t fit my skill set. I wanted to apologize for the lack of professionalism.” If I received an e-mail like this from a student, I would be confused. I would probably be nice and write back “Don’t worry about it. Good luck!” That’s it. Why even send an email? I’m sorry you’re worried about this prior episode but it shouldn’t affect your PhD prospects with another professor. If nothing else, this happened during the pandemic. I feel like a lot of my colleagues have been much more generous towards students because of this time in history. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: > > do academics hold grudges? > > > It depends on the context and the personality of the academic. But in general there is no reason to believe that the distribution of academics who do hold grudges is in any way different from the general population. So in summary: yes, some academics do hold grudges, or at least do not want to invest in someone who has disappointed them once. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/29	605	2,610	<issue_start>username_0: I had my first on-campus interview 10 days ago at an R1 university, which is not an ivy but a dream job in my field. I was supposed to give a colloquium and present a research talk about my future research and mentoring plans. Not only did every one-on-one interview go well, even after the research talk (that many had told me is the most important factor in decision making) many faculties told me the talk was amazing and they were very impressed with it. Also, I received a lot of positive feedback after the thank-you emails. Does this mean anything? I don't know what to expect. I know many people say they thought the interview went so well for them, but they didn't end up getting an offer. But I have never heard someone talking about these many positive feedbacks (some in writing). Since I'm extremely stressed and the waiting period is too tough, I appreciate if someone could tell me about their experience, positive or negative... P.S.: I know 2 out of 3 other candidates in person and they haven't heard either. I also know the last interview was last week.<issue_comment>username_1: You thought your interview and talk went well, you got good feedback, and the email indicates you're probably still in the running. That's encouraging but not a guarantee. You'll find out whether you got the appointment when they decide to tell you. That's all that can be known for now. In short, it means you likely have a good chance. But don't count your chickens before they hatch. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Only an offer is an offer. If there are several top rated candidates all of them may be getting positive feedback. You made a good impression. You'll have to be satisfied with that until something official is done. Good luck. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The purpose of positive feedback is not to tell you they want to hire you. There are two goals in mind: * The positive feedback will encourage you to accept the job if it is offered to you. * The positive feedback establishes a good working relationship if you end up getting the job, which might happen in the distant future. They can also just be polite. If the search has been run well, all the finalists are qualified for the job. There is uncertainty that they will accept an offer. The primary motivation of the department is to ensure that the position is filled. They do not want to be left understaffed. They do not want to do the search again. Nothing you hear between your interview and your offer/rejection is a reliable indicator of what happened during the search. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/30	502	2,271	<issue_start>username_0: I am a beginning phD student in theoretical physics trying to understand how the research process works. I have been wondering how top physicists/scientists actually do research. I would like to work on specific problems and original calculations. However, I find that I would also want to understand how other physicists think about problems/ what the core ideas in my field are by trying to read the original papers in the subject. I am struggling with this process. How to find the balance between reading important papers in my field (older papers with a large number of citations), recent papers, and working on my own calculations. How can I find a problem to work on? I wonder if experienced researchers can give advice on this.<issue_comment>username_1: You thought your interview and talk went well, you got good feedback, and the email indicates you're probably still in the running. That's encouraging but not a guarantee. You'll find out whether you got the appointment when they decide to tell you. That's all that can be known for now. In short, it means you likely have a good chance. But don't count your chickens before they hatch. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Only an offer is an offer. If there are several top rated candidates all of them may be getting positive feedback. You made a good impression. You'll have to be satisfied with that until something official is done. Good luck. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The purpose of positive feedback is not to tell you they want to hire you. There are two goals in mind: * The positive feedback will encourage you to accept the job if it is offered to you. * The positive feedback establishes a good working relationship if you end up getting the job, which might happen in the distant future. They can also just be polite. If the search has been run well, all the finalists are qualified for the job. There is uncertainty that they will accept an offer. The primary motivation of the department is to ensure that the position is filled. They do not want to be left understaffed. They do not want to do the search again. Nothing you hear between your interview and your offer/rejection is a reliable indicator of what happened during the search. Upvotes: 2
2022/01/30	597	2,631	<issue_start>username_0: Recently I have got a rejection from a journal in mathematics. But I am sceptical about the journal decision. The reason is that the referee has written a full 1 page report. The first line of the referee report starts with `there are several errors in the results. Here are comments and suggestions`. Now when I read the comments and suggestion, the referee clearly pointing every single errors and more importantly, suggesting how to correct those and make it authentic. The referee has given some ideas to include more results based on my existing results. I have never seen such a positive reports, specifically, the positive suggestions to make the paper authentic. The reports ends with the words `here are some more suggestions` and then suggesting to rewrite the references and other important issues. This seems the referee is interested in the work. After reading this report I believe that I can address all those points raised by the referee. The referee nowhere said against the paper, didn't say to reject it either but suggested to make correction. So I want to submit the revised version in that journal. However, the journal returned the paper without asking revisions. I don't know who was the editor, i got mail from the journal coordinator. It is a good (not top) journal of World scientific publication. I am much confident about my work and got more confidence after the referee report. Since the referee has given lot of time, I wish to submit the revised version. So my question: > > Can I mail to the journal to ask/request to submit the revised version ? > > > Thanks<issue_comment>username_1: You certainly can, but keep in mind that they rejected your paper, so they're technically not willing to reconsider it even if you improve it. Still, it's possible they change their minds. So it depends on how much you want to publish with the journal. The worst case scenario is they reject it again, in which case you're wasting time. In the end it's up to you. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Let me start this answer with the following important observation: referees do not decide whether a paper should be accepted for publication, editors do. It might well be that the based on the report the editor decided that the paper even after the corrections will no meet the standards of the journal. Maybe even the referee communicated such an assessment to the editor in a confidential note. Let me therefore suggest a different course of action: revise the manuscript based on the referee's suggestions and then submit it to a different journal. Upvotes: 3
2022/01/30	798	3,660	<issue_start>username_0: I am applying for faculty position in some school and among the documents needed, they asked for "Teaching, Learning and research philosophy.", this my first time to hear about learning philosophy and not sure if it's written separately or combined with the teaching philosophy. I am familiar with teaching, research, service, diversity and inclusion statements, but first time to pass by learning statement/philosophy. I tried to google up, but I couldn't find an answer. Thanks in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: A learning philosophy is about how people learn things. It can mesh with a teaching philosophy, but isn't the same. Different people learn different ways, though there is some controversy about such distinctions. There has been research on learning, based on the science of the brain itself. The idea is that learning requires a physical change in the brain - rewiring of synapses. A good source is The Art of Changing the Brain by <NAME>. Ultimately people learn through reinforcement and feedback. A teaching philosophy can work with such things. Relatively few people actually "learn" something by seeing/hearing it once, in a lecture, say. So instructors give assignments that provide reinforcement and, hopefully, also provide feedback on the learning so that the wrong things aren't reinforced. People can learn without formal teaching, of course, and people can "teach" with little actual learning. Ideally we want to bring the practice of teaching into conformity with how people actually learn. One thing that new instructors often forget is that their students are all different and that, in particular, most of their students are different from themselves. Professors got to where they are, mostly, through a unstoppable drive to learn. Their students often have different goals. It is also important to recognize, as an instructor, that students often don't really know how to learn. Ineffective note taking, over reliance on memorization at the expense of insight, cramming for tests are seen too frequently. While it is possible, to write a combined statement on learning and teaching, and in general, one without the other may not be optimal, in the present case I think the expectation is that you provide separate documents on teaching, learning, and research. That is just from the phrasing of the request. You wouldn't combine all three into one document. The teaching and learning documents need to be consistent, of course. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: One's philosophy of teaching ought to be informed primarily by one's views of how people learn effectively, so a philosophy of learning will generally determine the philosophy of teaching. Consequently, it would be logical to write them either together or in quick succession, usually with your views on learning preceding your views on teaching. You have not specified any particular instructions you have been given to write these things, so I would assume that you have latitude to write the statements as you see fit, either as separate statements that follow in a logical order, or as a single combined statement. One general thing to bear in mind for any faculty application is that you are seeking a position in part as a professional researcher/writer --- you should not need hand-holding on how many pages to use, what parts are together/separate, how to structure your writing, etc. If no constraints are specified then use your professional judgment on how best to write the statements in question and show that you are able to produce a clear and effective statement without detailed guidance. Upvotes: 1
2022/01/30	461	2,153	<issue_start>username_0: One of my paper was rejected from some journal around one an half year ago (I still working on my paper, anyway :)) and during the submission process, I have filled my profile in their submission system and also ticked the box: available as reviewer, recently the editor of that journal sent me an invitation to review some paper related to my background. I accepted that invitation and reviewed the paper, and still receiving more invitations from them. I am really wondering, if I am not qualified to publish with that journal, how I become qualified to review for them ?!!<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, it's fine. When the publication passed on publishing your work, they were rejecting the project you were currently working on; they were not rejecting you as a researcher or a person. They could have rejected that project for many reasons: maybe there was an issue you still needed to work out with the project, or maybe it wasn't a best fit for the publication. Maybe the editor liked your work but had to respect their reviewers. None of that is a rejection of you: any fair reviewer or editor would understand that what they write doesn't always work with the first journal they submit to. Also, peer reviewers usually don't know who you are. So I wouldn't connect the decision to pass on your publication with the decision to make you a reviewer. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The journal rejected your submitted paper, not you. The journal asked for you to review a paper for them, not for your submitted paper to review a paper for them. Journals sometimes use people as reviewers who publish with them, but that's for convenience (they have your contact info and area of interest on file) and to utilize a bit of social capital (asking for a review is a bit of a favor, and people may feel more socially compelled to accept the assignment if a journal has published their papers). It's not like publishing a paper enters you into an exclusive club qualified to review; peer reviewers simply need to be sufficiently expert in their field to offer a professional opinion on a paper. Upvotes: 3
2022/01/30	635	2,459	<issue_start>username_0: I am writing a capstone paper using MLA. I am using a digital file for a source and the file's title seems to have a typo and improper capitalization. The title is "District Demographics all students (preK-13)" however, there is no grade 13 in this US school district, at least according to the district's website. Normally, one would capitalize all words in a title (or at least I would). Is it improper to add a [sic] to the actual citation and not just a quote? My proposed citation would look something like: > > <NAME>. “Districts Demographics all students (PreK-13)” [sic]. 2021. Google Sheets file. > > ><issue_comment>username_1: It is hard to imagine that an error in the title of a paper would escape notice. I'd be hesitant to suggest that it was. If you have a proper copy of the paper and it, indeed, said "13" then I wouldn't want to second guess it. Perhaps there is something about that district that you don't know. But for an assignment it might be ok. For an assignment it isn't a problem until it is a problem, at which case, you could actually verify to the prof. that you were accurate in the reference. In the old days of paper submissions, a sticky note (well, not the old-old days, I guess) pointing to the accuracy would be a solution also. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: I would say no - it is implicitly assumed that the bibliography entry describes the publication in a well-defined way, however absurd or wrong the original title might be. Its sole purpose is for the reader to be able to find the referred material - no more, no less. Like Roland said in the comments, if the same sentence or some other excerpt from the paper you believe to be wrong would occur mid-text, then you use [sic]. Actually, there is no need to confirm it is wrong - [sic] indicates your belief that that is the case. EDIT: Also, the capitalization is a part of the citation style/journal style, as pointed out in the comments. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Capitalize a citation the way the citation style guide says to capitalize it. In academic journals, the copyeditor will change the capitalization to whatever is customary for that journal if the author has not done it. Do not change "13" to "12." That just makes it harder to find the reference later. Search tools understand capitalization, but not grade numbering. I do not feel a need for [sic] to be included. Upvotes: 0
2022/01/30	1,384	5,858	<issue_start>username_0: On Tuesday, I will be starting a postdoc at a highly prestigious UK institution. I have already been a postdoc for a year at a lower tiered institute, and I believe the probation was not much of a concern mainly due to that very reason. Additionally, a very nice and friendly [PI](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal_investigator) and a casual (yet productive) environment, did not make the probation period much of a concern to me. However, the current position that I will be starting is at my dream project / institution, and the environment seems more tense and fast paced (and add to that a bit of imposter syndrome). For this reason, the probation period has become an irrational cause for stress and anxiety. I suppose what I would like to know is what to avoid at all costs to ensure that this period passes without any issues. Note: The probation period is six months and postdoc contract is three years.<issue_comment>username_1: You shouldn't worry about "surviving the probation period". Your goal should be to do a good postdoc - overall, not only during or primarily during the probation period. After all, what is it worth to make it through the probation period, if you're not doing well in the rest of the postdoc - would you be any better off in that case? Overall, I thus wouldn't worry too much about it - at least not more than striving to do a good postdoc altogether. It might even be that the probation period is a legal requirement for any kind of contract (not just postdocs) in the UK. (One more comment: Given that you don't state at all how long the probation is, it is hard to give any concrete advice: The relevance of a one-month probation is quite different from a 6-month or 1-year probation.) Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It's your dream institution and your dream project, but this is just a patina over the work and the working environment you will be living in the next 3 years. And this patina is unfortunately not that relevant, in the long term. Why? If you are interested in the academic career, the postdoc is much less relevant with respect to what you do as research than the "management" aspects (i.e. applying for funds, delivering the bureaucracy on time, supervising younger guns, etc...). My advice is to think of the probation period as a mutual evaluation period: they are evaluating you, but you are also evaluating your new workplace. Focus on the first "long-term" deadline (1st year project report? 1st year paper? whatever), work towards that goal, at the same time be yourself, be open, be curious, try to get in touch with the research of your peers in the department .... and then after 3 months make your decision. I think you will need 3-4 months to scratch the patina of your new working environment. If, after three months you are enjoying the project, the working environment, your work-life balance, the place and the project, it is unlikely you will be performing so badly that you do not pass the probation period. It is very easy to assess if a person is enjoying the work, it is very hard to assess quality of a PostDoc work after 6 months, and no one has the time to do that, so the evaluation will be on your motivation to keep on working on the project for 3 years [1], rather than on some metrics. If you are not enjoying it, just focus on yourself and work hard towards getting your own funds for your own project, make your own plan B. If you have no academic interests, use the remaining months to sharpen your CV for your exit to the private world. [1] pay attention not to corner yourself in a hole. They hired you for 3 years to work on a certain project, however your CV in 3 years down the road will benefit if you showed some independence in getting funds, supervising students, etcetc ... keep your possibilities open. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The phrase that stood out for me in your question was "... an irrational cause for stress and anxiety". It seems that you are pretty much on top of your professional game, but that the mental stress is the main problem in its own right. Have you considered talking to a coach/therapist? Professional help for anxiety is not reserved for people diagnosed or burned out. A few sessions might give you better insights than you can hope to get here. Most importantly perhaps, enjoy and have fun. You have got your dream position at a prestigious institution. It seems that the imposter syndrome gets more intense the higher the prestige, but try to find comfort in the fact that out of all other potential candidates, the chair has your name on it. And in academia that is almost always for a reason. If you bring that confidence in your own ability with you into your work you'll most likely have a great time. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Don't worry about the probation period. This is mostly a formality. Probation periods at UK universities exist mostly for policy reason (because the University imposes them on all employment contracts). They exist to have the legal option of terminating a contract, in truly problematic cases. They are not a tool (at least not for postdoc hires) to evaluate the quality of a hire. In practice terminating a postdoc contract creates a lot of hassle for your supervisor. Not least because, they have go through the hiring process for a replacement, which will probably delay whatever project you are supposed to work on by a year. Moreover, if your position funded from a grant, there may not be enough money left in the grant to offer a full three year contract to your replacement, making it harder to find a high quality replacement. So, unless you do something that makes your supervisor actively want to get rid of you at all costs, you will probably make it through probation. Upvotes: 3
2022/01/31	1,823	7,721	<issue_start>username_0: I had an academic issue during the week and I reached out about via text (he is okay with this method of communication. In fact, he gave me his number without me asking for it). I reached out to him on a Thursday at about 5:00pm, during regular business hours. However, he did not get back to me until 10:00pm on a Saturday night. This really bothered me. I valued our relationship between each other and wanted nothing more than to be strictly professional. Even though I reached out to him on Thursday, I wouldn’t have minded a reply Sunday or even Monday morning. Am I overreacting in this situation? --- Thank you for your feedback, as it has been particularly helpful. I believe that this is plenty on me to reflect on; however, due to my disability, I do feel a little overwhelmed at the moment. With that said, I appreciate everyone’s feedback and I will use this information to further reflect on my question and concerns regarding this situation. Thank you all very much for your time.<issue_comment>username_1: Unlike phone calls, texting is seen (by most people) as asynchronous, like email. You text when you can. The receiver responds when and if they can. I see nothing wrong with the the other person's behavior unless they expected an immediate reply. I doubt that they would have such an expectation. He may not have read your previous text until just before sending his. He may have had some moments to create a reply late on Saturday. Just don't feel obligated to reply immediately. Had I been the recipient I wouldn't even have seen the text until the next morning. Relax. Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Was the answer in any way unprofessional? If not, I would rather say that you are overreacting. Also, what is the difference between a message on a sunday (OK in you opinion) and a message on a Saturday night? Some people have a very busy life and send messages whenever they find the time. I have myself written mails and messages at odd times (like at 4 in the morning or also on a saturday night). It would be a much different thing if he had called you, or, if he had expected you to reply straight away. But like this, and if it is a single occurence, you are probably reading way too much into it. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I think your complaint is unwarranted. Your TA is a student just like you, undoubtedly balancing a lot of demands on their time, just like you. Instructors and TAs get lots of requests for help and they often batch them up when they finally have time -- and that's often the weekend. What you learned is that your TA takes the job seriously enough to work on the weekend, even late into the night. Be thankful you have such a dedicated TA. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Not unless you have established your intolerance for such texts explicitly. Also, a more common complaint in your scenario would be that it took them so long to respond if the expectations for the delay were set to one business day - which is also not always applicable. There is nothing unprofessional in their behavior - at least not from what you have described. If you have some communication needs or preferences, make them clear. State at what hours do you find texts and calls normal or when e-mails are preferable. I do not mind calls at 11 PM on pretty much any week day but 9 AM calls on Monday might disrupt my sleep - therefore, I ask people not to do so and, ideally, use asynchronous means of communication unless we have made some arrangements. What seems reasonable to you is not necessarily reasonable for everyone, and academia is great in that it has very flexible work hours. Please do not force everyone to work 9 to 5 just because that is how you and "all reasonable people" work. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Texting is informal. If you prefer more formal communication, stick to email. Of course, people may also send emails whenever they wish. But it might be easier for you to not check your emails than to not monitor your text messages. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I think giving a student from class your personal phone number for texting is not very professional. I wouldn’t do it, and I wouldn’t advise others to do it, unless there’s a clear good reason for it (eg you’re chaperoning a trip and so people might need to get ahold of you in an emergency). That said I don’t see why replying on Saturday night is more unprofessional than any other time outside of business hours. That said I haven’t read the text or been around for your other interactions, you might have a good reason to be concerned, but the Saturday night thing on its own doesn’t strike me as unusual. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: In addition to all the other great answers (asynchronous like email, dedicated enough to respond when they find the time, etc.), consider technical aspects as well. Texting was originally much more on an immediate thing - I consider it an evolution of pagers, which started as just a tone, then a number, then alphanumeric, but all based on getting a message to someone right now. But the technology has evolved into something much closer to email. There is no guarantee of delivery time with email - it can range from a few seconds to hours or even days. Texting often has the same problems: I received some texts this morning at 5:55am. Fortunately, my alarm was set for 6:00am so it didn't matter much. I responded to the last text and then scrolled back and realized several other texts had come in at the same time, and then found out that the sender had sent them all ~ 12 hours earlier and had absolutely no intention of waking me up. It is possible that your 5:00pm text was received in the middle of the night or the next morning. It is possible that the response was sent on Friday afternoon or Saturday morning. However, unlike email, there are no headers or metadata that we can look at (the cell phone companies likely have the information, but normal users can't see it) to determine when it was sent, which hops delayed delivery, etc. In general, I prefer email, as I can see it on multiple devices - including on a computer if I am in a place with poor cell phone reception - and because it allows far more organization of messages. If your TA is OK with email, stick to email and you won't get bothered by text messages at strange times. If your TA strongly prefers text messages, consider that strange times may actually be beyond his control. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: The time/day is not the issue. If there is an issue here, is that they’ve given you their phone number and that you’ve gven them theirs. If uncomfortable, simply delete their messages and block the number and learn from the experience. I see that many here don’t see an issue with exchange of phone numbers that has occurred here. I personally do and it would not happen where I live/work (even emailing from a private rather than work email address is not seen as ideal). And yes the TA’s likely a nice person and means well. The rules however exist for a reason. Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_8: At my university there are definitely rules. Work with children check is also required so anything that could be considered as pitential grooming is not to be done (‘grooming’ is well defined andvteachers bothnin Highschools and university have to be vigilant for any signs that student may be experiencing abuse and similarly that they’re not engagingnin any behaviour that may be part of ‘grooming’ - so no ‘special’ treatment or interest is to be shared with any particulat student - tge university has deficated services to help students) Upvotes: 0
2022/01/31	967	3,804	<issue_start>username_0: I'm planning to apply this year to several Ph.D. programs at different universities in Canada. The school where I finished my master's degree (outside Canada) uses a percentage grading system where a GPA of 94% is supposedly equivalent to a Canadian GPA of 3.60. This is indicated on the last page of my transcript. However, when I checked several reliable online resources on how to convert a foreign GPA to a Canadian GPA, I learned that the Canadian GPA of 3.60 is equivalent only to around 90%, not 94%. Thus, if I follow my former school's grade conversion scale, my GPA will look lower than if I follow the grade conversion scale that I found online. My question is: do Canadian universities defer to the grade conversion scale of a foreign university where the Ph.D. applicant graduated from or do they follow their own grade conversion scale? Thanks in advance for you reply!<issue_comment>username_1: Graduate admissions are done by a committee of professors, not bureaucrats. The professors will look at the overall records of applicants and make a [i]subjective[/i] decision about who is admitted. It's quite likely that at least one of the professors on the committee will be familiar with grading norms in your home country or even your specific university and evaluate your transcript directly without converting your grades to a "Canadian" scale. In any case, the small difference this will make in your GPA will have no impact on your application. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: You can expect individual universities to give you guidance on what information to provide and what conversions to use. If it's not clear, you can contact them for guidance. I took a couple minutes searching "(name of university) grade equivalent" and immediately found: <https://www.mcgill.ca/gradapplicants/international/equivalency> and <https://www.sgs.utoronto.ca/future-students/admission-application-requirements/international-credentials-equivalencies/> for the first two schools I looked at. Grades aren't everything, and much of the advice given for the US at [How are Ph.D. applications evaluated in the US, particularly for weak or borderline students? Am I likely to get into school X?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38237/how-are-ph-d-applications-evaluated-in-the-us-particularly-for-weak-or-borderl) will apply similarly for Canada. Like in the US, admissions are typically done at the department level, so you may need to address your questions to the specific program you apply to rather than a general graduate admissions department. A brief email like this would suffice: > > Dear (graduate program), > > > I'm interested in applying for a (degree) in (program/department). My > undergraduate education was at (institution) in (country), where > grades are (given on a scale of XX to YY/given as class ranks/however > your country/institution does it). > > > (explain in a sentence what you > already understand about grade conversions from reading information > provided by the university online) > > > (ask a specific question about > whether they would like you to convert grades and how they'd like you > to do this, if it isn't clear). > > > Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: I can’t see how 90% or 94% will make much of a difference. The availability of funding, academic trends on the transcript, and LoR will have a much greater impact than a 4% lost in translation. To answer your question directly: Canadian universities do NOT defer to grades awarded in other countries. There is a country-specific scaling factor based on historical data and some other factors (that I don’t know too well) and as far as I know this scaling factor is agreed upon by all universities (at least within one province). Upvotes: 1
2022/02/01	173	717	<issue_start>username_0: I am applying to U.S. PhD programs in mathematics. I have noticed that the school websites (and the official offers I have received) all separate the summer funding from the overall stipend; the summer funding being an additional $3-5k over the $20-40k funding given already for the academic year itself. Why is this the case? Isn't the expectation that students will work full time? If students get all the money, wouldn't it be more convenient (and look more impressive) to just state the full amount as the "stipend"?<issue_comment>username_1: Some students get no summer funding. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Some students may be working at internships in the summer. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/01	1,263	5,371	<issue_start>username_0: I'm a Master's student in Physics. The summer vacations are coming up, and we need to do a few projects under various faculty to know their work and field. I'm interested in experimental high-energy physics, and there is only one faculty available for it. I contacted her six days ago regarding the project. She hadn't replied to the mail, so I did again and yet again—still, no reply. I went to the department, and it turned out that she hasn't come to the office for two months or so. They said that she was working from home. Now, I have to know whether there is a project available so that if not, I can contact others. Meanwhile, other faculty have taken students, so places fill every day. I don't have time. The office member said that they couldn't contact her via phone but only by mail, And she also didn't reply to them for many days. What should I do? Is it right for me to call?<issue_comment>username_1: Don’t call. Don’t wait. It could be your emails are going to her spam folder, so you might consider asking someone in the department to email her asking for an update but since time is important consider instead changing projects (even if another project does not align with your preferred topic). For some reason this person is not responding to multiple emails, which is the most obvious way to contact her. Do you really want to work with someone who is so unresponsive? Put another way: if this person shows minimal interest in answering your emails now, why do you believe she will answer your emails later when you are in need of advice for the project? Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Definitely call the faculty member as soon as possible. Since you don’t have much time to find a position, as you said, it is better to try to contact the professor immediately and get a decision. It could be that you will be unsuccessful in contacting her by phone call, too, since even your office staff has apparently not been able to contact her on her phone. If the same thing happens to you, then drop this project and pursue a different opportunity. In case you are successful in contacting her by phone, be sure to ask her about her schedule and her preferred method of contacting, including the mean time of response you should expect. The pandemic has thrown many people’s lives into chaos. In "normal" times, I would agree with the advice in the [answer by User username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181826/138536), but it’s entirely possible that this faculty member will make adjustments to supervise you properly if she agrees to take you on as a project student. Better to find out for yourself, if possible, instead of assuming anything beforehand. (Of course, in the absence of direct information, you could ask students who have worked with this faculty member about her style of supervision, but I expect you would have already done this sort of standard background check anyway.) Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Well, you could, but it is unlikely she would answer you unless she is specifically hiding from the department. Maybe she is off the grid now and will be for a while. Or maybe she has found a job in another country without anyone knowing. Or gotten sick. Or maybe she is put off by your barrage of emails (and your communication needs clearly do not match). There are plenty of reasons for someone to be unresponsive and not up for you to discern them. Reach out to other faculty. Be prepared to navigate the situation where she does get back to you, but way too late. Ideally write her just one more email once you decide upon working under someone else. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I really do not understand some of the other answers. If your professor gave you their phone number, you should call them if you need to. It's not that big of a deal. I feel you are overthinking this. I and my PhD advisor called each other all the time. It is just another form of communication. That's the fastest way to get the information. You should not feel that it is inappropriate, like showing at their front door... Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: If you've worked with them before and they gave you their number, then it's OK to call (sparingly - depending on your relationship with them). If they have not given you their number, then do not call them at home. What if they're sick? What if they're taking care of someone who is sick? Professors have lives, too. If you've already emailed them three times (waiting an appropriate amount of time between each) and you don't have an email back - you have your answer. Sometimes no response is a response. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: You already have your answer: > > The office member said that they couldn't contact her via phone but only by mail, And she also didn't reply to them for many days. > > > When she cannot answer her staff, why should she be able to answer you? I would try to go another route. Can you talk to someone of her team about your matter? For many things it is very likely she would delegate it to someone in the team anyway. They may be able to provide help until you get an official answer. It may even be an advantage, when you may be able to start working on your project before it gets officially registered (and deadlines may be defined and so on). Upvotes: 1
2022/02/01	235	1,079	<issue_start>username_0: After receiving a report on a manuscript from the referee, then the revised version must be submitted to the editor. In this step, will the revised version be sent to referee again to check that or the editor evaluate the revised version?<issue_comment>username_1: Depends. If the requested revisions are minor then the editor might be able to check the revisions themselves. Otherwise they will usually be returned to a referee, typically the ones that reviewed the original since they have read the paper before so they can review it faster than a fresh pair of eyes. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Normally, if you do peer review, you are asked if you are willing to review the same paper again in case another review round is necessary. The likelyhood of having reviewers, not editors do the re-review changes depending often on how major the revisions have been. The more revisions were necessary, the more likely it is that the reviewers will do the second round - at least from my own and colleagues experience. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/01	661	2,860	<issue_start>username_0: I have a 14 page draft sitting there for a year now, which I wrote exclusively. For my work I used specific hardware, which my supervisor got me access to so I cannot take his name off the paper. I have been asking him countless times to review/comment on it, but all he says is that he's busy and he'll look at it when he has time. He doesn't consent to submitting it anywhere, not even on arxiv, since he's 'not convinced of the current state'. I asked two external researchers in the field who flagged minor issues with figure captions or some clarifications, but other than that said that 'it is well written'. My supervisor is oldschool, tenured and doesn't care if something takes years to publish. Submitting without his consent could leave a bad impression on editors if my supervisor intervenes. I changed to industry after my PhD (one year ago), so it's not like I desperately need it on my publication record, but I do feel that I would like to showcase my work. The only way forward I see currently is to take the main idea of the paper and re-write it without the hardware implementation, so that I don't have to put his name on it. Of course this will take time. Is there another way?<issue_comment>username_1: The odds are unfortunately not in your favour. I can think of two options besides what you are already thinking: (1) Try to make it sound as if he can get something out of it. Then offer deadlines, cite your reasons for urgency. Perhaps you can say that this paper will open new pathways for your collaboration where you can secure another funding for both of you -- you don't have to, but a convincing offer might get him started. (2) In some institutions, there are ombudsmen or spokesperson who handle such academic collaboration cases. They may contact this person on a subtle note, asking that they are concerned about the status of your work. Do not take this option lightly. Since you are an ex-student, I do not think he will bother much about it. If both the above fail in the next 6 months, and you have made sure he has not used that work anywhere else (which you should definitely complain against), you should go ahead with your idea of re-writing. Do not submit anything without his consent, this will put the ball badly in your court. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: You've spent enough time on asking him. You have made the suggested corrections and clarifications, I take it ? So now just send notice of submission for publication to your old supervisor and CC the letter to the Head of Department. Owing to the lack of response from your ex-supervisor, you must say that you will enter it on your own name alone as author - though you will acknowledge the supervisor's assistance with hardware provision. I'm sure that you'll get a response from the ex-supervisor then. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/01	1,785	7,930	<issue_start>username_0: I am a young post-doc working under an ERC-contract (thus, I do not have my own grant or fellowship). I recently attended a conference where I met some people and we discussed possible collaborations with their company. This is a company who is really making new developments and it is normally difficult to get collaborations with them. Nevertheless, after a nice discussion they showed interest in the project I was presenting to them and in the prospective things we could do together. When I came back to the lab, I told my PI about this possible collaboration and explained to her that we would need to have a meeting with the person responsible for R&D in the company to fully establish our collaboration. My PI told me that as I was very busy with other stuff, she could prepare the slides for the meeting. We were then going through the presentation together and (substantially) modifying it based on my comments. She suggested that she could introduce the project during the meeting because she is better than me in "selling the project" (what is totally true) and I agreed. Everything went well and we started the collaboration. My problem is that I know she is now asking other people in the group to work on this project and she is exchanging emails with these people and our collaborators without even including me. I feel that I brought this collaboration to the lab, I made the company get interested in developing their technique in our model system, I presented the technique to my PI and thought about the scientific questions we could answer by applying it, thus, I feel this is my project. I also have to say that we are a big group of 10 people, but the borders of each one's project are not well delimited and we all work together to answer broad questions. I would then understand that this is my project within the big project of the lab. But I still do not think it is fair that she is now leading this part of the project, leaving me out. Am I wrong? --- Thanks all for your comments. I post a common asnwer to all of them because they are related. Yes, my PI is a supernice person and I want to talk to her about the issue. But I come from a totally different PhD experience where talking to the PI was imposible, so I am not used to that and I wanted to know in advance how reasonable are my concerns. Regarding having discussed the involvement in the project in advance, it is true that I did not clearly stated that I wanted to be involved. I was assuming it was assumed. I will learn for the future. I did not want to be too long in describing the situation, so I summarized, but the negociation with the company started already during the one-week meeting, going from them not being interested at all to be really interested. The same happend with my PI when I came back and presented her the possibility, I had to encouraged her because I thought it was a wonderful project that would help to answer many of the questions we have. And finally, in the online meeting we had all together, my PI was reintroducing the project, but they were saying that they were already very interested in working together. Thus, I was assuming that if I was putting so much interest in making it to work, it was clear that I wanted to work in the project. But I do not want to be the PI of the project, I do not want to be the one taking the decissions about other people working in the project or not, or what other people will be doing. I can understand is not my role. I just would like to be an active part of the project. I though that was also being a post-doc. Not only doing experiments that someone ask you to do.<issue_comment>username_1: Yes you are wrong. You are part of a group, you worked for the group. You may even do the technical stuff, but it is your PI that did the selling part. > > Everything went well and we started the collaboration. > > > Clearly not everything went well, because you never put up the requirment "If the collaboration starts, I would like to be the PI of this collaboration". Your PI has read your attitude as "This postdoc is young and would like to work with the company, let's formalize the contract with me as the PI/reference person and we will see who in the group will do the work, probably the post-doc". She is probably thinking "look how cohesive our group is, even our new post-doc reached out to a company to get it involved". You left yourself out. I hope you learned a very important lesson: set your boundaries, before boundaries are "imposed" on you. Final note: I do think you are a nice person, as well as your PI, but when boundaries are not determined, it is purely hierarchy. You perceive you are benefitting less from this collaboration, however your PI has now the responsibility to deliver what is required by the industry partner. Would you be able to do that? How many hours are you supposed to work on your current ERC project? How much time can you commit to the new partner? Your PI counts on you as "fully employed and busy with the ERC project", so for her it was never implied that you would be working with the company, and you gave up the "sales pitch" and never required to be involved more. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Have you tried speaking with your PI about your dissatisfaction about the situation? Because she might not be aware that you are unhappy, she is just doing this as she always does. We have a similar system at my institute, the people who acquire funding or projects do not necessarily work on said projects - the work rather gets distributed to whoever has the time, capacity and sufficient expertise on the topic. This system is not (meant to be) fair or unfair, but rather ensures that the work gets done. So I would suggest that if you would like to be involved with this specific project, talk to your PI. Tell her how you feel about it and that you very much want to be a part of it. There is no guarantee that she will say yes, but if you don't bring it up chances are very low that you will be involved from the sound of it. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: To answer the actual question in the post - no, not unfair. Like others already mentioned - if you wanted to be the PI, including formally, you had to voice that at the very start. As it stands, you were most likely deemed too inexperienced to handle the project management. You have not said a word about logistics and it would seem that to you, being a PI is chiefly about the scientific contribution. In most places I am aware of, they have the burden of allocating funds, handling reports, assigning work to others... While you should be getting some kind of that experience as a post-doc, I suspect you are just not quite there to navigate financial aspects and negotiations. As for working in that project or possibly being a co-PI, voice your desires while you still can do it reasonably. There is no implicit understanding that you bag everyone you rub shoulders on a conference with and claim any collaboration with them under your name - there are usually a lot of leads to follow at any given moment, and you should not be hoarding them. Or expect that the others perceive you as deeply invested in a project until you say so. Preparing a presentation is not generally seen as a big deal immediately implying that you want to continue working on the topic: it is a rather routine task. That is not to say your situation is not typical. Do not hold grudge against your PI and just talk to her. It is likely she is just trying to optimize the workflow for the entire lab and there is no second, malicious meaning to all that. It is not the most considerate of her, true, but... not unfair. You two just value the project itself and transgressions to date differently, somewhat akin to a kid who wants their painting to be hung on the fridge and an absent-minded parent :) Upvotes: 2
2022/02/01	472	1,966	<issue_start>username_0: I am a retired scientist looking to publish a viewpoint/review article on radiation and cancer. I do not have an affiliation (university or industry) and cannot afford high article processing fees charged by most journals. I would be grateful for suggestions on any journals that are likely to fit my needs. The journal does not have to be open access.<issue_comment>username_1: Is the answer "choose a journal that doesn't charge article processing charges" too simple? Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I would check the author information for journals you might consider publishing in. Things have changed over the last decade or so, partly because of open access, partly because of the switch to mostly on-line access (cheaper than actually printing and sending issues). As two examples, Physical Review: > > APCs are waived for authors from developing countries that APS offers free online access to > > > (APC = applicable publication charges, APS = American Physical Society). Applied Physics Letters: > > AIP Publishing does not require page or color charges for Applied Physics Letters. > > > (AIP = American Institute of Physics). So, review the author information and see who is doing what these days. Furthermore, you could consider directly asking the editor if they would waive any applicable fees for you, given that you are retired and not supported by a department or grants. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: There are also pre-print Servers now like BioRxiv, MedRxiv or even only aRxiv. Given, those are not journals per-se, however, if you just would like to put your paper out this could also be a good place to start. Usually this still allows publishing the paper in a journal later as well, however some journals (especially in the Biological/Medical Sciences) still have policies which do not allow preprints, so keep this in mind if you feel this would be a viable option for you. Upvotes: 2
2022/02/01	630	2,716	<issue_start>username_0: I am applying for graduate school and asked three of my professors to write me reference letters to all 3 schools I'm applying to. Turns out, one of the programs is a professional program and only needs one academic reference. How can I nicely tell two of my professors that I actually don't need them to write me a reference? I know it means less work for them, but I don't want it to seem like I don't respect them or value their time. Thank you!<issue_comment>username_1: Since you've already asked these professors for references, I would just let them proceed with sending all three references to all of the schools. That way you don't have to decide which referee is your "favourite" and risk offending the other two. Having the school receive additional references ---beyond what they've requested--- is unlikely to cause any serious problems in the application; at worst the school might decide to ignore two of your three references for fairness to other applicants. If you're concerned about this case, you can contact that school and explain to them why they are receiving excess references, and let them know that you're happy for them to ignore two of the three references if they want to. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: When I had a similar situation, I reached out to my references, copying them all on the same email (so they all knew who they were) to let them know I had just learned I didn't need as many LORs as I had thought and offered that if they hadn't yet written the letters and anyone was really busy, I could let someone off the hook. I later learned they talked among themselves to decide who was busiest. One of them was really backed up and delighted to know his to-do list just got shorter. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: If you have completed all the requirements for the program you have applied for, I don’t, sincerely, understand your concern. If you have received more than one letter of recommendation, that’s excellent and you should save that in your files for later pursuits. I do not feel it would be in your best interest to actually tell a professor or a scholarly individual to not write you a non-confidential letter of reference because it more than likely will not hurt you. However simple direct communication with them would not offend them (in my opinion.) Simply explain your circumstances and they will have empathy with you. As a professor myself I can attest to this directly. All these answers are simply opinions, and I have brought you mine, succinctly and truthfully. Sometimes it is simply lack of communication that gets us into troubles.. and can inculcate somewhat irrational worries. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/02	1,512	6,596	<issue_start>username_0: I had a tenure track interview at an R1 university a few weeks ago, and today the department chair wrote to me that > > We were impressed with your candidacy and still have the possibility of making an offer of a position, but you were not identified as our top candidate. > > > Firstly, in your experience either as someone in the search committee or as an applicant, do they send this kind of email to any person who isn't the first choice (all other short-listed candidates), or only to the second person? Secondly, in STEM fields, (more specifically physics) how probable is it that the offer can go to the second person? With my limited experience in the US system (I moved here less than two years ago), my understanding has been so far that getting an in-person interview is so tough, getting an offer is tougher, so it's not very probable that people get more than one offer and decline the other one. Is this a correct statement?<issue_comment>username_1: I have never heard of anyone sending an email to a candidate telling them they like someone else better but if that other candidate turns them down, they might hire them as a second choice. (Who wants to be told they were a second choice? It strikes me as a pretty odd recruiting scheme.) But I can tell you that top candidates get lots of offers and they can only accept one. So, even top 10 R1 departments (like the one I was in at Michigan) routinely strike out on many of their offers and have to work down their list or accept that they just couldn't hire the people they wanted. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: In physics it would be very rare for a postdoc seeking their first professorship to have two offers at the same time. Offers can be turned down because the university does not offer enough money, either for salary or research. This is rare. The only case I'm personally familiar with was not technically a physicist. People who already are permanent professors and seek a position at another university always have two offers: they can choose to keep their current job. That's when they occasionally turn down job offers. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I have seen many of these instances even for my personal applications. First, they really like your application, which includes CV, research, personality, and many other things. For sure, they have given the offer to someone else but have seen some degree of uncertainty with that person due to many factors such as asking for a higher salary, spouse hiring, a larger startup, a higher rank if the position is an open-rank one and so many other behind-the-scenes variables. At the same time, they also don't want to lose you! So, they just wanted to avoid a situation where you accept an offer from somewhere else if the first candidate does not accept the offer. They may think that you will not accept their offer in that case and are just trying to buy some time. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: As I read the question, you were a final round candidate. The message means that (a) you are not being given an offer at this time, and (b) if enough other final round candidates decline, you will be given an offer. Note that there are usually only 2-4 (and most frequently 3) final round candidates for a single position, so "enough" is rarely more than 3. (Note I think it's much better to give candidates this information rather than the other usual alternative, which is to tell candidates in this position no information at all for a few weeks.) As far as how likely it is that the candidates preferred to you all decline, this very highly depends on how many other positions with similar hiring preferences there are, and how attractive the offer is. Even when there are many more applicants in the market than jobs, it can frequently happen that several jobs want the same candidate, because they happen to all be looking for similar things in candidates, in which case their evaluations of candidates are quite likely to coincide. Then it comes down to how likely that position is to be the candidate's first choice. We have had searches here where all our final round candidates declined our offer one after another, and we had to reopen the final round. (In fact, that's how I was hired.) The market is tighter now, but that also means people who might not have applied for our job 10 years ago would apply now, and we are still probably close to the last choice among our most attractive applicants. (For one thing, we typically are only able to offer about 80% of the salary many competitors can offer.) Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: My experience (in physics) is that: * such an email is unusual, or at least unusually blunt. Typically it’s not necessarily hard to figure out who’s shortlisted if units keep a public list of seminars. Candidates can often figure out for themselves the relative rankings from the time it takes the unit to get in touch with candidates, but it is rare for this information to be volunteered so explicitly in an email. * It is not that rare for selection committees to miss out in their preferred candidates, especially these days. Top tier candidates will statistically get multiple offers as they will be at the top of many lists. Offers are declined for multiple legitimate reasons, including incompatible deadlines, startup, start dates etc. I have come to believe that this internal ranking does not matter much. My observations are that these rankings are often “political”; committee members may support one rather than another candidate for a number of irrational reasons. Also, offering to person A over person B does not guarantee that person A will do better, no more than being drafted in the second round means a player will do less well than another drafter in round 1. It all depends on the individual. Unless a unit is truly desperate, they will not offer a job to an inferior candidate: after all the University is about to invest in someone that could work there for 30+ years, so it’s usually better to cancel the search than hire a dud if you cannot find someone that will fit the job. Thus: the competition is so intense these days that if you get an offer you are very much likely deserving of the position, irrespective of the original ranking. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: (In Sweden) If the university is funded by tax payers, all notes, rankings and evaluations must be available to public. This is to ensure there's no corruption. Hence, making the rank public is not strange from that perspective. Upvotes: 3
2022/02/02	1,958	8,671	<issue_start>username_0: I've been asked to review a paper for a publication. I've always been teaching faculty, not a researcher and I've never done a review before, but the paper is within my area of expertise and I have some time, so I'm inclined to give it a try. But some basic guidance on the format and content would be helpful. What do you look for in a helpful, high quality review?<issue_comment>username_1: Before you start reviewing, have a look at the reviewing form they want you to use. It can be quite annoying if you have already written a review in your head, but then find out on the spot that they want you to break it apart into several specific subcategories. It's best to be one step ahead of that. On the one hand, you want your review to be informative to the editor. They will need to decide whether to accept the paper or not, and they are asking you to provide arguments that help them in making that decision. So make sure you do write a compelling argumentation. If the reviewing form has a field "confidential remarks to the editor" or somesuch, use it to quickly summarize the main reasons for your recommendation. On the other hand, you want your review to be informative to the author(s). The authors of course want you to accept their paper. However, if I am on the receiving end of a review, my appreciation of the reviewer mostly depends on whether they provide something actionable. The authors may not be happy with your reasons to reject the paper, but it helps if you make clear what the authors should do next. For instance, instead of "the authors should run comparative experiments with more state-of-the-art methods", write "the authors should include methods [A,B,C] in their experimental comparisons"; the former is a generic handwavy thing, the latter gives me a specific, concrete thing to do. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In my field, all reviews that I perceive as "high-quality" follow a certain structure: * Summary of the paper (one paragraph) * High-level remarks that justify your recommendation to accept/reject/revise the paper (e.g., a list of pros and cons; or a discussion of blocking issues that have to be addressed so that the paper can be accepted after a revision) * Detailed remarks, addressing specific sections in the paper * (If any:) Grammar problems and typos spotted Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Here are some issues to address: 1. To what extent is the content of the paper original? What is the value added to what already exists? 2. Is the paper correct? If not, do errors affect the central message of the paper? Do you think these errors can easily be repaired or removed without affecting the value of the paper much? Are there issues with the arguments and reasoning? 3. Is the paper written well? This concerns the language but also whether everything is explained in such a way that a typical reader of the journal could understand it, and whether the arguments and reasoning are clearly and concisely presented. Is the writing too long-winded, or on the other hand is too much assumed that is not explained? If you think that anything specific requires clarification, mention this in the review. 4. Is existing literature taken into account properly? Give references to literature that you think is important to acknowledged but is not currently acknowledged in the paper. Is the current state of research properly represented and the content of the paper put into proper context? One thing that I see often is that existing literature is cited but not represented properly, particularly if authors make an argument that their new method is better than an existing method - the existing method is often not quite as bad as portrayed. Reviewers cannot be expected to read a lot of literature they don't already know; however I do look up cited papers that I don't know occasionally, to get a quick impression of whether they are represented appropriately. 5. Is everything explained in enough detail so that an independent researcher could reproduce it? Are data, software, and other important material made publicly available? 6. Are visualisations done properly, in a useful and not misleading manner, with clear explanation what they mean? (Same thing can be asked about formal/technical notation.) 7. Even if original and correct, is what is proposed of practical use, or of real theoretical interest? Is it well motivated; is the material elaborated enough that it can be used as it is, or is there still much work left to get it at this stage? Should some of this left work really have been done by the authors? You may ask for a revision in which certain remaining issues are to be addressed if you think that not enough work has been done to put this into practice (also other kinds of work such as comparisons, see 8) as far as this can be expected of a single journal paper (obviously some projects are so complex that several papers are required to treat all relevant details - in other cases I really think the authors should have done more before submitting for publication). 8. If the paper involves comparisons, for example between newly proposed and already existing methodology, are these comparisons done in a fair and informative way? 9. If the paper involves generalisation from a specific situation, do you think this generalisation is justified? Is there an appropriate acknowledgement and discussion of uncertainty and limitations? (I will criticise overblown marketing claims that can be found in many papers.) By the way, many editors like it if you do not say directly in your comments to authors what your recommendation is (reject/revise/accept), but rather leave this to the Comments to Editor; in many systems you can just click it in somewhere. The editor then has an easier job to justify an overall decision that may deviate from your recommendation. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: I have had to find this kind of resource lately for colleagues and found this description Wiley's website quite useful: <https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/how-to-perform-a-peer-review/step-by-step-guide-to-reviewing-a-manuscript.html> In particular, the section on [How to structure your report](https://authorservices.wiley.com/Reviewers/journal-reviewers/how-to-perform-a-peer-review/step-by-step-guide-to-reviewing-a-manuscript.html#10) is quite good. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Some journals have specific formats or forms they want you to use. Check that before you start; otherwise, you may end up doing a lot of work for nothing. If there's no guidance, you could put something together like this: 1. Short statement (1-3 sentences) that says, "I read this paper, it (is or is not) an important contribution to (the field) as it (does something/solves some problem/answers some interesting question). I recommend (your recommendation)." 2. Most authors (and some editors) like it if you tell them what's good about the paper. In some cases, this could be the most difficult part of your review. Write as much as you think you should; no more than ~a paragraph or so. 3. Assuming there are problems, make a numbered list (numbering them makes it easier for the authors/editors to refer to them later). Each point should be a clear and concise item discussing your issue with whatever they wrote. "Issues" can be technical issues, logic problems, mathematical mistakes, code failures, problems with tables/figures/equations, or with the overall flow of the paper. 4. Group all of the English language issues into a single point (if you can). If there are many, you can either suggest that they get help or have a general numbered point about language with bullet points below indicating specific issues. Resist the urge to rewrite their paper. 5. After you've finished laying everything out, write a short (1-2 sentence) recommendation. Your recommendation should follow and be supported by points (3) and (4); i.e., don't accept the paper without reservations if you end up with 20 major issues and don't reject the paper if you found one typographical error. 6. Finally, close your report with a note to the editor with a statement about your willingness to be a part of the rest of the review process (which will be journal-dependent). Reviewing papers is a very important job of everyone in the scientific community. Make sure that if you recommend the paper to be part of the literature, you would be happy if your name was on it (note: it won't be - the editor should keep you completely anonymous). You are, in effect, the goalkeeper. Don't let trash get by you. Upvotes: 2
2022/02/02	1,479	6,227	<issue_start>username_0: The German Research Foundation (DFG - Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) is a funding body that funds fundamental research in Germany. The DFG has a following rule (100% rule from now on): if a person is funded 100% by a DFG project as a postdoctoral researcher, it is not possible for this person to apply for another project in the role of a Principal Investigator (PI). The DFG offers other funding sources for postdoctoral researchers: 1. Research Grant for own position (Eigene Stelle) that funds the position of the postdoctoral researcher. 2. Research Grant for a doctoral position, which enables a postdoc to act as PI and supervise a project. Because of the 100% rule, this is only available to researchers that are not funded by the DFG, but by university positions handed out by professors. 3. <NAME> Group Leader (<NAME>): an elite funding source that covers funding for the postdoctoral researcher position as a group leader, and additional funds for PhD students. Now let's look at some scenarios. If a postdoctoral researcher applies for her/his own position, and obtains it, only the researcher's position is funded, and the researcher does not gather experience as a PI. If a postdoctoral researcher applies for an Eigene Stelle and a Doctoral Position as a PI, it is unlikely to obtain this combination of funding because of the large amount of funds (for both positions) requested in a very early stage of a research career, with no experience as a PI. Another problem is that professors use Research Grants as a standard funding source. This means that a young researcher is competing directly with established scientists. Of course, a counterargument will be that this is taken into account in the application process - in my experience and communication with colleagues it is not. Even excellently rated proposals get rejected because of the limited funds. The lack of funds, in my opinion, is also driven by the fact that professors that review these proposals are unlikely willing to reduce their own chances of funding by providing funding to a young researcher, since everyone is funded from the same source. If one looks at the DFG statistics for Research Grants, it seems very positive, 40% of requested projects are funded - there is however no statistics on what percentage of those were requested by professors, and what by early stage researchers, that I could find. Applying for <NAME> requires a demonstration of experience in successful mentoring of PhD students: it is unlikely one will receive 1.5 Million Euro to fund a research group, having never supervised PhD students successfully. This requirement does not appear in the official documentation, it pops up during the review process, it seems to be expected by the professors that review the application. Supervising PhD students is a critical requirement for applying for professorships and tenured positions. I believe this information is also very relevant to researchers that emigrate to Germany: negotiate with the department if you're funded as a postdoc by the DFG and arrange 80% / 20% split of funding if possible, otherwise, don't stay on this position longer than ~1 year. Interestingly, postdocs funded by Universities / Industry / Other have literally no limit in the number of projects they can apply for as PIs. Such a person is allowed to work for whatever project funds him/her and supervise 6 DFG projects at the same time. Is it therefore possible to achieve tenure in Germany as a postdoctoral researcher, funded 100% by the German research foundation? My vote is: no.<issue_comment>username_1: The DFG funds projects, and these projects can run for a couple of years. So taking your question literally: No, the DFG cannot give you tenure, that would mean that a single project would have a duration equal to the amount of time it takes for you to retire. You can do postdocs on DFG funded projects and than apply for a job as a professor (becoming a professor is the main way people get "tenure" in Germany). In fact, in many fields that is the "normal" way getting a professorship. This statement does not mean it is easy. It means that of those people who made it, many got there through a DFG funded project. So we need to be careful about survivorship bias. The best thing that can be said about this is that it is definitely possible, but not necessarily easy. However, that is mainly because getting a professorship is very hard, whichever way you try to attain that, not something specific about DFG projects. Notice that you don't have to be a PI to get benefits. In my field I would expects someone to not be the PI for the first DFG project (s)he is involved in. First get some experience, and than become a PI, is pretty much the norm in my field. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: The answer to the question "Is it possible to achieve tenure in Germany as a postdoctoral researcher, funded 100% by the German research foundation?" is yes. In fact, most tenured professors in Germany I know have been funded by DFG (German research foundation) as some point in their career, many of them during their postdoc phase. I haven't heard of the rules you cite, but I can add one possibility you probably missed: As a non-tenured postdoc you can get funding for a project for you and a PhD students, i.e. you apply for a grant that includes you as PI and a PhD student (I know of several cases where this happened). Regarding the Emmy Noether program: The case you cite is for sure not the only one, but there are others as well. Officially one does not need to have experience in supervision to get that grant, and in practice, it happens quite some time that people get this grant without any supervision experience (again, I know several examples). What is true: If you are funded as a group leader via <NAME>, you can't submit another proposal for the DFG. My comments on that: If you head an Emmy Noether group you have a very strong standing in the German academic job market already. Moreover, it is still possible that you participate in a larger research project like an SFB and supervise more students this way. Upvotes: 2
2022/02/02	2,589	10,620	<issue_start>username_0: I have some questions regarding authorship. We are preparing an important biomedical paper with a list of over 10 authors, and the authors are ranked by contribution. My name comes after someone who I think contributes way less than I do. But I wonder if I should let people know I am not happy with the ranking. My concerns are: 1. Does it really matter being the 4th or 5th author? I wonder if it is worth being the "peace-breaker" for something not important. 2. I am the most junior one in the team. I guess that is the reason they put one person who contributed way less than me in front of my name. Is it common practice to give less experienced people lower rankings. 3. Since I am only unhappy with one person's ranking. How to raise this issue without targeting one particular person. 4. My boss is the corresponding author. And the first author is an external collaborator. Should I discuss this directly with the first author who put everything together directly or check with my boss first?<issue_comment>username_1: > > We are preparing an important paper with a list of over 10 authors, and the authors are ranked by contribution. ... Does it really matter being the 4th or 5th author? I wonder if it is worth being the "peace-breaker" for something not important. > > > No, I wouldn't pick this fight. It will not matter down the line at the risk of upsetting people you work with. And really, authorship assignment is noisy as it is. Obviously I don't know your situation, but junior people don't always have a full picture of everyone's contribution and their relative importance. Regardless of issues with order, you can always suggest a contribution statement, like [CRediT](https://casrai.org/credit/) so that people reviewing your work can get a better idea of what you did, specifically. Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: > > Does it really matter being the 4th or 5th author? I wonder if it is worth being the "peace-breaker" for something not important. > > > Not even a little bit. In some fields, authors are alphabetical. In others, being first (or sole) author is important. In others, the last author has a particular meaning (usually the lab's PI). But I seriously doubt there are any instances ever where being fourth instead of fifth would make a difference. So, I definitely would not expend any goodwill on this. > > I am the most junior one in the team. I guess that is the reason they put one person who contributed way less than me in front of my name. Is it common practice to give less experienced people lower rankings. > > > Varies widely. But do bear in mind that the more senior people may have contributed to the infrastructure / lab generally, even if their contributions to this specific paper are more modest. > > Since I am only unhappy with one person's ranking. How to raise this issue without targeting one particular person. > > > Tactfully and privately. In your case, you would probably discuss this with your boss and they would take care of communicating the decision, if they decide to bump you up. (But in this case, I would not raise the issue at all.) > > My boss is the corresponding author. And the first author is an external collaborator. Should I discuss this directly with the first author who put everything together directly or check with my boss first? > > > Definitely check with your boss first. Jumping over your boss's head is generally a nuclear option, even outside of academia. And in this case, even if the external collaborator agreed with you, they would have to discuss with your boss in any case, so jumping over your boss's head would have no real upside (and plenty of downside). As you gain more experience, you may eventually be able to go to the external collaborator directly, and it will be sufficient to inform your advisor that you have done so. But you should definitely err on the side of getting permission from your advisor before contacting external people (especially for something this delicate). Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: The real answer is "ask your advisor." You don't want to get a reputation as someone who is difficult to work with. In some fields (I'm thinking about high-energy physics), papers can have thousands of authors(!). Does it matter if you are 115th or 332nd? Clearly not. The most important positions (in most fields) are first and last - just as you noted; everyone else will be considered equal contributors (which is why most papers list them in alphabetical order). Don't worry about this and press on to the next paper! Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Going forward at this stage in your career, beyond first author papers, the most important thing will be being included on as many papers as possible, and for that the order won't matter. What will matter (in second place) is stating what you contributed to this project in your list of publications. Ideally this will also be in the author contributions section in the paper, but sometimes that is vague (e.g., "A, B and C conducted data analyses"). For your own records, I would write down exactly what you contributed, and for this it doesn't matter what this other person did. When I submitted my PhD dissertation, I was asked to explain for each peer-reviewed paper for which I was not listed as the first author, what I contributed to that paper. For this it was really useful to have this information handy. And it didn't matter where I was in the author list, the moment I was not senior or first. Be willing to help in the lab on various projects and you'll have a really nice CV. Don't fight for your position on the list if it's not your main project, and it's going to make people less likely to want to involve you in other projects. If you had not been included on the list at all (this also happens), that would be a completely different story. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: > > My name comes after someone who I think contributes way less than I do > > > Since you are the 5th, or the 4th (as you wish) author, clearly you have NOT the complete overview of what has everyone done... otherwise you would be the first author! Therefore your impression is most likely wrong. Towards an external observer, assuming your modification of the list is rightly based (and successfully implemented), there is no benefit in stating "I was the 4th author on paper XYZ" vs "I was co-author of paper XYZ". Even worse, the first sentence sounds like you are a snobbish a\\\\\e. Who cares about which position in the co-author list ordered by importance if beyond the 2nd? You were important enough to be a co-author, but you did not carry a fundamental role, so you proved yourself you can be a good team-player... don't screw up this team-playing following selfish thinking. Finally, it may be that your contribution was 7.5% of the paper, and the 4th author contributed 5% of the paper, which means your contribution is 50% larger than the 4th author ... and still no one would care. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: In papers with multiple authors, any place beyond the second is just like saying "this person did some work or was involved to some extent". Don't worry about being one position up or down, as other said it will not matter in the long run. Here's some humor not to take this issue to seriously [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NKco3.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/NKco3.png) [![enter image description here](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e0K9u.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/e0K9u.png) Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: I have a story for you. I am now working in industry, but something similar could happen in an academic setting. We were hired by a company to develop some image analysis project. One of the steps wasn't working so well, until one of their guys, a manager, had an idea that pretty much solved it; better, faster, and easier than what we had so far. If we were writing a paper, he would definitely deserve a spot in the author list, despite him not having even touched the code at all. But, if you hadn't been on that meeting, you might not have realised the extent of his contribution. Indeed, it would look like he is being included out of politics because of his position. Even if you knew his idea, you might not think it is that important. In hindsight, it is kind of obvious; but we were four experts working on that for weeks and it didn't occur to any of us. Tunnel vision does that to you. So, the moral of the story is that it is very hard to evaluate contributions, specially once you are a bit removed from the first author. And even that may be hard: in that project, three of us had so different contributions that a fair argument could be made for any of us deserving the first place over the other two. Congratulations on your paper! Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: It sounds like the modus operandi* of a person that would mention, in professional CV, how he/she was appointed as the class leader in the second grade of primary school. Or, for another approximation, it gives of a vibe of a person that used to remind the teacher to collect the homework in case the teacher forgot about it. In other words: let it go and don't do this, this will alienate you from your peers and potential future collaborators because it will signal that you tend to excessively focus on superficial appearances and unimportant minutiae, instead of getting the actual work done. I think that even being listed as the 1000th author in a project made by collaboration of 1000 authors is still better than being listed as the 1000th author and being widely known as 'that self-focused person who started drama over a small detail'. I personally would not want to collaborate with a person that would pick a conflict over such things as it sounds like a great deal of pain in the back that would better be avoided. The order in this case is really not that important. For example, it has now come to me that, in the context of RSA encryption algorithm, I have never thought that <NAME> did the majority of the job, <NAME> helped with some less important details, while <NAME> just happened to be around and jumped in to provide his two cents once or twice. No, I think that nobody has ever thought like that: I personally regard them of equal importance as the authors of something great and useful for all of us. Also please make sure that your surname is not just the last in the alphabetical order. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/02	388	1,734	<issue_start>username_0: Suppose that a paper is submitted to a journal and that the editor decides to sent it out to two reviewers. Each reviewer agrees to return the report in X months; however, it turns out that one of them is much faster than the other. The editor thus receives the first report, which firmly recommends rejection. The editor does not wait for the second report and rejects the paper. How common is this scenario? For what is worth, my field of interest is mathematics.<issue_comment>username_1: No, it is not common, but a strong reject for reasons that cannot be resolved in the eyes of the editor is sometimes sufficient. Ultimately, the referee that is most important is the editor and their vote is the "loudest". They don't have to take the average of the referees and can override it. It is important to look at what the reviewer has said. It is likely the commentary is highlighting serious errors, either mathematical, conceptual, or in presentation. The editor appears to have agreed and no longer can spend reviewer time in good faith. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I have certainly done that, and I think it is totally reasonable: If the first reviewer gives good reasons why the paper should be rejected, then it is quite unlikely that anything the second reviewer can possibly say would make me change my mind. That first reviewer might have been the world expert on the topic (which the editor would know), so what good would it do to wait for the second reviewer other than (i) artificially prolong the process, (ii) waste the second reviewer's time. So while this might not happen in a large number of cases, good editors do it and do so for good reason. Upvotes: 3
2022/02/03	766	3,339	<issue_start>username_0: My liberal arts college does not offer many courses that are considered required by many CS PhD programs. Our college offers an independent study option where I can propose the topic I want to study and study it kind of one-on-one with a faculty member or with one other student. How are graduate schools gonna look at courses completed in this way? Are they gonna show less credibility towards them by thinking "Well.. it wasn't a regular course, it's not too important..." or are they gonna treat independent study in the same fashion as regular courses. In other words, does it hurt/help PhD admissions in any way? I have taken two independent study courses already. Should I do another one, in say, "Programming Languages" (which is considered required by many programs) or should I just take another regular Math course (Statistical Computing in R) that is not a req. course by grad schools but can be considered as a potential CS elective Edit: Independent Study classes do carry a grade.They are NOT P/F classes<issue_comment>username_1: I suspect that different people will look at such things differently, of course, but I would, generally, approve of them, given some constraints. But it would depend on the course. If it is something that seemed more advanced than other options, or, better, more advanced than what occurs in most curricula, then it would be a plus. This assumes, that the course is graded as usual, rather than just pass/fail, where it is harder to get a sense of accomplishment. If a professor is willing to take the extra time to guide such a course, they would likely (not necessarily) be indicating respect for that student. A professor who guides such a course might also be a good person to consider for letters of recommendation. Lots of "regular" courses are designed for mainstream ideas. If you want to go beyond that you need to learn to work independently. Getting some guidance in it is a good way to start. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: The short answer is: it depends. Before you decide to endure a independent study with a the professor, you need to create a statement of purpose of what you attempt to *research, discover, review, analyze, and find* that is creative and truly exceptional. Dependent on the discipline, if you can be published in a major research journal, as part of your independent study, this will be very impressive to any graduate admissions office. Usually the professor will name the course commensurate with your study. For example, I completed a independent study as an undergraduate, and on my transcript it does not state “independent study“ but conversely it states “Theories in Literary Theory” It is always important to find out how your institution presents your independent study on your transcript. Also, if your work is truly pioneering, the professor will most likely write you a very favorable letter of recommendation whose value is profoundly important. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: It really depends on other people, but if there's one thing I know is that it most likely won't hurt you in any way IF you complete regular courses along with one on one courses as you said. If I saw a student take these courses, I would most likely consider that as a positive. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/03	657	2,933	<issue_start>username_0: I finished my Ph.D. in Plant Biology almost a year ago, and I am very interested in continuing my research in a postdoctoral fellowship. But, unfortunately, due to some problems I encountered during my Ph.D, I have not published any paper yet. 1. Do I have a chance for any postdoc position? 2. Or Should I attend another Ph.D. program and do I have any chance to get a second Ph.D. position? 3. Is it possible to text the professors directly or to tell them that I can support myself for a trial period in your laboratory? 4. If yes, how should I tell them? I will highly appreciate any kind of suggestion. Thanks in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: This depends on your resume and how other researchers publish in your field. If it is normal that PhD students in your field do not publish so much, and it is not expected of them to publish so many papers, then you do not miss so much in this regard. But you should seek what other factors are important for the supervisor you are going to work with or the department you are joining. It is very frequent that it is expected from post-docs to show they can manage scientific projects, write proposals, search for some funding and resources, shape collaborations, coach a few students in their teams, write research and educational publications, etc. Some job offers need one or more of the above skills. But do not underestimate the scientific knowledge. Some supervisors find an applicant who shows that they know a very specific methodology which can open many research opportunities in the future, so without seeking for traditional factors, they decide to hire them. By the way, I suggest that you do not pre-judge your resume and give yourself a chance to submit your application. You will get a more clear understanding on how you should shape your resume to fit in such job offers. After that and with sufficient discussions with your PhD supervisors, then you decide what your resume lacks. Maybe you decide to publish a few papers out of your PhD research project and search for more relevant post-doc positions. Your previous supervisors have much better understanding on how you can improve your resume, find positions that fit your skills, what parts you need to work more on, etc. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: From my point of view (physics): I wouldn't hire a postdoc without any publications, unless they had a very strong recommendation letter from their supervisor (whom I would need to know well enough to judge their trustworthiness), and there would be a good reason why there were no publications. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: In our field (Computer Engineering), Ph.D. students are required to have some publications, in order to earn their PhD title (the number of required publications depend on the university). As such, post-doc positions always require candidates with some publications. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/03	843	3,632	<issue_start>username_0: Last year, I applied for a research assistant position at a German university in the STEM field aimed at a PhD degree. I prepared all the documents required, including recommendation letters from professors in my current school. I also got an e-mail from the university confirming my application. However, I was not informed about the status of my application for a long time (about two months), even close to the desired starting day for the PhD I had not heard back from them. I also checked my spam folder every day. So I sent an e-mail to the university to ask what was going on. They said that my application was rejected but it seems that somehow the result was not communicated, and they don't know why. I didn't understand the situation, but I could do nothing but accept the given result. Soon after, I got an e-mail from the university informing me that they will open another hiring process soon. It says that they decided to hire a more convincing applicant at the time, but they hope that I consider applying once again. I never got this kind of e-mail before, so I'm now a bit confused. Is it normal for German universities to announce new hiring to all previous applicants, or is this only for me? I might be overthinking too much, but I'm guessing they are just being nice. (Maybe as I was not informed of my previous application because of their mistake.) My supervisor said that it might be a positive sign, so he encouraged me to apply again. But I'm suspicious whether the university really wants me to re-apply. I was not even invited to the interview, and all I got was a short rejection mail. I won't apply again if the same result is repeated, as I don't want to waste my time. What should I do? Should I seriously consider applying again?<issue_comment>username_1: I would take it as a positive sign. Note that in Germany, PhD/postdoc hirings usually work via professors, not via the department or university. This means that it is quite likely that whoever makes the decision in the hiring wanted you to apply again. In case they wouldn't want to hire you, there doesn't seem to be any incentive to encourage you to apply, as it would only create extra work for them. I wouldn't take the fact they didn't invite you last time as a negative sign: It could simply be that the last time, they had someone they definitely wanted to have (be it because of the specialization of the person, or it was someone the professor knew very well, or who had a very specific and strong letter, ... ), but for some reason, the hiring didn't ultimately work out. If that was the case, it was in fact kind that they did not formally invite several people to give talks: This would have just created unnecessary work for everyone. So if I were you, and I were still interested in the position, I would definitely apply. Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If you want another chance at the position, you should apply again. Nobody here can guarantee anything about how the process will turn out. Possibly they are 'just being nice', but usually, universities don't want to spend more time to 'just be nice'. The fact that you hadn't heard anything for a long time with your first application can mean anything. Probably it means what they told you. Universities have no reason to be dishonest in this process. There is a good chance that you will be rejected in the second application as well, since it is possible that they sent the invitation to apply to the second position to everybody that applied the first time. You can always apply and see what happens. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/03	508	2,109	<issue_start>username_0: Basically a few weeks ago I submitted my paper to a journal. It turns out that the paper is publishable, however a referee found a much better proof of my Theorem, and now I'm at odds on how to proceed. Do I: 1. Amend my paper by substituting my proof with the referee's proof? Doing so makes me uncomfortable as I would not have contributed the most important part of the paper, someone else did. 2. Continue publishing the paper with my (inferior) proof, but mention the referee's much better proof. 3. Continue publishing the paper with my proof, but do not mention the referee's suggested proof. What should I do?<issue_comment>username_1: Ask the editor. But since the referee suggests a better proof, it is probably safe to use it, and acknowledge the unknown referee for pointing it out to you. I would certainly go for improving the paper (=giving the better proof). But as I said: Ask the editor. They might reach out and check with the referee whether he/she is fine with that. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Ask the editor, but I would suggest to use the reviewer's proof. You say that will make you feel uncomfortable because you didn't make the most important contribution to the paper. This isn't necessarily true. First of all, you wrote the paper. Without you, there wouldn't have been any proofs to improve upon. Secondly, you do not know how the reviewer came up with their proof. Perhaps something they read in your paper gave them this idea. Perhaps not. We don't know, so try not to make any assumptions in that regard. They shared the proof with you, put something in the acknowledgements to recognize their contribution. Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I agree with the others. Publish the better proof. Acknowledge it. But also mention that you originally had your own proof--otherwise readers may think you did not have a proof before you received the referee's proof. Example: Theorem. statement Proof. [I wish to thank an anonymous referee for this proof, which is better than my original proof.] proof Upvotes: 3
2022/02/03	510	2,052	<issue_start>username_0: Ok so, I have seen a few students who have completed their Ph.D. in minimum duration of 3 years. I suppose that the student must have extra research talent but even then I have seen few students who have many papers and yet completed their Ph.D. in usual time (5 to 6 years). My question is what is the role of supervisor for completing your Ph.D. in short period of time, say 3 or 4 years?<issue_comment>username_1: The advisor gives you certain jobs to complete and bring the results. He will review the results and if he is satisfied, he will discus things with you and give you next job. Advisor is busy If the advisor is very busy in other things, he may take a longer time to give you the job and also longer time to review your results. Advisor is not keen He can guide you more keenly to do the job or he can put every thing on you how you do the job. Advisor is not so resourceful You may need certain resources (lab, materials, equipment, funds) to do the job and the advisor does not have them ready for you. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Others may think differently, but I'm not so sure that luck plays the biggest role. To answer your question specifically, if your advisor is supportive, or they at least stay out of the way and don't actively try to slow you down, you can finish as quickly as you want. The only real factor keeping you is classwork and whatever prelim exams the department has. It's possible to plan things carefully, take classes in the right order, and be done - again, as long as nobody is standing in your way. However, I would strongly caution against this path. Graduate school is useful for a number of reasons, graduation being just one of them. I graduated very early, and I think if I could do it again, I would take much more time to graduate. Doing so would have let me publish more, become more established in the field, go to more conferences, etc. Take a note from US special operators when they say, "Slow is smooth; smooth is fast." Upvotes: 2
2022/02/03	515	2,025	<issue_start>username_0: I failed my fourth semester in applied mathematics bachelor degree because of depression. So I'll be obtaining my bachelor diploma in 4 years instead of 3 years. Would I be able to apply for a master's degree in data science in Germany still ? N.B : I'm currently studying in French and I recently passed the Toefl test and scored 95/120. I'm not an EU citizen.<issue_comment>username_1: The advisor gives you certain jobs to complete and bring the results. He will review the results and if he is satisfied, he will discus things with you and give you next job. Advisor is busy If the advisor is very busy in other things, he may take a longer time to give you the job and also longer time to review your results. Advisor is not keen He can guide you more keenly to do the job or he can put every thing on you how you do the job. Advisor is not so resourceful You may need certain resources (lab, materials, equipment, funds) to do the job and the advisor does not have them ready for you. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Others may think differently, but I'm not so sure that luck plays the biggest role. To answer your question specifically, if your advisor is supportive, or they at least stay out of the way and don't actively try to slow you down, you can finish as quickly as you want. The only real factor keeping you is classwork and whatever prelim exams the department has. It's possible to plan things carefully, take classes in the right order, and be done - again, as long as nobody is standing in your way. However, I would strongly caution against this path. Graduate school is useful for a number of reasons, graduation being just one of them. I graduated very early, and I think if I could do it again, I would take much more time to graduate. Doing so would have let me publish more, become more established in the field, go to more conferences, etc. Take a note from US special operators when they say, "Slow is smooth; smooth is fast." Upvotes: 2
2022/02/03	3,670	15,571	<issue_start>username_0: I am second year PhD student in pure mathematics in Europe. My PhD advisor is a well-known and respected professor who has done and still does great maths. During the first year and a half, I have been working in a quite hot topic (say some Annals papers in the last years) which I have liked and where I have been able to produce some (not very interesting) results. My advisor produced some theorems in this topic previously, but he is not an expert on it. Recently, he recommended that we move on since he doesn't know of any further interesting and approachable problems in this area. Nonetheless, he seems to have a good (or at least not bad) opinion of me. The problem is that the new topic he is proposing is not very fashionable. Many years ago this was a very thriving topic where he produced top results. In fact, he probably is the leading expert on this. But in the last years there have been few articles on the topic, where few is an understatement. Also, this new problem is very far from the original one. Moreover, the PhD student that worked on this has left the graduate program (which of course might only be a coincidence). What options do I have? I am scared I won't be able to find good postdocs if I devote too much time to this. Also, he is not forcing me to work on this. But I guess that if I refuse his problem, then I should come up with some problem to study, something which I find very hard to do. EDIT: Thanks everyone for your answers! I will meet again with my advisor and ask him further questions about the problem he is proposing: whether its feasible, why no one has tried to solve it before (maybe its too hard, requires very new techniques, almost nobody has the necessary tools, is too technical, ...), whether he thinks it is interesting for the (mathematical) community, ... But right now I think I might give it a try at least. I'll keep reading the literature on my current problem though. Other comments: 1. I am not planning to change advisor as I am very happy with him both as a person and as a mathematician. 2. When I am talking about this hot topic in mathematics, it is not that hot. What I mean is that it has some activity and some (very) good results have appeared in the last years. Almost all these results come from a small set of authors though (which does not include my advisor). 3. By "forgotten" topic I mean a topic with few papers in ArXiv and few citations. Nonetheless, many of the techniques used to study this topic are alive and relevant in neighbouring fields.<issue_comment>username_1: From my dealings with professors in STEM, I'd say go with your gut and delve into your own preferred topic. If you feel strongly about a given area, you will arrive at your core idea through your own attempts. However, I know nothing about time constraints and resource issues that you may be facing or whether it is a do-or-die scenario. If you need a good postdoc, just take your time and avoid being cornered by the prof. It appears to me he just doesn't have the interest to help you set off and cover ground in your preferred area, but if you can cover enough ground privately and present some volume, he will tag along. The other alternative is to pick your area of interest and only start by discussing issues of scope with him. Let him contribute to scoping down or up while you abstract your core interest - but slowly lead him to bring up these interests. Side Note: I always looked at the postdoc as a solo project that would shape my career identity and how I view the world of biostats. So if I felt blockaded by the supervisor in any way, I would just do more private reading and ambush him with a whole new perspective that puts me back in control. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I think you should work on something that your advisor is very familiar with. How are you going to ask questions about the things you don't understand? Your advisor wouldn't be able to help you and you would have to talk with outside researchers. That's certainly something you should do, but then what would be the point of working with that advisor? If you want to work on a particular subject, then I think your advisor should be a leading expert on that subject. I suggest looking for other potential advisors who work on the topics you are interested in. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think you mistake how fashion works in mathematics. Topics become fashionable when people produce interesting results (especially when those results are related to other areas) and become unfashionable as time passes without progress. So, if you prove something interesting and applicable (to other mathematics, not necessarily to something outside mathematics), then you will suddenly make that area fashionable. (And interesting is more important than applicable.) The best spot for a mathematician is to be a leader of fashion, not a follower. The most common way to become a well-known mathematician is to create a new (or revive a formerly) fashionable area that other people than follow; doing something big in an already fashionable area with lots of competition is actually much more rare (because if lots of people are working on a problem and can't solve it, chances are the problem is very hard). Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! You say in comments that “He [advisor] is saying now that he doesn't see how to continue it [your initial work in the fashionable topic]. But, to be honest, I don't know how to continue with it either.” Based on that, your advisor’s suggestion to work on other topics is probably good: you don’t want to spend too much of your time on something where you’re not very confident of progress (especially since in a fashionable field, the problems remaining open are likely to be hard). At the same time, your concern about putting all your work into an unfashionable field is reasonable. I suspect it’s a bit overstated — if your advisor can see good problems to work on, I doubt the field can be as dead as you paint it, and (good) hiring committees will respect substantial work in an unpopular field better than weak work in the month’s hot topic. But working on this doesn’t mean abandoning everything else! So generally I’d advise: Make sure to spend a good portion of your time on problems where you have good confidence of progress — and the less-fashionable problems your advisor is suggesting sound like the best of the options you mention here. But spend some time reading + thinking about other topics too — breadth of interests is always good, and especially with any dissatisfaction about your primary topic. And these side interests can well include continuing to think about your initial more-fashionable topic. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: I don't know how it works in math, but in physics, being unfashionable can be a career ending move. Something that you do must set you apart from your colleagues who will graduate at the same time with you and will search for jobs at the same time with you. The pro's for being unfashionable in your case are that you can use your adviser as a resource, you have a lower chance to be scooped if you're working on something, and there is a small chance you can start something new that becomes fashionable, as others above mentioned. But, there are many downsides. If you don't go with the herd, you will get few citations, you are less likely to be hired by fashionable professors, if you stay in academia, you get less chances to meet like minded people for future collaborations, and so on. If you get to stay in academia, you'll also be a lot less likely to get grants, because those, by tradition, mostly go to the people working on hot topics. There are also some problems with keeping up with fashion. One is that you can never be as fashionable as the people who started the fashion. In physics, the guy who starts a subfield typically gets a few thousand citations for their seminal contribution. The rest of the people get one or two orders of magnitude less visibility. Another issue is that every time you dive into a new field, there is a very steep learning curve. If your adviser is a specialist, you can learn things faster, if not, you need to search for collaborators and stick with them. If you are already independent enough to do well in a more fashionable field even without your adviser, you can go for it. If it was me, I would choose a field that was fashionable, and where some my adviser's experience was relevant. That way you can get both worlds: you can stay fashionable and have a chance to combine what you know from the new field with your adviser's experience for creating something new. I think you should voice your concerns to your adviser and try to propose something that you could do together. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: A pragmatic perspective may involve asking yourself how badly/soon you want/need the PhD? You earn the chance to defend a dissertation when your advisor is willing to vouch for you with their colleagues on your committee. Your defense is bolstered when the same advisor can highlight to your committee evidence of an advance/contribution: your coauthored publications and your growing reputation in the advisor's niche research community. Following your advisors research arch may offer the best chance at securing these conditions in the shortest amount of time. If your advisor is senior, has a track record of getting people through, and your personalities are somewhat compatible, I would trust them and get it done. You can earn your first Nobel as a postdoc. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: Recently, he recommended that we move on since he doesn't know of any further interesting and approachable problems in this area. Do you know of any further interesting and approachable problems in this area? Or at least do you have an inkling? If you are creative / original / independent-minded (whichever term you prefer) enough to be able to come up with a (possibly quite rough) proposal on how to continue on this topic, by all means put this to your adviser. The two of you may be able to hammer out a way to continue on this. However, if the adviser does not see your ideas feasibly ending in a good thesis, you could be well-advised to follow his lead on what to do next. On the other hand, if you have no ideas of your own on how to proceed in the "hot" area, a switch is probably for the best. (BTW I feel that this is the sort of conundrum that student and supervisor should be able to work out between them, so it seems curious that it appears on this forum. Students sometimes think of their supervisors as semi-deities, and sometimes supervisors regard themselves as such. This does not always make for open lines of communication.) Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: You are receiving some very wise advice. Mine is along the lines of other people's suggestions. Follow your advisor's opinion and, at the same time, read what you like to build up expertise on a different topic. Base on this additional expertise, you could be able to write a study you'd like. You do not need a Copernican revolution. Read recent literature, say, last 10 years (very arbitrary time horizon which might vary from field to field), and put a heavier weight on the last 5 years (another arbitrary horizon). Then, try to twist, just a little bit, some of the recent ideas for a study of yours. E.g. in economics, studies of discrimination focus on ethnicity/race and gender, while studies on discrimination based on disability or gender identity are much limited in numbers; this literature is being developed only in the last few years. These studies focus on discrimination in the labour and housing market, while there are only a few studies on discrimination based on disability or gender identity in the service market. A researcher who investigates a related topic is surely going to contribute in a meaningful and novel way, while facing limited risks. It is hard to find a balance between ambition and risk. Much luck with it! Please get back to this post in later stages of your PhD and tell the readers how it went, it will be a useful experience for other students in your situation (I was in a similar one and I have acted accordingly to my suggestions in my answer) Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: I was in your position as a math Ph.D. student. I frankly took the route of doing my own problem (with my advisor telling me he doesn't have intuition about the problem but would be able to check my work and offer what advice he could.) This turned out great for me and I'm now tenured. But obviously there was luck involved in that I happened to stumble on just the right difficulty of a problem! You could convey your concerns about your advisor's problem and see what he says. Ask for another problem! If he doesn't have another problem for you, and you don't want to do your own thing, then realistically you should look for another advisor. If you want a research career then I wouldn't play games with obscure topics (unless you're a genius who will raise eyebrows no matter what problem you do!) My advisor IS that caliber of a mathematician. I'm not... Just my two cents. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: I think you may be getting too hung up on how you perceive your contribution to the field at the present moment, but not in the long run. Firstly, your priority is to graduate, so if you waver between old and new problems, what's fashionable or not, you may get off track -- at which point you'll eventually need your advisor to get back on track. Recall, however, that working on a PhD is supposed to entail unsupervised research, not supervised, so if you do venture on your own track, it may be harder for your advisor to get you back on track. Most of my PhD classmates worked in fields other than my(our) advisor's, mostly because they came into the program with their own ideas. I tried going down the same path of my advisor's but eventually hit a dead end in the road years later, since things didn't pan out after I needed input from some of his colleagues. At that point, however, I had already done so much work that I only needed to parameterize some key equations in order to finish. Because your advisor has offered to "pave the road" for you in his area of specialty, then I would think it would be rather comfortable to seek his advice whenever you get stuck. After all, no one else in the world may know the answer - including you. One more thing - it's highly likely that what you do for your dissertation won't even be closely related to what you do once you gain employment in academia or industry. To thrive in academics or industry, you have to be a SWAK (Swiss army knife) of sorts, which implies that the narrow bandwidth of your dissertation will hardly be amenable for tackling future challenges. What typically happens is that some time in your career you will need to draw on what you did your dissertation on, and during that moment you can refer to your seminal papers. At that point, your contemporaries and superiors will respect you more - but it usually only happens once or twice. The other angle you can take is to pursue your advisor's suggestion (track), and then publish on applying it to other areas. Then, when colleagues run across the area, they will observe that you have done most of the recent work in that space. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/03	3,324	14,140	<issue_start>username_0: My advisor invited me to do my master's thesis in his research area (of course I was happy about the invitation, but today I wish I had the discernment to choose an area based on my tastes). From the beginning, the objective/proposal of the thesis was never defined, which always left me unsure. I have tried to find a way to contribute to the body of knowledge in this area, but I cannot do this, perhaps because I do not have enough knowledge in this area (which is completely new to me). Also, this area has not stimulated my interest very much. I recently informed my advisor of this situation, but he told me to read more about the area to find motivation. He gives me the freedom to do whatever I want within this area, but I can't do this on my own. I feel like a fraud in my academic path, which up to now I have always been enthusiastic about and where I have produced good results. For the first time, I feel really depressed about my life and I don't know what to do. Any advice? EDIT: My master's degree is in computer science engineering and the research area proposed by my advisor is DLT/Blockchain.<issue_comment>username_1: From my dealings with professors in STEM, I'd say go with your gut and delve into your own preferred topic. If you feel strongly about a given area, you will arrive at your core idea through your own attempts. However, I know nothing about time constraints and resource issues that you may be facing or whether it is a do-or-die scenario. If you need a good postdoc, just take your time and avoid being cornered by the prof. It appears to me he just doesn't have the interest to help you set off and cover ground in your preferred area, but if you can cover enough ground privately and present some volume, he will tag along. The other alternative is to pick your area of interest and only start by discussing issues of scope with him. Let him contribute to scoping down or up while you abstract your core interest - but slowly lead him to bring up these interests. Side Note: I always looked at the postdoc as a solo project that would shape my career identity and how I view the world of biostats. So if I felt blockaded by the supervisor in any way, I would just do more private reading and ambush him with a whole new perspective that puts me back in control. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I think you should work on something that your advisor is very familiar with. How are you going to ask questions about the things you don't understand? Your advisor wouldn't be able to help you and you would have to talk with outside researchers. That's certainly something you should do, but then what would be the point of working with that advisor? If you want to work on a particular subject, then I think your advisor should be a leading expert on that subject. I suggest looking for other potential advisors who work on the topics you are interested in. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I think you mistake how fashion works in mathematics. Topics become fashionable when people produce interesting results (especially when those results are related to other areas) and become unfashionable as time passes without progress. So, if you prove something interesting and applicable (to other mathematics, not necessarily to something outside mathematics), then you will suddenly make that area fashionable. (And interesting is more important than applicable.) The best spot for a mathematician is to be a leader of fashion, not a follower. The most common way to become a well-known mathematician is to create a new (or revive a formerly) fashionable area that other people than follow; doing something big in an already fashionable area with lots of competition is actually much more rare (because if lots of people are working on a problem and can't solve it, chances are the problem is very hard). Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket! You say in comments that “He [advisor] is saying now that he doesn't see how to continue it [your initial work in the fashionable topic]. But, to be honest, I don't know how to continue with it either.” Based on that, your advisor’s suggestion to work on other topics is probably good: you don’t want to spend too much of your time on something where you’re not very confident of progress (especially since in a fashionable field, the problems remaining open are likely to be hard). At the same time, your concern about putting all your work into an unfashionable field is reasonable. I suspect it’s a bit overstated — if your advisor can see good problems to work on, I doubt the field can be as dead as you paint it, and (good) hiring committees will respect substantial work in an unpopular field better than weak work in the month’s hot topic. But working on this doesn’t mean abandoning everything else! So generally I’d advise: Make sure to spend a good portion of your time on problems where you have good confidence of progress — and the less-fashionable problems your advisor is suggesting sound like the best of the options you mention here. But spend some time reading + thinking about other topics too — breadth of interests is always good, and especially with any dissatisfaction about your primary topic. And these side interests can well include continuing to think about your initial more-fashionable topic. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: I don't know how it works in math, but in physics, being unfashionable can be a career ending move. Something that you do must set you apart from your colleagues who will graduate at the same time with you and will search for jobs at the same time with you. The pro's for being unfashionable in your case are that you can use your adviser as a resource, you have a lower chance to be scooped if you're working on something, and there is a small chance you can start something new that becomes fashionable, as others above mentioned. But, there are many downsides. If you don't go with the herd, you will get few citations, you are less likely to be hired by fashionable professors, if you stay in academia, you get less chances to meet like minded people for future collaborations, and so on. If you get to stay in academia, you'll also be a lot less likely to get grants, because those, by tradition, mostly go to the people working on hot topics. There are also some problems with keeping up with fashion. One is that you can never be as fashionable as the people who started the fashion. In physics, the guy who starts a subfield typically gets a few thousand citations for their seminal contribution. The rest of the people get one or two orders of magnitude less visibility. Another issue is that every time you dive into a new field, there is a very steep learning curve. If your adviser is a specialist, you can learn things faster, if not, you need to search for collaborators and stick with them. If you are already independent enough to do well in a more fashionable field even without your adviser, you can go for it. If it was me, I would choose a field that was fashionable, and where some my adviser's experience was relevant. That way you can get both worlds: you can stay fashionable and have a chance to combine what you know from the new field with your adviser's experience for creating something new. I think you should voice your concerns to your adviser and try to propose something that you could do together. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: A pragmatic perspective may involve asking yourself how badly/soon you want/need the PhD? You earn the chance to defend a dissertation when your advisor is willing to vouch for you with their colleagues on your committee. Your defense is bolstered when the same advisor can highlight to your committee evidence of an advance/contribution: your coauthored publications and your growing reputation in the advisor's niche research community. Following your advisors research arch may offer the best chance at securing these conditions in the shortest amount of time. If your advisor is senior, has a track record of getting people through, and your personalities are somewhat compatible, I would trust them and get it done. You can earn your first Nobel as a postdoc. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: Recently, he recommended that we move on since he doesn't know of any further interesting and approachable problems in this area. Do you know of any further interesting and approachable problems in this area? Or at least do you have an inkling? If you are creative / original / independent-minded (whichever term you prefer) enough to be able to come up with a (possibly quite rough) proposal on how to continue on this topic, by all means put this to your adviser. The two of you may be able to hammer out a way to continue on this. However, if the adviser does not see your ideas feasibly ending in a good thesis, you could be well-advised to follow his lead on what to do next. On the other hand, if you have no ideas of your own on how to proceed in the "hot" area, a switch is probably for the best. (BTW I feel that this is the sort of conundrum that student and supervisor should be able to work out between them, so it seems curious that it appears on this forum. Students sometimes think of their supervisors as semi-deities, and sometimes supervisors regard themselves as such. This does not always make for open lines of communication.) Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: You are receiving some very wise advice. Mine is along the lines of other people's suggestions. Follow your advisor's opinion and, at the same time, read what you like to build up expertise on a different topic. Base on this additional expertise, you could be able to write a study you'd like. You do not need a Copernican revolution. Read recent literature, say, last 10 years (very arbitrary time horizon which might vary from field to field), and put a heavier weight on the last 5 years (another arbitrary horizon). Then, try to twist, just a little bit, some of the recent ideas for a study of yours. E.g. in economics, studies of discrimination focus on ethnicity/race and gender, while studies on discrimination based on disability or gender identity are much limited in numbers; this literature is being developed only in the last few years. These studies focus on discrimination in the labour and housing market, while there are only a few studies on discrimination based on disability or gender identity in the service market. A researcher who investigates a related topic is surely going to contribute in a meaningful and novel way, while facing limited risks. It is hard to find a balance between ambition and risk. Much luck with it! Please get back to this post in later stages of your PhD and tell the readers how it went, it will be a useful experience for other students in your situation (I was in a similar one and I have acted accordingly to my suggestions in my answer) Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: I was in your position as a math Ph.D. student. I frankly took the route of doing my own problem (with my advisor telling me he doesn't have intuition about the problem but would be able to check my work and offer what advice he could.) This turned out great for me and I'm now tenured. But obviously there was luck involved in that I happened to stumble on just the right difficulty of a problem! You could convey your concerns about your advisor's problem and see what he says. Ask for another problem! If he doesn't have another problem for you, and you don't want to do your own thing, then realistically you should look for another advisor. If you want a research career then I wouldn't play games with obscure topics (unless you're a genius who will raise eyebrows no matter what problem you do!) My advisor IS that caliber of a mathematician. I'm not... Just my two cents. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: I think you may be getting too hung up on how you perceive your contribution to the field at the present moment, but not in the long run. Firstly, your priority is to graduate, so if you waver between old and new problems, what's fashionable or not, you may get off track -- at which point you'll eventually need your advisor to get back on track. Recall, however, that working on a PhD is supposed to entail unsupervised research, not supervised, so if you do venture on your own track, it may be harder for your advisor to get you back on track. Most of my PhD classmates worked in fields other than my(our) advisor's, mostly because they came into the program with their own ideas. I tried going down the same path of my advisor's but eventually hit a dead end in the road years later, since things didn't pan out after I needed input from some of his colleagues. At that point, however, I had already done so much work that I only needed to parameterize some key equations in order to finish. Because your advisor has offered to "pave the road" for you in his area of specialty, then I would think it would be rather comfortable to seek his advice whenever you get stuck. After all, no one else in the world may know the answer - including you. One more thing - it's highly likely that what you do for your dissertation won't even be closely related to what you do once you gain employment in academia or industry. To thrive in academics or industry, you have to be a SWAK (Swiss army knife) of sorts, which implies that the narrow bandwidth of your dissertation will hardly be amenable for tackling future challenges. What typically happens is that some time in your career you will need to draw on what you did your dissertation on, and during that moment you can refer to your seminal papers. At that point, your contemporaries and superiors will respect you more - but it usually only happens once or twice. The other angle you can take is to pursue your advisor's suggestion (track), and then publish on applying it to other areas. Then, when colleagues run across the area, they will observe that you have done most of the recent work in that space. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/03	813	3,652	<issue_start>username_0: So far, I've learned mostly from textbooks but I'd like to read actual research papers and gather information from the sources themselves. My question is: how can I assess, as a stranger to the field, what research material can be considered relevant to a certain topic I have in mind and which is not? The reason I ask specifically for political science is that if I were to talk about something like Mathematics, then I could probably run the calculations or logical reasoning myself and conclude the truth of the argument myself. In the case of political science, I can't really do much as I won't be able to recreate such studies.<issue_comment>username_1: A lot of data used in political science is publicly available, so you can replicate what the authors did. That is how you know what studies to trust. I'm not telling you to replicate all studies you read. That would be too much work, especially because you are an outsider in this field. However, you should look at whether you could replicate that study, and if you could do so, then that should increase your trust. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Three tests that might help: * Is the source published in a peer-reviewed venue? * Do multiple independent sources say the same thing? * If the source cites earlier publications that you've already read, does it tell the truth about what was in those earlier publications? The more "yes" answers, the more trustworthy the source is likely to be. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Reproducibility of research in the social sciences is an ongoing and unresolved issue. The problem is our current model of 'good' research is derived from the hard sciences but often the axioms that apply in a field like physics or chemistry are just not suitable in the social sciences. Primarily because social sciences aren't experimental. A physicist can describe in detail the experiment they used to produce a result and then another researcher can follow the same steps and see if the find the same outcome. In a field like political science, you can't go out and run another national election just to test results published by someone else. Consequently, to evaluate high quality work, you're going to have to put some effort into understanding the statistical tools and methods used by the researchers and think critically about whether the published analysis really supports the conclusion. Some things I might recommend looking for: 1. What is the sample size of the analysis? 2. Are the authors trained political scientists, economists etc. or are they from some other field trying to prove their own pet hypothesis? 3. What is the quality of the references used? Are they citing known journals/work in the field or are they citing 'freemdomeagle.biz'? 4. Are the data used in the research available in an online repository? Most high quality journals these days have a requirement that data sets be made publicly available on platforms like ICPSR, CKAN, Dataverse etc. 5. Are the statistical methods they used appropriate and do they make an effort to explain any statistical anomalies in the data or the results? 6. Have they published the code they used to produce the results? Sadly, this is less common than publishing data but it is a good sign if it is available. 7. Is there a statement that addresses any author conflicts arising from affiliation or funding? That's what I can think of off the top of my head. Maybe others can add more in the comments? This is of course all focused on quantitative research. If you want to evaluate qualitative research, that's a whole other question Upvotes: 1
2022/02/04	1,104	4,799	<issue_start>username_0: I have written a paper together with a co-author. The co-author is a former assistant of mine. The paper is based on my idea but they have done quite a bit of work on it. We had a generally good relationship. The paper has been rejected twice and in the third attempt there was a request for a major revision. I have updated the paper after the rejections, but after the last decision, namely the revision request, the co-author has stated that they want to add some material that they think will likely satisfy the reviewers. I actually know this material and think that it may make another paper, however I said "that's fine by me". This was half a year ago. I am now waiting for the co-author to do what they have promised to do. I am very keen on having the paper published, and I believe that what the reviewers want could be addressed in a different way. I think I could do it (and if it doesn't work submit elsewhere where I think we have better chances with the paper as it is - rejections up to now may have been caused simply by aiming too high). I'm open to what my co-author proposed, so if they did that work, I'd be OK with it as well. However we are losing time and new relevant literature comes out in the meantime, so our task will be more difficult if we wait for much longer. The thing is, I have asked my co-author a few times how they get on with the work and when we can resubmit. Originally there were answers like "I'll have this done in a week or so", but now they have become unresponsive (last response was end November). I'm starting to doubt that they will ever finish this, and even if they did, I don't think I should wait for very long, one more month OK, but a year or two? No way. I assume nothing serious has happened because they were active on social media a few days ago. What are my options now? I could update the paper and tell them that here it is and if I don't hear anything within a week, I take it as a confirmation that it is fine for them if I resubmit it. Would that be OK? I suspect it isn't, but I am interested on views on that. Note that I already have sent them an email asking for whether it would be OK if I update the paper and resubmit, but I didn't get a response. An alternative is to remove their name as co-author, rather state in an Acknowledgement what they have done, and submit with only myself as author. Fur sure I do not want to remove their name and I'd warn them about it and offer them to submit with both names if they agree on submission (rather than holding things up for ages), however I wonder if in case I don't hear anything from them using only my name would be the more legally correct option. Or am I just stuck and there's no way to get this published without a further response from the co-author which might not come? PS: Additionally I wonder for how long a journal is likely to accept (or at least review) a requested revision. They haven't set us a deadline but it's half a year ago now, so I'm worried.<issue_comment>username_1: I think you are stuck. It would likely be unethical to submit as a sole author since your description indicates they have earned authorship. Reputable journals require all authors to agree to publication. But, I'll guess that you have a solution if you are willing to complete the other person's work yourself, so that they don't need to work further on the paper. But still leave them as a co-author. Some things in your question suggest that they somehow got stuck with something, maybe this paper and maybe something else, and just stopped replying as they had no effective way to make progress and so, shut down. If you finish the paper yourself, all you need from them is permission to go forward. But making a "reply or else" demand won't help if the journal wants their affirmative permission - which they should and probably will. You can't assume permission is implied by the lack of a response. Nor can the journal. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: All the usual: talk to them, provide a specific deadline for their contribution after which you make the decision to do something else with the reviewers' concerns. Make it reasonable so that either your co-author can communicate in time and you are okay with waiting that long: from your description, a couple of weeks to a month would be a good estimate. Regardless of whether the reply comes or not, at the deadline you would know the answer to the issue with edits. As for co-authorship issues should they ghost you... Well, you are stuck like username_1 says. Still, do not make this assumption at that point: clearly, you are more interested in publication than they are, and you must even the ground first by communicating a timeline that is acceptable to you. Upvotes: 2
2022/02/04	909	3,947	<issue_start>username_0: I'm applying to a university for a Ph.D., which requires 2 letters of recommendation. I asked a professor to submit this letter 8 days before the deadline (and provided him the necessary e-mail link within hours). It is now due 2 days before the deadline. This professor still hasn't submitted his letter (my application is otherwise finished). I've asked him, and he tells me that he has not received any email for a recommendation letter submission. I told him the deadline is due in 2 days he said that he needs at least 1-2 weeks to send it. Should I wait for him, hoping that he turns in his letter after the deadline? What should I do with him? He was my master advisor and I wrote 3 papers for him, all good journals. Update: It has been more than a week since I asked that person to fill out the letter. He agreed to do that, but after I submitted his name, he just says he has not received an email yet. Even when you ask him to send the letter directly he just does not respond. I need two-three weeks. The letter is very simple, it looks like a questionnaire can be filled in 10 minutes. I asked the university to resend but god knows if he really puts an effort to search through his emails to find it. There is a lack of respect, and this prof does not bother himself to search his email.<issue_comment>username_1: Two days is an extremely short notice. That your masters' advisor is unwilling to act upon it is completely understandable. He has provided you with sufficient information in response; your options are to find someone else (good luck doing that, given the rush) or ask the submission committee for a deadline extension. Finally, your question does not mention any reasons for giving such short notice. If you have extraordinary circumstances, it is reasonable to ask everyone involved for some extra help. Otherwise, learn from this transgression: it is already despicable to not value time of your subordinates to make them adjust everything to your schedule, and it is absolutely crazy to expect that from people who are not your subordinates. In this specific case, you needed your advisor to write a LOR (a reasonable expectation), but entirely disregarded accommodating them sufficiently. I am sorry, but that is just unacceptable. Things happen, but you have forced yourself into calling for a big favor from what normally is very routine, and your went into it without realizing you were asking for that much. Even if something appears trifle to you, never ever assume others will do it on a whim and give them some breathing space. So, address that mentality and ask someone else. P.S. Given you rely on having asked the university to send the link to him, did you also assume they have done it the same very day? If so, this is also unreasonable. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: By the tone and the wording in this question, I'd say there is a huge tension between you and this professor -- although he was your advisor. You feel like he ignores you, and too lazy to do a simple search through his emails, and you, in return, don't give the benefit of doubt as to him being extremely busy for a couple of months. In these type of situations, I personally believe that it is not beneficial for the person who asks for a recommendation to push things. It is always a possibility that the professor is choosing not to write a letter instead of writing a really bad one which will make sure you get an immidiate rejection. All considered, I think your best course of action would be to ask another person. Also, a pro tip: It is always a good idea to ask people whether it is OK to put their names as a reference even before starting to submit applications. This has a lot of benefits, the most common one being the referees drafing up a template for you so that they can change a few sentences/words for every other application you submit. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/04	1,347	5,554	<issue_start>username_0: I am currently an undergraduate who likes to think about research a lot. My email is “<EMAIL>”, however in all my papers I am listed as “<NAME>”. Frequently I will email people about their preprints, asking questions and pointing out slight typos or gaps in their proofs. They typically react very positively to my feedback, and often will put me in the acknowledgements. However, a large amount of the time I get acknowledged as “Zachary” rather than “Zach”. I think it would be best to always be listed as “Zach” for consistency’s sake. Does this make sense? If so, how should I also about ensuring this? Approaches I’ve considered Personally I would feel quite awkward/presumptuous to preemptively say “By the way, if you do acknowledge me, please use ‘Zach’.” I want to avoid asking a “do X without Y” question, but I really want to avoid overselling the value of my comments which are just asked out of curiosity. Another approach I’ve consider is using the signature “Zach (formally <NAME>)” in my first-time emails to people. However I fear this may be a bit too eccentric and not the most clear. Any thoughts to these approaches or alternatives are welcome.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't see a solution, since you want to use something non standard for scientific/academic work. Most people prefer a more formal name rather than one less formal. I'm username_1 (no not really) but everyone IRL calls me Buff (ha ha). But for any formal purpose most people who haven't been told otherwise will default to the formal version. I think that if you really want to be Zach then you need to keep informing people of it. If you want a non-default solution then you need to be vigilant about it. They aren't going to grok it on their own. Alternatively, since you are still at the beginning of the academic journey, you could, perhaps switch to the formal version for formal communication. Even my university email signature (applied automatically) has the formal version of my name. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If you want consistency, the solution is to be consistent yourself and not send out emails that present you as either Zach or Zachary. If your emails give people the information that your first name is either X or Y where X is a common abbreviation for Y, they will assume that Y is the legal/formal name, and assume that that is the correct name to use for acknowledgements. And this is what you are doing now by sending your emails from the address “<EMAIL>”. So, get your university to change your email address, or create your own email address using a non-university email service. I suspect that that will largely solve the problem. It’s possible that some people will still assume that Zach is short for something else even without any indications that that’s the case due to a strong cultural conditioning (just like some people from certain cultures occasionally assume my real first name is something other than Dan), but by and large people will go with the information you give them. Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: > > Does this make sense? > > > Not really, no. In all English-speaking countries, it's normal for people to commonly be called an abbreviated version of their name, especially for longer names. Formally, their name is the full unabbreviated version. There is no inconsistency between the two, and no-one native to an English-speaking country or familiar with English names could ever find this inconsistent. You may prefer that people call you by the abbreviated version, and that's fine. You can tell them that when you meet them, and you can put that in your email signature and on your business cards. But it doesn't make any difference for anything except what they call you when you meet. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: If it was me, I probably wouldn't mention it to them directly. When you have publications and an 'academic presence', you can go by Zach (although Zachary would be slightly more normal). But if some people refer to you as Zachary in acknowledgements, it's fine. It won't hurt you down the line, as acknowledgements don't go in a database and nobody will be confused anyway. If you happen to be emailing someone and you know their current draft is not final (e.g. they have acknowledged you on arxiv but the paper isn't published yet), you could definitely mention it as an aside. But I wouldn't bring it up otherwise, if it was me. It's good advice to try to get an email address with your preferred name and always use it in signatures, etc. But again, I wouldn't worry too much if this isn't possible. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Is it possible that you just see a problem where there is none? Do you really need to seek consistency or perfection in this matter? You seem to be OK with people using the short form of your name, then why worry when people use your legal first name? Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: In business (at least at the academic hospital where I work) I usually look at how an email to me is signed to choose a response name. So if <EMAIL> writes to me: "Can you send me a copy of the NPO guidelines? Bob" I know how to respond. And when someone writes to you as Zachary, respond as Zach. The second time: "Please, just Zach -- only my mother uses Zachary" And these days we also have pronouns to list and check, so being pedantic about your name is not a big deal. Upvotes: -1
2022/02/04	808	3,496	<issue_start>username_0: I am going in for an on campus interview next week. I was told I need to do a 30 minute presentation on a "calculus topic" (the job is for a math tutoring center director at a small liberal arts college). I was told I can use white board space or any other technology. Originally, I thought this meant candidates are supposed to select a section from the standard curriculum and perform a teaching demonstration. However, when I was given details about the "Talk" I was told to submit a title and abstract. This was slightly confusing to me, as title and abstract usually are more "general audience talks" on a topic people may have not seen, not a teaching demonstration. I sent an email to the search committee asking for clarification on whether this was supposed to be a "general audience talk" or a teaching demonstration (as I would do it in class). I was told the following: "One of the purposes of the talk is to get an idea of how well the Math Center Director would explain math when working with students, so we would like to see each candidate present a calculus topic. To be consistent with what we have requested of the other candidates for the position, please select one topic from calculus that you would like to present." I think this means that it is a teaching demonstration for a particular section in the calculus curriculum, but how would you give an abstract in this case (presumably, they would already know about the material). If anybody could decipher what kind of "talk" this is supposed to be, that would be very helpful. I have sent a couple of lines of communication, but I am still not completely sure what the "talk" is supposed to be.<issue_comment>username_1: Actually, it seems pretty straightforward. Pick a section (short section = 30 minutes) and develop a lecture. For the abstract mention the section and how you want to approach it. Stress motivation and insight rather than detail in the abstract. My advice would be to take something that will generate insights into the inner workings of things and focus on that in both the abstract and the talk. One of my own favorite topics is how to use derivative information (first and second, say) to get insight into how rational functions behave. I'd guess that the idea of having you write up an abstract is twofold. One is simply so that the audience can be prepared if they like, but also to get an idea of your writing competence. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I think you’ve understood correctly what kind of talk they’re expecting: a sample 30 minute class excerpt from a calculus class. I agree that it’s slightly weird to give a title/abstract for that, but the point is they need to advertise your talk and put it on their calendar and that requires some kind of title and abstract. You might try looking at their seminars webpage to see whether you can find how this was dealt with in the past. But I would just title pick a title that describes which section you’re covering (e.g. “maxima, minima, and critical points”) and write a short abstract (e.g. “This is a sample calculus lecture on maxima, minima, and critical points. We will discuss local and global minima and maxima and Fermat’s theorem explaining how they’re related to critical points.”). Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: The point of an abstract is to convey concisely what you will talk about, and not to tell the reader something new. So write your abstract accordingly. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/04	1,689	6,946	<issue_start>username_0: Professors in research universities often rely on graduate students as research assistants who work on a variety of tasks including analysis, coding, experimentation, and writing. When funding is available, hiring graduate students shouldn't be too difficult. In the place I work, I don't have much access to graduate students (very few, unmotivated students are there). But I have been thinking of hiring freelancers to do some of the dirty work I might have. For example, I may want to write code for a method that I have developed. This might be done by a freelancer that has some good background knowledge in my area. But I haven't done this before. I want to ask this community about whether professors do use platforms such as UpWork to hire freelancers in their research projects. Is this common? Has anyone actually tried this? Can this work? I appreciate your answers.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't see any problem with this, though you need to consider whether their work rises to the level of shared authorship. Mostly it would not if you direct their behavior (your IP, not theirs). Of course you need to find funds for this. Large scientific projects (think CERN) hire a lot of techs to manage the equipment, though many of them are also listed as co-authors on papers. Another possibility, of course, is to establish a collaborative contact or two where the team as a whole has all the necessary skills. And some projects might even be used to motivate the unmotivated. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: This is not very common; students make for a cheaper workforce. Of course, everyone is after skillful and motivated students, but hiring them outside of the relentless exploitation of labor in academia easily costs twice to quadruple as much. Companies do ridiculously long internships for essentially the same reason :) So yes, one could do that, but unless the students are hopeless and the project is boring and unable to stimulate that, it quickly becomes unfeasibly expensive. And given the nature of the work in academia, it is common to have an industry professional or a team to work part-time in the lab or outsource projects to them; often that would be coming from old academic connections... And once again, it is possible to pay under the market rate if your project is interesting enough - as it should be the case in science. It is all about the resources and their availability. Besides the "cynical" part outlined above, knowledge-based work, especially in science, comes with a lot of hidden costs. Notably, it pays off to have long-term working relationship with someone to not bear the cost of them learning every single time. [Knowledge is sticky](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joy%27s_law_(management)#:%7E:text=It%20is%20because%20of%20the%20nature%20of%20knowledge%20%E2%80%93%20getting%20hold%20of%20it%20is%20tough.%20It%20is%20unevenly%20distributed%20and%20sticky.). So all in all, this is completely possible, but the return on investment is simply not good. As a move of desperation - maybe. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In the US context, this could be very difficult. The first issue is that it is likely that the grant budget allocated money specifically for graduate student research assistants (and often undergraduate students.) Funds for student support appear under different budget categories than outside contractors and thus the money could not be spent on non-student freelancers. Yes, you could write contractors into the grant budget from the beginning, but you're likely to find that the funding agency doesn't want to fund contractors. Funding agencies like the NSF prefer to fund this kind of student support because it supports the broader impact of more graduates in the discipline. The second issue is that most institutions in the US would prefer that grant funds be spent on student support rather than paying contractors. Even if your funding agency allowed hiring contractors, it's likely that your university administrators would say "no." It is true that many social science researchers have used services like Mechanical Turk to recruit paid subjects for their research. However, the amounts of money involved are typically quite small, and in many cases, the work requires research subjects who would be hard to recruit in a college environment. There's a big difference between paying someone $15 to fill out a survey and hiring a contractor to do $50,000 of programming work. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: It is not impossible, but it is fairly rare. First, a few examples of this occurring. 1. A collaborator's lab hired a "consultant" who specialized in a few specific techniques. He came for a few months: set up some new equipment, calibrated/adapted it for the lab's particular needs, trained lab members in its use, and then moved on. I think he had been a research scientist and was now semi-retired; he wasn't otherwise affiliated with the equipment manufacturer or university. 2. Two friends are working as contract coders. They help standardize, document, and polish labs' motley collection of scripts. One of them worked on an analysis "platform" as part of his PhD, and he also helps move work from those ad-hoc scripts onto the platform. 3. My current lab outsources some fabrication work to a machinist. We don't do enough of it to justify having our own shop, but what we do want sometimes want something with tight tolerances or made from odd materials. However, these are relatively rare occurrences. Why? I partially agree with username_3' [answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/181999/15762), but I think it's a bit more subtle than that. Many funders aren't explicitly opposed to contractors, but their policies implicitly discourage them. Trainee labor is relatively cheap, if sometimes in a penny-wise, pound-foolish sort of way, and can be funded in a lot of ways, some of which don't tap into the research funding (e.g, training grants, fellowships, etc). Contractors are more expensive and can only be paid out of the research funds, making them a better fit for projects with large budgets and tight timelines. Indeed, some DAPRA work is done almost entirely by contractors! Freelancing usually also involves tightly-scoped, easy-to-verify tasks: build the specific thing in these blueprints, write code to connect this to that, etc. Research is often more exploratory and open-ended: not only do you want to implement your proposed method, but also understand it--and perhaps the problem it is intended to solve too. It will be tough to ensure that any lessons learned along the way transfer back to the"research" component. You'll need to verify those conclusions too, along with whatever work product is produced. I think this is often tough to do, and universities have surprisingly little infrastructure that helps with it. Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
2022/02/04	1,027	4,297	<issue_start>username_0: I am nearing the end of my part-time doctoral journey (EE). I have successfully worked on a number of topics and have already published more than the average full-time doctoral graduate in my advisor's research group. My preliminary exam took place almost a year ago and since then I believe I have addressed all questions and suggestions from my committee. Even though the timeline I provided to my committee was to wrap up my research in Fall 2022, I am a bit faster. I am now slightly expanding my research area to fill the time. What do you think is the best way to ask one's advisor about scheduling the final defense? Of course, I am eager to finish but at the same time do not want to jump the gun. My advisor and I have a very nice and cordial relationship. Based on my discussions with PhDs from the research center, it is customary to have this discussion about 6 months in advance since it takes time to corral the committee and write the dissertation.<issue_comment>username_1: This depends on your advisor's personality and your relationship. From what it sounds like (which is great), this should be a relatively easy discussion. I think there are a few keys issues to either address or to which you should have answers in case they ask: 1. Do you have a plan for after graduation? In other words, is there a job (or something) waiting for you? If so, that's awesome and that can be a focus of your discussion. For example, "[Place] and I have been talking and they've [offered/are considering/whatever] me [position/whatever] after I graduate." 2. Where are you in the writing process? Some universities/departments allow students to effectively take what they've published, put a "wrapper" on it, and call that their dissertation. In this case, you're solid. If that's not the case, I would strongly urge you to at least put an outline together. That will show your advisor that you have a plan. The rest of the schedule will then be dominated by your writing quality and speed. If you're starting with a blank sheet of paper, you might make a plan and then multiply your time estimate by three. 3. I assume that you've already established your committee. If that's the case, all other things being equal, you should be able to schedule your defense six months out. If you haven't set your committee, that's something else to do before you have your meeting. You sound like you've been very productive - which is great! That may mean that your advisor is happy letting you shepherd some of the newer members of the group (all of this is, of course, advisor-, department-, field- and university-specific). Even if you're just sitting in the group of grad students and not necessarily "helping" them, your presence can be beneficial to the other students. Your advisor is likely appreciative of that (and may not be so excited to shoo you away). If it were me, I'd schedule an appointment with your advisor and then say something like, "[Boss/Dr. X/whatever], I just received an offer from [see point #1]. I have an [outline/plan/whatever; see point #2], and I think it should take me [estimate] to pull everything together for my defense. What do you think? Should we start scheduling things with the rest of the committee for [some point 6ish months out]?" After all, your advisor wants you to succeed; that's why they are your advisor! Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Assuming that you have a proper dissertation, which, in your field might be a set of published papers, then you should probably proceed. Other requirements need to be fulfilled, of course. But the only other consideration is whether your work is of sufficient quality and the advisor should be able to attest to that if it is there. I'd approach it, myself, by just asking whether the advisor thinks you are "ready" and that you have sufficient quantity and quality to finish. If not, figure out what tasks need completion, but if so, just schedule it. Since you have steady employment, the academic schedule matters little to you, so any convenient time, but sooner is better than later. I don't see why you need to make a presentation or slide deck or whatever. A list of papers should be all that is required. It doesn't seem at all like jumping the gun. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/04	892	3,813	<issue_start>username_0: When I was a freshman I got caught cheating on a homework (really just looked at a similar question online trying to figure out how and filled in the wrong number) and got a 0 on the assignment. I'm now working on grad school apps and am being asked if I ever had a sanction against me, if I've ever been found guilty of academic dishonesty, etc. It's not on my transcript and I don't think they'd find out, but I don't feel right about lying here. Do I have any shot at getting in to a top grad school (CMU, MIT, Stanford, and Cornell are where I'm applying first). My understanding right now of this is good programs are basically off the table, now it's a question of how far down the ladder I have to go to find somewhere that doesn't just reject me right away. Is there any way to fix this or am I just screwed and not welcome in good academia? It seems like there's an attitude of "once a cheater, always a cheater" and people want nothing to do with somebody who was "convicted" of this.<issue_comment>username_1: For most purposes you don't need to disclose such things as they were handled by the prior institution and the case is closed. Hopefully you learned not to do such stuff in future. However, if directly asked whether you had been charged with an academic infraction, you should probably be honest. But, you can also, then say, that you are now a better person because of it. A lot of people have things in their past that they aren't proud of. There is no reason to wear a t-shirt with a list. Most institutions bury such things and keep them from external view, though they may keep records for a period to guard agains repeat behavior. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Honesty is always the right answer. They've asked you a direct question; answer them directly and honestly. If the question is something other than a straight "yes/no" and you have space to elaborate, then you can tell them what you learned from the experience. It doesn't matter if they would catch you or not; it matters that you're honest and forthright. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Whatever you do, it's advisable to make sure that you don't act on any misunderstanding. Different people and institutions can mean different things by the same words. Theoretical descriptions of standards don't always match common practice. So I would suggest that before you finalise your action here, you try to get two kinds of information. The first would be to find out exactly what the people you are applying to mean by 'sanction', and any other relevant technical expression in the application process. There should hopefully be some sort of help function somewhere relevant, or a statement of policy. The second kind of information would be (enlarging on a suggestion from an earlier answer post) to find out, if possible, where your previous infraction fits on a scale of seriousness. I can't tell for sure (and I don't recommend that you give more details here). There is a legal-moral maxim that the law is not concerned with trifles. While this may not yet be a legal matter, it seems a related moral matter. If your previous infraction is not on your academic record/transcript that might possibly be one indication that someone regarded it as trifling. The moral relevance is that there are people in the world who hold themselves to high standards, and others who hold themselves to much lower standards. We are all sharing (even if maybe that's not quite the right word) the same world. Based on good information, you might want to debate with yourself in terms of implications, and in three dimensions and time, what you consider the best action. Then you can apply your judgment and conscience on the basis of your own good information and assessment. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/05	477	1,950	<issue_start>username_0: I have a PhD in agronomy. I now want to get more hands-on experience in plant breeding. Most post doctoral positions I see require applicants to have graduated no more than 2 years before applying. I don't fit into this category as I have graduated long after the past 2 years. Do I apply for another PhD or a masters instead, to enable me to enhance my research skills in this area?<issue_comment>username_1: Preferable would be a postdoc in a close to relevant area that overlaps with your new and old interests, more so with the former. While earning a second PhD or MSc can have benefits, they will usually not outweigh that of a PostDoc. It is not uncommon to change your field slightly when doing a postdoc. Perhaps a research job in a company in the industry can give you the experience you seek? I would suggest getting in touch with a career counsellor to discover your other options as well. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Somewhat typically for this SE, the answer is "Just do it". Don't know how approach your advisor? Just do it. Don't know how to write a proposal? Just do it. Don't know how to do more research in X? Just do it. Formalities are important to observe for a career, but they are still secondary to the substance of your work. You have a certain skillset, and a desire to do things outside of it, as is common in academia. Landing a job is a mutual thing: there is something of value to the employer (your skills), and something of value to you (getting paid and learning). Your background seems to overlap sufficiently with the desired target, so there seems no reason to get more formal education full-time. Find a group that does what you want and at least a bit of what you can do (or feasibly has a need in that) and apply there. Education-wise... one might end up getting certifications along their career path, but getting stuck in school perpetually is just no good. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/05	1,007	4,159	<issue_start>username_0: I completed my undergrad and masters at UofT (Toronto) in CS (my field is CS Theory/Online learning) and I was interested in applying elsewhere for a PhD. I am in a fortunate position to have received PhD offers from some great schools in the US (CMU and Harvard). I also have an offer to continue on at UofT. So I'm trying to understand the pros/cons of leaving for the US. I work extremely well with my current advisor in Toronto and we have published a fair bit together at top venues. So staying here means I know I'll have good publication record going. Beyond that, my family and fiance are here in Toronto, so staying means I get to be close to them. It will be difficult for my fiance to move to the US for visa/work permit issues. While I'm comfortable here, a part of me feels that this is a cop-out as I have been here for all my academic life, especially when I have options like CMU and Harvard (with seemingly good advisors). So I just wanted to know if staying in UofT and not going to one of these schools would close doors (my goal is to become a prof). Would a very strong research/publication record from UofT make up for the lack of collaboration/prestige/academic network that Harvard/CMU would bring? What are some things I should be thinking about in making this decision? One way of reconciling this was noting that both these universities are pretty close to Toronto. So I was thinking that during the summer, I could work remotely out of Toronto (go to campus as needed) and obviously stay there full time during the semester. Would this be a big/unusal ask for PIs?<issue_comment>username_1: Graduating with a PhD from a top school would absolutely make accessible to you future career options that would be essentially inaccessible otherwise, and would make career options that would be accessible in theory, but unlikely, a lot more likely to be within your reach, compared to if you get your PhD from a very good but not exactly top university. That is true for academic jobs, and I believe (but am less able to attest from firsthand experience) that it is also true for non-academic jobs. Some well-meaning and idealistic people will say all that matters is the quality of the work you do and not where you do it. Of course, that does matter a lot — it’s probably reasonable to say that it’s the main thing that matters — and I wish we lived in a world in which that was indeed all that mattered. In the actual world we live in, where you went to school is one of the many signals employers use to measure your potential worth and to compare you to other job candidates. Whether it’s fair or not or how things should be or not, it’s simply a fact. Even if we assume a utopian ideal in which all that matters is the quality of the work you do, the reality is that at a top school you will be surrounded by faculty and students who are higher-achieving on average, and consequently have a higher potential to help, motivate, and incentivize you to do top quality work yourself, than their counterparts at a good (even excellent) university that is less of a top school. So even under this utopian assumption, being at a top school still has advantages. I’m not saying the answer to your dilemma is necessarily obvious. There may be many good reasons to stay in Toronto. But from a pure career perspective there will most likely be a cost to such a decision. It’s a tough decision, good luck in any case! Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: By staying in Toronto you run the risk of getting a “degree in Professor X” rather than a degree in CS: however good your advisor is, they cannot know everything, they do things in their idiosyncratic ways etc. Staying at the same place can work, but going elsewhere will vastly enrich your education through exposure to a different departmental culture, access to different resources, methods, courses and organizations. The long term rewards are often multiples of the short term gains from staying with the same advisor. Of course you don’t want to leave and take a step down but CMU and Harvard are certainly not a step down from UofT. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/05	310	1,325	<issue_start>username_0: I am continuing the topic from my project thesis as my master thesis with more additional work. I have to refer/cite to some of my own results from the Project thesis in my master thesis document. Is there any standard way to follow? Or is it no different from referring to other research papers and so on? Google did not help.<issue_comment>username_1: You should cite as usual (see below). If the project thesis is unpublished then mark it as such. If it is available through some means, such as the university library, it would be helpful to note that, such as in a footnote. Note that in general your own unpublished work can simply be incorporated into later work for publication. But this seems to be an intermediate case in which the work is "sort of published" as it was submitted for some course work. But I suggest doing citations and references because it is good practice and avoids all questions of possible self plagiarism. It may be erring on the conservative side, but that is, at least, academically "safe". Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Not only you can refer/cite to your project thesis results (if published), you can also reproduce some parts of that (if not published) in your master thesis. That is your work and you have the copyright. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/05	492	2,043	<issue_start>username_0: An article of mine has been accepted by a Springer journal. I want to publish this article in Open Access. My institute is a pretty small one and cannot fund my research. Is there any worldwide funding agency I can approach? I am from India.<issue_comment>username_1: I assume that you mean have Springer post it as open-access. Otherwise you have to get copyright permission from them. But they may be willing to waive fees (or reduce them) if you ask and plead poverty. I haven't dealt with Springer on this but some professional societies will waive fees in such situations, especially for small institutions that don't normally produce a lot of publications. But funding for papers, rather than research projects, is pretty rare. If you have the opportunity to apply for grants for research, keep this in mind and include a portion in the grant request for publishing fees of the results of the research. Too late in this case, of course. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You can contact Springer directly about this, they have an "OA funding support service" who can inform you about your options. From <https://www.springeropen.com/about/oa-funding-and-policy-support>: > > In partnership with our parent publisher, Springer Nature, we offer a free open access (OA) support service to make it easier for authors to discover and apply for funding for OA publication charges for articles, books, and book chapters. > > > To use this service, visit our OA support pages and discover our lists of organizations which offer funding for article processing charges (APCs) or book and chapter processing charges (BPCs/CPCs). Here you can also find further OA funding and policy guidance, including a checklist and FAQs to help with securing funding and meet the requirements of funders’ and institutions’ OA policies. > > > For further advice on the funding available to you and guidance in approaching funders and institutions, please contact us at <EMAIL>. > > > Upvotes: 1
2022/02/05	1,253	5,156	<issue_start>username_0: I am in computer science in the usa with a PHD offer. I’ve been told that if u get funded with a TA position, it doesn’t necessarily slow your graduation time. Is this true? It seems obvious to me that someone who works more on research will be able to graduate faster. I’m asking because I do enjoy TAing and would like to do so more than just the single semester requirement. Would this be a bad decision to specifically choose TA funding rather than RA funding?<issue_comment>username_1: This might depend on the field, but, in general it probably has only a minimal effect. Research in many fields takes time to "mature" and "ripen" in the mind. And serving several hours a week as a TA still leaves you time to think the deep thoughts that lead to breakthroughs. In fact, taking a break from deep thought to teach or assist in a course might actually be good for the overall effort. Most people don't have an option, however. Funding is necessary. Most of the funding (most fields) is TA funding, since lots of course assistance is needed in the undergraduate program. I once held a fellowship that was free of any obligations. I was no more "productive" then than later when I was a TA. And, if you want a career in academia, spending some time as a TA is probably a plus when it comes time to look for a job. In computer science, however, I'd expect a small effect. You need to take breaks of some kind from research in any case. Even professors do that. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: It shouldn't matter that much if you have good time management skills. However, in my experience a CS TA have a bit more work than a math TA, which I was. You write automated graders, deal with hundreds of students bugging you to debug their code etc etc. Also, it was always a nice little break for me to teach undergrad math when I was doing my own research but I am not sure the same would apply to a CS PhD student. It might be draining to working on your programming/simulation all day and then do some more of that for an undergrad class, which would be most likely uninspiring. On the flip side, if you get RA funding/fellowship that could come with its own pressure/deadline. Your supervisor could make you work at the lab 40+ hr/week and I have heard horror stories of overworked PhD students from EEC/CS/Engineering field. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Not really. It's because of the nature of research work. This extra time you get from not doing teaching work can matter if you know what to do next in your research, and that something is straightforward and time-consuming. However, much more often in research: * You don't know what to do next. * You have some idea what to do next, but don't know how to do it. * You know what to do next and how to do it, but it'll be done in an hour, and then you don't know what to do next. When you don't know what to do next, then having more time to spend on research isn't very helpful because it's just you staring at the computer screen. That's when having something else - whether it's teaching, designing experiments/courses, or reading Academia.SE - is a nice backup. It could even be better, because quite often when one thinks again about a problem after several hours one has new insights. Off the top of my head the extra time is most helpful when you are writing your thesis, because that's actually something that is straightforward and time-consuming. This doesn't extrapolate to regular papers, because in my experience even if you are the person responsible for writing the paper, you can usually complete a draft quite fast; the real time-consuming part is getting feedback from co-authors. See also this question: [Is TA-ing worth the opportunity cost (of having more time for research)?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/134440/is-ta-ing-worth-the-opportunity-cost-of-having-more-time-for-research) Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: As others have noted this may be field- and department-specific. When I was in U.S. grad school in mathematics, non-U.S. students took roughly one semester less than U.S. students to graduate (on average) and it was widely thought that TAing was the reason. (Ex-U.S. students were more likely to have external funding, e.g. from their home countries, meaning that they did not have to teach as often.) As others have said, TAing is generally not an enormous commitment of time, and if you plan on continuing in academia it certainly helps to get used to balancing teaching against other responsibilities, but the hours do add up. You might ask students in your program about the actual circumstances of TA responsibilities - for example, whether it is expected that TAs also attend lecture in the classes that they TA for (sometimes the case), about the average number of students that a TA is responsible for (may vary widely by school and class within a school), the burdens of grading, and so on. You didn't ask, but for better or worse I do not think TAing experience beyond the minimum is a material factor in most academic job searches, even at teaching-oriented schools. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/06	416	1,822	<issue_start>username_0: I have recently accepted an invitation for reviewership. I was asked to review a paper submitted to a well-known conference. Because of my carelessness (or laxness, if you will), I didn't realize that one of the authors is my former colleague whose name appears on several papers as a co-author. I always try to be objective, and objectively the manuscript is borderline at best. However, if the paper somehow gets accepted, and the editors find out my relationship with one of the authors, I feel like my academic integrity will be damaged. Should I just send the editors an email explaining the situation and rejecting the reviewership, or should I write this fact as a note after I finish my review? If neither, then what should I do?<issue_comment>username_1: If you've co-authored papers together, it would certainly be considered a conflict of interest. It also sounds like the journal sent you the author list before you accepted the review. In this case you may already have committed a transgression, though unwittingly. Considering that co-authorship is also easy to detect, it is quite likely that this may be found out, and damage your standing somewhat. On the other hand, unilaterally rejecting the review offer after initial acceptance may incur some displeasure from the editor. My suggestion would be the middle path, i.e. write to the editor, mention that the acceptance was made without due diligence, and seek their advice on how to proceed. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I think your review is an honest review and the editors are aware of this fact also, so I would suggest that you write your review and send it to the editors along with a note about your relation with a co-author. After that it will be up to the editors what they decide about it. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/06	897	3,912	<issue_start>username_0: I would like to get into a mathematics MSc or PhD program. My undergraduate degree is in physics and I have completed the most basic mathematics courses, like calculus, linear algebra. In the final year of my physics degree I found a new interest in differential geometry. I even completed a graduate course on the subject and have been studying on my own. This eventually resulted in getting bad grades for my physics modules (few Fs). What can I do to improve my chances on getting into a graduate program in mathematics? I don't really want to take any courses on analysis, or topology as I've studied them on my own.<issue_comment>username_1: You have to consider your competition -- that is, the people schools can choose from as they are applying at the same time as you are. First, they will generally not have "a few Fs" -- that's going to look rather bad on your transcript, in particular since it is at the end of your studies. If you had had a semester of this sort at the beginning, it would be possible to explain it away in your essay as "I needed to grow up, but as you can see in my transcript, I have gotten through this phase of my life and my recent semesters were all As". So that is an issue you have to think about how you can address or remedy. Second, most of your competition is from people who were math undergraduates, have taken all foundational math courses with good grades, and have typically taken a few graduate math courses. You have taken one -- that's good --, but it will remain unclear to anyone looking at your application how broad your math undergraduate education really is, and how you would do with the graduate math breadth requirement most departments have. So, long story short, I'm afraid what you currently have isn't particularly safe as far as getting admitted is concerned. I would see whether you can stay at your home institution for another year, for example, to fill in the holes in your transcript (more breadth in your math courses, maybe more graduate math courses, good grades). Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Impressive GPA If your GPA is really impressive, then many universities will give you admission. Pre-requisites Mathematics MSc or PhD program may require you to take some undergraduate math courses as pre-requisite and then you can carry on with the program. I would suggest that you contact the math department and ask them about your situation. Contact with more than one universities. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: The best thing for you to do is apply to a Master's program abroad to raise your competitiveness for PhD programs down the line--and sadly, you can expect to fund it yourself. Simply consider that there are very few graduate schools that would fund a student from a foreign university in a small country, who has a few failing grades on their transcript (even if in a different field; after all, physics and math are very closely related). If you can get into a master's, you have the opportunity to really build up your mathematical background and make up for this deficit, hopefully making yourself more competitive. It will be a significant struggle, but it is possible. To me, the most alarming part of your question is the fact that you don't wish to take analysis or topology. You should absolutely be looking to strengthen your math background, especially in such fundamental topics--I would suspect that, like any young student self-studying these topics, your background in them is not as strong as you expect. And if your background truly is very strong, and these classes prove easy, that's great! They will be a useful review and an easy A to add to your transcript (you need proof somehow that you know these topics, as no one will believe you've read the book), and you can use the extra time to focus on less familiar topics like algebra. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/06	1,344	5,912	<issue_start>username_0: I am a fifth-year Ph.D candidate in Applied Mathematics (my general research interests include probability theory & stochastic processes & PDEs) at a research university in U.S. and I have applied for almost 80 postdoc positions (via Mathjobs.com and Interfolio) in U.S. and Europe, and up to now I just received one offer from another research university in U.S. (although I received four interviewers in total up to now, but three of them eventually rejected my applications). Actually I thought my publication record is not bad (2 published papers and 3 pre-prints at the time when I applied for postdoc positions), of course I am aware of some "super-star" applicants but I also believe that super-star applicants are relatively rare, I am just wondering how on earth the competitions for postdoc positions (not even tenure-track positions) can become so fierce? Or does such fierce competition only occur in the area of (Applied) Mathematics?<issue_comment>username_1: How we got here is an interesting question, but it is likely a coming together of several things. Uncertainty usually puts a damper on hiring, and it might also cause a jam up in getting employed, with many people graduating earlier still in the pool. COVID didn't help, of course, nor did the current political situation in the US. Too many states have decided that providing tax revenue for public goods is politically impossible and so funding is poor. Universities themselves have become political targets, further affecting funding. Science itself is under political attack. There aren't a lot of "moonshot" goals at the moment that push money into academia as there have occasionally been in the past. I'll guess that the biggest block at the moment is just uncertainty and that may settle out (or not) once we learn how COVID will actually play out. Unrealistic views and propaganda aren't helping, and the disease isn't going to cooperate. I, too, graduated (long ago) when the academic job market collapsed. After a huge funding boost for the original moonshot, it completely dried up overnight leaving lots of us about to earn doctorates in an empty market. Many mathematicians with doctorates had no opportunities beyond pumping gas (and, yes, people still did that for you). Look at all your options, including some you haven't ever considered. You've been thinking about research at an R1, most likely. But there are other satisfying academic positions that can give you a good career or serve as a bridge to better times. Industrial research labs also do some interesting things in at least a few places. If you take something less than ideal and want to move up, make sure that you develop and keep collaborative relationships and do what research/writing you are able to manage. It may turn around, but don't assume that it will be soon. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I feel that around the level of post-doc, the hiring question also shifts a bit from how good you are to how well do you fit in the group. People might of course still hire a super-star candidate, should one show up, but those are rare and tend to only apply to specific places anyway. In general, the choice will be between several roughly even candidates. And all people involved know the vagaries of the business well enough to realize that this decision does not really boil down to numbers. For example, far too often, the number of papers you have at this stage of your career depends less on how good you are than on how lucky you have been with the review process. So people will look less at how many publications you have, or how good the respective journals are, but at their content. Does it show mathematical proficiency and some new ideas or is it just standard methods applied to a slight variation of a standard problem? Does it fit to what the rest of the group is doing? And if it doesn't fit, can it be turned into or combined with something else so that it does? Your task as an applicant is to convince the people who are hiring of that. Sometimes this is easy. You might already work on precisely the same problems, they know you and you know them. But considering how few people tend to work in each sub-sub-sub-topic, this is rare. Much more likely is that you are only adjacent at most and as it turns out are a dozen others. So show them that there is a connection. When I was involved in hiring a post-doc the last time, I found it really confusing how little time most people spent on customizing their application to the position. Everyone mentions the research they'd like to do, usually in continuation of what they already did before. But while this is nice, what people care about is what research you like to do with them and how the stuff you did could be combined with theirs. I am not saying that you should write a whole new research proposal, in fact you should keep it short, not be too specific and keep it in a prominent position so that people will actually read it. Put a few paragraphs close to the beginning of the cover-letter, where for example you mention that you did X, the people you apply to recently did Y and that you think that combining the ideas on X and Y could lead to a paper on Z. There is no need for detail here, if they want to know about X, they can read your paper, they know about Y and the whole idea is to get them thinking about the possibilities of Z on their own, which gets them to invite you for an interview to discuss this some more. I am not necessarily claiming that you did not do this, but I've noticed that far too many people are just content with just changing recipient and date in their generic cover letter. And if you say that you already applied for 80 positions, I am not sure that you spent the necessary half a day or so for each of them to skim a few of their recent works and rewrite your cover letter. Upvotes: 3
2022/02/06	658	2,920	<issue_start>username_0: I want to apply for a Master's degree in computer science in Italy. I noticed that some Master's programs in Italy give you less than one semester to work on your thesis. My goal is to apply for a Ph.D. program afterward. Considering that your thesis and having good publications are very important for Ph.D. programs, is it a good choice for me to choose a university in Italy that gives me only one semester to prepare my thesis? In many universities, in the second year of a Master's degree, you don't have any courses, and you only work on your thesis, which means you will probably prepare a better thesis and have more time to publish a few papers. Now you might say why I am asking a question when I know the answer. Because I came across a few universities with an excellent overall rank and computer science rank, but if I choose them, I'll have less than one semester for my thesis. If I want to choose a university that offers a whole year to work on a thesis, I cant choose the universities I mentioned earlier.<issue_comment>username_1: When you start MS program, by the middle of first semester, you will know the faculty and their research interests. Then you meet the professor of your choice and request him to be your advisor for thesis. By the end of first semester, you could have decided about the topic of your research. Then you can start collecting data, papers and other related information. When it is last semester, you may have finished major part of your thesis. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: As far as my experience (including Italy where I work, but in Stats/Math not Computer Science) goes, only very few applicants for PhD programs manage to publish during their regular MSc time; the majority don't have publications at all, others did them through Research Internships or other experiences (those who have most publications are usually simply those who are older and have done other things than just straight studying). Publications are not generally a "make it or break it" criterion, as there are good reasons why some don't have the time to do them, and others get their name on stuff to which they have contributed little. Furthermore the thesis itself is looked at, but people don't have an advantage just because they have more material in it because they had more time. A short thesis done in a limited time span can show your insight and ability as well as a longer one for which you have longer time. So I wouldn't worry much about this just regarding a later PhD application. Our criteria for PhD admission even apply to people who didn't have to do a thesis at all in the framework of their program (and there are rules at my university and maybe all over Italy that say that they should not be discriminated against based on this). It may be that in CS it's different though (because it may be faster to get stuff published). Upvotes: 2
2022/02/06	4,296	18,201	<issue_start>username_0: There is a pattern I keep seeing and I'm very curious about the reason behind it. Let's say you're going to read a paper on astronomy: In order to understand it, you need to know some basics about the topic. Similarly, a paper on electronics will require some basic knowledge of the topic if the reader wants to have any chance of understanding it. But I keep seeing research where, at the introduction the prerequisite knowledge is defined, as if the reader was unaware. At first, I was assuming that it might be similar to legal documents where you will define the terms when it comes to their meaning, coverage and exclusion, but the more documents I read, the more I realize this is not the case. Let me take some simple examples here, about sleep apnea: > > [(1)](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1978327/) Obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea (OSAH) is characterized by episodes of complete or partial upper airway obstruction during sleep. > > > [(2)](https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCRESAHA.119.316359) OSA occurs when there is obstruction of the upper airway causing cessation of airflow > > > [(3)](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mohammad-Badran-2/publication/262686778_Insights_into_obstructive_sleep_apnea_research/links/0c96053875b2d09aed000000/Insights-into-obstructive-sleep-apnea-research.pdf) ... is characterized by momentary > cessations in breathing (apnea) or significant reductions in breath- > ing amplitude (hypopnea) caused by an obstructed or collapsed > upper airway > > > I can find many many links exhibiting this and it seems a lot more prevalent in medical literature. For example, when reading a paper about technology, you don't find a paragraph starting with "electricity results from the existence of charged particles...": there is an assumption you know what electricity is. Content space, and the reader's time, are wasted to define the basics even though the contents are usually incomprehensible to anyone that wouldn't know the basics anyways. Can anyone explain why this seems to happen more in some disciplines than others?<issue_comment>username_1: That's what an introduction is. A good introduction will (1) start with the basics that everyone knows, (2) present the problem that we're trying to solve, and then (3) set up the rest of the paper (how this is done may be field dependent -- it could be a summary, or just an overview of the paper's organization). These introductions should be concise, and they are not necessarily intended to be comprehensible to a general audience. For example, your first article defines central sleep apnea as follows: > > Central sleep apnea (CSA) syndrome is characterised by recurrent episodes of apnea in the absence of upper airway obstruction during sleep which can occur in association with alveolar hypoventilation (i.e., hypercapnic), or it can be normocapnic or hypocapnic > > > Anyone interested in this study likely knows what CSA is, but seeing this definition stated gives me a good orientation -- I now know exactly what we're talking about and am ready to "drill down" to the specific things this study considered. It's also helpful to see the definition stated using the same language that the paper is going to use. But note that this definition is not really intended for non-experts: "normocapnic" and "hypocapnic" are not words that most people know. Next you say: > > For example, when reading a paper about technology, you don't find a paragraph starting with "electricity results from the existence of charged particles...": there is an assumption you know what electricity is....Can anyone explain why this seems to happen more in some disciplines than others? > > > I disagree with your premise. Sure, physicists probably don't define electricity just like the doctors in the above study didn't define sleep. But a well-written introduction does start with "the basics that everyone knows." For example, I pulled up the first link from the first open-access electronics journal that google returned, which led me to [this](https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9292/11/3/480) article, the introduction of which begins: > > The increasing global energy demand over the last 20 years means that electric energy is gaining more and more importance in our daily lives [1–3]. Furthermore, when > taking into account the imminent emergence of the electric vehicle (EV) [4–6], there is no > doubt that the electric energy sector will be of great importance in the immediate future. > Inside the electric energy sector, the power converter is a key device whose design and > behavior directly affect its efficiency, its cost, and the size of the final solution > > > All of this is definitely "the basics that everyone knows" -- in fact, this seems even more accessible than the sleep apnea introduction. One last comment: not all introductions are well-written, so occasionally, your observations can be explained by "this author did a bad job." One example that comes to mind is papers about neural networks (especially deep convolutional neural networks, and especially in journals that are not "about machine learning"). Giving a clear explanation of what these neural networks are and how they work is very difficult, and most authors do not want to allocate many lines to the task. So, the result is exactly as you say: they give a thoroughly useless explanation which is incomprehensible if you don't already know how such networks work, and not needed if you do already know. One must make judicious choices in deciding what material to present in the paper versus what material should be left to references. Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_2: Simply, it is that it is both standard practice and wise to define the technical terms you intend to use in a paper so that there is less chance of misinterpretation. What is obvious to you will not be obvious to others and, you need to admit, that in come cases, what you think is "obvious" is actually wrong. Each element of the medical term you describe is essential in some way and should be stated. Alternatively, such terminology can be introduced by citing another work in which the definitions occur. To do otherwise is probably malpractice. --- I'll also note that some things are "common knowledge", such as most things taught in an undergraduate curriculum and certainly anything taught in most secondary schools. These things don't don't normally need definition when used as the definitions are both standard and easily available to anyone. There are exceptional cases, of course, in which even the definition of electricity needs to be specified, such as when it is used in some esoteric (non common knowledge) way. Scholars are familiar with the concept of common knowledge because such doesn't normally need referencing or citation in a paper. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: > > Content space, and the reader's time, are wasted to define the basics even though the contents are usually incomprehensible to anyone that wouldn't know the basics anyways. > > > Do you remember when you were an undergraduate (or even worse, high school student) reading your first research paper? If your experience was anything like mine then you might have had thoughts such as "I have no idea what this means" or "I understand this paper up to exactly this point since I have seen that equation in my textbook, but I don't understand anything beyond that at all", or even "[Why do authors use such complicated sentences instead of plain English?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/85286/why-do-researchers-sometimes-use-extremely-complicated-english-sentences-to-conv)" Have some mercy on people less expert than you - you can skip past things that are obvious much faster than they can learn things which are not obvious. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: The definitions of medical terms (and terms in other disciplines) are reasonably likely to change over time, so even if every reader today knows the meaning of a term, it does not follow that every reader in the future will know the same meaning. That said, any paper (or really any verbal explanation of anything) should include some statements of things the explainee already knows, because the way humans learn is by associating new ideas with things we already understand, and so an explanation needs to tell you which old ideas the new idea is (or should be) associated with. Consider a mathematical proof: these often contain a statement of something the reader already knows (e.g. a definition or theorem), because although the reader knows it already, the reader doesn't know a priori that that particular definition or theorem is the one that justifies some later step in the proof. And that's not just true in mathematics; every paper is practically an argument for why its conclusion is correct, and arguments should state their premises, even if the premises are well-known facts, so that the reader can follow the reasoning of the argument. Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: Understanding a paper is not a binary. I challenge the assumption of the question that someone who doesn't already know the "obvious" facts won't understand a good part of the study. I'm no medic, and before reading I knew very little about sleep apnea ("it's some problem that makes people sleep badly and snore I think...") but I opened one of the papers you link, and after just a quick scan I have a reasonable idea what they were trying to do and what they found. If pressed I could probably offer a summary that could go in a funding request or something. I don't know the context of the study in the wider field. I wouldn't spot any shortcomings, aside from perhaps botched statistical analysis. I would only have a basic idea about how to compare it with another study. And certainly, nobody is going to rely on me to review it. However, all that said, it's not hieroglyphs to me, and I learnt something reading it. In addition, if I found I wanted to know a bit more, the author has given me some terms that I could search to fill out my knowledge further. So that was helpful. As mentioned in the other answers, these statements can serve to ensure other expert readers know what basic definitions you are using. But they do also expand the group of people who may read the paper and make some sense of it. You don't need to understand every last detail of a paper to get something useful from it. What with most of us being publicly funded, perhaps we have a duty to take some steps to make research accessible, and basic definitions are easy to provide. Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: I see this from a slightly different perspective than many of the other responses (from my cursory glance at them). The three examples you chose each has a slightly different definition. That's important. Though it seems they are repeating the same thing, they actually aren't. Why is this important? Because the exact definition may be the determining factor in what the study is trying to resolve. As mentioned by another, they are not defining "sleep." The kick is, they COULD have defined sleep if they had a specific reason for the type/kind of "sleep" they were concentrating on for the purposes of the study. Consider this: Write a paper regarding something in your field of work or study. Write it as you wish papers were written, skipping all the "common sense" terms and concepts. Now, give that paper to someone who may have a general idea about the topic, but no where near what you have. Or better, give it to someone who has NO idea. Get their reaction. Did they understand it? Did they want/need foundational information to help with comprehension? Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: This is a very old problem. There is ancient Chinese wisdom about it. "In explaining anything to anyone, one should start with that which is absolutely clear." It's a bit hopeless, since another equally old Chinese wisdom says: "It is not possible to have anyone completely understanding what it is you mean, without you telling him what it is you believe in." Add to that the physical fact that all language is a lie by definition and every use of it religious and you will have read the useless basics of this answer. The truth is, these basics are usually added by demand. Papers aren't just written, but also published and the publisher has objectives of his or her own. Also the particular discipline a paper relates to may demand it, like in medicine or law. It is actually quite seldom a writer himself who wishes to start a scientific paper with the basics. Another reason to include basics, is to define the school of thought that the paper follows. Basics, even if commonly accepted, aren't always 100% certain. This makes mentioning the assumptions a paper is based upon unavoidable. Then there is the fear of being misunderstood and the desperation of not knowing what level of understanding basics to expect of the readers. Local custom or rule in the discipline may also account for the inclusion of basic information. Sometimes it's just the way the writer learned to write. Believe it or not, some people were actually taught to write as if they are explaining something to a child. Last but not least, there is the fact that those who write papers, as much as they may be experts in their field, are seldom experts in writing. As a subscriber to "Nature" I did a lot of interdisciplinary scientific reading over the years. Over time I have come to appreciate that where the point of a story doesn't always get me to understanding its extend, this seemingly ballast information sometimes reveals the true nature of the core message of a paper. It's doesn't just contain 'the' basics, but rather the writers basics, which I by occasion have found to be quite revealing. I prefer a paper with too much basic information over a paper in which I have to fill in the blanks any time. In general, a well written scientific paper is like a roller coaster ride. You have to climb to the top first, which may not be the most exiting part, but the higher the climb, the wilder the ride. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: Pro forma introductions to a research topic that are plagiarized from other papers are highly tedious and, as you suggest, a real turn-off towards such papers' findings. I think that journal editors ought to advise such authors to use their own words, write them clearly and avoid overuse of the jargon of the field: this much at least would show that they thought it through rather than simply mealy-mouthed it. But introductions per se are vital for research papers. The reader's attention must be focussed on the direction of the author's own research work and its purpose in the context of existing knowledge in this field. When other researchers are overviewing a long list of papers, a well-written intro is far more useful to them than the balder 'bombshell' abstract. Perforce this involves going back to first principles of the science/field. But it is where the author goes from these that is important - and how they go from there. While many will just follow the 'orthodox' path (and not question its many unstated assumptions) beaten by previous publications and enlarge it little further, others will be more radical and/or more thorough - and hopefully find a more fruitful vista. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: When papers "state the obvious" it often appears weird and unhelpful, as you noticed. Yet this awkwardness does not come from "stating the obvious" but rather from immediately thereafter assuming the non-obvious. Let's consider your first example, along with the sentences that follow it: > > Obstructive sleep apnea-hypopnea (OSAH) is characterized by episodes of complete or partial upper airway obstruction during sleep. Conditions associated with worsening severity of events include supine body position and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. The therapeutic response to continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) is usually complete. > > > > > Central sleep apnea (CSA) syndrome is characterised by recurrent episodes of apnea in the absence of upper airway obstruction during sleep which can occur in association with alveolar hypoventilation (i.e., hypercapnic), or it can be normocapnic or hypocapnic. > > > Merely three sentences after defining sleep apnea, the paper assumes the reader already understands "alveolar hypoventilation". How many people don't know what apnea is, but do know what "alveolar hypoventilation" is? Introductions should be funnel-shaped, starting out broad and then gradually narrowing. They should provide prerequisite knowledge that a typical reader might not know. But when introductions narrow sharply, they seem faintly ridiculous. And when introductions provide prerequisite knowledge that most high school graduates know, but fail to provide prerequisite knowledge that first-year graduate students might not know, they are rather unhelpful. It is this unfortunately common practice that makes you (and many other readers of academic literature) doubt the value of introductions. Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: Journals can be odd things. Often, they publish papers in very narrow areas that can still be of interest to their wider general readership. This is particularly true of clinical literature, but it comes up everywhere. Other times, especially where a paper takes common knowledge in one field and presents it to a broad readership in an adjacent area, basic explanations are quite necessary. For example, while apparently apnea impacts circulation in a way that it might interest the general readership of Circulation Research (one of your examples comes from there) it would be a mistake to assume that the general readership knows what sleep apnea is. I suggest that what you call "obvious" may not be obvious when you consider a wider readership than what you apparently assume to be the case, necessitating more basic material than what would be required by an expert in a narrow area. Upvotes: 0
2022/02/07	620	2,533	<issue_start>username_0: I'm an undergraduate writing my senior project paper. Had a good advisor who approved my topic and just let me write, we talked once every other week and he'd just share useful articles, give feedback on what I'd written, etc. I had to change advisor due to schedule conflicts and my current advisor is a professor I don't really have a good relationship with. I feel like she's holding me back, because instead of just letting me write (I did all my research last semester and this semester. I just want to write, I got 25+ pages to do) She's very overbearing, giving me lots of small little assignments and picking them apart with constant criticism. Not to sound arrogant, but I'm perfectly fine just writing the paper on my own, I'd prefer minimal intervention. My question is: as long as I finish the paper on time and it's well written, do I have to jump through every hoop? What is the best thing to do for me in this situation? I'm looking to be as autonomous as possible and just get the paper done with minimum intervention.<issue_comment>username_1: She must have other advisees also (current or previous). Find some previous advisees and discuss with them how to handle her specially how to get good grades from her. Meet some current advisees and check how they are getting along. I hope you will find some clue to get good grades while keeping an easy relation. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Short answer: Yes. Jump through every hoop. Long answer: Yes. Jump through every hoop. What you see as tedious, time-consuming work could actually be setting you up to be an even better researcher/writer. And, frankly, you're not as good as you think you are. No one is. Everyone can stand to have their work picked apart, reviewed, edited, chewed up and spit back out again. You've got 25+ papers to write, according to your post, so get to writing them. I've been through undergrad and Masters and have a whole lifetime of experience long after those years have passed by. In life, you're going to be pushed, tested, cut down and built back up again. This is one of those times. You may not like it now, but when you come out on the other side, you will appreciate whatever it is you learn from having someone push you like this advisor is. And, if you don't see what you gained from it as the years go on, take a step back and re-evaluate yourself and where you end up and be objective about how she made you better than you thought you were. That's what good teachers do. Upvotes: 2
2022/02/07	1,433	6,445	<issue_start>username_0: A paper I wrote was recently accepted for publication. In one of our figures, we report our results juxtaposed against results from another paper published in a different journal. To perform a quantitative comparison, we did the following: * Download the PDF of the other paper. The relevant figure is in the style of a "density plot" with an associated color bar. By this I mean that three-dimensional data (x,y,z) is plotted in two dimensions with the z value represented by a color in a color bar with associated numerical values. * We reconstruct a data set in the form (x,y,z) by associating the (x,y) coordinates relative to the given axis tick marks, and by associating the colors at each (x,y) to the associated color in the color bar. Details of the method by which we did this is explained in the supplementary material of our paper. * We re-plot the resulting data set with our own plotting software to compare it to ours using the same color scheme (a different color scheme from the original). Importantly, we did not duplicate the figure of the original paper, but converted it into a data set and re-plotted that data. The raw data set was not included as a supplemental to the original publication. (one could argue that we should have simply requested the raw data from the authors of the other paper, but that's a different question) We just received our proofs from the copy editors, who included the following remark: > > Please note that in order to reproduce figures from another journal, authors must show that they have complied with the requirements of the publisher of the other journal, possibly including written agreement of both publisher and author of the originally published work. If a figure is reprinted from another source, copyright information must be included in the caption. Please provide required information. > > > While we don't wish to dispute the copy editors and will probably simply go through with getting permission from the other journal (which will likely require us to pay around $50 USD), I want to know what the rules/laws regarding what we did are in this case. A few thoughts: * It seems to me that we did not "reproduce the figure", i.e. we did not show the same figure as it appears in that paper. * If the data set had been included as a supplementary to the paper, then presumably a citation would entirely suffice to use that data and re-plot it (perhaps this would depend whether the paper was paywalled or not?) * Assuming the above is true, then extracting data from a figure, which ostensibly is just a compact and intuitive way to represent precisely the underlying data set (i.e. in principle the figure contains the same data as the underlying numerical values), then there should be no difference between what we did (extracting the data from the figure) and simply plotting data obtained as a supplemental to a published paper. In any case this seems like a rather unfortunate situation for scientific publishing and making scientific results accessible.<issue_comment>username_1: It's hard to say anything conclusive without comparing the figures, but my guess is that the journal is just being overly cautious. It is simply much easier to ask for, and obtain, permission before publication than dealing with the unlikely situation of the other journal causing an issue later. Better safe than sorry. (And hey, it's a great deal for the journal if they can trade a small risk of having to spend considerable amounts on copyright attorneys for the authors spending $50...) Sometimes this risk aversion is taken quite far. I was asked for permission in a case where somebody wanted to plot results of their own calculation, because the results showed similar curves to ones I had previously published for the same quantity in a closely related system. --- That said, you ask about rules and laws. I am not a lawyer, but I nonetheless think the following will be fairly accurate. The first thing to note is that details will matter. (That is a big part of why copyright litigation is expensive in the first place - details are time consuming.) Under US copyright law, there is a [fair use defense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_use) for academic use, but relying on that assumes one is willing to deal with litigation. Note that there is no presumption the reuse is fair - if a complaint is filed, it needs to be dealt with and the specific case analyzed. The analysis involves several factors. One of these is related to how much of the work is copied. This can get complicated quickly, since the legal question really is about which protected elements of the figure were copied. The data would not be protected (paywalled or not, data are considered facts, which are not protected), but creative choices could be. I don't know what case law is most relevant to density plots, but one could probably make an argument that choices of font, aspect ratio, labels, tick placements etc. involve some level of creativity - likely not enough to be protectible in separation, but maybe in combination. In most cases I suspect this would be a losing argument, but beating it in court isn't free. Now, how similar is your figure to the original one? A recreation in a different plotting software, involving a complicated data extraction step, does not necessarily result in different creative choices. If you painstakingly reproduced it in all or most of these aspects, but used a different color scheme, this would put you closer to the line than if the data was integrated in a completely different figure. --- At the end of the day, it's just much easier for the journal to avoid these issues altogether by having a policy requiring permission more broadly than is legally necessary. I think it's unfortunate that journals charge authors for granting this permission, but, then again, some fee is probably necessary to cover costs associated with such paperwork. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: There is no shortage of hairsplitting about coypright rules in this forum. However, there is (as far as I know) zero question about actual litigation or legal problem. From which you can deduce that most people (including your copy editors) are overly cautious, and that you do not need to get permission. Actual copyright litigation is against platforms such as Sci-Hub or ResearchGate, not individual researchers. Upvotes: -1
2022/02/07	641	2,672	<issue_start>username_0: My problem is the following: I have a last name that is composed of two names. In some of my papers, the two names are hyphenated (in others, they aren't). So basically my full name is either written as: Firstname Lastname1-Lastname2 or as Firstname Lastname1 Lastname2. Because of that, it makes it harder for arxiv to find a complete list of my papers. In practice, if I click on my name in the paper preview on arxiv, it will list all papers associated with the either the first or second way of writing my name, but not both. In order to solve the issue, I linked my arxiv account to my orcid, which is listing all my papers irrespectively of this issue. But this doesn't fix the issue on arxiv. In summary: is there a way (without modifying my name in my previous papers) to fix this issue? I have an arxiv author id but there is the same kind of issue that it is not listing all my papers there.<issue_comment>username_1: In my experience, the key to issues like this is dogged consistency. Once you decide how you want your name to appear on papers, that's the format you need to use in every paper and in all of your correspondence (at least in your signature block). Literally everyone should know you by the version of your name you selected. This is difficult for many people (including those with hyphenated last names) but is the only solution I've found. Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This sounds like a technical problem with the ArXiv treatment of author accounts. It is unlikely to be easy to solve the problem externally, but presumably it could be solved internally with a reasonably simple change to the underlying code for the author accounts and search facilities on the site. ArXiv is run by a group of researchers at Cornell University. It has an [IT Advisory Group](https://arxiv.org/about/people/technical_ad_group) that meets several times per year to discuss an advise on IT problems relating to the site. There is also a [Leadership Team](https://arxiv.org/about/people/leadership_team) that makes decisions relating to the site. I recommend you contact the IT Advisory Group for ArXiv and let them know the problem you are having. Since this is a volunteer group, they might also be willing to have you attend one of their meetings to discuss your problem with the group. Many people have multiple surnames or multiple spellings of their surnames (it happens commonly with female researchers who change surnames after marriage) so this seems like a problem that would potentially affect many people, for which there ought to be a reasonably simple internal programming solution. Upvotes: 1
2022/02/07	620	2,645	<issue_start>username_0: What is your strategy when submitting an article? I am asking because I wonder if it hurts to try submitting to a top journal even if the paper is clearly not good enough. Worse come worse I get a desk rejection and a couple of comments from the editor. If I am lucky, I get some reviewers' comments. I guess something else that matters is time. If a journal takes months to get back, an additional submission might results in a huge loss of time, which postpone the publication process. But I still don't get why I should start from a lower ranked journal, without even trying an overshoot. Field is Econ if it helps. But I am more interested in a general argument.<issue_comment>username_1: Ultimately you need to make a judgement call, but the best judgement will be one that tries to find the most appropriate journal, not the best and (certainly) not a predatory one. But that means that you have done some investigation beyond just determining ranking. What do they publish? Is my paper compatible with what they are likely to publish? How big a contribution am I making? Do I extend the work of X who publishes here? There are lots of things you can look at. But yes, publishing takes time, though it also, hopefully, gives you feedback provided it goes through review and isn't immediately rejected by the editor. Do your homework. Try to find a "best match", though that is elusive. Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: For me, there are some factors at play: * If this paper is something that a student needs to graduate, I prefer playing it safe. Journal rank is less important than a prospect to exhaust one's paid scholarship period. * I start with a presumption that we write for a particular audience, and my primary goal is to reach this audience. Thus, I'd prefer to publish in a journal that (I believe) will be read by the relevant people. * Thus, for example, a widely scoped top "Journal A" that publishes a lot of diverse papers yearly and too vast for me to read would be less preferable to me than a focused and less prestigious "Journal B" that I personally check regularly. Summing up, I think if the paper at hand can make headlines in the mainstream press, a "star journal" can help. Otherwise, a publication at any decent venue is supposed to become a part of common knowledge. So if we aim for an impact (and we probably should), the goal is to improve the likelihood of being read and cited, which I think isn't always directly related to journal rank. As a shorthand, I tend to prefer journals that publish papers I personally consider most similar to the work I do. Upvotes: 2
2022/02/07	1,051	4,694	<issue_start>username_0: I teach a seminar where I organize an anonymous peer review procedure among the students. One of my students gave another colleague an exceptionally helpful feedback. The recipient was so grateful and impressed that they asked me to reveal the name of the reviewer. I received permission from the reviewer and eventually disclosed the name. However, on second thought, I am unsure whether my approach was actually correct. I myself received exceptionally friendly & helpful anonymous comments from multiple journals in the past, but it never came to my mind that I could ask the editor to disclose their names. But as an author and researcher, it would, of course, be great to continue the dialogues that started within such anonymous processes. Requesting to reveal the identity of a reviewer somehow seems indecent to me, as if it violated a holy rule of the scientific publication system. I could also imagine that dishonest requests could be made under the guise of gratitude. May I thus ask you whether it is fine for an author to ask the editor to disclose the names of anonymous peer reviewers with the argument that they are so grateful & impressed by their comments?<issue_comment>username_1: This is fine, assuming the reviewing process is over. It’s also totally fine for anyone (editor or reviewer) to say no. It really should only happen rarely when the reviewer makes an exceptional contribution. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: There is rarely any ethical issue in asking for something. Whether it can be granted or not depends on others and on rules in place. Those rules generally have a purpose and sometimes, as in this case, the purpose may have been fulfilled and is no longer relevant. So, from the standpoint of the one asked, you need to decide whether it is proper to reveal the reviewer. Their permission, which you obtained seems to be essential, again lessening any adverse affects from breaking confidentiality. You are in a teaching situation, of course, so the rules are, perhaps, slightly different from the normal rules in publishing. The intent of the ask and the intent of the reveal is not, in this case, to enable retaliation or dishonest reviewing or anything else (IMO) negative. Sometimes the author doing the ask simply wants to give special acknowledgement to the reviewer. This can be done anonymously, of course, but that may not always be required. So, ask yourself, as the instructor, what are the consequences of the reveal. Does it diminish, in any way, the validity of the review or of the system? But, the original ask itself is benign, whether it can be granted or not. Upvotes: 2 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: This situation has played itself out, so it's done. What I would consider in the future is to have the requesting person simply express their gratitude in writing and submit that to you for you to pass on to the anonymous reviewer. Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: Most journals have the option to display your name as a reviewer, and some journals/publishers actually list the reviewers and include their comments with the published manuscript. I've personally received an acknowledgement from authors to thank me for my advice. Beyond this, every review you do should go on your [Publons](https://publons.com/about/home/) profile, which in turn should be linked to your ORCiD ID to keep a thorough record of all the reviews you have done. Serving as reviewer is a long-standing scientific tradition and is "part of the job". It is a valid contribution to science, and you deserve recognition for the work you've done. Disclosure can also be important if the authors decide to go with a different journal. Ideally the second submission (even to a different journal/publisher) should make use of the same reviewers. About half of the papers I've reviewed for one publisher was later published elsewhere a few years later and I wasn't involved in the 2nd review. This ultimately means my advice may have improved the initial paper significantly but there is nowhere I can be credited for it beyond Publons and ORCiD. In post-publication review, through commenting or communication/letter to the editor, those are usually not done anonymously either... your name and affiliations are indicated with the comment. The same applies to pre-print servers like biorxiv and research square where commenting/review is not done anonymously. I also think that in this day-and-age of predatory journals who publish your work without peer-review, authors and the community want some proof that the paper was reviewed by actual people and any concerns were addressed. Upvotes: 1