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<issue_start>username_0: I found the following article on the Internet:
* [Candidates with Muslim-sounding names are three times more likely to be passed over for jobs](https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/candidates-with-muslimsounding-names-three-times-more-likely-to-be-passed-over-for-jobs-a3459141.html)
What is the situation in the case of acadamia?<issue_comment>username_1: The way to obtain such numbers is by submitting application documents to job posting that are identical other than the name of the applicant. If the documents are sent to enough prospective employers and a statiscally significant difference is found, this can indeed be attributed to the name quite well.
This methodology does not work for faculty positions, as the nature of job applications is different. You can't just create a duplicate publication record of this kind. In many cases, successful applicants will be known to someone at the target university from conference talks, publications or collaborations.
One could compare numbers such as "fraction of students in discipline X with Muslim-sounding name" to "fraction of faculty in discipline X with Muslim-sounding name", but there are many differences between the makeup of the student population and faculty members, and firm conclusions will remain elusive that way.
So what can we say? There are plenty of academics in the UK with Muslim-sounding names, so such a name is not an unsurmountable disadvantage. Getting a job in academia is hard no matter what your name is. On the other hand, academia does not stand apart from the rest of society. It would be highly surprising if it is completely free from the anti-Muslim-sounding-name-bias found elsewhere.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I estimate that not only it is not harmful on average to have a Muslim name in the UK academic job market (on average), but that it is a *clear advantage*.
"Diversity hires" are becoming more important to many departments, and regulatory requirements are put on faculties to adhere to these requirements. To my understanding, these regulatory requirements (at the university level or above) sometimes come with *diversity targets*, i.e., percentage of "diversity" candidates that are to be interviewed and possibly recruited (this is my understanding of the term "diversity *targets*"---i.e., that the target is a number. Some people in the comments claim there are no rigid numbers). Diversity candidates are clearly tagged in (some) recruitment cycles by different categories: BAME (black, Asian, Middle-Eastern), female, etc. Recruitment cycles are then *audited* for upholding diversity targets of this sort (again, it is my understanding that if a department does not uphold a certain minimal target (i.e., percentage. Just for example, only 5% are foreigners, or 5% are female) of "diversity" interviews, they will have to justify this in the audit and they may not be able to; therefore, departments are pressured in this way to fulfil a minimal number of "diversity interviews").
If you have a clearly "foreign name" (Middle Eastern) in the UK it thus definitely counts as a diversity-point in favour of your candidacy.
If you are also a **female Muslim**, my estimation is that you have a very good chance of being at least interviewed, assuming some minimal credential requirements are fulfilled.
*Important comment*: although diversity points can help in general, my estimation is that the major advantage a candidate has is not their ethnic/religious identity, but how well they are connected to people with influence *inside* the department, be it collaborator, colleague, or someone who comes from the same "clique" of colleagues.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I'll make two observations about academia, though they aren't specific to UK.
First, as a group (and with exceptions), academics are generally less prejudiced than the overall population. My own view is that diversity is a strength and that if I want to learn something new, it is good to talk to people not just like myself.
Second, in a large university in a country with a diverse population, as I think is true of UK, there is value in having role models for students that they can directly relate to. This is, in a way, the flip side of the first observation. But it implies that a diverse faculty is helpful when it matches a diverse student body.
I conclude from the above that having a "foreign sounding" name, whether Muslim, or Nigerian, or Chinese is one of the lesser impediments to an academic career than having, say, a poor publication record or few people willing to recommend you highly. Yes, you will find discrimination, but I'd guess that it is more likely to be manifest outside the university than inside. We have a lot to learn, even in the twenty-first century.
I'll also note that it is good for "majority culture" students to see and learn from competent professionals from other cultures. That might even help us reach the twenty-second century.
Upvotes: 3
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2022/09/23
| 3,152
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a final year computer science PhD student and I've been to several conferences so far.
My thoughts:
* Typically I've talked to other PhD students and postdocs about research/ life. But there's never really been any lasting value from these conversations.
* Collaborations don't really emerge from these conversations. In my lab, collaborations are arranged between people at our institution who would provide a clear strategic benefit to a research project.
* I find that I learn about new topics and techniques from the talks and social media, not from 'networking'. And I myself use talks and social media as the primary way to market my research.
* From talking to others and reading anecdotes, I find it quite rare that networking at conferences results in a concrete career or reputation boost.
* I find it rather pointless to engage with a researcher just because they are 'elite'. The elite researcher is often tired of junior researchers trying to approach them like paparazzis approach a celebrity.
* If you do want to approach a researcher, it seems best to do it over email (so there is a written record and they don't forget), and you can clearly articulate the purpose of the interaction.
* It seems that in computer science a lot of reputation is really achieved through 'structured' mediums like talks, social media, citations, usage of artifacts, etc. I am told that a lot of senior professors simply don't go to conferences anyway because they don't really get anything out of it, and junior professors are there to be physically seen and appear visible (i.e. it's a performance).
I would like to hear your thoughts about whether you think networking at conferences holds much benefit to your career/reputation.<issue_comment>username_1: This seems like short-term thinking, though at your career stage that would be natural. I'm at the other end of the career arc (retired) and have a different perspective. I found meeting and talking to people very important in generating both thoughts and collaborations.
I'll try to address some of your points specifically:
In CS, (our field), the big ideas are often seen widely at conferences for the first time. There can be a lot of buzz, as there was at the OOPSLA conference when there were talks on Software Patterns and the GOF book hit the stands. (I nearly got trampled in the stampede to see the book.) I met the authors there and later collaborated with one of them and had other conversations with "patterns-adjacent" people. Long term it was very fruitful, though I was a skeptic early on.
I once had a workshop with the creator of the Ruby language, sitting next to another collaborator I'd met at such a conference. We had a great time figuring out how Ruby contributed to the language spectrum.
But, you can't just chat up a few folks and expect much to happen when you first meet. Maybe later if you have common interests, but your career might last 40 years so the early investment in time and effort can pay off.
When you go to a talk the people around you are probably also interested in that topic. They are good people to have a coffee (tea, ...) with afterwards and talk about the ideas. Ask questions, introduce yourself.
If you've met someone interesting and want to suggest a collaboration later (email) they are more likely to respond if they've met you and had an idea-based conversation with you earlier, maybe at a conference.
I've met luminaries in the field over coffee at conferences and workshops, some of which have led to collaboration, though not immediately. My experience is quite different. Most of the superstars are actually quite human, though I've met exceptions also. But if you seem like a leech it will probably be noticed.
Often enough a "big name" will be sitting at a table between talks with a few other people. If you are interested in their work, those others at the table might be valuable to get to know.
I never looked at conferences as a way to "market" my ideas, but a way to learn and share. I found a lot of others, both the junior and the senior folks to have similar focus.
I don't know if people do this anymore (and doubt it), but I have quite a large collection of business cards from people around the world. Some of them are big names (some were students of the big names), but some of them are just interesting folks to share ideas with. It is that sharing that can make the difference.
---
FWIW, at your stage of the game I hadn't attended any conferences at all, though I was in math where such things may be somewhat less vital. But conferences, and the people I met there, helped me advance both my ideas and my career.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: The networking in conferences needs to be thought of more broadly than initiating collaborations.
If you're looking for a job being (and especially presenting) at conference gives an opportunity to gain exposure for your research (hopefully increase citations) and for yourself. It helps a lot if someone on a hiring committee thinks 'I remember this person, they gave a great talk and do really interesting work' rather than 'I've never heard of this person before, are they any good?'
You have the opportunity to build a network. Keep in mind this is a *slow* process. Even talking to other PhDs/Postdocs socially about research/ life, going out for dinner/drinks, etc is important. These junior researchers will eventually be professors and colleagues. Regularly seeing the same people at conferences is how friendships/collaborations are built. You get to know each other, build trust. After the conference maybe visit, invite/get invited to each other's institutions, etc. When the right topic comes up for a collaboration they will think of you (or vice versa). It might take years before the right context for a collaboration comes up.
I also use conference to meet existing collaborators who are not local to me in person to discuss and progress our work. These are people I've spent years building relationships with that have eventually led to fruitful collaborations.
Your expectations need to be realistic when interacting with senior/famous people at conferences. They already have an established network of collaborators. They are not likely to bring you onto a project / start a collaboration with you. Get to know them socially, often they are at the centre of a wider circle of researchers - see if you can wrangle yourself into getting invited to dinner/the bar with their group. Your goal is for them to know who you are and what you do (see jobs point above). They also likely serve on grant committees, etc so some positive interactions/familiarity is to your advantage. You may be able to build on this with time, but start small.
So yes, I do feel conferences (in particular the in-person variety) have been/continue to be beneficial for my career/reputation.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: As the other answers... indeed, accurate and specific, ... indicate, indeed, there may be scant immediate payoff. But, as with retirement investments, compound interest, and such stuff, the things you do early-on are very important for later "payoffs".
That is, *do* have people see you, perhaps hear you give a talk, know that you are "in the game", and so on. No, this won't get you tenure immediately... but it will certainly have positive (if subtle) effects on peoples' perceptions of your preprints and so on.
But/and, I'd suggest *NOT* just hanging around with people your own age, but trying to be (at worst) a hanger-on while more senior people are chatting or dining or whatever. :)
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: In your career stage, I would have said exactly the same thing. I went to many conferences and meetings (my advisor insisted), but rarely talked to people more senior than me, mostly listening to the talks and hanging out with other students, people I knew, and some professors that my advisor introduced me to. I sometimes wondered if my university really got value for money for the not inconsequential amount of money all these trips costed.
Years later, I observed that, somehow, I *had* a network (despite never trying to create one), as opposed to other people in similar career stages whose advisor was less well-funded and/or less keen on sending students to networking opportunities. People knew my name, I got invited to PCs and editorial boards, and my work got cited more than the work of peers. I have a hard time pointing to any specific event that had a clear impact on this development, but as a whole the effect compounded ([as Paul calls it](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189046/70660)).
Networking is one of these things where the payoff from doing it ocassionally, as one-off short-term activities, is basically nil. It starts paying off when you go to conferences that are small enough often enough that you keep running into the same people repeatedly. I have also found that in terms of networking what you really want are *small*, specialised conferences, workshops, or meetings - in a conference with 1000 participants you can spend a whole week and not really be remembered by anybody; but if you participate even a little actively in a one-day workshop with 15 participants 5-10 of these people will remember you going home.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_5: As a computer science researcher, I fully agree with your more
negative observations as a PhD. I had the opportunity to go to several
conferences, schools, workshops, I've worked in several non-scientific
projects with industry, using all these activities more or less
naturally to get in touch with a whole bunch of people, mostly other
PhDs, workers from industry, and postdocs and senior academics to a
much smaller extent, though. We discussed ideas (sometimes suggesting
a future collaboration) or just had a nice chat between nice
persons. The outcome for me, however, was that at least 9 out of 10 of
such encounters were surprisingly superficial on the one hand and of
interestingly little professional use on the other. I can say that even after a few years of postdoc.
However, *things changed quite rapidly to the positive after my
PhD*. Connections made in these years turn out to be significantly more
substantial, lasting, and characterised by a short-term benefit and an
authentic mutual interest people develop for each others' work and
life. As a matter of fact, my existing network largely builds on my
postdoc activities and several years of self-driven initiative.
@username_4's answer includes an interesting but perhaps ideal
perspective I was once indeed told and, hence, hoping for to enjoy
when I started out as a PhD. Unfortunately, my experiences differ.
Although I'm still not too long in the business, from several storytellings of senior academics, I grasped that our academic field (computer science,
software engineering) seems to have changed quite a dramatic bit over
the past three to four decades. There are more and much larger
conferences, the publish-or-perish paradigm/philosophy has turned good
parts of the academic discourse into a seemingly ruthless,
non-scientific, and hyper-commercialised rat-race (please, excuse my
slight exaggeration).
An obvious factor driving the structure and utility of your network might
of course be doing research in a trendy field. That, however, can be in
conflict with your personal interests. (E.g., in AI/ML research, you will hit the ravages of time but your efforts might drown quickly in a vast ocean of hardly distinguishable perhaps not even novel
work.)
Overall, networking is undoubtedly key to academic success. But I am
in increasing doubt as to whether the usual regular conferences in our
field are a good networking platform. They often turn out to be
unnecessarily expensive, wasting money that could otherwise be used, for example,
to get good equipment for lab work or even to fund/extend contracts.
Seeing networking as a highly individual thing, my conclusion is: If I
were to do a PhD again, I would have probably tried not to waste too
much time with conferences during my PhD, focus even more on my
research and a few very good publications, attend some schools, and
ramp up my global networking activities only in the last PhD/first
postdoc year. Based on my experience so far, I can thus recommend PhDs (and also postdocs; as already indicated in the other answers) to
* do internships,
* engage in local collaborations within and across the departments,
* spend mobility times (something you should intensify as a postdoc),
* go to smaller workshops,
* visit (summer) schools,
* attend seminars/project meetings, and the like.
There, people get to know each other much more naturally. One thing
not to forget is that as a PhD you are more likely to meet other PhDs
on conferences rather than seniors, they are often far less
approachable. And most of the PhDs won't stay in academia for a whole
bunch of reasons discussed elsewhere. So, the benefit of academic
networking as a PhD is somewhat limited merely because of that fact.
Upvotes: 3
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2022/09/23
| 1,138
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<issue_start>username_0: I have started a postdoc position very recently. I have funding for now, however I wanted independence, my PI encouraged this idea and we are working on a fellowship for me. On the other hand, I have been nominated by my PhD institution for a different fellowship that is by nomination only and is by far the best option I can imagine. I would like to ask my current PI to write a letter of recommendation for this application but I am afraid to render myself as opportunistic or misleading (since we were working on a different option together right now). I would be grateful to know PIs perspective on this subject:
1. Is asking for this letter appropriate or will I damage my relationship with my PI?
2. Is it possible that my PI writes a bad letter for me because I'm pursuing a different option?
3. What is the best way to approach my PI?
Thank you!<issue_comment>username_1: A wise, honorable, respectable postdoc advisor will recognize that for someone in your position it is absolutely necessary to consider all avenues for remaining and thriving in academia if it is your goal to do so. You need to be pursuing more than one thing because you cannot guarantee you will get anything you have to apply for.
A normal human being will also be a bit hurt and disappointed if you have plans with them and decide to go a different direction. However, disappointment need not lead to retribution, and a good advisor would not let this color their recommendation of you. Quite to the contrary: the best person to write you a recommendation to continue working in academia is someone who would like to personally continue collaborating with you.
If your advisor considers you negatively for pursuing your other options, that's a problem with them, not with you. However, you know your advisor better than we do: if you don't trust them, you may need to act more strategically. If you do trust them, I would recommend you just approach them directly with the circumstance and opportunity and ask if they could write a supportive letter. I don't think it's necessary to predetermine which opportunity takes precedence if you obtain them both; for now, you're just an applicant to two different opportunities.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: 1. The answer to the second half of your first question heavily depends on the personal traits of your adviser. Both jealousy and magnanimity are natural and widespread human traits and without knowing a person really well, one cannot predict which one will prevail. Technically speaking, your request is completely reasonable and legitimate though.
2. It is possible but *extremely* unlikely. The general culture is just to refuse to write a recommendation letter if one doesn't intend to write a reasonably good one.
3. Just be honest and explain clearly why you prefer the other option. As a tactical step, you may even start with "I have that other option. What do you think of it?" and play it by ear from there.
My answer, as a PI, would be "{That option has such and such (dis)advantages (if I know them)/I cannot say much about that other option (if I don't know much about it)}; I can offer you this and this here, but it is your life and career, so the choice is yours and I'll respect and support it no matter what you choose." (Actually I was exactly in the position of such a PI once, so I am just repeating what I said back then. The approach of the postdoc was way more direct than what I am suggesting and went along the lines of "Will you feel betrayed if ... ?").
If you hear something reassuring like the above, you can proceed without hesitation, for whatever your PI feels in his soul, you can safely assume that he keeps his feelings under control and really wishes you the best. There are, probably, some responses that should make you back off immediately too but you'll easily recognize them as well.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: 1. Probably, depends on how much they invested to get that opportunity for you. I want to believe it will not go too far but you may lose any privilages that you might have.
2. Not unless they hold grudge so bad that they stake their reputation on sabotaging you. They may refuse to write a recommendation letter (even that might cause issues for them), but they cannot write a bad one out of spite. I personally will never employ (if I have the chance) someone in academia who has done this. Everyone passing through academic life require recommendation letter one point or another, anyone cheats this system has no place in it.
3. Best course of action is a passive approach. Tell them you want multiple options in case one of them doesn't work. If they ask what will you chose if you get accepted from both, tell them you have not made your mind yet and you will consider both options. Even ask them their opinion on the matter. Who knows maybe they will say you should chose the other one.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/09/25
| 2,212
| 8,840
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<issue_start>username_0: I am from the country of Georgia.
I'am going to apply for US PhD program.
My top choice university is UCLA.
If I would be accepted to UCLA (or another American university) PhD program, can I bring my Dog (Siberian Husky) to campus? Can he come to my office or live with me in on-campus housing?<issue_comment>username_1: A quick search shows that [pets are not allowed](https://reslife.ucla.edu/uaregulations) in UCLA graduate student housing (fish excepted with restrictions). I'd guess the same to be true most places (campus housing). But every US university will have its own rules on such things.
For off-campus housing the landlord's rules would apply and some would permit and others forbid it.
Note that, while you can probably walk a dog on campus, it would almost certainly need to be on a leash and you need to clean up after it. This would be true most places in the US these days, with some exceptions.
There will also be issues about bringing a dog to the US in the first place; vaccinations, quarantine, etc. Make sure you understand the rules.
Service animals such as seeing-eye dogs have special relaxed rules.
Note also that not every university in the US has housing dedicated for graduate students, though some will allow single grad students in regular student housing, which is mainly for undergraduates; no pets, though. Single rooms might be available or not. But most universities tend to be surrounded by lots of rental housing owned by individuals or corporations.
If you don't bring your dog, note that lots of shelters here have animals needing a home. You would ethically need to consider their long term needs if you don't intend to stay after you finish a degree.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Bringing your dog is tricky but not impossible.
* As others have said, it's very unlikely that you'll be able to live on campus with a large dog. There are probably few if any US universities that allow large dogs in campus housing.
* This is not necessarily a problem, since you could simply live off-campus. However, finding a landlord that allows you to have a large dog might not be easy either.
+ It will be hardest near campus and in downtown major cities. If you're a landlord in one of these areas, you are getting several applications per day and may choose one without a dog, to avoid concerns about property damage, barking, liability if he bites someone, etc. In particular, you may find that some cities are near impossible -- the nearest affordable, large-dog friendly apartments may require a multi-hour commute.
+ On the other hand, if you choose a university outside of a city center and you live at least a few miles from campus, you should be able to find something. However, in my personal experience, most landlords will not allow large dogs.
* Your university will have rules about bringing your dog to campus with you (UCLA, for example, allows leashed dogs on campus outdoors, but forbids non-service dogs in all buildings). It's possible that you'll get lucky and no one will care if you break the rules -- especially if you dog just curls up in your office and never bothers anyone. But it's very likely that someone will complain (or will have allergies) and you'll have to leave your dog at home. It can be a challenge to give your dog proper stimulation and attention under these circumstances, especially for an energetic breed like a husky.
Bottom line: if you have a good housing solution for your dog in Georgia, you should probably leave him there. You could always make arrangements to bring him over after your first year, if you manage to find a dog-friendly apartment. If you "must" bring the dog with you, that is certainly doable, but you should take this into account when choosing which schools to apply to. Look at the advertisements for apartments a few miles from the school in question and see how many allow large dogs.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: ***If I would be accepted to UCLA ... PhD program, can I bring my Dog ... to campus?***
Yes, you may bring your dog to *public outdoor areas* on campus, provided that you abide by various rules. From [UCLA policy #135](http://www.adminpolicies.ucla.edu/APP/Number/135) (version at time of this post became effective in July 2019):
>
> A Pet dog is allowed on most outdoor public areas of University Property† only if the Pet dog is under the control of a competent person and restrained by a substantial chain or leash not exceeding six feet in length. Note: Certain outdoor campus venues may not allow Pets and/or have additional restrictions.
>
>
>
Note that pets are not allowed on campus-provided transportation vehicles (e.g. shuttles).
UCLA's policy contains a general description of your responsibilities:
>
> An individual who is either visiting or residing on campus and who wants to bring an animal to campus, is to be mindful that the animal may constitute a hazard to others, especially in confined or closed spaces. Such threats may include but are not limited to, allergies, exacerbation of specific phobias, falls, increased risk of disease, and bites. In addition, the presence of an animal in certain areas may distract or interrupt activities or may create a nuisance, including the nuisance caused by animal waste, noise, or damage to property.
>
>
> An individual bringing an animal to campus is required to be aware of these potential threats or hazards and to exercise reasonable control over the animal in order to minimize the risk to others.
>
>
> The animal owner is responsible and liable for the animal at all times while the animal is on University Property. Any injury to an individual while on University Property or damages to University Property by an animal will be the responsibility of the animal owner.
>
>
>
***Can he come to my office ...***
No, not if your office is university property†. From 135:
>
> A Pet dog or other Pet animal (leashed or otherwise) is not permitted in any campus building ... at any time.
>
>
>
If your office is not university property, then the property owner's policies apply, of course.
(If you are referring to your office at your place of employment, though, fwiw bringing pets to work in office buildings is a generally unusual practice and I believe it would be very unlikely for you to find an employer that let you bring your dog to work with you, especially in a corporate setting.)
***...or live with me in on-campus housing?***
No (as per above), not if the housing is university property†. There are some allowances for UCLA faculty and staff in very specific conditions. See also [UCLA Housing Regulations](https://reslife.ucla.edu/uaregulations) §B.11 for details specific to university housing.
---
There are exceptions if your dog is a *service animal*.
Please refer to the linked policy documents for up-to-date info, the other rules by which you must abide, and details about service animals, as this post is not a complete description of UCLA's policies, nor do I intend to update this post if their policy changes.
*† Note: "University property" is defined in that policy:*
>
> *University Property refers to the grounds and buildings of UCLA campus and off-campus buildings owned or operated by the University.*
>
>
>
---
***... (or another American university) ...***
The policy I described above is UCLA-specific. For other universities, you will have to read their respective policies, which may differ from UCLA.
There isn't a central resource for university pet policies so your best bet is to visit their web site and either use their search feature if they have one available (to limit your search to official university provided info), or poke around on the site. If they do not have a way to find or navigate to policy info on their web site, then use your favorite general search engine, taking care to look at official and up-to-date sources. "*University name* pet policy" is a good bet for search keywords.
If you have doubts or are unable to find information, there should be some kind of contact info on the university's web site for a department that can answer your questions.
---
If your chosen university does not have an acceptable pet policy for on-campus housing and does not require you to live in on-campus housing, then you may also consider looking for off-campus housing that meets your needs.
Additionally, if your dog's needs are a factor in your decision, there are various city-specific resources that you can find. Lists of "top US pet-friendly cities" on the internet sometimes give rundowns of amenities available in the area (dog parks, veterinary services, etc.). You can find them by searching; I don't want to link to any specific info as it is rather subjective.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/09/25
| 425
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<issue_start>username_0: I sent a manuscript to a refereed journal and got no response three months after submission. The journal doesn't specify how much a review lasts, or when should I expect to hear back from them. Manuscripts are sent via e-mail to any member of the editorial board. After sending the manuscript I didn't receive a confirmation e-mail from the editors, so I'm worried that my submission got lost between other emails in the inbox.
Given that I had no response after three months, is it reasonable to send the manuscript to another member of the editorial committee?<issue_comment>username_1: It seems likely that your submission was lost with nothing back for three months. Rather than send it again, send a request for confirmation that it was received. Send it to the same person, but also to a lead editor if you can identify them, or at least one other member in any case.
You should get some sort of response quickly and it might be to submit again. Bad things can happen to email.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I think it depends on the journal but in general it is not uncommon to take many months. It definitely would not be okay to submit elsewhere without withdrawing, and note that some reviewers may already have finished (so withdrawing wastes their effort). As another answer said, you can always check with them .. but I think it is early to do so.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It is quite common for an editor to send an article out to reviewers and give them 90 days to review it. Additionally, a reviewer may ask for an additional 90 days so six month period is a common turnaround time for first reviews.
As you did not receive a confirmation e-mail, then I would encourage you to send a follow-up e-mail to the original editor cc'ing additional members of the editorial board.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/09/25
| 1,965
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing an essay which involves many concepts supposedly unfamiliar to the reader. It has been suggested to me that the explanations of these terms be in the footnotes as this way they wouldn’t count towards the word limit.
My preferred style is the [MLA](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MLA_Handbook), which doesn’t seem to have a custom of such. Which style should I be using if I intend to put in extensive explanatory footnotes?<issue_comment>username_1: As far as I am aware (but I could be wrong), there is no academic journal or book publisher that does not include footnotes into the total word length. Even if this is an essay, it is highly likely that your teacher also considers footnotes as part of the total word length. I advise you to confirm such details with the person in charge of the course.
There is no fundamental relationship between a citation style (or manual of style) and the length of footnotes. It depends on the topic that is being handled, and the chosen method of research. Longer-than-usual footnotes are more closely associated with certain research fields, especially within the humanities.
The most common use of extensive footnotes can be found in critical editions of pre-modern, medieval and ancient authors. A good example is the critical edition of the [Dead Sea Scrolls](https://books.google.co.jp/books?id=TDPuIdnZOncC&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&lpg=PP1&pg=PA45#v=onepage&q&f=false), and a more recent example would be <NAME>'s annotated edition of Carl Jung's Black Books.
Related to this, we can find academic journals that allow for extensive footnotes (within reason), depending on the topic: studies of pre-modern legal history, religious texts, archaeological finds, medical treatises, ancient architecture, etc. One journal that tends to allow for large footnotes is Monumenta Serica [(example 1)](https://www.jstor.org/stable/26768556?socuuid=9631a5a6-69e2-4e29-b46f-30a6a5090280) [(example 2)](https://www.jstor.org/stable/26768559?socuuid=e50d794b-77de-438e-9426-23aaa48e8d1d).
Lengthy footnotes tend to become unavoidable when one is dealing with cultures that are profoundly different from modern ones, or when dealing with artefacts and documents that go back far in time. Other fields such as philosophy can also sometimes have unusually long footnotes. Again, it depends on the topic that is being analyzed.
However, it is important to stress that one should make every possible effort to avoid long footnotes, even when it is allowed. For example, make a list of the topics or concepts that require the longest explanations, and create a section near the introduction that provides a basic, clear and simple explanation of such concepts. Then, when you need to add more nuance or minor details to those explanations, use footnotes. Or try to spread the explanation of those concepts throughout the text, while still using footnotes for small details. At every stage of the process, ask yourself: "Is this explanation *really* necessary for a reader to understand the key points of my essay?" Train yourself to write clearly and concisely, because that is one of the main reasons why students are asked to write essays.
One last word regarding styles. It has become fairly common to use [Chicago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Chicago_Manual_of_Style) (or adapted versions of it) in books with extensive footnotes, not because it encourages such long footnotes, but because it is designed to provide detailed referencing data for finding old documents in historical archives. Chicago is extremely useful when you need to distinguish between different manuscript copies or versions of the same text, which can be spread over different archives around the world.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: #### Write for *readability*, not to abuse abstruse word-count rules
While there are sometimes writing assignments in university courses with some strange rules for computing the word-count, as a general practice, the decision of whether to put information in the body of a paper or its footnotes (or an appendix or elsewhere) should be made on the basis of *readability* and convenience to the reader. The decision should hinge on what is the best way to present information to the reader (and perhaps also stylistic consistency of particular journals, etc.), not on the basis of some silly idea that words in a particular area don't count against a word-count restriction.
There is nothing inherently wrong with having extensive footnotes in a paper *if this is the best way to present information to the reader*. Generally this will occur where there are lines of argument or observation that are ancillary to the main thrust of the paper, which would distract from the flow in the body of the paper. Nevertheless, I would counsel strongly against moving material to footnotes merely to try to abuse a set of silly rules relating to word-count. (If this paper is for a university assignment, and your lecturer has imposed a set rules that incentivise this, please feel free to draw their attention to this post to let them know that they are engaging in poor educational practice.) As to what you might call a writing style that focuses on doing this, I would call it the style of *bad writing*.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: So far as I know, every style can accomodate footnotes. You don't often see them used extensively, in the way you're asking about, because it makes for tedious reading.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I was taught that footnotes are bad and disrupt the reading flow. One should probably omit them alltogether, and with some writing discipline this is doable.
Now, speaking of the "oh, and by the way" notices – which you would rather write in a book or maybe a thesis, but not in a research article – I see two ways.
The more conventional one is to create a separate section and put all the trivia there. The other one leans on Knuth and Tufte and is more a *presentattion* thing: use extensive wide sidenotes, such as those in `tufte-latex` class. Put the trivia in there, without footnote symbols or anything. In this manner the trivia would not disturb the reading flow, the presentation of *actual* material.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: Legal studies articles sometimes include extensive footnotes. For example, [<NAME>'s article "Finding the Good in Holmes's Bad Man" in Fordham Law Review (Volume 79 Issue 5 Article 9)](https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4750&context=flr) includes multiple pages that are 75%+ footnotes as well as one page (2075) that is entirely footnote overflow from the previous page! Many of the footnotes are case citations as would be expected, but quite a few include extensive commentary on the case as well that the author didn't feel quite fit in the body of his article.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: I own a book, [First Peoples in a New World, <NAME>](https://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/com/1108735479), that is a popular rendition of the scientific literature of the archaeology of what became the Americas from around 12,000 or so years ago. It is around 20% endnotes. Meltzer is one of the developers of some of the main theories of people from that time up to, say, the neolithic.
However, of you want to read it all, including the scientific notes, it is maddening to read, though very informative.
As a print book, the notes are certainly contributing to the word/page count, of course.
But, other books, those that merge a popular and a theoretical/scientific view into one work, probably satisfy your search for a "writing style". But that is much less likely to be used in an essay or paper.
Upvotes: 1
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2022/09/25
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<issue_start>username_0: I watched a video recently about a book (<NAME>'s "The Structure of Scientific Revolutions"), and I am going to use that video as a source in a paper I am writing. Do I need to cite just the video or Kuhn's book as well?<issue_comment>username_1: Generally speaking, cite what you use. If you haven't made reference to the book, then the video is enough. Presumably the video itself cites the book.
However, it might be worth the effort for you to actually read the book as it likely has more information than the video. Then the problem resolves itself.
---
Also, in general, not necessarily specific to this book and video, a video can be an interpretation of a book and the author of the book might disagree with the interpretation. This would be unlikely if the book's author was closely connected to the production of the video, but could occur otherwise. So, again, cite what you use.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: You only have to cite the video. But in the case where you're referencing a work that quotes or paraphrases another work it is fairly common to say something along the lines of "In *Useful Widgets*, <NAME> asserts widgets are useful, backing up his claim by <NAME>'s seminal work *On Widgets*..."
The caveat is that I've seen multiple errors propagated where someone didn't go back to the original and the intermediary work fundamentally misunderstood the argument they were trying to paraphrase (the worst case being the passage paraphrased started with "One could say..." and the next passage said "But it is clear that this is wrong because...", and so the original author was outright arguing the opposite of what they were said to be arguing). Or the intermediary work attributes the quote wrong. Or the intermediary author was paraphrasing but it gets taken as a direct quote because they weren't following the same style guide.
Of course those mistakes aren't necessarily your fault, but because you didn't do the diligence you're propagating them. I'd strongly recommend going back to the original as a best practice and an opportunity to engage with both authors.
Upvotes: 1
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2022/09/26
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<issue_start>username_0: Say, there is a recently proposed machine learning algorithm that you applied to another dataset and you found high performance results.
In general, you found a method that was proposed to solve some task and you apply it to solve another task.
Is this enough for a contribution? Isn't this plagiarism?<issue_comment>username_1: Generally speaking, cite what you use. If you haven't made reference to the book, then the video is enough. Presumably the video itself cites the book.
However, it might be worth the effort for you to actually read the book as it likely has more information than the video. Then the problem resolves itself.
---
Also, in general, not necessarily specific to this book and video, a video can be an interpretation of a book and the author of the book might disagree with the interpretation. This would be unlikely if the book's author was closely connected to the production of the video, but could occur otherwise. So, again, cite what you use.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: You only have to cite the video. But in the case where you're referencing a work that quotes or paraphrases another work it is fairly common to say something along the lines of "In *Useful Widgets*, <NAME> asserts widgets are useful, backing up his claim by <NAME>'s seminal work *On Widgets*..."
The caveat is that I've seen multiple errors propagated where someone didn't go back to the original and the intermediary work fundamentally misunderstood the argument they were trying to paraphrase (the worst case being the passage paraphrased started with "One could say..." and the next passage said "But it is clear that this is wrong because...", and so the original author was outright arguing the opposite of what they were said to be arguing). Or the intermediary work attributes the quote wrong. Or the intermediary author was paraphrasing but it gets taken as a direct quote because they weren't following the same style guide.
Of course those mistakes aren't necessarily your fault, but because you didn't do the diligence you're propagating them. I'd strongly recommend going back to the original as a best practice and an opportunity to engage with both authors.
Upvotes: 1
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2022/09/26
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm applying to graduate school as a senior in my undergraduate studies. I know there's a good chance I won't get in, so I was hoping to ask the professor I am working under if I can research under him for a year while I apply again. What's the best way to ask if I can work under him as a backup option without sounding rude, and at what point should I ask?<issue_comment>username_1: A sit down conversation would be good, where you talk about your long term goals and mention that you might be delayed in starting grad school. Just ask if there are things they can help you with in terms of some project in the interim.
I don't think anyone would consider that rude.
And it is a good plan to keep connected, both to the field and to professors.
A sit down is far better than email since you have a chance for back and forth explorations.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: For professor mentoring an undergraduate student, the broad goals for their students should be:
1. Teach you about research - both how to do it and what it's like
2. Get you to your next position, which is almost certainly someplace else
If you don't get into graduate school in your first run of applications, then these goals are still ongoing, and it's natural for you to stay. Of course there may be obstacles to this if you are graduating (sometimes positions can only be available to current students), but there's absolutely nothing to be cagey or secretive about. Graduate students are usually expected to go study somewhere besides where they were as an undergraduate. It's very natural both to a) have a backup plan and b) for your primary plan to be something besides being an undergraduate researcher for the rest of your life.
Whenever your next opportunity arises for a conversation, I'd simply ask your professor directly: "If I'm not successful in applying to graduate school this year, is it possible I could continue working for pay here in your lab?" is entirely appropriate. It's good to have this conversation early to help in planning finances. Your advisor should be hoping that your graduate applications are successful, but if they are able to support you they are likely to appreciate having an experienced worker continue.
I'm writing from the perspective of someone in the biomedical sciences in the US, where there is typically a fair amount of funding and flexibility available to support both undergraduate students and recent graduates in lab positions. In other fields these opportunities may not be available, but you probably can have a fairly good idea by looking around you at who the other people are.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: You might want to contemplate applying to grad school at your undergrad institution, as a back-up plan (no reason to be apologetic), so that you'd be a *student*... much more employable in every way (pre-PhD) than otherwise.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/09/27
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<issue_start>username_0: If an academic group receives a multi-year grant denominated in a currency different from that that they pay salaries, can they use some of the grant to hedge against changes in the relative value of the two currencies?
Some years ago I was a member of a group in the UK that received a substantial five year grant from the US. Between the awarding of the grant and the time we started employing staff the pound dropped against the dollar, meaning we could have employed more staff than we originally estimated. However, because of the risk that the exchange rate reversed over the time of the grant the "bean counters" did not let us take this option. In the end the pound remained somewhat low and we had excess money in the grant in the final year. The project could have been much more productive if that money had been spent on more staff in the beginning.
If this was a private company they would have the option of hedging the risk, ie. taking some position on the currency markets such that whatever the exchange rate does the money available would be roughly similar. Is an academic group allowed to take such a futures position in the forex markets?
While I am not in this situation at the moment, considering the substantial drop in the value of the pound that has occurred since the July NIH funding round I suspect many people are, and the magnitude of the change is much greater than has occurred in recent years.<issue_comment>username_1: As usual, it is impossible to answer questions of the form of "is XYZ allowed with grants?" with certainty - the answer to any question like this will always be *"that depends on the rules of the organization providing the grant as well as on the rules of the organization receiving / managing the grant".*
That said, for this specific question I feel fairly confident to say that universities will generally *not* allow you to speculate with grant money, or invest them in the financial market in some other manner. Grants are given for specific purposes (this makes them different from, say, donations) - sometimes these purposes may be abstractly formulated, but never sufficiently abstractly that "invest it in some other company" would be covered. At the end of the day, if an organization gives you money to (for example) hire grad students you actually need to hire grad students - not invest the money, hope for higher returns, and then hire even more grad students (or alternatively hire less or no grad students if the investment goes bad).
>
> However, because of the risk that the exchange rate reversed over the time of the grant the "bean counters" did not let us take this option. In the end the pound remained somewhat low and we had excess money in the grant in the final year.
>
>
>
Realistically, stories like this are the exact reason why grants (even personal grants) are usually submitted to universities to manage and not directly to researchers - the "bean counters" as you call them are sufficiently experienced (and sufficiently disinterested in the outcome of any specific project) to make objective financial decisions that do not get the project, university, or PI into troubles, whereas we scientists may sometimes get *a little* carried away with positive possibilities without considering the risks.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: From the guidelines for grant applications at <https://www.ukri.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/BBSRC-051020-Funding-opp-20ALERTJustificationOfResourcesDoc.docx>:
>
> If quotes are provided in foreign currency the exchange rate used to
> convert it to GBP should be clearly stated. The exchange rate at time
> of submission should be used, BBSRC-UKRI cannot account for changes in
> exchange rate between submission and award of the grant.
>
>
>
It's not clear whether this applies to funding from all the UK Research Councils, or just from BBSRC.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Though I'm in the US and not the UK, my impression that in both places **academic groups do not handle money, their institutions do**.
US government grants, in particular, are always to the institution. The PI and other staff don't have any authority to spend the money directly, it's up to the institution to manage the money. In your case, the institution decided to be conservative and did not let the group spend more pounds early in the grant than were originally budgeted. An alternative might be to make exchanged funds available on an annual basis (or whatever schedule the funds are actually received on). I could see that as a potential challenge if you work in a place where the employer has restrictions on when they can release paid staff: if you can't drop an employee tomorrow that you're paying today, you have to be sure you'll have the money to pay them tomorrow, too.
Large universities have their own financial clout and though there may be some restrictions on those operating as public entities (which would vary by jurisdiction), academic institutions manage their money much like a company does, through investments and relevant hedges in their endowments, retirement funds, etc.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Any organization that accepts a grant receives a check or transfer from the funding organization. The organization has rules on how that money is to be spent. Indeed, grants are considered projects.
The institution is effectively saying "in exchange for this much money, our investigator will do the research described in the grant." Either periodically, or at the end of the contract, the funding institution checks up on things to make sure things are going as planned. If the institution has real problems with interim reports, the next check may never come.
Obviously, research being research, not all of it works out, and institutes are fine with this. Institutes *will not* be fine with a report that says "yeah, I know you gave us $250,000 USD, but we tried to leverage that into $350,000 USD by speculation, and it failed, so we were only able to spend the $125,000 that we were able to recover". The institute does not expect you to spend money they didn't give you (unless part of the contract was matching funds, or some such), but they expect you to make reasonable efforts to spend the money they do give you the way you said you would.
Taking the money given to the Uni and putting it in some account for speculative pursuits is most likely not allowed. In fact, I suspect criminal charges could be the result.
Let's take this out another step. Say you have $250K in an account for a grant. You think "Wow, I can speculate with that money, make a ton, and then return the $250K!!" I suggest this isn't all that much different to a prosecuting attorney from your original scenario.
UPDATE:
FWIW, such costs are unallowable for NIH research grants:
From <https://grants.nih.gov/grants/policy/nihgps/html5/section_7/7.9_allowability_of_costs_activities.htm>
>
> Contingency Provisions
>
> Unallowable. Payments made by the NIH awarding
> IC to the non-Federal entity's "contingency reserve" or any similar
> payment made for events the occurrence of which cannot be foretold
> with certainty as to the time or intensity, or with an assurance of
> their happening, are unallowable under non-construction grants.
> Contingency funds do not include pension funds, self-insurance funds,
> and normal accruals (also see Reserve Funds in this exhibit). (See
> also Construction Grants-Allowable and Unallowable Costs and
> Activities in IIB concerning contingency funds under construction
> grants).
>
>
>
Indemnification, though, is permitted under some circumstances, which I'm not sure would be met here.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: **Explicitly hedging** as in financial institutions? No. I would be surprised if any grant funder or fundee would allow that.
**Are potential currency fluctuations taken into account** when writing and executing on grants? At least sometimes, if they are done well and involve multiple currencies.
This could include:
* moving work between partners
+ e.g. having a UK group do an expensive experiment and the US lab doing a cheaper one
* bringing expenses forward or back in time
+ e.g. buying equipment now even if it won't be used immediately
* changing currencies of purchased goods and/or services
+ e.g. paying a subcontractor in a third country to build a website with dollars instead of pounds
+ e.g. moving a conference/meeting venue to a country with a favourable currency
That's not "hedging" in the forex sense, but it is building options into the structure of the project to react to future currency movements.
Even without currency fluctuations, research is by nature uncertain; the [1000 Genomes project](https://www.sanger.ac.uk/news_item/2010-10-27-1000-genomes-project-publishes-analysis-of-completed-pilot-phase/) ended up with about 2,500 genomes for example, partly because the technology got cheaper to run faster than expected over the course of the project (and currency was probably a part of that).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: Professional "bean counter" aka "research administrator" here with 12 years' experience at top US research universities, having managed funds at more than 20 US Federal agencies and dozens of industry sponsors and foundations.
Your question sounds inflammatory, but it actually is a good question on how income is allowed to be handled. There are regulations in the US about how income is allowed to be distributed (i.e., can the institution get it up front and also keep it). I have seen some private agencies allow us to keep the interest on our income, and at my institution it goes back to the PI when the grant ends. I know of one foundation that required us to refund the interest to them and any interest we received on unused funds! (Why did we accept such a stupid grant??)
The way the feds get around this entire question is by not giving the money upfront. Because Uniform Guidance pushes the cost reimbursable model, there is no interest to worry about. There are however federal accounts that also give fixed price, often via SBIR/STTR mechanisms.
The way many academics handle uncertainty in funding is to run a deficit upfront, but this carries certain risks. Let's say you have a startup of $1M. You can overspend year 1 funding on many (most?) federal grants knowing the deficit carries forward nearly always. However, let's say your contract is with IARPA and they aren't interested in Phase 2 funding. They cancel the project and you are out of pocket on your over-expenditure. Not a lot of PIs can gamble on such levels, but it happens at top institutions from time to time.
If you need to start spending before a contract is in place, many institutions call this an "advance account". Depending on funding this may or may not be controversial. I work with CS and Engineering right now and with MURI funding I always run a deficit to ensure we get our next increment and expense for the costs we have today. I usually am more worried about underspend than overspend. This is frequently because PIs don't ramp up their spend right away, we end up behind enough to lose the next increment. Most agencies want less than 25% remaining to award more. I can implement this strategy because I'm at a top school. Other places can't do this and uncertainty is a real problem, sometimes with no solutions.
My request to all PIs with US federal funding is to read all terms and conditions (NIH has the Grants Policy Statement; NSF has the PAPPG) including the larger federal Uniform Guidance for grants and FAR for contracts. If researchers took an interest in the rules, my job would be much easier. A lot of these questions are answered therein. Look into "carry forward" or "carryover" rules. Running a deficit is an actual strategy if your institution allows it (see above-mentioned risk).
Upvotes: 1
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2022/09/27
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<issue_start>username_0: I am doing my dissertation for the second time now, as I failed the first time. I have sadly used up all my hours with my supervisor and will not get any feedback. So there are no meetings anymore and this supervisor has started working at another university.
I am allowed to ask for help or questions through email, but nothing more until the submission date. The issue is that the advisor I have now won't respond to my emails, I wrote a week ago asking some questions to no avail. She does this regularly and I have even complained. Once it took her one month to reply to me. This is a big issue and I really need help, and I need feedback as I do not want to fail again. How do I go on from now on? I feel very stuck and hopeless, with no support.<issue_comment>username_1: If someone works at another university, then that person gets paid to help the students of that new university. There is usually some leniency for a transition period. However, if you already used up your allotted hours, then it would be getting increasingly hard to justify time spent on supervising you.
Also, you can complain all you want about a person who is no longer employed there, but what can your university do about that?
In all the universities I worked at there was someone in the department who was responsible for helping students find their way through the bureaucracy. Those persons had different job titles, so you may need to do some searching to find that person in your department. (Yeah, there is some irony in needing to know the local bureaucracy to find the person who can help you navigate that bureaucracy) Go to that person not to complain, but to ask for help.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I have never heard of a student “using all their time with a supervisor”. If the situation is as described, the supervisor has left and you cannot reach her in a timely manner, then I suggest you contact someone from your academic unit for guidance.
It is very unprofessional to abandon a student close to graduation, especially if the student is in difficulty. In my experience most units have discretionary means of mitigating the situation, and your program chair/head/coordinator should recognize this current situation serves no one.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/09/27
| 545
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<issue_start>username_0: I am applying to a PhD program in US, and I have two referees for recommendation letters. Referee #1 is my faculty advisor, and referee #2 is a thesis advisor.
If referee #2 uses similar writing style (and content) as referee #1 (they have each other's consent) but writes only about his advising experience with my thesis, will this be classified as plagiarism?
For example, both of them started each paragraph as "I am impressed by \_\_\_\_'s ...." and "I believe her curiosity and background in statistics...". They also used this sentence but worded similarly: "I notice that many biostatisticians and data scientists have excellent problem solving and leadership skills. However, the combination of teamwork skills, adaptability, and critical thinking skills are crucial to the success of research projects (and its concepts), but they are often lacking in them.".
How bad will it look in front of the committee? This is for a PhD program in the same university where I am currently completing my Master's (in the U.S.).<issue_comment>username_1: It is not plagiarism, but a lack of diversity. For me, they are also too general.
It is also not a good practice to mention something you already showed/mentioned in other parts of the application in the recomendation letters, so it is even worse if the two recommendation letters mention the same thing.
Moreover, in my opinion, it is not a good idea to mention your professors' comments on other biostatisticians in the field that way. For some people I know, it is a minus.
Probably, it is better to mention how good you are among good statistics practitioners rather than how good you are compared to "not-so-good" statistics practitioners.
Upvotes: 1 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Plagiarism really isn't the issue. If two such letters landed on my desk, I would probably think that the student had provided some sort of draft letter to both professors, who modified it to suit their needs.
The impact those letters would have is hard to tell, without the content of the rest of the student's application portfolio -- but I probably wouldn't think of those recommenders as being "highly enthusiastic" about the student.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/09/27
| 2,630
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an international student studying in North america. I am applying for a master's program. I reached out to many professors for a letter of recommendation, but none replied. So, I told one professor that I would give him a small coffee gift card just for replying, regardless of whether he said yes or no. **I now realize that I should not have done this.**
The professor explained that I should never make such an offer and that he could not accept it. Still, he agreed to write the letter. However, he is going to mention this incident in the letter.
**Is this gonna give the negative impression to people who review application?** If so, should I ask someone else to write for me instead? It is hard to get people to reply to my requests.<issue_comment>username_1: Perhaps this is just a cultural misunderstanding. You don't write like a native Canadian, so I'll assume you are from another culture for this advice.
Different cultures have different practices and expectations around gifts. In Canada and the US, what you did seems like a bribe of some sort and your comments suggest that it was, at least, an inducement to answer you. I don't know if this would be natural in the place you were born or not.
But, one option you have, perhaps, is to go visit them in person and apologize for what you did and, assuming it is true, tell them that you just don't have enough experience with the local culture yet and ask them to forgive you for your actions. If they seem to accept the apology, you can then ask, again, for a letter.
It isn't something that would likely work with email, however.
But, yes, in Canada and the US, the interpretation would be negative at worst and puzzling at best. It just doesn't happen here.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: **Do not use this reference letter.**
Depending on the exact information included and the phrasing used, there are two potential interpretations the reader could be left with.
Scenario A is that the reader gets the impression that you genuinely and purposefully tried to bribe the letter writer. This would such a drastic ethical transgression that I'd expect your application to be utterly rejected at this point.
Scenario B is more favourable to you: Here the reader believes (as I do based on your post) that you made a rather innocent mistake based on a lack of understanding of the relevant social norms. But then the letter writer is themselves unaware of the impact and meaning of your words, or they are trying to sabotage you. The most gracious reaction to that would be to disregard the entire letter.
So to summarize, the best plausible outcome of such a letter is that it gets ignored, at worst it will sink your entire application.
As already brought up in the comments and by username_1, there is no tradition of "facilitation money" in "the West", including Canada. This would count as a bribe, and offering or accepting bribes is usually illegal. And if you actually want to try and get someone to risk their job and maybe even jail time, you'll have to offer way more than $25.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: This incident sounds to me like a simple misjudgment in relation to an intention to give a small gift as a thank-you. The inference to this being a bribe to influence a decision-maker is weak, since you offered it as a gift irrespective of the outcome of the decision of the professor, and the value was extremely small in relation to the earnings of the proposed recipient. As others have pointed out, it is strange and ethically-fraught to offer a gift in circumstances like this, but it sounds like you have already learned that.
Personally, I don't think the mention of this incident is likely to be harmful to your application, so long as there is a clear explanation of the details (including the mitigating parts) and the fact that you have learned not to do this since then. It is not unheard of for new students to be unfamiliar with the rules and customs around gratuities in universities, *a fortiori* if they are from another culture. The sole negative impression that this incident would give to me is that you came into the university somewhat naive and socially awkward in relation to how students should interact with their professors. If you decide you want to include the LOR that includes mention of this incident, then I would recommend you include a clear description of the incident in your own materials, and stress what you have learned from it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: **Your professor's actions seem very strange.**
* If he believes that you were trying to bribe him, then he should have refused to write the letter.
* If he believes that this was a simple misunderstanding, then putting this in your letter seems like an inappropriate response. At most, the professor should disclose the incident in a footnote rather than describing the incident in the very first paragraph.
>
> Is this gonna give the negative impression to people who review application?
>
>
>
It's more likely to give a negative impression of the professor. Unfortunately, since the professor is recommending you, this is not great for you either. Further, it creates a distraction: the committee will likely spend only a few minutes considering your application; you do not want them to spend their time discussing this irrelevant incident.
Still, the real question is: what are your other options?
* If you can find another professor who can write you an equally-strong recommendation, then of course you should do that. But I assume you are asking the question because you do not have many other options.
* In this case, I do not think using this professor's letter will be fatal for your application, and you may not have any choice (your application will be incomplete if you do not submit enough letters). It's probably a good idea to provide a *brief* (one-sentence) description of this incident providing your side of the story, but do not dwell on it; space spent describing this incident would be better spent describing your strong points.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: Avoid using that reference unless it means you can't put in the application. It comes across as odd, and a reader will discount the letter.
If you have trouble getting professors to write you references, you could try making an appointment with the chair of your department (or a similar position) and ask them to help.
Explain the problem and the consequences (it makes it impossible for you to apply for positions). They may be able to find out why professors aren't responding to you when writing references for students is part of their job.
If these professors think they are too busy, then a department chair or dean can remind them they need to find the time. If they won't write because they feel they would have to write a mixed or negative letter, then you need to know that before you graduate.
There may also be an office of international students on your campus that could help you with the cultural niceties of references. I found references as they work in the USA very strange when I first moved here, and I imagine Canada will have its own specific culture too.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: The incident of the gift card is one thing.
But if the professor is going to go further than that and *actually mention this incident in your letter*, do you really want that person speaking on your behalf in your application package?
This is like noticing any red flags on a job search. If a employer/advisor/boss engages in practices that you disagree with, why would you want to work with them? That professor is definitely doing something questionable and I would not want them to write a letter that is going to damage my chances of admission.
On the note of people not replying, professors are busy with tons of e-mails. So don't necessarily over-do it, but definitely follow up on e-mails when you can. Maybe go in person as well if it's possible.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: **My first thought would have been "do not use his letter", but I also feel like you don't have a lot of options. It's not easy.**
1. I have a lot of experience with recommendation letters (requesting, writing, and reading). I have never, ever, seen (or made) any mention of attempted gifts in one of them. This would stand out like a sore thumb to a reader/recruiter. I can't predict the reaction, but it would be quite memorable.
2. The professor was right to refuse your offer and to help you understand how the system works. However, I find it extremely unlikely that you are the first one to make this mistake. Other professors (see #1) appear to have chosen not to mention anything. This means your professor does not think like most professors (let alone like most letter readers).
3. Thus, the issues with his letter (which you will never see) could be larger than just the mention of the "bribe" incident. I feel the most important question is: is the letter going to be strong? Will it describe your flaws in painstaking detail? Will it contain phrases like "Mia was the 15th out of 28 students in my class and her performance was acceptable"?
4. But again, this professor is the first person that even answers your request. You might be better off with a strong letter with a weird paragraph than without the letter.
My conclusion is that you should ask for a 10-minute meeting and try to be relatively direct. Maybe you should ask something like "Are you comfortable writing a strong letter?" You have little to lose. I hope this helps.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: This is a really awkward position, for the both of you. If he considers this as a bribe, he is obligated to report it to the university and not mention in a recommendation letter... I think that he is trying to teach you something about the ethical value of that as an action. Also, I don't know how things work over there with the recommendation letters from previous employers and teachers, but I was in a deep hole when I was in college and even though I would pass my exams and barely get away with absences, none would give me any kind of recommendation and I would never blame them for that. What worked for me when I started looking for employment, if they had asked me for a letter, I would tell them the truth. Expose exactly who I was and how I was back then, but also the steps and leaps I had taken to turn my life around and be the man I am today. I am sure our cases are different, but what I was to tell you is that even if you have and interview, and you don't have a letter, explain to them why, expose your true self with all the feelings you have, all the shortcomings and anxiety, but also tell them what you have learned, how you deal with life, what you can offer them. I have finished psychology and I work at a big company that has nothing to do with that and also have friends in HR in high places. The meta has shifted, they are looking for people that know they have weaknesses and are actively try to work on these, they don't trust the perfect candidate. I don't know if I passed to you what I wanted you, my feelings tend to overtake me when I write. Best of luck nonetheless.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: Has anyone been a non-student staff member of a research lab at a (reputable, US) university starting from an entry/Bachelor's degree-level position, then leveraged their years of employment as the basis for a dissertation to receive an advanced degree from the same university with some minimal additional coursework/research/etc.?
Would this route be frowned upon at all, or have some other downsides I've yet to consider?
If such an option exists, is there a name or label usually used to describe this? Is this more plausible for a Master's (rather than a PhD)?
To clarify, I am not asking about honorary doctorates. I'm satisfied with my contributions over the past ~4 years, but nonetheless I haven't made *exceptional* contributions to qualify for such a thing, nor am I interested in getting an empty title from some disreputable source.
I am trying to understand if this is something that is actually plausible and worth looking into or not.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> years of employment as the basis for a dissertation
>
>
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Years of employment do not provide any basis by themselves. Were you actively developing new tools, or designing new experiments in these years?
If yes, you will be quite efficient in finishing your PhD quickly, because you are already doing what PhD students do.
Are you ready to do what you do now, for 3 years, receiving ~half of the wage (or nothing at all)?
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: There are schools that offer Master's Degrees based upon life experience. <https://www.degreemajor.com/life-experience-masters-degree> is one such "school", but I offer that as an example, not as an endorsement of the practice or recommendation of any particular "school".
I know about such programs because my department tried to hire a person with such a degree as a laboratory engineer. HR disallowed the credential, and we couldn't hire the person -- so such a degree clearly will not be counted as a real degree in every situation (or maybe even "any" situation -- all I can attest to is that our own HR department would not recognize the degree)
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<issue_start>username_0: I’ve had a very hard time dealing with supervisor(s) in the last 2 years of my PhD. This is my third year and with the help of a postdoc I finally formulated a more generic scientific goal for my Ph.D. The postdoc likes it a lot and I can see how this generic formulation solves many problems including the ones that I’ve to deal with application wise in the PhD.
My primary supervisor is usually a very discouraging person. I’ve the impression that he talks behind my back to my other supervisor and the main professor. He has a narrow vision related to the application and never really helped me much.
In this country, we value the opinion of the main professor a lot in the PhD. This person was very encouraging and helpful. However, suddenly he changed his mind and formally asking me to focus on the main problem of the Ph.D.(which is application based). I suddenly lose motivation and as a young researcher, I’m also not able to stand up for myself.
Should I just work hard to realise my scientific aims? Or, should I find a balance of satisfying them and my own goals as well? At the end it all comes down to efforts and papers and they get to know everything that I work on.<issue_comment>username_1: If I understand your description correctly, you've decided you would like to change your research agenda from your initial proposal, giving a more general research agenda. It sounds like there is some disagreement among the academics you mention as to what is an appropriate scope and focus for your research project, and whether or not they support this change. If I understand your description correctly, there is a professor and a postdoc who agree with your more general research goals, but your primary supervisor is encouraging you to focus on a particular applied part of this broader agenda, which was your initial proposal.
A PhD candidature is a research-training program, and the proof of development is generally the ability to create publishable research outputs (e.g., academic papers conference papers, etc.). Nothing in your post really sets out a plan for how you want to achieve this within your research vision, so that is something you will need to think about. If you focus on the narrower applied project at first, and are able to successfully publish research on that topic, it may assist you in developing towards completion of your candidature. Similarly, if you can publish research in the broader areas of interest to you, that may also assist you in developing towards completion of your candidature. The best way to proceed depends on a complicated calculus of risk, reward, motivation, etc., but you will need to formulate a pathway forward where you can publish a sufficient amount of research to meet the requirements for successful completion of your candidature.
It sounds like you have some general motivation issues with regard to the research, and you also appear to have some unrealistic ideas about the expectations for a PhD candidature. Particularly because of the latter, I recommend that you do not follow your own instincts too closely, without significant counsel from the academics supervising you. You should have a discussion with your supervisor and try to formulate a program where you will publish research but where you are also *heading towards* areas of broad long-term interest to you. Motivation issues are tricky in graduate-level education --- on the one hand, we ideally want students to pursue research activities that they find interesting, but on the other hand they also need to develop some stoicism in relation to the slow pace of development of work and the necessity to work on problems of less interest sometimes.
In regard to formulating a way forward, I would strongly caution against your assumption that only the people who are being encouraging of your proposal to change your research program are being helpful --- sometimes it is also helpful to discourage approaches that may not bear fruit. Your supervisor might be of the view that there is a greater prospect of research publication in your initial applied topic, or might have some other reasons for suggesting you focus on that part at present.
>
> I’ve the impression that he talks behind my back to my other supervisor and the main professor.
>
>
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That is part of his job; when supervising a doctoral candidate it is expected that you will confer with other supervisors and possibly even other professors outside the supervisory group. There is certainly no expectation that all these discussions would be limited to situations where the student is present. Bouncing ideas and opinions off other academics is a helpful way for a supervisor to test whether they are providing good advice to the student and it is a useful mechanism for general alignment of best practice in supervision (and it is also sometimes just a helpful way to vent to colleagues about day-to-day work frustrations).
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In addition to username_1's reply, try to take the perspective of all parties involved.
* Does the main supervisor discourage your approach because (i) she/he thinks it is not promising? (ii) not aligned with their own research agenda? (iii) doesn't comply with constraints imposed by the funding body? (iv) other external constraints?
* Similarly, is the postdoc just interested in the new project or would she/he benefit from that project also also for their own career?
* At the risk of sounding generic: Pursuing independent interests is generally good, but only if you actively seeks advice from 1-2 people you trust, and you are well aware of expectations and constraints at your specific place.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> I’ve had a very hard time dealing with supervisor(s) in the last 2 years of my PhD. This is my third year and with the help of a postdoc I finally formulated a more generic scientific goal for my Ph.D. The postdoc likes it a lot and I can see how this generic formulation solves many problems including the ones that I’ve to deal with application wise in the PhD.
>
>
>
A PhD thesis has a well defined topic. Sometimes constraints related to funding sources makes that you must work on that topic, like it or not. Phd students have supervisors because they (most of them) do not have the ability to guide themselves among the available research topics. A supervisor will ensure that you work on a subject on which you can progress and publish.
I find it odd to say that you "formulated a more generic scientific goal" for your phd with the help of a postdoc. The goal of your phd is defined with your supervisor(s). If you leave them out, don't expect to have their support when things do not go as you planned.
>
> My primary supervisor is usually a very discouraging person. I’ve the impression that he talks behind my back to my other supervisor and the main professor. He has a narrow vision related to the application and never really helped me much.
>
>
>
You talk about a "primary supervisor"! If he wants you to work on the application, you should do so. Maybe that's the main motivation for your thesis. Do you expect your thesis to succeed if you completely disregard what you are expected to do?
Nowadays, applicative research is very well received. You open your perspectives from both academic and industrial points of view.
>
> In this country, we value the opinion of the main professor a lot in the PhD. This person was very encouraging and helpful. However, suddenly he changed his mind and formally asking me to focus on the main problem of the Ph.D.(which is application based). I suddenly lose motivation and as a young researcher, I’m also not able to stand up for myself.
>
>
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Again, you are asked to focus on the main problem. I guess, this is mentioned somewhere in your PhD topic and you cannot avoid it. If you work with your supervisors on a subject, they will help through discussions and advice. If you try to choose your own path, without their approval, I don't see how you can succeed (unless you're very talented and you'll make it on your own).
---
In view of the above:
1. The topic of a thesis is, usually, well defined (here, knowing the country you're from would help us understand better the situation). Especially if the motivation is an application and the funding is specially directed towards this.
2. It is not ok to rely more on the advice of a postdoc than on the advice of your supervisors. Think a bit who has more experience? Who can support you for future applications?
3. From my point of view it is completely fine and normal to have ideas on which to work on in parallel with your PhD work. If you find interesting ideas in the work of the postdoc you mention, you are free to develop them in the same time as you do your PhD work (here again, knowing the research domain would be more helpful, I talk from the point of view of a mathematician). But prioritize and think carefully. If you disregard your supervisors things might not end well.
4. Concerning the title question: "Should I follow my own direction for my PhD research?" My short answer is NO. You follow your own direction after you finish the PhD. On the other hand, you follow your own direction for what you can do in parallel with your PhD work.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Other answers emphasized the role of scientific supervision and risk management in taking decisions about the direction of your PhD research. A lot have been said about the experience of supervisors vs. the experience of PhD students.
But there could be a completely formal reason for the behavior of your supervisors. PhD projects are often funded by the project that is managed by (I presume) your main professor. The project contains some research plan which should be followed to some reasonable extent. If you reformulate your thesis objectives, you may well get very nice results which may lead to your PhD, but the project will fail. The goal of your supervisors could be to achieve success in both directions.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am almost done with my bachelor's degree in a STEM field (Computer Science).
I wanted to ask if it is possible to transition into the social sciences, after I am done with my bachelor's? I'm interested in Political Science, and especially International Relations.
If yes, how easy is it?
Will I need to enroll for another bachelor's degree or will it be feasible to directly apply for a Master's?
Background: I have done introductory courses in Economics, Sociology and Environmental Politics. And I am doing my bachelor's thesis for a research experience but it is in CS.<issue_comment>username_1: One option would be to find a master that is "half-way" between computer science and social science. For example, there are a number of master programs focusing on applying data science on social science problems, like this one <https://www.uni-konstanz.de/en/study/before-you-study/study-programmes/masters-degree/social-and-economic-data-science-msc/> .
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Questions of the "can I get into?" type usually come down to what a university will let you do. And that usually comes down to a letter of recommendation from a prof or two.
My prof got into a PhD program in physics at Cambridge. This was because he had a letter of recommendation from Einstein. He had no undergrad degree.
There was a co-student of mine when in my PhD in particle physics. He had a degree in linguistics. But he took a bunch of math and physics classes because he was interested. And he got a good recommendation. So he was doing just fine in his PhD in particle physics. It was a little intimidating when he would be reading three different languages before lunch.
These days, the contact info and course catalog should be on the net for many schools. Scope out what universities there are that might be interesting to you. Find the departments that have programs you might like to take. Send them some emails asking what their requirements are and if your case specifically would qualify.
You may be able to contact the support staff. Be very nice to them. They can help you a lot. The secretary of the department chair will likely know every detail of what you need.
Try to be specific in your email. Say what you are in now, when you expect to finish, and the degree you are interested in. Ask specifically if you meet the requirements.
Possibly you will come very near to meeting the requirements. Consider whether you would be willing to do a couple classes at the new university before you start your degree. Maybe a year with a smaller class load but some kind of employment would work. Maybe some sort of TA job at the university can be arranged. Then start the real degree, maybe only one semester late.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: For entry into a Masters program, the usual expectation is that the student already has an undergraduate-level understanding of the field, either from having already done an undergraduate degree in that field or from related study or demonstrated self-learning. From your description, you have done some introductory courses, but it does not sound like you have a full undergraduate education in your desired field. Even with a sprinkling of electives in introductory social science topics, your existing undergraduate degree in computer science would not have much cross-over with social science. Unless you have undertaken substantial self-learning in the latter field it is unlikely that you would have the background for direct entry to a Masters program, and it would be unusual for a university to admit you directly.
The usual process in cases like this is that a student will undertake a bachelor's degree in the field of interest before progression to a Masters program, or possibly a lower-level graduate program. In some cases the university might offer an accelerated bachelors program (e.g., cutting down certain course requirements) based on the fact that the student has already done an undergraduate degree in another field, or even something like a Graduate Diploma program to act as a bridging program at graduate level. This would depend on the policies and programs in the particular university, and you should talk directly to the Graduate Coordinator in the relevant Department of interest to you to get more information. (You might also be interested in this [related question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/188318/188319#188319) by another student seeking entry to a PhD program in another field from their present area of study.)
As to whether it is "easy" to transition from STEM into social science, well, it is no harder (and possibly a bit easier) than going into a social science degree directly from school. Plenty of 18 year-olds manage to go directly into undergraduate social science degrees and succeed, with no previous university background. I see no reason that an older university graduate with an existing STEM degree would have any more trouble entering the field than a bunch of people in their late teens.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I want to mention a book in my SOP/PS and would like to provide a link so that the reader can easily get more details about the book instead of googling it. What would be the ideal website for this purpose: Amazon, google books, publisher's page, author's page etc. or is it best not to include a link at all in case the SOP's are usually read on paper?<issue_comment>username_1: I'd suggest no link at all for several reasons. Most important is that you don't want the reader to go off somewhere else while reading your SoP. You want them to focus on what you write.
Also, as you note, you don't know how the SoP will be read (paper, electronic...). And, you probably have a word limit and might find a better use for the few words it would take for the link.
You should consider that such statements are likely to be viewed, at least in part, as examples of your writing.
A commercial site (Amazon,...) would probably be incorrect.
I would only consider it if the work were obscure. It is likely however, that if it is important to what you say, then others in the field can probably find it easily enough.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: From my experience, only mention it in the PS if that book is truly important for your development (Do you have a good reason to justify that to yourself?). If the book is popular, it is probably unnecessary to provide extra information on the details of the book. If it is obscure, as username_1 answered, it is not a terrible idea to mention the details in the essay. However, you have to take into account that you only have limited space for the PS. You have more to say than what you have learnt from a book. The committee has limited time for each applicant too and probably will not look at it.
It is better if you can provide evidence that you truly learnt something from the book, and produced something as the direct result of reading the book. In fact, that was what I did. The course I wanted to take was not available, so I instead bought an advanced book for that course, self-studied, built a small project based on what I learnt and rewrote code for all algorithms in the book in another programming language. I mentioned it in "**Miscellaneous**" section of my CV instead.
Also, it is good to have some other supplement documents.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I want to include an image that contains 4-5 graphs from diverse sources next to each other, in order to illustrate their similarities. Since I do not own any of those images I want to include, how do I properly cite them?<issue_comment>username_1: I'd suggest no link at all for several reasons. Most important is that you don't want the reader to go off somewhere else while reading your SoP. You want them to focus on what you write.
Also, as you note, you don't know how the SoP will be read (paper, electronic...). And, you probably have a word limit and might find a better use for the few words it would take for the link.
You should consider that such statements are likely to be viewed, at least in part, as examples of your writing.
A commercial site (Amazon,...) would probably be incorrect.
I would only consider it if the work were obscure. It is likely however, that if it is important to what you say, then others in the field can probably find it easily enough.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: From my experience, only mention it in the PS if that book is truly important for your development (Do you have a good reason to justify that to yourself?). If the book is popular, it is probably unnecessary to provide extra information on the details of the book. If it is obscure, as username_1 answered, it is not a terrible idea to mention the details in the essay. However, you have to take into account that you only have limited space for the PS. You have more to say than what you have learnt from a book. The committee has limited time for each applicant too and probably will not look at it.
It is better if you can provide evidence that you truly learnt something from the book, and produced something as the direct result of reading the book. In fact, that was what I did. The course I wanted to take was not available, so I instead bought an advanced book for that course, self-studied, built a small project based on what I learnt and rewrote code for all algorithms in the book in another programming language. I mentioned it in "**Miscellaneous**" section of my CV instead.
Also, it is good to have some other supplement documents.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: From your experience, how soon did you hear back from an academic interview in the UK? The Department with which I had an interview for a lecturer role said that they needed to appoint someone asap but it has been three days I haven't heard back so I just wanted to hear about others' experiences.
**Update:** I have heard back from the department and sadly I wasn't successful. Thanks all for your helpful comments.<issue_comment>username_1: In the UK, the HR Departments at most (all?) Universities are notoriously slow. They would want to see all the paperwork post-interview before they approve the new hire, and they do take their time for it.
From my personal experience in the UK:
* 1 time the Chair of the hiring committee contacted me directly and informally in 2-3 days after the interview. The decision was not yet confirmed by the HRs, and the Chair contacted me on their own risk because they knew time was of the essence for me (due to my visa situation) and they cared.
* 2 times I received a call after a week or two. I was the first candidate and the decision was pre-approved by HRs but they still wanted Chairs to contact me informally first to make sure I am going to accept before they would issue me a formal offer (if not, why bother?)
* 10+ times I was not the first candidate. The rejection letter came by email sometimes a month, sometimes 6 months after the interview.
* In a few very extreme cases, I had to chase the Department for feedback and reimbursement of my travel fees 6+ months after the interview. It was really a shame.
To summarise - in the UK, the academic hiring process for postdocs and lecturers is slow, disorganised, formalistic, and not really friendly towards the candidate. Waiting 3+ days for the response after the interview is very common.
I have no experience and no idea how things stand for the Professors. YMMV
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: My estimation is somewhat different from Dmitry's answer.
In my opinion, the committee has selected another candidate, and is now waiting for his/her acceptance. As long as the candidate doesn't accept you are still in a waiting list, and have the chance to be contacted later (though this is unlikely in most cases).
*Comment*: in the UK, unlike the US, interviews are conducted in one or two days, to all the candidates at once.
*Comment* 2: In some rare cases interviews can be conducted like the US, and in this case you shouldn't be waiting for an answer soon.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: A prestigous journal was calling abstracts for a special issue. I was informed by the guest editor that my abstract was accepted with final paper due dates. I completed my submission and have been waiting almost two months. I was wondering if it is common for rejection in situations like my case.<issue_comment>username_1: Acceptance or rejection isn't predicted by the delay. The editors have asked for reviews from trusted reviewers. They will make a decision on individual papers near the time that the production department needs clear instruction. I'd guess that most rejections will come near that time as the editor(s) consider the relative "worth" of each paper to the whole. But the "production deadline" might be a bit fuzzy in some cases.
I'd also assume that if a paper is definitely rejected you will be notified relatively quickly to avoid requests for information becoming too much of the workload.
And, I'd guess that after two months, editors are still collecting reviews, assuming that the production deadline isn't imminent. Things take time because people are busy with other tasks.
But, no one can predict what is in the minds of the editors or what their work process is. Patience is advised.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I have a hard time believing that a prestigious journal would accept contributions based on an abstract only, but according to your question they did, because they asked for the final version. I think it is more likely that
1. As Ian said in a comment, the journal is not prestigious, but they used a very similar name as the journal you thought you were interacting with.
OR
2. They did not ask you for a final version but for a final submission, as username_1 assumes. In this case, they might have a way for you to look at the status of your submission. I have no idea why they were doing a pre-screening of articles based on abstracts, but you should be able to determine this from reading the call for papers. In this case, two months is not a long time. The journal needs to give reviewers enough time and they might not have sufficient reviewers standing by.
OR
3. The journal is the journal you are thinking about but they were looking for contributions for non-refereed or "lightly refereed" articles, which would not go on your CV among "reviewed journal articles". In this case, they have all they need and this special issue would come out sometimes soon. If you can find the invitation to which you reacted, you can find out what this issue is. However, in my experience, journals are very careful about not mixing refereed
and lightly refereed articles without very clear labeling.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: A while ago, Google Scholar introduced "public access mandates". For me, for example, it says on the starting page that **one article is "missing" (not available)**, so I go on the details page, and I am very confused by what this all is supposed to mean:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/0VBC3.png)
So the article in question was published in an Elsevier journal (Medical image analysis) and it was funded by German Research Foundation, yes. Apparently, there is an **issue** with the article (it says on the starting page that something is **missing**, remember?) so when I click on "Review", it offers me **two options to resolve the issue:**
*Either* shall I upload a PDF, *or* make a correction, where the options for the latter are:
* I am not the (responsible) author
* Publication date is wrong
* The article was not funded by German Research Foundation
Neither of these options applies in my case since all information is correct, so the **only option I have left to resolve the "issue" is to upload a PDF**. But Elsevier strictly forbids sharing published articles.
So my confusion boils down to these questions:
1. *Why* is this article listed in the section "Articles with public access mandates"?
2. *What* do they expect me to upload and *why*?<issue_comment>username_1: What Google Scholar is tracking here is whether all articles that are required by funders to be open access actually are. So the "problem" you see here is that you (apparently) published an article as closed access material and acknowledged a funding agency, DFG, that requires articles to be made open access. Hence the three ways to fix this - either provide the article, correct the publishing date if it had been published before DFG mandated open access, or claim that somebody else is the corresponding author (presumably Google will then stop bothering you and query the corresponding author instead).
It is important to note that there is, per se, nothing wrong with your article - it's not like Google has troubles parsing the article or matching it to your profile. The warning is an advise *to you* that you may be in violation of your funder's policies. The question is how to best address this after the fact - if Elsevier does not support any open access model (e.g., no green or gold open access model) there may not be much you can do after having already published the article. In that case it may be best to let it be and be more aware of the relevant policies of your funders in the future.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: As username_1 notes, DFG [strongly encourages](https://www.dfg.de/en/research_funding/programmes/infrastructure/lis/open_access/support_researcher/index.html) its grant recipients to provide public access to their research products. In the US, [federal law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NIH_Public_Access_Policy) mandates that NIH-funded researchers deposit accepted manuscripts into Pubmed Central. [It seems](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-archiving) German copyright law was amended to allow the same.
In your question, you note:
>
> Elsevier strictly forbids sharing published articles.
>
>
>
This is not quite correct. Elsevier, has an embargo period. Luckily, the article in question has a "Version of Record" date of 29 July 2019. The journal has a self-archiving embargo period of [24 months](https://www.elsevier.com/journals/medical-image-analysis/1361-8415/open-access-options). Therefore, the embargo is lifted.
As such, you can "self-archive" your article in any ["non-commercial hosting platform"](https://www.elsevier.com/about/policies/hosting). I personally am funded by the NIH, so I've always used PubMed Central. But it seems like you could use [arXiv](https://arxiv.org/) to archive your accepted manuscript. ArXiv is indexed by Google Scholar.
Upvotes: 3
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2022/09/30
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| 3,240
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm advising some students preparing abstracts proposing posters at an international conference.
I was just asked about putting images in the abstract that represent data. It's a photograph of a phosphorescent screen which we use as raw data for fitting, but it's certainly an image as well.
The image is not much more than thumbnail size and in a published paper would start from the original .bmp or .png and therefore be much larger, processed differently and carefully annotated.
The conference submission guidelines include this relevant bullet:
>
> * The Author agrees to and does hereby assign all rights, title and interest, including copyrights, in and to the abstract to the Publisher. When the abstract is ready for publication, it will be published at the Publisher's own expense, under the Publisher's name in a conference abstract.
>
>
>
I'm at a loss how to advise the students and today is the last day for submission (as usual).
This questions asks only about including or not including the image in the published abstract. I gather that the poster itself remains the property of the student and PI.
---
Different but potentially related:
* [What does assigning the copyright of a paper mean?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/40626/69206)
* [How to legally re-use images in paper and still continue to use and distribute them in slides?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/49182/69206)<issue_comment>username_1: Do not give away the copyrights of images that you would like to publish in a paper, unless you think that the image will be an outstanding contribution to your poster (it looks like it does not).
Giving away the rights to something is not intrinsically bad (depending on your ethics/moral conventions), but you will need to spend an additional 5 minutes in the future whenever you want to reuse that image (you will always need to check with the publisher, it is 99% sure they will let you use it for free if you use it in a research/academic context ...).
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Note that copyright covers expression, not ideas (nearly everywhere, but laws differ). It is tha specific image that you would give up copyright to, not the underlying data. And not to a different image based on that data. But, it needs to be sufficiently different. I'm surprised, though, that a publisher would care about copyright of posters.
Moreover, when you give up copyright to a publisher you normally get back a license for certain uses. Those uses might not include the right to republication other than in a dissertation. You need to investigate and understand that license, since it gives you some rights, but not all rights. And, if necessary, you can ask the publisher for a more generous license.
---
Note also that a copyright owner controls publication of "derived works", hence the requirement that a new image be "sufficiently different". A bit subtle, of course. But (most jurisdictions) copyright is a civil law matter so it is up to the copyright owner to complain. One basis of complaint is that the infringing work reduces the "value" of the original, which seems unlikely here, though not impossible to imagine.
Upvotes: 1
|
2022/09/30
| 644
| 2,753
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<issue_start>username_0: I accepted a postdoctoral offer a few months before but couldn't join immediately as the visa was delayed by 4 months (now the visa interview date is very close). I informed them that I'll join once the visa arrives. In the meantime, I got a regular position from a research firm and a postdoc offer from a really prestigious university. What should I do now? I like the earlier professor; he's brilliant and humble. Again, joining the research firm will give a stable future and later university a significant weightage to my career.
What should I do? The earlier professor may feel offended. I don't want to hurt anyone.
---
PS: Now I have declined the earlier offer and informed the professor about the development. He is very disappointed as it has jeopardized his project progress. I honestly apologized; but he is taking it very seriously. What should I do now? I am feeling really bad. Can anyone help? Was my decision right?<issue_comment>username_1: Do not give away the copyrights of images that you would like to publish in a paper, unless you think that the image will be an outstanding contribution to your poster (it looks like it does not).
Giving away the rights to something is not intrinsically bad (depending on your ethics/moral conventions), but you will need to spend an additional 5 minutes in the future whenever you want to reuse that image (you will always need to check with the publisher, it is 99% sure they will let you use it for free if you use it in a research/academic context ...).
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Note that copyright covers expression, not ideas (nearly everywhere, but laws differ). It is tha specific image that you would give up copyright to, not the underlying data. And not to a different image based on that data. But, it needs to be sufficiently different. I'm surprised, though, that a publisher would care about copyright of posters.
Moreover, when you give up copyright to a publisher you normally get back a license for certain uses. Those uses might not include the right to republication other than in a dissertation. You need to investigate and understand that license, since it gives you some rights, but not all rights. And, if necessary, you can ask the publisher for a more generous license.
---
Note also that a copyright owner controls publication of "derived works", hence the requirement that a new image be "sufficiently different". A bit subtle, of course. But (most jurisdictions) copyright is a civil law matter so it is up to the copyright owner to complain. One basis of complaint is that the infringing work reduces the "value" of the original, which seems unlikely here, though not impossible to imagine.
Upvotes: 1
|
2022/09/30
| 816
| 3,436
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<issue_start>username_0: The graduate students of my institute want to establish a regular meeting (two hours, once a month) just for themselves.
All of us are happy to have this regular opportunity of sharing ideas & joys & sorrows with regards to research life. However, we are still uncertain about how to ensure that we will have a good agenda for each meeting.
Are there any "best practices", any recommendations on how to best organize such regular meetings? Is it possible to generalize whether there are some agenda structures that usually go well, and others that usually go badly?
For example, would it make sense to have two (voluntary) research-related presentations per meeting, and to leave the rest of the time for feedback & and informal discussions?<issue_comment>username_1: The doctoral program where I formerly worked had something not quite like this, though it included both faculty and students. Once a month the students involved in their research (that is, later, not earlier stages) could present their work to the group and get feedback. There wasn't a real agenda, other than that anyone could present and mention any blocks they might have and get some advice from those present.
But an alternative might be to have one (or maybe two) students do something like that with only other students present. This assumes that the meeting focus is on the research and also that people can easily grasp one another's work.
When I was a doctoral student (long ago) my advisor had one other student at the time, a friend of mine. We only grasped the coarse details of one another's work, so this wouldn't have been very valuable without the advisor (and maybe another faculty member) present to comment.
But if the main thing is to share "joys and sorrows", why not just schedule a lunch every month and people can just shoot the breeze, complain about the profs and the job prospects and such like. No agenda necessary except the choice of venue.
---
One other thing we did back then that was good for networking was a weekly softball game for grad students and their spouses. That was, of course, cross disciplinary, though within the (large) math department.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: In my institute (for context: western Europe, with both experimental and theoretical labs), PhD students would elect one or two delegates or representatives, generally for a one-year term. Their role was to represent PhD students during meetings with PIs and administrative staff, but also to organize monthly PhD meetings. Here is an example of what the agenda of such meetings looked like:
1. Opening
2. Announcements
a. Staff changes
b. Events
c. Others
3. Agree on today’s agenda
4. Comments on minutes previous meeting
5. Election of New PhD representative of the institute.
6. Reparation of the cooling system in the library.
7. Problem with the postdoc email list.
8. Discussion on installation of a vending machine in the institute.
9. Organisation of the PhD and Postdoc retreat
10. Questions and comments
11. Set date for the next PhD meeting
12. End
It is worth noting that our "PhD meetings" were actually for both PhD students and postdocs. Their point was to discuss daily-life problems, and not to do scientific presentations (as most of them were already organized within the institute). The atmosphere was pretty relax, often finishing with a beer on the campus.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2022/09/30
| 1,234
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<issue_start>username_0: We performed a systematic literature review using the three databases Scopus, ACM Digital Library, and IEEE Xplore. Comment from one reviewer was that Scopus contains the other two databases, and thus searching ACM and IEEE is redundant. Our results do not indicate that Scopus covers the two databases.
Question: Does Scopus cover the ACM Digital Library and IEEE Xplore databases?
The empirical search results suggest that it is not sufficient to search in Scopus and get all results from ACM and IEEE also in Scopus. However, there are at least two things that could be partially responsible for the empirical results not always helping here: (a) The time lag in updating the indexes (when and how often are the ACM and IEEE databases integrated into the Scopus database?) and the search methodology (in ACM, full text is apparently searched by default (instead of abstract, title and keywords), we got more articles in ACM than in Scopus, but could not attribute this to the search methodology. However, we cannot exclude errors on our part here.
Furthermore, there are systematic literature reviews in well-ranked journals that search all three databases, among others, e.g.:
<NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., <NAME>., & <NAME>. (2016). Gamification for health and wellbeing: A systematic review of the literature. Internet Interventions, 6, 89–106.
Our search for "official information" found the Scopus Content Coverage Guide [1](https://www.elsevier.com/__data/assets/pdf_file/0007/69451/Scopus_ContentCoverage_Guide_WEB.pdf). Here IEEE is mentioned as indexed, ACM does not appear, but there is a rather large "Other" block of 60%.<issue_comment>username_1: Scopus has a complete source title list you can download [at the bottom of this page](https://www.elsevier.com/solutions/scopus/how-scopus-works/content) ("Download the Source title list").
If I filter for IEEE the column `Publisher imprints grouped to main Publisher`, I find **350** results (distinct journals/transactions indexed in Scopus).
The IEEE website, hwoever, speaks of 393 journals (see [here](https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/browse/periodicals/title), left-side menu). It thus raises the suspicion that not *all* IEEE journals are indexed in Scopus (probably 43 are missing).
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/SGzBg.png)
Most likely the *newer* media are not indexed.
Some examples I found not to be in Scopus' source title list:
* IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence (since 2020)
* IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory (since 2020)
* IEEE Open Journal of Signal Processing (since 2020)
* IEEE Transactions on Signal and Power Integrity (started in 2022)
It is likely that there will be similar patterns with regards to ACM.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In my opinion, it is highly unlikely that Scopus covers everything in IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library. To know precisely, you will need to look for the documentation on each of the three sources (Scopus, IEEE Xplore, and ACM Digital Library) to find the exact full lists of their coverage and then compare these lists. Given that these are three independent database sources and they are constantly adding (and to a lesser extent, removing) sources independently of each other, I think the chances that the three of them would perfectly overlap are close to zero.
On a side note, just in case you are not aware, Scopus is fundamentally different in nature from IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library. IEEE Xplore and ACM Digital Library are full-text databases that archive the full texts of most of the articles in their databases. However, Scopus is an abstract database. That means that it does not archive full texts directly. Rather, it only archives abstracts (along with titles and keywords, of course). For full-text access, Scopus links directly to your institution's library with all the databases that your institution has subscribed to. If your institution has full-text access to the article, then Scopus will link to it. But if your institution does not have full-text access to the article, then Scopus cannot provide it, either.
In this way, Scopus is analogous not to the ACM Digital Library (nor to IEEE Xplore) but to the **ACM Guide to Computing Literature** which works similarly as an abstract database. Since this is also an ACM source, it is most likely that the ACM Guide to Computing Literature fully contains everything in the ACM Digital Library and a lot more. Although it probably does not overlap 100% with IEEE Xplore (because IEEE is independent from ACM), I would guess that it probably overlaps better than Scopus because its research domain is closer. So, if you want to search in just one place, I think the ACM Guide to Computing Literature might be your best source.
Upvotes: 1
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2022/09/30
| 268
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<issue_start>username_0: I submitted a manuscript to a journal, but due to an issue with that I asked the Editor-in-Chief and Associate Editor to withdraw the manuscript from further consideration. The response of the Editor-in-Chief was:
>
> Thank you for the message.
>
> Please send the latex file of the paper urgent to expedite the publication.
>
> Sorry for the delay
>
>
>
Now, what should I do?<issue_comment>username_1: Just resend your email highlighting that it is a withdrawal.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: When someone writes you an unexpected message, you should write back and ask for clarification. My guess is they have accepted the paper, but it could also be they got you confused with someone else. I can think of a few more possibilities.
I have no idea if you think having an immediate acceptance in this journal is a good thing. If you do, write back with the latex file attached and thanking the editor for dealing with whatever problems you are not telling us about. If you do not, reiterate the withdrawal.
Upvotes: 1
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2022/09/30
| 1,143
| 5,066
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<issue_start>username_0: My poster didn't win the "best poster award" at a top conference in mathematics, is it desperate/impolite to ask the committee about an evaluation of my poster's quality?
I don't want to seem needy but, I want feedback so as to know what to improve.<issue_comment>username_1: At some conferences all posters are evaluated and all participants receive some feedback.
If you've received none it's likely that there is none to send you. You could politely ask the organizers if that's the case. Don't mention that yours didn't win.
You've now asked two questions about conference posters. I think you should prepare and submit them, as often as it fits your work and travel schedule, for the experience you gain creating them and the feedback you get from folks who meet you in front of your poster. Don't worry about prizes or formal responses.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: No, it’s neither impolite nor desperate. In the eyes of any reasonable person I don’t think it will imply anything negative about you at all. There is a possibility however that the committee won’t have much feedback to give you, other than that your poster was simply not as impressive as that of the person who was given the best poster award.
If the committee members are in a charitable mood they might be willing to invest time to give you a detailed critique of your poster, but the point is that doing that takes a lot more time than just deciding whether your poster deserves the best poster award, so technically would fall outside of the scope of the committee role they took on themselves.
As another suggestion, you can of course also ask a trusted friend or mentor for this kind of feedback on your poster.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: While you can certainly ask, I'd like to suggest a slightly different approach for the future:
When presenting the poster, ask people who are interested in your poster (or pass by) for suggestions how to improve/critique. Often, you'll anyways get suggestions on the subject matter when discussing the poster with a visitor, and you may easily get suggestions on the presentation side of things as well in this fashion.
---
In my experience, the committee members devote a substantial amount of time\* - but also are asked to judge/compare a large number of posters. Discussing a detailed critique with the poster author means yet increasing this amount of work, and it would be fair that not only you but all poster authors get such a critique if they ask.
Btw, sometimes poster judges are assigned a subset of posters, e.g. according to expertise, and then give scores from which the winning poster is determined - so a particular member you approach may not have evaluated your poster. However, I'd expect that they are able to do so - but then many other attendees would be able to as well. Hence the advise to talk to people who are interested in your poster or at least in the general topic.
\*They have to evaluate all posters they are assigned to during the poster presentation time. In consequence, they may even skip/miss discussing posters they are interested in in detail with the author (e.g. since there are more posters to evaluate, or the interesting poster is not eligible and thus not part of the evaluation, or it is not in their share of posters to evaluate)
Being part of the poster committee is something I do as professional duty, but it is not a particularly enjoyable duty to me because it does cost me time that is particularly valuable to me: time that otherwise could go into discussing in depth a very few posters that I'm particularly interested in, or time that could go into talking in-person with colleagues (without poster) whom I meet only occasionally at such a conference.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: You are missing the point for a best poster award. Most researches try to give a talk about their research, depending on the conference this comes with a publication in the conference's proceedings. If the research is of low general interest, does not match the conference topic, or describes the idea of ongoing research, it is degraded to a poster.
Having a poster can be thankless: You wait for people interested in you poster, but you pay the full conference fee and traveling costs. The best poster awards upvalue the poster session, as at least the members of the best poster award committee will check for your poster - and it might actually motivate a couple of poster presenters to create a good poster.
I think you should not concentrate on improving your poster skills too much. In a not too distant future you will write papers and give conference talks which require different skills. (posters train you to formulate your research question, preparing nice graphs, that remain undoubtedly useful)
Try to max the outcome of a poster session for your research: You might get tips for related papers or where other people struggled in the past with similar approaches.
This might depend on the field.
Upvotes: -1
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2022/09/30
| 765
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<issue_start>username_0: I want to respectfully ask the editor to finish the review of my paper in the shortest time possible, because I got an early deadline to defend my thesis.
Here are some details on the review process of the submitted paper:
* Field: Computer science
* The **1st review** took **6 months**, then I received the comments of the reviewers with "major revision"
* After revising the paper, it was re-submitted, and now it is **3 months** since that without any feedback.
What do you think about my essay:
>
> Dear Editor,
>
>
> Our paper intitled [XX] has been submitted to the [XXX] journal in
> [DATE1], after 6 months we received the reviewers' remarks that were
> taken into consideration while revising the paper. In [DATE2] (3
> months ago), we re-submitted the revised version and we answered all
> the reviewers' comments in separated letter.
>
>
> Currently, I have a time constraint to defend my thesis that requires a
> published journal paper, for this reason I am wondering if there is a
> possibility to have the results of reviewing our revised paper in the
> best short time please?
>
>
> Thank you
>
>
> Best Regards,
>
>
> [MyName]
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: It will probably have no effect. The reviewers are independent and have their own careers. And after a major revision, the paper needs to be looked at carefully.
It isn't wrong to send and is polite enough, but don't expect to see much action.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: You better put your effort in postponing the deadline of your thesis, because that one is the deadline on which you have control, i.e. it depends on **you** having a paper published by that date, not on the (at least) three external people: potential positive reviews and the acceptance from the editor.
Think about how to spend in a meaningful way the time between the early deadline and the next deadline for your defense.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: When I review papers, I try to speed things along if I know that the authors are under some constraint. I'd recommend keeping it brief, and saying when your deadline actually is:
>
> Dear Editor,
>
>
> I write concerning our paper X, which we submitted on Y, and for which we submitted a revised version on Z.
>
>
> My university informs me that, to defend my thesis, I should have a paper accepted for publication by Date A. I know that my university's rules are not your problem, and I apologize for this, but could I please ask if it would be possible to finish the review process by then?
>
>
>
So, an actual date rather than "the shortest time possible".
Also, make sure first that you understand your university's rules. Does the paper have to be *published* or just *accepted*? In my field (not computer science), there is typically quite a long lag between the two.
And, finally, as other commenters have said, be prepared to take no for an answer.
Upvotes: 3
|
2022/09/30
| 1,224
| 5,341
|
<issue_start>username_0: I was working with a student of mine on a paper, and we completed about %90+ of the work - implementation, experiments and paper writing. He had to graduate before his student visa was up, so after he defended I signed his thesis forms. I had asked him to share the latest version of the code and improve the paper to submit but he basically disappeared and does not answer my emails. I also noticed that he stopped sharing the earlier versions of the code (on Google Drive which I ran on Colab, it seems I did not save copies). He was a student I trusted and of good character so I never thought he would just disappear. Obviously, the way he behaves makes me skeptical, and I intend to repeat experiments and a new student agreed to take the work, even though it will be a great loss of time and effort to implement everything from scratch.
Moreover, it is basically this student's thesis work and I want to submit the paper with his name on it (first author) but I may need his approval or even a copyright declaration form to publish. How can I proceed in this case? How can I salvage the paper in a situation like this?
EDIT:
I am asking what people do in these situations, and how they salvage the work. I am not invalidating his contribution or authorship. This must be pretty common but it is the first time I am facing this.
I have projects where students work together, and our school mandates students to "publish" in order to graduate. Please note that this could potentially be very problematic for student co-authors as it could threaten their graduation.
Go easy with the assumptions, I had weekly meetings with the student to advise him, the idea was mine and I was very involved in paper writing and editing. I just did not do a good job with versioning/keeping copies of the code. I could potentially replicate everything but it does not technically make him less of a co-author as far as I am aware. Also, as the school requested upon graduation we signed a copyright form - legally we are both co-authors of his thesis work (which the paper is derived from).<issue_comment>username_1: Actually there isn't much you can do but keep trying to contact the student. You need their permission to publish and to include their name.
You can, however complete the work alone and only require their permission to publish the result as co-authors.
I wonder if it is possible that they aren't avoiding you, but aren't getting your messages. Perhaps the university has some alternate contact information for them. Or even another student.
Publishers will require permission from all authors. It isn't an option.
Even reimplementing everything isn't really a solution, if the student's ideas are still in the work. You can't escape that and avoid plagiarism. It is good to do, but you still need their permission to publish. Keep trying.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Once shared, ideas are worth nothing. On their own, ideas can't be patented or protected. What matters is your ability to implement your own idea towards a recognised form of an output (paper, patent, etc). When you take more senior roles and no longer have time to implement ideas yourself, what matters is your ability to manage your team towards the development of your ideas in a supportive way while still ensuring the results.
In the described scenario, you have not involved yourself in development and testing of the code to the degree that you did not even have a copy of the code stored on your own device. I have to assume that you also do not have a documentation for the code beyond of what's described in the PhD thesis. If you have never tested the code yourself, how are you sure the results in the PhD are reliable and are actually produced by the code and are not simply faked?
You will likely want to reevaluate your approach to managing your academic team and the details of your supervision process based on this experience. Good luck.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Although it is obviously advisable to get consent for your work from all authors, it seems that at this point one co-author is not responding, not co-operative to an extreme level, and as far as we know, theoretically at least "is not even alive".
In cases where a co-author is *deceased*, it is still possible to publish a joint paper (this has been done. Edit: getting permission from their estate it seems). So in these cases at least, no real permission from all authors have been obtained.
My advice would be then:
* Send a clear message to the student that you are about to publish the work soon with his/her name as co-author.
* Wait a while (e.g., one month), and send another reminder.
* Wait another week, and send an urgent reminder about this to the student.
If the student does not want to publish, or has other plans and he is deliberately avoiding you, he/she will probably reply.
Otherwise, if the student does not reply, go ahead and submit the paper. Explaining that one author has disappeared in your cover letter to the editor-in-chief.
**Comment**: my assumption here and everywhere is that *deliberately ignoring legitimate e-mails of colleagues* is an ethical breach in any professional setting. If the student does not want to publish the paper they must let their co-authors know that.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/10/01
| 2,140
| 8,807
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<issue_start>username_0: Say I have a hypothesis and then did the experiment 10 times and collected 10 data points. Five of the data points agree well with my hypothesis, but the other five are outliers. I strongly believe in the validity of my hypothesis (which every experimentalist does I guess), but I can't find an explanation for the outliers, or the possible explanations are too many. Can I still publish with five good data points? How should I deal with the other five? I assume it's unethical to not report them, right?
Update: Sorry I didn't make my situation clear. We did use a lot of different techniques to test our hypothesis. The 50% outlier is just one technique we used. But the other techniques we used all converge very well and support the hypothesis. The 50% outlier for that one technique probably only accounts for 10% of the total data points of all the techniques we used. That's what bothers me and my question is
1. Can I only report data points for the other techniques we used?
2. If I have to report data for the technique that has a lot of outliers, do I have to find a reasonable explanation for the outliers?<issue_comment>username_1: I read the edit. If the model assumptions are correct, it is totally fine to have a situation where a test rejects your hypothesis while other tests (different approaches) do not reject your hypothesis. This "multiple-testing" approach is still safe here as long as you do not reject your hypothesis based on the result of the last "failed" test without any modification of the procedure. It is safe to report the data and result of the last test.
Furthermore, random variation could be the reason why there are outliers, but depending on the nature of the "outliers" (e.g. if they are too far from each other), there could still be potential problems. I still believe you should do more experiments or examine the datasets again to be sure.
**Original answer:**
In my opinion, don't do that. Do more experiments if it is possible. You can not say that they are outliers if **half** of these data points disapprove your hypothesis. That is a terrible ratio. It is likely that there is a problem with your experiment/hypothesis.
Furthermore, it is not a good practice to remove outliers without a proper explanation. "Outliers" are not objectively well-defined without assumptions. When someone says that some data points are outliers, they imply the structure of the data generating process (model assumptions), so they can conclude that these data points are too unlikely to be generated from the process. Of course, model asumptions should be made reasonably (according to what we know). Based on this statistical reasoning, they decide to remove the units.
However, if you have no reasonable explanation (model assumptions) to consider the data points as outliers, there is no reason for you to remove them. It is unethical to remove data points just to produce what you want to see rather than to produce the correct result.
Sometimes, "outliers" suggests a completely different conclusion. It raises a different question: "How wrong are the model assumptions?". It's not an ethical problem, but a malpractice (and a waste of resources) to believe that to assume that the model assumptions are always correct (or not too wrong to be accepted), and ignore the findings. With a proper (reasonable) reconsideration of model assumptions, the correct conclusion can be derived. Of course, it is unethical to modify model assumptions just to produce what you want to see, especially when there is nothing "significant" going on.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Scientific integrity requires that you report all the data. Period.
You are then free to focus on the parts that support your hypothesis and try to explain those that don't.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Leaving half the data out is scientific **fraud**. You have to report all data points and if they do not agree with your hypothesis then maybe your hypothesis is wrong.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: With five “outliers” out of ten, either your experiments are done quite badly (50% giving wrong results), or your hypothesis is very incomplete. For example your hypothesis might be “mice do x” but the correct hypothesis would be “male mice do X”, which would have 50% “outliers” as long as you use both male and female mice.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Yes, you have to report all of your data. You also need additional expertise in experimental design, statistics, the scientific method and Quality Control/Quality Assurance.
>
> Say I have a hypothesis and then did the experiment 10 times and collected 10 data points.
>
>
>
The way this is described, the 'experiment' is your **one independent data point**. The repeat executions of that experiment do not qualify as additional unique data points because they should be highly correlated... but they arent...
>
> Five of the data points agree well with my hypothesis, but the other five are outliers.
>
>
>
(Sigh.) Half of your data is not an outlier by definition. An observation doesnt become an outlier because it doesnt support your hypothesis.
>
> I strongly believe in the validity of my hypothesis (which every experimentalist does I guess),
>
>
>
Stop this talk right now. This is wrong on every level. As an experimentalist, you definitely do not speak for me. The data does the speaking. Imagine this was a forensics experiment as part of a court case and you were the prosecutions witness and you said this under oath in court. Imagine that for a moment.
>
> but I can't find an explanation for the outliers, or the possible explanations are too many.
>
>
>
Which is it? The hypothesis you do advance has to be testable and falsifiable. Remember, that your different experiments are the data points, and NOT the unique repetitions of the same experiment. You clearly have enough explanations. If you have too many explanations, reformulate the question. over and over and over.
>
> Can I still publish with five good data points?
>
>
>
Of course you can submit all the data. It sounds to me like you have bigger problems.
>
> How should I deal with the other five?
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>
>
Include the single experiment-with-multiple-repetitions as 'not supporting our hypothesis'. Formulate a testable, falsifiable, defensible, reproducible hypothesis that can be tested and muse on how that should be tested as 'future work'.
Get some help in experimental design, statistics, quality.
>
> I assume it's unethical to not report them, right?
>
>
>
It is unethical yes, but it goes well beyond unethical. The phrase I've heard at work is that you 'know enough to be dangerous'. The path you are dancing around is a mix of fraud and negligence and needs to be addressed today.
>
> Update: Sorry I didn't make my situation clear. We did use a lot of different techniques to test our hypothesis.
>
>
>
Good. These are your 'unique data points'. As written, you only have 'one outlier', not 5. Behold the magic of statistics!
>
> The 50% outlier is just one technique we used. But the other techniques we used all converge very well and support the hypothesis.
>
>
>
Great! Time to submit, pending the new hypothesis for explaining the new/repeat observations.
>
> The 50% outlier for that one technique probably only accounts for 10% of the total data points of all the techniques we used.
>
>
>
Apparently there is a complete lack of uncertainty analysis, statistics, quality control etc. The technical term is 'physics envy' :)
>
> That's what bothers me and my question is
>
>
> * Can I only report data points for the other techniques we used?
>
>
>
No, but you can change the 'resolution' of reporting from unique *executions* to unique *approaches*. Changing the 'resolution' of your aggregate data is the best, most common, most defensible, most reproducible way (that i know of) to fundamentally alter (shall we say 'improve') the data you have available.
>
> * If I have to report data for the technique that has a lot of outliers, do I have to find a reasonable explanation for the outliers?
>
>
>
You cannot have 'a lot of outliers'. That is contrary the definition of an outlier. You can have 'too many'.
You need something that is testable and falsifiable at a minimum. My personal suggestion is not to 'guess the correct answer' but to advance multiple, multiple hypothesis. If you advance multiple hypothesis, the odds are better you will list the 'correct' one. You want a path forward, this is the opportunity to lay that path. With multiple hypothesis advanced, you have room for natural selection to run its course and let the data select the most robust hypothesis.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]
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2022/10/01
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<issue_start>username_0: I will be applying for PhD positions towards the end of this year and maybe early 2023. My query is specifically about cold emailing professors in Europe about possible PhD positions. Until now, I have sent out a few ~10 emails to some professors in the field I am interested in. The general format of these emails is
1. Who I am, and my qualifications
2. Their general area of work, and mentioning some publications/works that I found interesting
3. My interests
4. Questions about their research projects, and open positions.
I can't make a lot of changes to the first 1st and 4th, but I do make very significant changes to the 2nd one, and maybe a few to the 3rd to appropriately highlight my own research that relates to the professors'.
Now I recently came across a post here that linked to [a BlogSpot article](https://paulwgoldberg.blogspot.com/2011/02/iit-student-seeks-internship-at-your.html) on how this kind of a format with "*it claims to have read the recipient's work in detail, then goes on to profess an interest in a range of topics none of which related to anything I know about*" are considered to be off-putting and are instantly deleted (it also doesn't help that the post talks about Indian students, and I also happen to be Indian).
The problem is...what am I supposed to do? I do need to email quite a few professors asking for PhD positions (a lot of them might know each other, but I try to not mail the same professor in the same department). And from my perspective, I am not mass emailing.
I have deliberately chosen these professors after a somewhat careful exploration of the people out there. The content about my details and interests can't change, and my queries about positions doesn't change, so the format invariably ends up looking almost the same from mail to mail. I do not have enough time either to draft different formats that talk about the same things in different words.
The only changes I make are what interests me about their work, and I can't (maybe I can) go through 10s of their papers and read them in detail to concisely summarise them in my email so that it doesn't sound like a generic email. I generally read the abstracts and end up saying something like "I was interested by your work in *their field of work* and especially your paper on *(name of their paper)*".
So my questions are:
1. Is this format generically ignored by professors and instantly deleted?
2. Could you suggest any changes to the format that might help?
3. Does emailing multiple professors in the same field, who know each other and maybe talk to each other, count as mass emailing?
4. What should be the approximate contents of my 2nd section?
That BlogSpot post has me scared that I might have upset certain professors whose research I really do like, and create an impression of a desperate candidate.<issue_comment>username_1: What are you trying to achieve? If your goal is to get an offer for a PhD position which suits your skills and matches your goals and expectations, you need to spend more time researching each potential lab/PI before submitting your application. This means writing fewer applications, not more.
If your goal is simply to contact more Profs with minimal effort - this is mass emailing. As username_2 correctly mentioned, this is a waste of effort on your part --- best Profs receive such messages by the dozen and will quickly ignore them. You will be left with subpar options, which is probably the opposite of what you are trying to achieve.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I used to get quite a few such emails. They were long and detailed and immediately trashed without reply. It was obvious that the senders weren't really interested in what I do.
First, apply to those who have already expressed an interest, say on their web pages, that they are interested in accepting students. Make a detailed and specific reply only to those people. They will respond.
For other that you find, and that you would *truly* like to work with because you have seen their work and you have an interest in that subfield, send a very short and easy to reply to mail...
>
> Professor X: Are you currently accepting doctoral students or likely to in the near future? If so, I have some background and a lot of interest in `> and might make a good fit. If you are interested, I'm happy to send more information.`
>
>
>
A note like that can be read in a few seconds and would be more likely to be responded to immediately.
But make sure you do your homework first, so that you aren't just "blowing smoke" about your background and interest.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: As somebody who has received quite a few of these emails in their lifetime (most clearly mass mailings, but occasionally also from people who seemed genuinely interested in my work), I would say your "format" is about as good as it can get (assuming that your 4 parts are a sentence or a short paragraph each, at most). The distinction between "mass emailing" and "genuinely interested" is whether these few sentences demonstrate that the candidate has read my work (at least a few of the newer pieces) and shows some clear understanding of it.
Note that this entails a lot more than randomly inserting "my lifelong dream was studying ..insert word frequently mentioned in my paper titles..", and, at least for me personally, less is often more - saying "I'm interested in X, and I like that you often use approach Y to study X" comes across a lot more authentic than "X is the most important topic of our time, and I need to study it using Y under the guidance of a famous professor ... blablabla".
**However**, even for the ones that seemed like they generally cared for my work, my answer always is a polite variation of "I'm sorry, I can't help you". In my university, and in most places in the Western world I believe, *we do not have the option to accept students arbitrarily into the PhD program of our universities*. There is a process, and it needs to be followed.
In my university in Sweden, each PhD student is an employee, and hirings on these positions need to happen through open calls. In other universities / countries, the PhD school might organize central admission rounds. In any way, it rarely is the case that professors even have the option to read your email, get excited, and then directly offer you a position (the only exception I am aware of are the German-speaking countries, where this is indeed possible).
If you are applying for PhD positions, here is what you should do:
* Understand that Europe is a heterogeneous region, and different countries, sometimes different universities, have very different customs when it comes to how students enter PhD programs.
* Decide which countries are most interesting to you, and find out how things work there. Most of this stuff isn't exactly secret, there are plenty of descriptions on the Internet if you know what to look for. Or you can ask - to be frank I am much more likely to answer an email that is asking for how one becomes a PhD student at my university in general than an email "application" of any form.
* Adapt your approach to your target countries / universities. For instance, should you decide to apply in Sweden you can stop all your attempts to email people. Instead, you need to make sure to be registered to the right job portals or subscribe to the recruiting sites of the universities that interest you, and then you can simply apply for a project / position that is relevant to you. You'd still need to do your research and write a customized application, but at least then you know that there actually *is* a job.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: Perhaps this is not satisfying as answer, but, when asking "how to" do a thing that is doomed, or even sometimes viewed as obnoxious, ... the genuine answer is that you can't do it that way.
Yes, this appears to be a Catch-22/paradox, namely, that students cannot connect with the people who (it seems) are exactly those they need to connect with.
But, what it is, really, is that there is no short-cut. In most cases, there will be a requirement of "open-ness" in applications for grad school department-wide (as in the U.S. these days), or other versions of "open-ness/fairness" in UK and EU.
This tends to mean that applicants have to be considered, uniformly, in the pool of all applicants. Anything jumping outside the system is not legit.
(Indeed, not so long ago, the only really successful "applications" did *EXACTLY* step outside the system... but this was/is reasonably interpreted as bias. I agree.)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: A1. Generally cold calling is doomed unless you're calling a graduate school that has a known commitment to the field of research you want to pursue. And that's assuming they have no formal application process and that your letter is very well-written, i.e. both from the heart and mind. Naturally there is also the matter of funding in the case of a student from overseas - I'm assuming that you do not have means to fund your own PhD and pay the university's exorbitant overseas fees. Any letter of application from an overseas student will have to discuss and, if possible, provide an answer to the question of funding the studentship.
A2. I think parts 2 and 3 of your format can be melded as you would be more likely to succeed in the area of your major interests (since you'd work harder at it) than elsewhere. And there is no sense in just applying for a PhD in some topic just because it's obtainable to you and serves a purely existential purpose: a PhD programme will sort the committed from the uncommitted very quickly. You may have more than one interest. If so state them in order of preference and if there is a topic within which they overlap and it's a plausible and feasible project, consider *mentioning* this in passing but do not posit this as a research proposal - leave this to the professor.
Do **NOT** patronize senior researchers on their publications. And do not evaluate research approaches - you are too young to do this for senior people. Talk about the approaches to a topic that **you** feel/think are "interesting", providing your reasons. In some topics you may not have such reasons but may still feel that the topic is so important scientifically and/or socio-economically that any plausible approach to its development is justifiable: I see nothing wrong in saying this - honesty is a virtue after all - but do not say it if you don't really feel it.
The last part of your letter must briefly cover funding. If you have applied or intend to apply for an Indian government overseas studentship, British Council fellowship, etc then you should say so. If you have no immediate prospect of getting such a support and would be willing to work as a Research Assistant while working on a PhD based on your day work plus additional work evenings/weekends then you have to state that.
**But in all you write you must not lose your self-respect or dignity. Don't plead, beg or whine between the lines of your email or letter. Don't inflate your CV or claim an interest in something that you honestly do not feel. You are making a reasonable application. Write it in the tone of someone who (modestly) believes in their own professional worth but understands that it is the graduate school's prerogative to decide.**
A3. Answer obvious. Write to Dean of Postgraduate Studies in that Graduate School and he/she will either send you formal application forms or else refer the letter to either or both.
A4. Already largely covered in A2 answer.
But make your letter brief and write only in general terms to your own interests. You can reference a separate document where you elaborate on your own perspective on the research topic and associated views as described in A2 above.
Sign the letter *Yours Faithfully, (Your Name)*.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/10/01
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<issue_start>username_0: I am working on a research idea and my advisor is not helping much, he is leaving me on my own. I thought a conversation with someone knowledgeable in the field would be good or even a collaboration. As an international master's student, how do I approach external professors that don't know me in such a case but, without much awkwardness or me looking needy?
I thought of the following:
1. Introducing myself.
2. Tell them I am doing research on topic X for ex "optimization" and I have an idea that I am working on and would love to hear about others' perspectives on it.
3. Ask if they know someone who I can reach out to who might be interested in discussing this idea.
4. Thank them.
What do you think? and what are the things that I should never put in an email to them?<issue_comment>username_1: Put yourself in the shoes of the person that you are writing to. Because you selected someone important, X (the person that you selected) will be busy and receive a certain number of emails. Each email takes out a certain amount of time from X's schedule. Some of these emails are from people that want something such as a way to study under X, even though a close reading will show that they actually do not know what X is interested in. Some of these emails will ask for help in reviewing, ... X will probably have given up trying to answer all of these emails and will only have a single glance at the email.
You are a stranger to X, so if you write a long nice email, it is still quite possible that X will not even answer you because X has not read your email. You are also asking a lot. X has Ph.D. students on their own and X might be struggling to find time for them. Trying to think about somebody else to mentor you is also difficult, as X does not want to impose on their academic friends.
It is much better to set up a connection through some mutual acquaintance.
*See, your real problem is that you do not feel helped by your advisor and you do not seem to think that you could ask your advisor to find you someone to discuss your idea.* But you presumably take classes or attend lectures at your institution. If you approach someone personally, they are more likely to at least listen to your request. Someone else on the faculty might have a connection to X and if your email comes with a recommendation of someone else, then your email will have passed through the initial screening.
If you have to use email, the best strategy to get your email even read is to have the other person emotionally involved. If X has written on your topic and your idea plays off on of X's papers, then you can use this as a starting point: "I read your paper and I am wondering whether this idea of mine would not expand on your idea". This makes it clear that there is something in it for X.
\*\*TLTR:\*\*In short, you need to get X's attention and you need to make any type of mentoring worth-while for X. Email is going to be a difficult medium. But your real problem is your relationship with your advisor, and that is **your** problem and not X's problem.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Let me add a bit to the [answer of username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189246/75368). First, I'll repeat the comment that your advisor is the best person to connect you with someone else, assuming you think it is wise to ask.
If that is impossible, perhaps there is another faculty member you trust who can either help or can put you in touch with one of their contacts. An email from a professor won't be ignored where one from a student might be.
But, and thinking of other questions you've asked here, this is one of the reasons you want to go to conferences as a young scholar. There will be people there who can likely help you and might be willing. Even your poster session is a good place to grab people who seem especially interested in your poster and ask if they have a few moments for some back-and-forth over coffee or whatever.
Or, go to a talk by someone close to your academic specialty and stay afterwards for a chat. Ask for advice. Ask for permission to contact them after the conference ends.
But as the linked answer suggests, blind emails are too easily ignored.
Long term, build yourself a circle of collaborators. A good start is to get yourself connected to that of your advisor. You don't have to plan to write papers with everyone in your circle, but you want a bunch of people you can talk to.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/10/01
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<issue_start>username_0: This case concerns a university in south part of Germany. There is a lady who has a full-time job in this university (she is PI of a group not a professor) and has brought several millions Euro to the university.
Now the problem is this: this lady has left Germany years ago and is living and working in Brazil, but in a very strange way, she still receives her full salary in Germany, and in fact, she is presented in the German university as she is living in Germany.
The case has been reported several times, but administration doesn't do anything. Is there any approaches or suggestions how to force university to investigate this matter?
**EDIT 1**
One of the people in the university had told the whistleblower that the PI in question is a highly valuable person as she brings money to the university. So, it seems there are people in the university administration that are blending the laws and regulations for her.
**EDIT 2**
One of her students had informed the office of the ministry of education of the state which university belongs, and the minister is incidentally a close friend of university rector; however, they forwarded the email to the university without any response.
**EDIT 3**
I just learned that one of her PhD students has filed a civil lawsuit last week. If any result comes out of it, I will update my post.<issue_comment>username_1: If I interpret correctly your question, then the university has been made aware of the physical whereabouts of the lady in question and has decided to not do anything about it. It is unclear whether you have standing, e.g. you are suffering any damages from this arrangement or whether you just think that the university is being exploited or that a law is being broken.
If you think that a law is being broken, it is actually your civic duty to report this to the police. If you think that the lady is being paid out of a grant when she is not doing any work, then you can approach the grant giving authority as a whistleblower.
If you think that there is some corruption (i.e. someone is being paid to allow something illegal and that the authorities are not reacting because they are being fed lies), you could try to involve the media.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: There is no way a university would fail to notice that a professor is not present on campus for a long time. There is no point in "reporting" it.
There is no reason to think a professor has committed fraud or any other sort of misconduct by working from another location. Most people would consider the professor's employment conditions to be a matter the professor can keep private until she chooses to disclose it. Employment conditions are regulated by local laws; you didn't mention any that might have been violated. We do not even know if this professor is a beamtin.
If you are a student at the university, and you paid the university tuition to be taught in person, then you might be able to take action *against the university* but not the professor. I am not familiar with German law, but my understanding is that German universities usually do not charge tuition, so I do not see how a German student would get a refund or any other compensation.
Among the top 1000 or so most prestigious professors, it is not unusual to work for two universities that are located in different places. For example, <NAME> worked at University of British Columbia and University of Colorado Boulder at the same time. Fraser Stoddart works at both Northwestern University and UNSW Sydney.
A lot of scientists work far from their university because it is essential to their research. Astronomers, anthropologists, biologists, earth scientists, and many more do field work, sometimes for an extended period.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I have spent the last 11 years of my life trying to get German universities to act on hundreds of cases of blatant plagiarism in doctoral dissertations. I have learned that German universities are slow to act at best, and will ignore me (although I report in my name and I am a tenured professor) if they feel like it. As mentioned above, there can be many reasons for a person to be listed at multiple institutions, none of which are problematic.
Which part of the university did you inform? Generally, the 'Ombud für guter wissenschaftlicher Praxis' is the right place for reporting academic misconductct. Any other place will probably just delete your email, especially if you are anonymous. But again, living somewhere else is not misconduct.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: I would be careful about drawing conclusions here.
First, it is not that unusual for some people to have multiple appointments (especially if some appointments are not permanent), sometimes in different countries. For instance the [thousand talent program](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thousand_Talents_Plan#:%7E:text=The%20program%20has%20been%20criticized,intellectual%20property%20theft%20and%20espionage.) in China sought to hire non-Chinese academics who in turn did not have to forfeit their original positions.
It is not unusual for faculties or PIs with multiple positions to negotiate flexible working conditions, including employment with third parties, including extended time away from a work site. It likely has to be reported but if this does not interfere with the current position then what can be done?German law might preclude someone from holding two full-time jobs *in Germany*, but does it preclude someone from holding another position in another country concurrently with a position in Germany? Even if German law does not technically allow this, can this be circumvented through a negotiated arrangement? In other words, it may well be that the situation is known and proceeds with full knowledge of the relevant administrations.
The key point is: is the job of the PI at the German place of employment getting done? If the answer is no, this is a problem for the employer. If the answer is yes, there is no problem.
Presumably if the answer is yes - the work gets done via remote supervision or someone acting locally on behalf of the PI - then what exactly are the students “complaining” about?
Now I agree this kind of arrangement does not make the PI or the Uni look good, but unless you are privy to contractual details between the PI and the university, or between the PI and the funding agencies, and that these contracts expressly forbid this, then accusations of fraud are very much premature. Unless of course the reporting misrepresents a situation that would be against the conditions of the grant or the conditions of employment (but would how you know this?)
Upvotes: 2
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2022/10/02
| 982
| 4,083
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<issue_start>username_0: There are scholarships for PhD students that work at any accredited university, sometimes in a particular zone. [Example](https://iessf.org/scholarship/alan-lucas-educational-scholarships).
>
> Applications may be submitted by full-time students who desire to study propose to pursue lighting education or research as part of their undergraduate, graduate or doctoral studies. **Applications for the Alan Lucas Memorial Educational Scholarships may be made by those who will be a junior, senior, or graduate student in an accredited four year college or university located in Northern California (including San Luis Obispo, Fresno and north)**. All applications should be submitted before April 1. The scholarships to be awarded will be at least $1,500.00. The student must submit an application, a statement of purpose, a description of work in progress, transcripts, three recommendations and a scholar agreement form. Copies of all enclosed documents should be photo-copied for interested students.
>
>
>
Does something similar exist for postdocs or tenured professors? In particular, can an applicant for postdocs/tenured positions feasibly say "I will bring my own funding"? If the answer is "yes", is this a powerful advantage in the application process (I know it is for PhD students)?<issue_comment>username_1: **Yes**, such funding possibilities exist although the situation is different between postdocs and tenured professors.
For postdocs for example the Humboldt Foundation offers the [Humboldt Research Fellowship](https://www.humboldt-foundation.de/en/apply/sponsorship-programmes/humboldt-research-fellowship) for a research stay in Germany. They state on their website:
>
> A researcher from an academic institution of your choice in Germany will provide you with a mentoring agreement and written confirmation that research facilities are available, and will compile a detailed review for you.
>
>
>
So you need support from an institution, but you can choose the institution. You will have to find this support before the application. But you will usually have no big problem to find support, given that your research profile is competitive, because you would bring your own money. If the application for the scholarship is not successful, then the supporting institution does not have to hire you, obviously. So bringing your own money is a big plus because it basically creates your own position.
For tenured professors, the amount of external funding they bring is an important criterium. It may not be the money needed for your own salary, but that should be covered by the institution. So if you can say during an application process that you will bring 20 PhD students with you who are fully funded, that is a big plus. It is not uncommon that it is possible to transfer third-party funded research from one institution to another. It might take some negotiating with the funders, though.
And the Humboldt Foundation also [offers something for professors](https://www.humboldt-foundation.de/en/apply/sponsorship-programmes/alexander-von-humboldt-professorship).
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I understand that NSF grants are transferable by PIs and co-PIs with consent of NSF and the original receiving institution. I’ve only had one employee go through this process for a grant he was a co-PI on when he left the original institution to come to work for us. You can’t force the other personnel or students to move, though you may be able to take that funding along if they do want to move and hiring procedures are followed exactly.
Regardless, talk to your Program Officer/Director and see what they say.
I presume you have discussed leaving your university with your department chair, too. The award from the agency (in the US) was probably to the university. And definitely not to you personally. I wouldn’t talk to your agency project officer or director unless you’re ready to be accidentally outed about your move.
I can’t say anything about what other US agencies allow.
Upvotes: 0
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2022/10/02
| 450
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<issue_start>username_0: I need to submit my PhD thesis for archiving (online and physical), and a copyright-related question dawned on me.
I used a figure from a book in my introduction. It is a very standard materials science schematic of crystal systems that is present in virtually every single materials science book in some shape or form, as it illustrates one of the founding principles of the subject.
I couldn't manage to extract the image in good quality, so I actually redrew it myself. I rearranged it, relabelled it, and changed the schematic up a bit. I'm not even sure a reference and copyright notice would have been necessary at all at this point, to be fair.
However, I did nevertheless request and obtain clearance from the Copyright Clearance Center with minor editing privileges, and I included the permission statement in the caption. I also stated I redrew, and relabelled the figure, and stated a modification I made to the schematic itself.
However, I now realised I missed stating a couple of additional modifications I made to the image.
Now, there are two things:
* Will having a potentially unnecessary copyright permission statement be an issue? Or would it be better for me to remove it otherwise I might have issues (not sure what issues you can have for being overly cautious to be fair)?
* If I leave the statement in, will the fact that I didn't state the additional modifications made be a problem (considering I probably didn't need the permission in the first place)?<issue_comment>username_1: You have gone way beyond what's required for fair use. Thanks for that. You have nothing to worry about.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I can only confirm username_1's answer. Your cares for fair acknowledgement are very appreciated. For my own thesis, a simple statement in the caption ("Redrawn from <NAME> et al., with authorization") was deemed sufficient by my committee (and they were on the "picky" side of the spectrum).
Upvotes: 2
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2022/10/02
| 1,062
| 4,555
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<issue_start>username_0: I first attended college A, but had many personal problems, failed many classes, and eventually dropped out and returned to my home country. Three years later, I applied to local college B, where I started from the beginning and ended up earning excellent grades, strong GRE scores, lots of research experience, and good letters of recommendation.
I now intend to apply to PhD programs in the US/Canada, but the following has me worried. I understand that the answers depend on the school in question, but I need to know since it costs money to apply. If possible, please answer from the POV of an admissions committee:
1. How much will the grades from school 'A' hurt my application? Will the admission committees from renowned research schools look at my grades and reject my application outright?
2. Is it possible to turn my case into a narrative of triumph over depression and make me an even stronger candidate?
3. Can you point to any case similar to mine and how they ended up?<issue_comment>username_1: The grade from the school A will not hurt you. Your current academic achievements will show them that you have the perspiration to overcome hardship to achieve success again despite of that mental burden you went through, but I doubt that it will help as you are going to apply for a PhD, not an undergraduate program which such a story may help. A person with a history of mental illness may have to show more than just academic achievements to have the same likelihood of being accepted.
I have overcome depression as well. I used to be a good student (#1), and suddenly one day I just lost the motivation for no reason. Depression sucks. Eventually I realized I was on the verge of losing everything I earned, so I decided to stop all of that madness by forcing myself to study even if I did not have the motivation. It worked. I eventually ended up with excellent results and kinda got over the (great) depression. I have never been hard-working and confident like this in my life.
My academic results are great. I feel lucky that I realized what I needed to do in time.
More importantly, I have a realistic plan for my research journay, and I have a lot of motivation for that, but I do not care if somehow I lose the motivation as I can work well under no motivation and extreme stress. I also have many professors who support me and are willing to help me for what I am going to do next.
**I will not mention this story in my application. It will just make things more complicated**, but if one may want to know I may share not to show them that how I got over depression and got excellent grades, but how I trained myself to become a persistent, consistent and goal-oriented person. I do believe (I) having a history of mental illness may look like a risky asset to professors, but I can always show that I got over all of the hardship and I have the qualities and academic capability needed for the success (or at least completion) of my future research journey.
Good luck!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: In the US and (I guess/suspect Canada) the early grades won't hurt you and will be largely ignored, due to the later success. Just like high school grades have no real impact on doctoral admissions if the later performance is good. The most recent results heavily (heavily) outweigh earlier attempts.
But, the early mental issues and how you overcame them is dangerous to bring up and I recommend against it. A story of how you achieved success despite early issues isn't really needed and might be misinterpreted. I suggest you avoid that unless asked, in which case, "health issues, now resolved" is enough of a response. The change in performance speaks for itself as reflected in the grades and such.
And, no, a history of mental illness is usually (I wish it were always) invisible to any admitting committee. Others with similar issues might be in the same pool and not mention it. To consider such things, beyond the academic record, would be wrong.
But, get good letters of recommendation which are important here and write a good, forward looking, Statement of Purpose that outlines your goals and how you will achieve them; both educational and career goals. Let the CV speak to the past without further comment.
Yes, lots of people have such stories, some of them mentioned in other questions here. Congratulations on getting beyond the past problems and to a better place. You don't need to look back or shine a light on the past to move forward.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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2022/10/03
| 2,142
| 8,979
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<issue_start>username_0: After a four year break, I'm finally getting around to submitting my MSc. research to a journal. My research involved time series data - analyzing a food sample over a series of days using a number of methods. For one of the methods, HPLC, the equipment was malfunctioning on the first sampling date, so I only have results from the following two sampling dates. I realized this significantly impacts my work, but I do have a statistical difference in between the two dates that the equipment was working, as well as 15 other attributes that were successfully analyzed on every sampling dates and tons of other takeaways. Any advice on how I can professionally say "the damn equipment didn't work and I was a lone grad student in the lab on fall break" without throwing out the HPLC data that I did collect?<issue_comment>username_1: How about something simple like
>
> Despite having problems with occasionally malfunctioning equipment, we were able to obtain valid results except for one set.
>
>
>
I'm not sure I've captured exactly what happened, but something simple like that. Add the name of the manufacturer if you must, or give them an acknowledgment elsewhere in the document. It might be best to separate the two, putting the ack in a footnote or acknowledgement section.
You can, of course, strengthen the wording if you like (...serious problems...), but don't rant in a scientific paper.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Maybe:
"The first data point was lost due to a malfunction of the equipment."
"Due to problems with the instrumentation, we could only obtain two HPLC values."
You might need to give an explanation why the experiment could not be completed or why the data is not necessary.
Something a bit stronger than "The HPLC values obtained conform to the general tendency."
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> the damn equipment didn't work
>
>
>
... which is nothing particularly unusual. You mention it and that's it.
You may want to spell out that & why your samples could not be stored without degradation or were used up by the HPLC, which later on was found to be unreliable. Or whatever actually happened.
>
> and I was a lone grad student in the lab on fall break
>
>
>
My professor would have said: that may be a practical reason, but it is not a scientific one. I.e., this isn't anything that goes into the paper
A more precise formulation of this catchy quote would maybe be: this is a practical (lab organization) reason that however isn't needed here, because it doesn't add anything of scientific relevance over the more direct (also practical) reason of "detector not working" - and the scientific impact, i.e. that the loss of data needs to be taken into account by limiting the conclusions, isn't changed.
The milk is spilt, and that's it for the paper. For the paper, the only remaining question is whether it still has sufficient content without these data, and whether you can justify not doing an additional run of the experiment (you may want to discuss this).
For your professional experience, it will be good to consider planning experiments in a more fault-tolerant manner in future.
E.g., to plan experiments in a way that does not hamper finding help if needed. Or adapting the analytical method to retain aliquots (if proper storage is possible) in case something goes wrong, planning more samples from the beginning so the results of a few missing chromatograms are not devastating. Or to be more redundant in your measurement planning in general.
>
> without throwing out the HPLC data that I did collect?
>
>
>
You only throw away the unreliable (or non-existing) part of the data. That may make the data analysis more complex, but in general it is no excuse to exclude the remaining perfectly fine measurements.
Typically the way to go in the paper is to include what you have, and limit your conclusions accordingly if some data is missing.
If the other measurements provide sufficient information, the paper is still fine.
If the loss of one (set of) chromatograms means there's not sufficient information left, that is not really different from not having obtained sufficient information for any other reason, including bad planning of what analyses are needed.
---
update wrt. @Snijderfrey's comment:
(I'm analytical chemist, though specialized on spectroscopy rather than chromatography; have working experience also on food samples, and have collaborated with food chemists)
And yes, science is to some extent subject to practial considerations. So a more precise distinction (and less black/white than the catchy quote) would be is the scientific impact of the practical decision justifiable?
The loss of a complete day of chromatograms out of 3 days in total is an order of magnitude where as a reviewer I'd like to see some explanation.
Part of this is that there are (bad) scientific reasons that could have lead to the outcome, e.g. "we never thought of HPLC until the first experiments were over" - which would have me think what else they did not think about...
The practical reasons @Snijderfrey lists are justifiable to me as they fall in the category of things that inevitably happen - though one can and should work towards low probability (as in: working efficiently):
* Lab equipment breaking down: detector lamp do burn out, capillaries or fibers or cuvettes break, columns go bad, you name it. (wet-lab work unfortunately doesn't have a Crtl-Z key, and in particular not if it's destructive analysis like HPLC)
Again the line is not sharp between the need to replace consumables, regular maintenance, and repairs.
In OP's case, it seems that the proper person not being on holiday
may have saved the day's experiment. Still, of all possibilities how
such instruments can and do break, only a fraction can be
repaired in short time. Or the alignment and/or calibration after the repair takes so long that the sample is anyways degraded.
Yes, it is possible to guard against this failure mode, but it is maybe (likely) not worth while for OP's lab. (As opposed to e.g. a clinical lab that may have a policy that people have to plan their holidays so that certain skills are always available - because the consequence is patient safety rather than some bothersome explanations in the paper)
* a sample being spilt/preparation error.
This often doesn't lead to 1/3 of the data being lost: one may be able to take an additional one, or only one replicate/aliquot/portion is lost (this failure mode is one of the reasons why we *do* replicates).
* Science operates at the boundaries of the known. We deliberately do experiments where boundary conditions dictate work flows that are not optimal from some point of view but that are still justifiable or necessary trade-offs: I've had samples where portioning had to be suboptimal because we could not grind (seeds that were potentially to be sown later on).
I've also had far too few patients in a data set to really draw
conclusions - but they were all we could get during 8 years of
collecting - which we considered justifiable. Whereas I've also had too few patients in a data set
where more should have been much easier to collect, and that IMHO
amounted to bad science...
The flexibility to adapt analysis to slightly unbalanced data and limiting conclusions is to me just another tool to adapt to the risk of things going wrong - like planning replicates in advance so the loss of some data doesn't endanger the whole study/paper.
---
BTW: unless you have concentration data from other methods (with better time resolution), you may have significant difference between days 2 + 3, but you don't know whether that's day-to-day variation, field sampling error (unless you can rule that out since you took a sufficient number replicate samples each day), or time-dependent change of the original specimen.
BUT: this is no very substantial change whether you have day 1 or not - also with day 1 it would be extremely unlikely that you could separate these sources of variance.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The question you need to settle first, is why you believe that your HPLC data from days 2 & 3 is meaningful. "*the damn equipment didn't work and I was a lone grad student in the lab on fall break*" doesn't come across as though you understand what the problem was, and so how can we trust that you can then be certain that on days 2 and 3 you got meaningful data? If **you're** not sure, throw the data out.
**If**, and only if, you are sure that the data is actually valid, then a trivial formulation would be "We analysed the data using techniques A, B, and C, and on days 2 and 3 we were also able to use HPLC to..."
Whether the HPLC kit was unavailable on Day 1 because it was broken or because someone else was using it isn't the readers' business. That the HPLC data presented is meaningful, very definitely **is**.
Upvotes: 2
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2022/10/03
| 1,074
| 4,536
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<issue_start>username_0: I asked my professor to write me a letter of recommendation for my PhD application, but his reply was "You are welcome to name me as a reference for any applications." Is it a turndown or did I get it wrong? He was my thesis supervisor and I got a good grade on it.
Update: Thank you all for your generous replies, I was worrying about bothering my professor by sending him another email. My concern has been relieved and I am now able to proceed to the next step.<issue_comment>username_1: It could be yes or no as it is dependent on the nature of your application. If you apply to a university that requires you to provide the contact information of the referees for them, so they can directly get information about you (recommendation letter) from the referees, then NO, he did not refuse to do it, but if you asked him for a recommendation letter for a program that requires direct recommendation letters, then it could be true that he was reluctant. But it could also be the case that he will help you and he allows you to name him as a referee as he will write the letter later.
If he does not want to write a recommendation letter for some reasons (e.g. he is busy, he misread your email), you should try to get to your goal (i.e. having a reference letter from him) in some smart way. For example, you can send him an email along the line "Dear Professor, I am ... and I already name you as referee at this university. However, for the other university they require a direct letter from you. Can you please..."
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If this was the UK, you might interpret this slight deflection of the answer as a roundabout way of giving a negative response. Germans tend to be a bit more direct than that. Given the context (thesis advisor, good grade), I would simply interpret this a positive response. They are happy to provide you with a reference. They are simply phrasing this in the way they expect references are given. (In some part of the application, the applicant gives contact details for one or more references, which are to be contacted.)
It may be that you need a letter send directly to place you are applying. If that is the case, you should simply ask them for that specifically. I see no reason that interpret their given response as a refusal to do so.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I believe there simply is a confusion of what exactly you asked for. In Germany, I believe it's less common to write letters of recommendation in the US style. Instead, what one typically does is list 2-3 contact persons in the application, and if the application is seriously considered some or all of these references may be directly contacted by the future employer (by phone, email, etc.).
Usually, this is seen as more of a sanity check than a deep evaluation - i.e., the referee will mostly be asked if the stuff that you list in your application is factually correct. Some people will also ask for a subjective evaluation, but most employers are rather unwilling to go there since you are by law not allowed to give a bad reference, so most people will stick to the facts.
That is to say, if what you want your professor to do is to write a detailed letter of recommendation you maybe should check if that's also ok (since that's a lot more work than what would be expected if one is listed as a reference in the German style).
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: I agree with [@username_3](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189290) mostly.
However, I see yet another possibility: What is common in Germany are *Arbeitszeugnisse* (a particular type of letter to the employee certifying what they did, and usually also how well they did), which is again somewhat different from an LoR. This is written by the employer (it's their duty to provide one if asked). It may be that the professor said they'd be willing to act as reference because they are not in a position to provide an *Arbeitszeugnis* (e.g. the PhD was not accompanied by an employment contract or despite being supervisor, this professor was not the manager in an employment sense).
It may also be that the professor is reluctant to write the *Arbeitszeugnis* even though they must. *Arbeitszeugnisse* are far less used in academia (though public service research institutions in Germany have administrations that are more than likely to ask for them in my experience) than in industry, so they may think OP doesn't really need it and that they can get away skipping this duty.
Upvotes: 3
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2022/10/04
| 1,535
| 6,737
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently gave an exam that had a particular short answer question where I asked the students, "What type of reaction is this?". I was looking for neutralization reaction, as aqueous NaOH was reacting with aqueous HCl. However, one student identified it as a double displacement reaction, which is also correct. I only gave partial credit for this answer and I am getting pushback from the student. Should I concede the technicality and give full credit?<issue_comment>username_1: If the answer is correct it should get full marks, even if it wasn't the answer you expected. The student can't know what you expected, of course. Yes, concede, though I don't see it as a technicality.
Upvotes: 8 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> which is also correct
>
>
>
I think you've answered your own question. If it's correct, then it's correct and should be marked as correct. Why would you mark an answer you've identified as correct as anything besides correct? If it deserved partial marks, you would've said "which is kind of correct".
Upvotes: 7 <issue_comment>username_3: Unless you're also teaching your students how to read your mind, in which case only the answer you were thinking of deserves full credit, then yes, the student deserves full credit.
If "neutralization" is more specific, and conveys more information than "double displacement", you could do the following:
This is now officially a **tricky question**. If that was unintended, change it, and be careful in the future to not lay similar traps.
If that was intended, then you need to be clear with your students that on your exam "multiple answers may be true, but you need to pick the best, most specific, one". I'd make sure that a couple of times during lectures I would say "X is a double displacement rxn, which is a very general class, but more specifically it is a neutralization rxn..."
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: I'll go against the other answers and argue here that there are valid reasons to assign only partial credit.
I know nothing about chemistry, but from Wikipedia I gather that a neutralization reaction is a special type of double displacement reaction, and I assume that there are specific quantitative results taught in your course that apply only to neutralization reactions, so it is important to identify them and it is not just a matter of naming.
A student that has mastered the material of the course should be able to recognize a neutralization reaction, so that they can apply the relevant results and learn more about it. For another example, I wouldn't want my doctor to say "you have some kind of respiratory disease"; I would like them to be able to identify exactly which one, so that it can be treated with the more appropriate medicine.
A grade, or a question score, should be my best estimate of the mastery of the student; identifying objects that are treated in the course is part of it. This student knows some of the material taught in the course, but clearly not all to a perfect level, otherwise they would have recognized that more specific type of reaction. So partial credit describes the situation perfectly.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: [Like username_4](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189310/1277), I can’t fully agree with the top answers. **Correctness isn’t the only criterion answers are typically judged by: there’s also usually an expected level of *completeness* or *specificity*.** As Federico says in comments, “a chemical reaction” would be completely correct, but very few teachers would give it full credit.
However, **the expected level of detail must be clearly communicated to students**. Usually it’s best to do this in the question itself: don’t just ask “simplify this fraction”, ask “simplify this fraction as far as possible”, or “…to reduced form”, or similar. But sometimes the expectation comes from the teaching: if a calculus class has clearly emphasised the classification of stationary points into local maxima, local minima, and inflection points, then it’s fair to ask “What type of stationary point is this?” and expect one of those three answers, and not give full credit for answers like “It is a stationary point above the x-axis.” In such a case, understanding the expected level of detail is part of the course content.
So in the OP’s case: **If the class teaching has unambiguously established an expected level of precision** — e.g. putting clear emphasis on a specific classification of reaction types — **then it may be reasonable to give only partial credit.** But the question in itself is very non-specific about the level of precision expected, so **if the context hasn’t clearly established that more precision was expected, you should give full credit.**
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: I taught high school chemistry, and I would say the answer depends very much on what the overall topic of the exam was. If it was clear from context what you were looking for (say, the topic was "Acids and Bases" or something similar), then yes, this student's answer is *technically* correct, but clearly missed the point. Partial credit might be appropriate here, or even no credit at all (depending on how far you believe they missed the point).
In another context, "a double displacement reaction" might be the most appropriate answer, for example if the topic of the exam involved the differences between single displacement and double displacement reactions.
If it was a general end-of-semester assessment or an exam on a broader range of topics, you should consider whether it was obvious from context what you were looking for, or not (I would say it's not obvious, but I didn't sit through your course, so I have no idea what you stressed and how). It might be worthwhile to think of what *wrong* answers a student could *reasonably* give to such a question, in order to determine if it's sufficiently obvious what you're looking for. In such a case it might be appropriate to give full credit for this answer, and then make the question clearer for next time.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: In my junior high:
If teachers declared a rule, in this situation, "You should be precise when deciding the type of a reaction." Then teachers can regard "double displacement reaction" as wrong answer immediately.
If they haven't declared one, they will consider both "double displacement reaction" and "neutralization reaction" to be right because "neutralization reaction" belongs to "double displacement reaction" you know.
You must have noticed that in both situations, "neutralization reaction" is always a right answer. So teachers will tend to declare such rules if such situations exist.
Upvotes: 0
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2022/10/04
| 2,026
| 8,881
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<issue_start>username_0: I've read at quite a few places about criteria for admissions to graduate programs.
A common theme was that a typical PhD program's admission committee looks for ***evidence of research potential*** in the application.
However no such thing is said about a Master's program. So, I want to ask the academia folks: What does a *typical* Master's program's admission committee look for in an application?
If this is too broad: the field is Computer Science, and the countries interesting universities are based in are US/UK/Switzerland. General Answers are also welcome.<issue_comment>username_1: I'm not sure that "typical" masters degree program is a valid concept, actually. There are several kinds. Some are considered terminal degrees, though not usually in CS (MBA, for example).
Most look for undergraduate success and, in the US at least, probably good letters of recommendation. An expressed "eagerness" is probably also a plus, though subtle.
Some programs are purely course based, not unlike an undergraduate degree but with more advanced topics. Some have a research component, though usually time limited, restricting what can be attempted. But a research background in undergrad is unlikely to be required, though treated as a positive.
Some programs are a stepping stone to a doctorate, and some are awarding during doctoral study, perhaps for some extra effort, though not always even that. Asking is enough in some places. But those students were accepted using different criteria than the others.
I've known of programs that are primarily for employed students, perhaps in an area with specific needs to advance the skills of some industry/industries. Places with high-tech concentrations for example. They might look for experience in one of the industries served.
But, it probably boils down mostly to "Will this student benefit from the program and contribute in some way."
And some just treat masters degrees as a revenue source. Some take nearly every applicant, though the applicants are self selecting to some extent. Those who hate schooling and are bad at it are unlikely to apply.
And a "typical" admissions committee, when used, looks for indicators of success *in that program* whatever its characteristics. If a program accepts nearly all applicants, there might not even be a committee, treating admissions as a clerical function, checking boxes against admissions materials.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: For a coursework Masters program the admissions are generally determined by performance in a related undergraduate degree, or failing that, equivalent professional experience. For a research Masters program the admissions may be slightly more geared towards the assessment of "research potential" but with a lower expectation than admission to a PhD program. Aside from that, there are many universities with these programs, so many varitions on exactly what they require/prefer for incoming students.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Master's degree in CS / Information Science (and many other fields) are a big revenue source. Some ethical universities will want to restrict admissions to students who have a good chance of succeeding in the program. They will also want to ensure that graduates of the program are likely to increase their value in the market place, at least sufficiently to set of the costs of going back to school. Some ethical universities use the *caveat emptor* principle, which means that they will give good and honest information to applicants, but accept all applicants that fulfill the requirements. And then there are universities who see the MS program as a purely commercial transactions. They will not lie, but leave it to the applicants to figure out whether they are a good fit and whether going through the program is going to lead to a better job. And then there are unethical universities who give out misleading information. One way to protect against falling victim to these programs is to look at reputation, because academia is pretty good at finding out what others are up to.
(Why are MS degrees a revenue source? The number of undergraduate student is stagnating now and going to fall soon. Ph.D. students are expensive, since they take up a lot of faculty time and maybe lab spaces. But there are many people in the work-force that are "stuck" in their current level and therefore are looking for new capabilities that are certified. These people often have paid of their student loans and now have disposable money. They might also remember their college days fondly and look for a repetition. At the same time, the workforce gets more and more specialized and cannot find employees with certain capabilities (like right now data analytics). Thus, from the university's point of view, there is a big market, they can serve the needs of the prospective students, and they do not need to lay out money for financial support. For a public university, they are not restricted by legislative mandates.)
In short, in my field, a MS is mainly a commercial transaction. Universities in general try to offer a good value for the money and time spent on the students. Some will want to ensure a high success rate, others rely on the students themselves making a good decision, and there are some who will admit anybody with a breath and an undergraduate degree.
The difference to the Ph.D. is that a Ph.D. student is initially a big investment of time and money, and a later pay-off once the Ph.D. student has become productive. A MS student pays for their way through school as they go.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Swiss (public) institutions do not care about your money as the tuition fee is heavily subsidized by the government. The acceptance rate for international students is surprisingly high, even at the best institution ETH Zurich. (high) GPA/ranking in your class, graduation from a reputable institution, recommendation letters will be the main factors contributing to the chance of getting accepted.
You also need to fulfill some prerequisite requirements regarding relevant courses taken at previous institutions. For CS Master it is expected that you have already done some CS courses (Data Structures/Algorithms for example), some maths courses (Real Analysis, Linear Algebra, Discrete Maths, etc), etc.
The living cost is cut-throat... There are highly competitive full scholarships. At ETH Zurich there is the ETH Zurich Excellence Master Scholarship, but you have to prepare an excellent research proposal, and even if you have a good one, as I said, it's competitive. It is good to know German. There will be more TA opportunities available to those who are proficient in German. The hourly wage is quite **attractive**.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: You should be aware that the UK Masters/MSc market is different from the way things work in other countries, courses are almost exclusively one (calendar) year long and primarily taught (usually about 2/3rds of the overall course weighting).
Since the teaching style isn't too different from undergraduate patterns, admissions panels are broadly looking for similar things; good grades, evidence of interest in the subject area and no obvious weaknesses on the technical side of things. Letters of reference don't usually play a big part unless the author is known & trusted, or the letter is written in a way which damns with faint praise. As with username_1's answer, some departments use MSc students (particularly international MSc students) as a major revenue stream, leading to fairly large (i.e. undergraduate size) classes.
A small number of institutions offer Masters by Research (MRes) courses, which have a far smaller number of classes and include more training in how to conduct primary research. These are frequently linked to PhD places as an integrated degree, running a little bit more in the US style.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: Keep in mind that, at least in the US, the commitment a university puts into a Masters student is much less than that put into a Ph.D. student, from recruitment expenses until the day they graduate.
If a university admits a Ph.D. student they shouldn't have, they've "wasted" (not quite the right word) any money spent bringing that student to campus for tours and interviews. They've wasted a fairly limited slot (departments often have a limit on how many Ph.D. students they can accept). They've wasted tuition waivers.
For Masters, all of this is of much less concern (in the US). A student gets admitted, and a year or two later, they graduate, or don't.
Mostly, what admissions committees look for for Master's students is a feeling that they can handle (i.e., pass) the courses in the curriculum. There's a higher bar if an individual Masters program is highly competitive, of course.
Upvotes: 0
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2022/10/04
| 1,079
| 4,653
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<issue_start>username_0: For the last few months I have been working on an undergraduate research project with a professor. This was the first project I was given to work on. I want to pursue a phd after undergrad so I took this project on and have dedicated a lot of time and energy to the project as I really wanted to see it succeed. However, this project is in a branch of CS that is not related to their research expertise at all. So I have been on my own to to read papers to see what the SOTA is and try to come up with algorithms. In our meetings, the professor likes to see my work but the ideas he proposes show that this isn't their area of research and is unaware of SOTA algorithms. Furthermore, there is no one at my university who is specializing at this research currently. The way I saw research is to improve upon the SOTA or to develop innovative algorithms to achieve some task, however I don't see that happening without some expertise in the domain.
I have a very high amount of respect the professor, however I don't see myself getting very far by myself and without any fellow undergrad/grad students. Has anyone been in a similar situation? I want to ask for research directly correlated to the professor's areas of expertise but I don't want to be negative towards the professor as I am very grateful to the opportunity that was given to me. How should I approach the professor about my situation?<issue_comment>username_1: It is common for research to go a different direction than anticipated.
I don't know anything about your research or what a SOTA algorithm means, but yes, generally more compromises have to be made as an undergraduate research with regards to what sort of support you can get locally.
>
> The way I saw research is to improve upon the SOTA or to develop innovative algorithms to achieve some task, however I don't see that happening without some expertise in the domain. I have a very high amount of respect the professor, however I don't see myself getting very far by myself and without any fellow undergrad/grad students.
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I think if it's your understanding after discussion with your mentor that this is going to be a hard track, **you would be wise to select a project closer to their expertise for this experience**, and maybe keep learning about SOTA and you can return to it in a different institution or with a new advisor.
*That said*, you should sit down with them and say "I want to do this project: ... Would ou be able to advise me through this?" If they say no or prevaricate, find a good middle ground.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Assuming you want a US centric answer, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Extending the state of the art as an undergraduate (or even in some masters programs) would be unusual due to factors you mention as well as time constraints. Pretty much anything you do that is acceptable to your professor will, IMO, be a strong benefit in a doctoral application.
Most people don't take up serious research until well into a doctoral program. Serious research, looking into the unknown and trying to learn something from it, is very time consuming.
Very few applicants to doctoral programs with only a bachelors will show any research at all beyond reading and summarizing what is already known. You are already a step ahead of the pack.
Keep on. Keep the professor happy and engaged.
It is probably late for this, but if you can manage attendance at one of the major CS conferences in your field, then you would have a chance to meet and speak with others, some of which might be interested. Presenting a poster, if possible, is especially good for meeting folks.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: In my experience, my professors were not able to contribute much in terms of my thesis. They gave me lots of advice regarding the document's structure, the research approach, grammar, and the like, but not in terms of the actual thing I was writing about.
Their advice was great, and one that served me well over the years. Go out and ask on my own!
They pushed me to ask experts on my field, to approach professors from other Universities, and gain the knowledge and experience that I needed.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: You can communicate to the professor that you'd like to collaborate with someone who has previously worked extensively in that domain.
Professors usually have a wide network, and are not new to collaborating - so your request won't come across as rude. In fact, the prof is more likely to be able to connect you to people in that domain than you yourself would.
In short, communicate.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently graduated from a Masters in mathematical physics. During my time I especially enjoyed pure maths courses and picked as many as I could. Since graduating I have been exploring my options and am intrigued by the subject of elliptic curves. I am trying to build a background in my spare time, with the goal of writing a short presentation of the topic, to learn by teaching and to potentially use in future applications.
If I continue enjoying the subject, I would like to apply for a PhD. I feel I should get some point of contact with potential supervisors as soon as possible, however it feels rude to do so with only a very vague understanding of their work.
My question
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How do I initiate contact with academics working on elliptic curves despite being very new to the subject. Could I ask them to explain something that would be found in a textbook ? For example, the Tate-Shafarevich group seems to be quite actively researched. Could I ask them why they're interested in this group ?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> it feels rude to do so with only a very vague understanding of their
> work
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Actually, it **is** rude, if you are not enrolled in their course , **however** luckily we live in the year 2022 and you can access an online course to build at least a minimum understanding of the topic, since I assume you have the time and the (intellectual) resources to attend such a course, or at least to work out the syllabus of such a course.
Additionally, you may join a workshop or a conference on the topic. If you write nicely your situation (not a student, unemployed, interested in the topic, looking for opportunities for a PhD on the topic of) to the organizers, they are likely to waive the fees to access the conference (if any).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Unless you are enrolled in their classes or you find some mistakes in their books that you would like to report, I don't think it is a good idea to contact them (that way). In the worst case, they may mark your email as spam.
If you only want to initiate the conversation with them, please don't do it this way. It is not wise to impress them like this.
If have some doubts while reading the books. Please consider asking professors whom you know. They may provide some help.
Furthermore, do your "homework". Keep reading and studying the topic yourself. At least, you need to have a decent understanding of the topic to know if you really like it. Some topics may sound super interesting at first glance, but turn out to be terribly boring later. When you are ready, prepare the necessary documents for the application. Do some research on potential supervisors and contact them (if it is appropriate)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Here's what I would recommend.
1. First, I would learn the basics of elliptic curves by consulting a standard book on elliptic curves. A good first option is the book by Silverman and Tate. You could also consult the book "The Arithmetic of Elliptic Curves" by Silverman. These books focus on the relationship to number theory. "Lectures on Elliptic Curves" by Cassels is also really good.
2. After spending some time on it, if you are interested, you could look for people who work on elliptic curves. Now you have found people who think about elliptic curves. Then what?
3. Go to their list of publications and look at some of them. You don't have to try to understand the papers completely. Just read the introductions to these papers. Try to answer for yourself: What do they do in the paper and why?
4. Then you could send them a *short* e-mail (5 sentences or so). You could say the following:
a. You've been reading about elliptic curves on your own, using the references [insert the books/articles you've been reading] and have been enjoying learning about them.
b. You're interested in contemporary research in this area, and you found out that they work on this topic.
c. You've looked at some of their publications and have read the introductions to their publications to get an idea of what they work on.
d. You would like to learn more. Then ask if they could recommend something to read to help them learn about current research.
This shows that you're interested in their work, and that you've done some independent reading.
(Also, roughly speaking, the reason some people are interested in the Tate-Shafarevich group is that a lot of interesting results about arithmetic aspects of elliptic curves, like their L-functions, are only true under the assumption that the Tate-Shafarevich group is finite.)
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: >
> How do I initiate contact with academics working on elliptic curves despite being very new to the subject. Could I ask them to explain something that would be found in a textbook?
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Unlike the other individual points of view expressed here, I think this can certainly be done in a way that neither rude, spam, nor unwise.
While there are certainly "I can't be bothered" types in any academic field, there are also plenty of folks who understand that the finding various ways to explain their research, especially to people with different levels of familiarity is a valuable exercise for scholars and some would even see it as a sacred duty1.
Enlightened scholars will also know that sometimes unexpected benefits arise from unexpected or nonstandard discussions.
I would not say that if they refuses or ignored a well-written email of this type that they were "bad" or unenlightened, but I would see their willingness to discuss with you or not as a sort of filter for the kind of person you'd like to get to know in the first place!
### Okay, but what would a "well-written email of this type" be like?
It should be honest and upfront but not off-putting. Explain that you don't want a full lecture on the topic, but before you take the dive you want a little bit of guidance and/or clarification to make sure you get started on the right foot and path. Include a few specifics that make it clear you have at least *some understanding* of the topic and that they would not be wasting their time.
Mention a time limit, like 15 or 20 minutes. Of course if they feel it's productive they may extend, but make it clear you have every intention of keeping it short and promptly leaving if they don't offer to extend. You want to give them an opportunity to see if they can help, without fear that they have a lot to loose.
* **If you get a positive response2**, then despite what you said, study like crazy and make at least some progress so that they might be pleasantly surprised that you were a bit modest describing your level of understanding, and so that they are further reassured that spending a little time with you has a chance of making a real difference. To that end [username_3's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189342/69206) suggests some resources to start with.
* **If you get a negative response** send a short, concise thank you reply and follow up *on your own* on any advice they might have included in their response (unless it's bad advice!)
* **If you get no response** then you should not pursue it further with that person at this time. While occasionally mail messages get missed or move to the spam folder, most likely they don't want to deal with the situation, and you don't want to do anything that looks troublesome or harassing or else word of you may spread in a negative way.
---
* 1in moderation.
* 2and even if you don't!
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I’m an undergraduate student and want to teach a workshop next semester, so I’m working with my school’s administration to get help with room reservations and stuff.
I have been bounced around between a few different head professors. Finally, I found the right one and got this email requesting my help with tutoring their friend’s daughter for an assignment:
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> Charles, I got your information - requesting to [start workshop next semester]. Let us talk about it in the coming days.
>
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> On unrelated note, my friend's daughter is [doing undergrad at X school]. She has requested for assignment help - private tutoring. If you have a hour or two today or tomorrow, it will be great to help her. This assignment is due [at time]. >
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> [Friend's daughter's name], if you have worked on these problems / have partial answers, you may want to share so that we can review and respond. Best wishes.
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Is this weird? Will I get in trouble for cooperating?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, it’s wildly inappropriate for a professor to make such a request of a student who needs their help.
You can cooperate if you want, but maybe consider whether you want to be the kind of person who lets other people with more power manipulate him into doing their bidding. If this was a matter of life and death I might see a dilemma, but in this situation I have a feeling you could get your problem solved in a variety of other ways that don’t involve being a party to this sort of shady transaction. Good luck in any case!
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: The thing that makes this email strange (and a bit inapproriate when juxtaposed with the fact that you need them to help you) is that it does not specify the tutoring to be paid work, and therefore implicitly looks like a request for free labour. If the professor intended to offer you an opportunity for *paid* tutoring work then they probably view that as an opportunity for you, rather than a request for a *gratis* service.
So yes, the email is strange, and it is a bad look. It is possible that the professor just did not take due care to give all the relevant details and didn't notice this when sending. I would recommend interpreting the email charitably, and assuming that the professor hadn't thought about the appropriate amount of money for the tutoring because they see it as a transaction that does not involve them. Alternatively, perhaps the professor does not know how much money the friend intends for the tutoring, and so expects you to get the ball rolling on money discussions if you're interested in the work. As to how to proceed, if you want some paid tutoring work, you could pick an appropriate figure to charge and then write back and offer to tutor for that amount; if you don't want the tutoring work, just decline or ignore the request.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: **Yes, I consider the message weird for several reasons.**
1. Apparently, the message is addressed both at you and the professor's friend's daughter. This is very inappropriate, as it's **a breach of privacy**: it is of no concern to the professor's friend's daughter that the professor and you are in negotiations about teaching a workshop.
2. Since the message has been addressed both to you and the professor's friend's daughter, she is aware of the fact that the professor has asked you to help her. This is **an impolite act** of the professor, because he's put you into [a potentially face-threatening situation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politeness_theory#Face-threatening_acts): as the recipient of the request is immediately involved, it may be harder for you to refuse than it would be otherwise.
3. Even though the passage of the message in which you're asked a favor is prefaced by "unrelatedly", the message may be read as an implied [*quid pro quo*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quid_pro_quo) – as you say in the title, it may be interpreted as asking you a favor (to assist his friend's daughter) in the expectation that you feel obliged because you have received a favor (support in teaching a workshop). If this was indeed the intention, would be very **unethical behavior**, and you may even argue that it was a kind of **extortion** given the power imbalance between the professor and you.
4. The message doesn't mention payment – only "private tutoring". This omission is either **unprofessional** (if it was simply an oversight) or **exploitative** (if the favor is indeed intended as unpaid tutoring).
What I would do in response to a message like this is this: I'd simply delay my answer until the deadline for the assignment has passed. Given that all this appears to be on very short notice, a delay of a day might be enough, and would still be within a completely acceptable response time. Then, in the reply, I'd say something along the lines of
>
> *Sorry, I was kept very busy yesterday due to [valid reason that doesn't reflect negatively on me]. I sincerely hope that [professor's friend's daughter] was still able to complete the assignment without my assistance.*
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>
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The rest of my response would be about the workshop, and not the tutoring offer.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Academicians are often very busy people. I interpret this as he sees you are suitable for tutoring since you are interested in that workshop and take action. Thus he refers you to that person as a possible tutor. One email to you both probably means I don't want to get involved, do whatever you want. When there is exploitation going on, you will receive a different email while the other person gets something else.
I am almost sure what he/she is after is to get rid of this chore, not to get a service for free. I sometimes get requests like that, though I will, in person, advice my student not to do it for free, just to make sure they will not misunderstand it. It is not a direct favor, but I am just trying to get rid of the request and in the meanwhile I am giving better students a chance to earn some bucks. I think this might be the case here.
I think it will be a good idea to take on the task, asking some tutoring charge, something that is not excessive (if you ask too much it will strain the relationship between your professor and his/her friend) or immediately respond you will not be able to help due to some reason. Only accept if you are sure you can handle the task.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: The key problem I see is that while the OP is not getting a direct response to their question, just the vague suggestion they'll "talk" in the "coming days", the (unbelievably) "unrelated" question of tutoring his friend's daughter comes up to be done in the next day or two.
This seems like an almost explicit condition for talking to the student.
There's the breach of confidentiality as well, but I'd personally consider this a disciplinary hearing level of abuse of authority. Someone working for me would be have their work emails checked for a pattern of such abuse in the past. I'd be contacting former students to see if they were put under similar pressure.
At the very minimum this would (from me) generate a formal warning letter related to ethical appearance as well as practice. It's not enough to be ethical, you have to be seen to be ethical in such a position.
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> "She has requested for assignment help - private tutoring"
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> "This assignment is due [at time]."
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These are absolutely shocking lines. It's practically an admission that the professor expects the student to complete the assignment for her.
We've seen many scandals about wealthy people's kids having work done for them and even having exams done by other people. Let's not be naive about how bad this email looks.
And I don't think anyone in a position of power like this gets much benefit of the doubt. They *should* be avoiding this exact kind of communication like the plague.
In short, this (IMO) stinks.
Someone suggested it's a marginal benefit to the professor, which is not really true as it could be a case of arranging free "tutoring" for someone else in return for some other favor. That, I regret to say, is how some people conduct their "business".
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: Of course this is inappropriate: Someone in a position of power is demanding a personal favor from a subordinate in exchange for doing their own job. The "unrelated note" they mention is not actually an unrelated note, in the same way that it wouldn't be unrelated if you said, "Sure, I'd be happy to tutor your friend's daughter. On an unrelated note, I'm going to busy next week, and it sure would be nice if I got an extension on the upcoming homework assignment." (Or, on the stick rather than the carrot side, "You've got a nice business here. It sure would be a shame if something were to... happen to it.") It's a quid pro quo outside the normal professional relationship a professor is supposed to have with their students.
That having been said, the professor may just be unaware of how unprofessional this is. They're in a position of power over their subordinates; undergrads and grad students are completely dependent on professors and have very little recourse in situations like this. Maybe they're used to getting undeserved perks or think they actually deserve them. (For that matter, I've run into more egregious demands along these lines, though they're not things I can post about in public.)
Unfortunately, there's not much you can do in this situation--- which is exactly why it persists. You can decline, but that's possibly going to sour your relationship with the professor and block you from getting the workshop. (And no, the professor isn't going to explicitly say that they're denying you the workshop for that reason, but that doesn't mean it isn't actually the reason.) It may also sour your relationship with other professors; they do talk among themselves, and you're not going be around for those conversations to defend yourself. Going to the head of the department or other administration figures would be a waste of time; no department is going to throw a professor under the bus for an undergrad without much more egregious and much more explicit evidence.
So, unfortunately, that means you're stuck deciding whether teaching your seminar and cultivating good relationships in the department are worth a bit of sleaziness and graft. It's unfortunate, but welcome to academia.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: Just apply [Hanlon's razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor) here, and be positive.
If you are interested in the private tutoring, you can write (of course adjust to the specifics):
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> Thank you for the reply I am happy to join. Let’s talk end of the week.
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> About the private tutoring, I am glad to help, and tomorrow looks good. Should I negotiate the rate directly with (daughters name) or (friend name)?
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Only send this reply to your professor, so if Hanlon's razor failed and he wants out of that, he can do it in a facesaving way.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an electrical engineering master's student in the USA. My research is in a slightly different area than my supervisor's background, and so I suggested adding a co-supervisor at a different institution. My supervisor agreed and the co-supervisor was added.
However, my main supervisor has now mentioned repeatedly that I am not permitted to communicate with the co-supervisor without him being present or involved in the communication as far as the research is concerned. I do cc both in emails, but the issue here is that he said I cannot contact (either by email or phone call) the co-supervisor for any private conversation concerning the research.
Is this ethically right or is there something wrong with him or this situation?<issue_comment>username_1: My first impression is that he doesn't want you to get contrary or conflicting directions that might lead to trouble down the line. That would be perfectly ethical. If the co-supervisor is somehow also being supervised or mentored by the main supervisor, it could be an additional reason: training of the co-supervisor. This might happen if the co-supervisor is a postdoc or otherwise inexperienced.
There are other, less valid, reasons that could be in play, of course (insecurity, ego, ...), but not necessarily so.
Schedule joint meetings. Copy everyone on emails. Don't treat it as a big deal without further evidence that it is a problem.
You could ask him the reason, of course.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: My guess is that your supervisor wants to minimize the burden on the co-supervisor. Frankly speaking, master's students don't know very much yet, and this includes knowing which questions are appropriate for the experts. So, it would make sense if your advisor wanted you to come to him first, and then he can refer you to the co-supervisor (or any other expert) as needed. This is altogether appropriate.
Another appropriate reason would be that they are trying to avoid miscommunications that happen when the two supervisors are only communicating by passing messages through you. This "noisy channel problem" is sub-optimal at the best of times, and can lead to real difficulties.
But we are just speculating. Ultimately, we can't say if this is reasonable without knowing the reason, and only your supervisor can tell you the reason.
So if you don't want to ask your supervisor, I think the best we can do is to say that such a request is not inherently unreasonable, and you should plan to abide by it.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: If the co-supervisor is not at your degree awarding institution, your supervisor has responsibility for making sure your master's is marked correctly, and that you are treated fairly, that reasonable workloads are put on you, etc, etc.
It's actually pretty reasonable for the supervisor to insist on being kept in the loop, as they have to monitor all this. If co-supervisor sends you off in a different research direction, or asks you to do a much more intensive project than supervisor thinks you can reasonably complete in the time, this could cause you problems. By insisting on staying in the loop, supervisor can head these off, and also monitor your contributions. As it is supervisor awarding you a mark at the end of the process, it's reasonable to check that you're not being inappropriately spoon-fed or pressured by co-supervisor.
This is the main difference between a master's and a Phd - as a Phd student, this would be a little strange, as you're expected to be forming your own research bonds, and you've got a bit (not a lot) more time to go down rabbit holes that supervisors might send you down.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: Seems to me that your supervisor is trying to create and maintain order in the communication process. There are tons of reasons why he might be making this request. Here are 10 potential reasons (which are not exhaustive) why he might be asking you to go through him:
1. Co-supervisor is at another institution, you are not a student there, so the onus is on him to make sure that you aren't chewing up resources of another institution inappropriately as you work on your thesis.
2. He probably just wants to stay in the loop. It may be just as much about getting your supervisor up to speed in this new field as much as it is getting you up to speed. Academic types are naturally curious folks and he may want to learn from your co-supervisor too.
3. It's just good etiquette to loop him in.
4. He may want to further cultivate his relationship with the co-supervisor and build a productive working relationship for himself. Grad students are ephemeral connections they tend to move on, it would be better for him career-wise to own that relationship.
5. He may want to provide his knowledge, opinions, and expertise to any conversation.
6. He may have dealt with this person in the past and had a bad experience, and is trying to protect you from a difficult personality.
7. He may be protecting you from conflicts of interest.
8. He may be trying to teach you a lesson in professionalism within academia.
9. Training grad students might be what he likes about his job. He may want you to come to him because he wants to see you learn and grow.
10. He might have an ego issue going on, by requesting the co-supervisor in the first place you put him on notice that he wasn't what you want or need. Even worse, he acknowledged that it was probably true. I'm not saying that this is for sure going on, but he may be a little bit wounded. You should recognize this and give him some grace because he **did** show a large amount of humility by allowing you to get the co-supervisor in the first place.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Two legal reasons I can think of: your advisor is doing research on a sensitive topic, i.e. DARPA funded or something. There are laws saying what you can and can't share and they could be trying to make sure they abide by them.
Similarly, even if your research is not sensitive, your advisor may be considered that the communication across institutions **looks** suspicious, especially if boarders are crossed. For example, [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xiaoxing_Xi) is a case of a professor who was arrested but later all charges were dropped due a misunderstanding by the FBI about what he was collaborating on with foreign institutions.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: The obvious hypothesis is that your supervisor is a micro-managing control freak, which would not be unheard of. However, there *may* be all kinds of reasons your supervisor might be uneasy about letting you talk to the co-supervisor alone, independent of whether you've given him a concrete reason for it. We don't know enough details to decide that, and I'm not sure if it would be wise to share too many more details here.
This leaves you with all of the hypotheses already posted here, (and I came up with some additional ones,see below), and you still have to figure out what to do about it.
#### So, what to do about it?
I think the best way for you to decide this would be to either talk to your supervisor about his reasons directly or (if that thought makes you nervous) to someone else on the team. They might have some additional insights that can help you decide whether to challenge the order. If you do, my strong recommendation would be not to directly give your position but rather to ask your supervisor to elaborate on his reasons, make sure that you understand those reasons, and only *then* state why you think it puts a burden on you. You are much more likely to get a positive reaction if you can demonstrate to your supervisor that you understand his concerns, and can make a plausible claim that relaxing the requirement would help you without causing an issue.
I think that course of action should also minimize the risk to your MSc project because you probably don't want to quarrel with your supervisor while trying to do science. Even if you conclude that your supervisor is in fact a micro-managing control freak, you might still want to go through with your thesis project, so it's better not to burn bridges.
#### Some more hypotheses to test
All of the above seem like possible scenarios, and I have more:
Your supervisor may be worried that you misrepresent some of his own work to the co-supervisor, or that the co-supervisor might have some misconceptions which you might unwittingly reinforce. So he wants to be present to stay aware of (and occasionally correct) how his colleagues at another institution perceive the work being done not just by you but also others at your university. The same applies in the other direction.
And, more generally: He might want to cooperate with these people in the future, and that can be a difficult diplomatic rope to walk. He might be worried about you getting on the co-supervisor's nerves, naïvely or accidentally disclosing or misrepresenting something commercially or strategically sensitive, or otherwise affecting his relationship with the co-supervisor in some way, and he does not want to put the burden of responsibility for these things on you.
I know academics who have blocked each others' papers and cancelled collaborations over technical disagreements, and others reacting very strongly to the idea that their collaborators might try to use some information to gain an unfair advantage in an area where the two institutions are competing for grants.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: Yes, your supervisor is possibly worried about your ideas or his/her ideas being stolen. Whatever you are working on is part of the research that goes on in your lab, so your conversations might also involve information about other projects. It might be due to not trusting the co-advisor enough but it does not have to be, if you mandate a rule like that, you prevent a lot of damage. I have seen people experience this and almost always it was at the student's cost, and of course also the supervisor's and at times lab's.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: A few years ago, I submitted a paper to a journal. After one and a half years, I got a 3 sentence report that was negative. There were no helpful comments on how to improve the paper. The paper was rejected.
It makes me think that whoever wrote it is trying to prevent me from getting a job.<issue_comment>username_1: That would be very unlikely at a reputable journal. The editor needs high quality advice. Someone who knew you personally should have disclosed that to the editor. Editors cultivate reputable and honest reviewers, but can't control timelines.
More likely they got busy (or forgot), did the review very late, were unimpressed with what you wrote, and gave a minimal report.
Even for a disreputable journal it would be unlikely since they are likely happier to publish things of low quality if you help pay the bills.
Eighteen months *is* a long time, however. You should have asked for updates prior to this happening and possibly withdrawn the paper if no progress was being made.
You didn't say if it also was a rejection, nor whether advice from others helped you get to a better place. Hopefully you worked out something positive, or can submit elsewhere.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: For these types of situations, you should apply a variation of [Hanlon's Razor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor): "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity/laziness/professional incompetence."
I doubt this was intended to sabotage you, or with any malicious intent. More likely the referee was just bad at their job, and the editor failed to deal with it. In any case, waiting one-and-a-half years for a perfunctory rejection is an *unacceptable* outcome and represents poor journal practice. The editor should have been on top of this and arranged review within a more reasonable time (e.g., by sending to an alternate reviewer). You could write to the journal editor to complain if you want, or simply state the name of the journal here in this forum so that others can avoid.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: As other answers point out, in all likelihood this was simply (0) a manuscript that did not meet the required standards of publication, (i) extreme tardiness on the part of the reviewers, (ii) negligence on the part of the editor to not push reviewers harder, (iii) laziness on the part of the reviewers to not give you more feedback.
But, and that's where I'm really going: You can't ever know whether it was the reasons above or indeed someone trying to sabotage you. Nobody is ever going to tell you who the reviewer was, and even if you knew, you couldn't know that person's motivations. So here are your choices:
* Assume tardiness, negligence, laziness in the people in your community.
* Assume malice and intent to sabotage you in the people in your community.
Since these are your colleagues, and since it could be anyone, how are you ever going to go to a conference and look people in the eye if you assume the second choice above? Do you want to live a life where you have to assume that everyone out there could be out to get you? Could you be happy if that were your attitude toward your colleagues?
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: Probably yes if they were harboring an old grudge. It may or may not be intentional. The person could be in bad mood.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: Interpretation of this situation depends on some details: you said in comments you asked for updates, and they said it takes a long time. In my field (pure math), while getting a perfunctory report after such a long time is unusual and far from ideal, it does happen from time to time. While it's reasonable to be upset about this, and certainly the editor did not handle this well, there's no evidence given that this was intentional sabotage.
Here are some things to keep in mind:
1. In some fields, refereeing is often very slow, and I think long delays became more common during the COVID-19 pandemic. I've certainly experienced a number of long delays recently, both due to slow referees or editors dropping the ball. But even in normal times, a referee or editor may have health issues or pass away, creating extra delays you don't know about.
2. You did not necessarily see all of the comments that the referee wrote. The editor or referee may have decided to keep some more critical comments from you.
3. Sometimes referees accept but don't finish their job. One possibility is that this happened to your paper, and the editor had to ask someone else after a year or so, and this was the report they gave after a few months.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: What field are you in? I assume someone having to provide feedback on a theoretical maths paper will take much longer than someone looking at the results of an medical case study. It is also surprising that the journal sent the paper to one referee *only* to start with.
One can always withdraw a publication if it takes too long to get the paper refereed, to submit it to a different journal hoping for a faster turnout. Having said that, for some fields the number of possible and available refs is small, so one might just get to the same referees.
Knowing nothing about your manuscript, your accusation nevertheless comes across as extremely offputting. As we are not in the position of giving any informed comment, anything is possible in the spectrum going from you submitting a very poor and tedious paper, to the referee being actually malicious. In addition, some editors are actually very bad at managing the refereeing process (for what we know the editor might have sat on the manuscript for 17 months, and the referee might have been quite fast), and you seem to discount that.
Just so we are clear -- this is the internet, and any complaint about the issue there can only have two outcomes: people validate your position, or not. If you are correct, this is the very worst place to deal with the issue (you have a supervisor, right?). If you are not correct, anything goes. Nevertheless, you pose a real world problem which has near 0 chances of being resolved here.
Upvotes: 2
|
2022/10/06
| 1,692
| 7,198
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm an international student. Last year, I got into a research programme and started working with a supervisor. I had a great relationship with this supervisor, and he encouraged me to pursue PhD studies in his lab. He helped a lot with my application and I got accepted with funding despite some personal challenges. I do like the university, the group, and the supervisor, so from this perspective, everything is great.
The problem is that I now realize I don't want to stay in this country for five more years. I've been here for several years already, have not managed to learn the language very well, and I'm always the "foreigner" in any situation. I wish I had thought about this last year, but I didn't.
I told the supervisor that I plan to decline the offer, but he is encouraging me to accept it. He has promised that I can master out after two years, or he'll support me transferring to another PhD program if I want to do that.
Is this a good plan? I am concerned that entering a PhD program and then leaving without a PhD will look bad. On the other hand, I don't have any other offers right now. And I'm worried about alienating my supervisor, who is well-known and whose recommendation later is important for me.<issue_comment>username_1: As cliché as this sounds, you need to do what is best for you and out of respect for S and their funding, research group and university you need to make this decision soon and final.
The worst thing you could do is go there half-hearted and not live up to the funding and universities expectations from a funded PhD project. They would desire, although maybe not expect, a return on their investment in you. If you do not think you can give them that through genuine and legitimate reasons about the culture, language and city then the best thing you could do is give them (and you) certainty.
Accepting and doing a masters over two years would just lead to, "well you've invested two years, why not another two?" and that argument is really persuasive, [it sinks many a gambler!](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Escalation_of_commitment).
Do what you think is the best for you, let the correct people know this as soon as possible so they can advertise the position, reallocate places or funding etc. and set in motion what they need to do.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The expectation will be different for different countries. I am studying at an European university, and my supervisor has no problem with me applying to other universities after graduation. I always told him about my future plan.
There are also some places where supervisors will "force" students to do M.Sc and PhD at the same university under their supervision. I am strongly against this idea, but for this aspect, I think you know better than anyone else here as it is culturally-dependent, or if you don't know, you should specify the country here.
I cannot imagine myself doing Bachelor, Master, PhD at the same university for many years, but that is just my personal opinion. I know many excellent professors who studied at the same university for 10 years, and later became faculty there. Clearly, there is no right or wrong answer. For some places, students are encouraged to go to other universities for graduate study for a different perspective, and I think it is a good idea.
However, I also believe we can not always get what we want. Sometimes, we are given a good opportunity, and we should take it. Your life, my life will not stop after getting PhD, but there will be other opportunities as well. PhD is a great challenge. It will not get easier if you transfer to other places. You have to do the risk-benefit calculation yourself carefully. Either you choose to stay or you choose to move, you will somehow regret that.
But, no matter what anyone else tells you, your mental health, your happiness are important things that no academic achievement or grade can compensate. If you still think this place is not for you (mentally), you really should leave. You should spend some time for yourself to rest after making the decision. It will refresh your mind, helping you have a better perspective for the next application.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Given all the informations you gave, you are a very important pawn in the dynamics of the group, probably it has to do also with the fundings for your professor (there must be some blockage of the fundings for the project to starts only when PhD position is filled, therefore your professor is pressuring you) and your contribution in the groups (you are probably downplaying your contributions), too.
First: your mental health is of uttermost importance.
Second: is not unheard of people working fully remote, even in the academia, even before Covid.
As a recent graduate, I assume money is an issue and you cannot stay out of work for more than 3 months. Therefore, I see the choice between being unemployed, broken and depressed, or employed, less broken and depressed (but I may be wrong).
I suggest you to accept the position, you already made **very** clear to your professor you want to leave, or better, that you want to **live** somewhere else, you are accepting their terms, but they are also accepting your terms.
You have a lot of bartering power on your side, you may find an agreement in moving to another institution (anywhere in the world, as a visiting researcher) while at the same time being formally affiliated at the current university.
It may not be that the professor is willing to do that, but if you come up with a reasonable plan (i.e. finding a supervisor at the foreign uni, scheduling in-person meeting 7 to 8 times per year with your current group) you may have green light.
If, on the other hand, you can stay without work for 3-6 months, take the opportunity, it is a great opportunity to "take a break" and the older you get the more difficult it will be.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: Your topline question is very general. But the answer to that is actually irrelevant to your case. What is common isn't universal and the only situation that matters is yours.
But, my best guess is that you are overthinking it. Yes, you can probably transfer, but it seems to me like jumping into the abyss. You say you are the "foreigner" always and haven't mastered the language, but you seem to have done well enough to have impressed your advisor to the point that they are strongly advocating for your continuation. I don't think that is rare, but I do think that it is a very important consideration. Many questions here on this site are about conflicts with advisors. I don't guess that you will find a more supportive advisor if you move.
If you do stay, your language skills will likely improve and you will probably "fit" better into the local culture than you feel you do now.
I wouldn't suggest throwing away what you have unless you can *first* find a better situation elsewhere. I don't think that will be easy.
However, I also think that it is likely that the supervisor would actually give you a strong recommendation. Their opinion of you sounds, from what you write, as very positive.
Upvotes: 0
|
2022/10/06
| 1,071
| 4,386
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<issue_start>username_0: I have a 4.0 GPA in computer science from a no name university (1001-1200 in THE) and I have 3 months worth of research experience at a good university in Europe plus one semester of a research project. Can universities like CMU, Yale, Prineton consider my application? Has anyone seen other cases like this?<issue_comment>username_1: While the name of your undergrad university certainly plays a role, your personal excellence is much more important. You need to show this in your CV and in your application. For example, if you are 1st author on a **really good paper** in your field (e.g. originating from your bachelor or master thesis) this certainly counts a lot. **Glowing reference letters** might also help (good is not enough).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: You will be considered by any university you apply to, but for those top few places, the competition is fierce with lots of top applicants. For that reason alone, I'd say your chances are small.
While it is worth applying to such places if you have a good record and (US centric) very good letters of recommendation, you should make a broader search if you want to assure success overall. Spread some applications over interesting top fifty or so US institutions.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I know the US system is very different but what I have experienced and seen in Europe is this: you can try to get funding/apply and complete a one- or two-year master's degree at a "top" university. After that, the "top" university or a university of similar "rank" is much more likely to offer you a PhD position (assuming you did well, of course).
This is likely not directly applicable to the US, but perhaps there are options to get your foot in the door: e.g., summer course, internship, RA/TA jobs, etc.? I think your research internship is already a big plus, too.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: The first year you are looking for a PhD, I would apply mostly to the programmers you are most invested in getting accepted to, but also to some research positions or masters degrees where you might get a chance to better prove yourself if you fail to get into the PhD programme you want. As others have said, publishing great papers, or having a letter of reference from someone known to the people in the department you are applying to both significantly increase your chances.
But keep in mind that competitive PhDs are competitive. It isn't just about you, it's about who else happens to apply the same year. There will always be an enormous chance element about whether the best supervisor matching your interests is even taking any PhDs the year you apply, or whether they happen to have just gotten a big grant and be taking a lot of students.
If you don't get into a PhD programme you had hoped to your first try, then you can put more time into the next tier down, or if you do get a good research position, you can put a lot of time into trying to get papers out and wind up in a stronger position for your application, or of course both.
Personally I only got accepted at the MOST competitive of the four places I applied to my first year trying. I got lucky! The professor I wanted to work with there took 8 students that year. If I'd applied the year before, he wouldn't have taken any, as he was going on sabbatical.
But having said that, I had a poor GPA from a decently-known undergraduate programme, so I didn't even apply to a PhD until I had already done a Masters and got good letters of recommendation -- in that case from references who weren't particularly well known, but from a known MSc programme.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: Based on your description I'd say your odds are not good. You can tell how competitive you'll be by going to the website of your target university and searching for some PhD students' CVs.
[Here](https://me.xlk.me/files/cv.pdf) is an example CV of a current student at Yale. Ignore everything from after 2019, because he enrolled at Yale in 2019. He had one publication (which won a first place prize too), several academic honours, some undergraduate teaching experience, some internship experience at Apple, and four different projects.
I don't know the specifics of course, but as you can see the competition at top universities is strong, and your competitors will be armed to the teeth.
Upvotes: 0
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2022/10/06
| 538
| 2,398
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<issue_start>username_0: I interviewed for a faculty position in the first week of september and the interview went very well. The last two candidates were interviewed in the second week of September. I sent a follow-up email to the search committe chair on the first week of October regarding decision-making timeline. The search committee chair replied to my email on the same date but at night and stated " they sent the recommendation to the dean and director, and now things should move forward faster, but still he can not give a definite timeline this time since its the busy time of the year". Does this letter mean anything positive or negative? Appreciate your answer.<issue_comment>username_1: It is just an update, neither positive nor negative. If the dean and director have an important part in the decision, then it is up to them and we can't read their minds nor know their priorities. You are still in the game, of course.
Nothing to do but wait. Maybe have a culturally appropriate beverage. Good luck.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: A good mental model for how academic searches work is that they are like a black box that crunches a complicated set of information fed into it as input, and after some (usually excruciatingly long) amount of time outputs a binary bit saying “we would like to offer you a job / we decided not to offer you a job”.
The point I’m trying to make with this picture is that it is not going to be helpful to you as a job candidate to know what is happening inside the black box; in fact, knowledge of what happens inside can actually mislead you into an incorrect assessment of your chances of getting the job, or just cause confusion. For this reason, search committees are usually very reluctant to share information with candidates about what is happening “under the hood”.
This search committee chair is trying to be helpful by sharing with you some of the inner workings of the black box. The information they gave says nothing about the final outcome, but it might give some clues about how much time it will take for the outcome to be decided. Although as we can see from your question, it can still lead to exactly the kind of confusion I was referring to above, hence proving my point that this kind of information is not as helpful to share as people sometimes think.
Good luck, I hope you get the job!
Upvotes: 2
|
2022/10/07
| 1,220
| 4,824
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a recent CS graduate. I realize the value of going to college and getting a degree now. It'd be absolutely impossible to learn everything taught in college on my own looking at my current situation.
**I'm studying to get a job currently as well as to pass licensing exam for engineering graduates in my country. But main focus is job.**
I'm also studying subjects like DBMS, Operating System, Data Structures and Algorithms because they too are somewhat related to web development/programming and studying just 1 subject per day is very bad thing if you get stuck. My goal is to rotate between 3 things per day, Web development, DBMS and DSA/OS. I've to say that I'm re-learning these subjects. I've already studied them in college but I didn't studied them well at that time as they were taught when I was freshman in college.
Companies here (It's Nepal) Don't like training new grads so generally you're all on your own. I need to upskill myself to a point where I can get guidance but don't need that guidance.
Here are the problems I'm facing atm.
1. I"m not sure what topics should I learn? For eg: If I had to learn DSA in college, I'd just learn the syllabus/contents that the college gave to us. Do I still do the same?
2. I'm not sure what should I practice. What exercises. A book has 100s of exercises in 1 chapter and it's obvious, nobody can afford to solve each of them. In uni, I'd either solve "assignments" or "previous year question papers" and learn a lot from them. For each chapter(eg: memory mgmt,process mgmt are 2 chapters of OS), I'd be doing 20 long+short questions. What do I do now?
3. I've no natural/real deadline. No pressure of exams. That is really harmful as I won't be finishing anything in time like this. I'm always in a hurry. I'm scared of wasting more time. I am impatient because there's nobody to fix deadlines for me. There's nobody to tell me how much time something will require to me. I've never took an year loss in my entire life.
4. I'm facing failures after failures in learning when starting to learn from a gap(I took around 2 weeks gap).
5. Staying at home all day is mentally tough and draining. I'm always unfocused. Mind is wandering here and there. I'm not sure the science behind that, but it's really creating cluttered and useless mind. "Empty mind, devil's home". There are no "IT Training Institutes" that are worth the money here in my state even though it's the state with capital city.
No public libraries that allow "work space with laptop and books" has been a huge issue. Recently, I've heard ihub allows it so I'm optimistic.
Luckily, I'm not really sad about being away from uni and amn't demotivated by it. I need guidance to move forward more than anything else. This is a huge change of scenario for me. It has been around 1 month of it and I'm still like this. It's true that I've not have to study for whole 1 month because I'd other things to do, so I was in a break from studying. I'm seeking for non-medical guidance here.
Some suggestions given to me by my friends is to "learn bare minimum and get a job", but that's a catch-22. Learning bare minimum is what I'm trying to do. Make project, learn dsa for interviews. That's all. Learning a lot isn't a problem for me atm(ofc it is), but learning anything(even just 1 thing) is a problem.
Thank you.<issue_comment>username_1: Here are my advises that could help:
1. You should spend some time for searching what you want exactly, and since your goal is to get a job, then it is necessary to check the job offers and know their requirements in order to learn them.
2. **Make a roadmap for learning the required skills**, and set a duration for each step, set goals and follow a rewarding system (if you learn/accomplish something, reward yourself).
3. **Focus on one thing per time**, learning many modules can make you distracted.
4. Create a group of serious friends to learn together and share knowledge.
5. Github is a treasure, you can check others' source codes and learn from them, as well as you can share your programs and get back comments. In general, working within a team can improve your skills.
Good luck
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: If you are really stuck, the world is full of options and you do not know which one you have to pick and you do not know what the different companies are *really* doing , look for an internship.
You will get a bit of life inside a company and you will be able to focus on what you want to do, what you can do and more importantly **what they need**.
Working for a company is not related to what you want. A company is simply buying your work to sell it for a profit ... so your task is now to find a reasonable match between what you can deliver and what a certain company is needing.
Upvotes: 1
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2022/10/07
| 1,628
| 6,732
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<issue_start>username_0: First off: I really like my supervisor. I’ve worked well with her, I’m on her research team for her own research and I really appreciate her and look up to her.
Long story short. Continuous feedback on my research proposal when I send in revisions is that I need to learn how to proofread/proofread better to not waste their time. The problem is is that I am and I am trying. The last revisions I sent, I put through grammar software, proofread it 4 times for the common mistakes she identified I make, and even had a friend proofread it.
I’m concerned that she thinks I’m not trying, when really I am. I’ve only had A’s in papers throughout my graduate coursework, with other professors commenting on my strong writing. I feel incredibly stupid because I am missing things on the revisions. I’ve signed up for a proofreading/editing workshop through my University since this is now a constant feedback point from her.
However I just don’t know how to address letting her know I’m not skipping proofreading and that I am trying. Particularly after her last email stating my lack of proofreading is wasting her time. If I’m being honest the feedback felt hurtful when I spent so much time on it and was really proud of my work.
This is the third time she’s sent me strongly worded feedback about my proofreading. I don’t want her to think I’m ignoring her feedback or just sending her shit work for fun. How would you respond?
---
Comment: "What sort of errors is she commenting on?"
Reply: "Oxford commas, verb tense, I had one anthropomorphism in the last revision. Two of my narrative references had an extra comma (et al., vs et al.) and then being inconsistent with abbrev. so my research is healthcare focused. Referring to the Medical teaching unit (MTU) in its longhand in a few spots rather than using MTU for the entirety of the proposal."<issue_comment>username_1: The only thing I worry about in her response is "strongly worded". If the strong words are about the proposal then it is fine. But if they are about you and how she perceives your competence, then it is not so fine.
In the former case, then don't respond at all, but just try to do a better job. There is a difference, of course, in formal scientific/academic writing and the more casual writing that you use elsewhere. Perhaps she is just focused (too focused?) on that aspect and wants to move you along the line to more formal writing. Yes, I realize that is a generous interpretation.
But if she is belittling you then it is a different story and the only way to deal with it is either to find a different advisor or to have a sit-down face-to-face to clear up the issues.
I want to remind you, however, (since I can't remind her) that proofreading your own writing is vastly more difficult than proofing someone else's work. Our mind "sees" what we think we wrote (remembered writing) rather than what we actually wrote. Oxford commas are a perfect example. In mathematical writing I've substituted one operator for another and missed it completely while proofreading, invalidating an argument.
And proofreading twice is no panacea. If you can get someone else to proofread your proposal before submitting, you will get an independent view. Yes, that is hard also.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: [Comment](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/189422/proofreading-struggles-and-research-proposal-feedback#comment510901_189422): "What sort of errors is she commenting on?"
[Reply](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/189422/proofreading-struggles-and-research-proposal-feedback#comment510902_189422): "Oxford commas, verb tense, I had one anthropomorphism in the last revision. Two of my narrative references had an extra comma (et al., vs et al.) and then being inconsistent with abbrev. so my research is healthcare focused. Referring to the Medical teaching unit (MTU) in its longhand in a few spots rather than using MTU for the entirety of the proposal."
It's surprising that grammar software did not catch verb tense errors, sometimes people will also paste a few paragraphs at a time into a draft of an email in gmail to take advantage of additional grammar checking available there (in addition to all other available grammar checking software).
Another thing you should absolutely always do is to **read it out loud** to yourself and then again, to a friend. When reading silently, especially if it's something we've recently written ourselves, it's so easy to skip over small errors because we already know what it's *trying* to say and automatically fill in for small errors.
Use of abbreviations must be consistent and there are plenty of standards and rules for this. The first time you write it out, then forever more you only use the abbreviation or acronym. If readers don't recognize it, they know they can search for the first instance and expect to find it written out clearly there (and nowhere else).
**Get yourself a good [style guide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Style_guide)** and read it and commit to it. Find a short one otherwise you'll get bogged down. Consider **asking your supervisor for one** suitable for you.
For each mistake your supervisor points out, **commit to never making it again** by keeping a list of your pointed-out mistakes handy and using it as a checklist from now on when proofreading.
### on the "strongly worded feedback about my proofreading":
As [suggested in @username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189437/69206) if the strong wording is against the types of mistakes, or includes "you've done it again!" comments because you did something they already mentioned not to do earlier, try to see this as *actionable* and therefore helpful and constructive feedback.
In the future, you may simply get rejections with generic reasons without any specific or actionable feedback. Enjoy it and take it to heart while you've got it!
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: These sound like relatively minor complaints, the sort of which you would expect perhaps the typesetters or editors to catch for you once you made it to publication, if you're lucky enough to be in a field that still has real editors and typesetters.
If you are worried that she doesn't appreciate your effort, or that there's something specific that you could be doing to make yourself more detail-oriented, why not ask to spend some of your next research meeting specifically on mentoring on this problem? Then she can make suggestions about how she catches things, and you can describe what you've tried, and you can come to some mutual agreement on appropriate levels of effort and strategies for catching these types of errors.
Upvotes: 1
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2022/10/08
| 972
| 4,022
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing a postdoc proposal which will involve work in area X. Area X can be studied from a theoretical or applied perspective, and the proposal involves the latter. While my PhD has focused on theoretical aspects of area X, I also have experience in the applied aspects via an internship. The issue is that all the work resulting from the internship is classified, and cannot be legally shared. I cannot, for instance, cite a paper (though I did write an internally published paper on my work while an intern). How can I convincingly convey that I have experience with the applied side of area X?
I *am* legally able to share that I worked in applied area X during my internship, that I wrote a paper, and I may disclose the name of the organization I worked with. This information appears on my CV, but how should I best incorporate it into my proposal?
Or should I, without anything specific to say about my experience in applied area X, say nothing because saying anything would sound desperate?
Related: [How to reference confidential data in reference list](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/10639/how-to-reference-confidential-data-in-reference-list)<issue_comment>username_1: Have you read the [instructions](https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/policydocs/pappg22_1/pappg_2.jsp)? The PAPPG covers this:
>
> D. SPECIAL PROCESSING INSTRUCTIONS
>
>
> 1. Proprietary or Privileged Information
>
>
> Patentable ideas, trade secrets, privileged or confidential commercial
> or financial information, disclosure of which may harm the proposer,
> should be included in proposals only when such information is
> necessary to convey an understanding of the proposed project. Such
> information must be clearly marked in the proposal and be
> appropriately labeled with a legend such as,
>
>
> "The following is (proprietary or confidential) information that (name
> of proposing organization) requests not be released to persons outside
> the Government, except for purposes of review and evaluation." Such
> information also may be included as a separate statement. If this
> method is used, the statement must be submitted as a single-copy
> document in the Proposal Preparation Module in FastLane or
> Research.gov. (See also Chapter II.C1Chapter II.C.1 for further
> information regarding submission of single-copy documents.)39
>
>
> The box for "Proprietary or Privileged Information" must be checked on
> the Cover Sheet when the proposal contains such information. While NSF
> will make every effort to prevent unauthorized access to such
> material, the Foundation is not responsible or in any way liable for
> the release of such material.
>
>
>
Otherwise, assume any information you disclose is subject to FOIA.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Or should I, without anything specific to say about my experience in applied area X, say nothing because saying anything would sound desperate?
>
>
>
It is counterproductive to withhold truthful and relevant information about yourself out of fear that the information cannot be verified. You should share what information you are able to, and leave it to the people evaluating your proposal to think how to make use of that information. If they think the information is useless (I doubt very much they will), they will ignore it, and you will be no worse off than if you hadn’t mentioned it at all. There is no benefit to you preempting or second-guessing their judgment on this issue.
>
> I am legally able to share that I worked in applied area X during my internship, that I wrote a paper, and I may disclose the name of the organization I worked with. This information appears on my CV, but how should I best incorporate it into my proposal?
>
>
>
Just mention it in the appropriate parts of the proposal, and explain the limitations preventing you from sharing more. It is not materially different than any other type of information you are including in your proposal.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2022/10/08
| 1,027
| 4,419
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<issue_start>username_0: I worked full time throughout undergrad and about 11 months after undergrad in the pharmaceutical industry. I worked mainly in manufacturing and quality control doing mainly routine testing and assay troubleshooting where I learned several lab skills. I also have undergrad research experience (and a publication). I’m planning on applying to PhD programs in biomedical science in the US and I was wondering if these industry experiences will be beneficial for my application. How much of the industry experiences, if any, will be beneficial?<issue_comment>username_1: In my experience, very few junior tenure track faculty have any industry experience beyond maybe a couple summer internships along the way. I think you can take from that that industry experience is not a big factor in PhD admissions.
Factors that really move the needle are strong LORs, a compelling SOP, and any research experience and publications. GPA needs to be above a threshold but beyond that doesn't matter so much. (Top programs could fill every spot with 4.0 students but they don't because that's not the only thing they care about.) Industry experience and glowing LORs from industry may be helpful, but definitely not as much.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: Doctoral programs are about research. Your experience doesn't seem to be research oriented, so I'd guess that it counts for little, though positive. But it does explain what you've been doing in the interim and that seems productive, so a good thing to state.
If the lab skills are specific to what you intend to study then it is a bit more positive, so focus on that aspect.
But other things such as GPA (especially in major subjects) and letters of recommendation will count for more in a US application.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I largely disagree with the earlier answers on this. You have 11 months of work under your belt that competing applicants are unlikely to have. That's 11 months of maturity, and 11 months that demonstrate that you've been earning a living and still want to go into a graduate program, suggesting a strong commitment. Aside from what you've been doing during that employment, that's great stuff for any grad school application. Also, since (presumably) you haven't gotten fired, it shows an ability to work with others, and to do your job to your supervisor's satisfaction.
If you don't believe an admissions committee will find this important, part of the job you need to achieve in your application portfolio is telling the admissions committee *why* it is important.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I completely agree with [username_3's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189439/69206) that this is likely to be a big plus for several reasons outlined there, and that you should be proactive in helping to make that clear.
You've mentioned:
>
> I worked mainly in manufacturing and quality control doing mainly routine testing and assay troubleshooting where I learned several lab skills. I also have undergrad research experience (and a publication).
>
>
>
I'm pretty sure that research faculty in the program would be *horrified* to discover that skills and ability to carry out research from day one were being ignored as selection criteria. Certainly when they select students to work in their lab, "Can this person be productive here?" is a primary selection criteria.
>
> ...I was wondering if these industry experiences will be beneficial for my application.
>
>
>
*It should be* so likely it will be in some cases. But as username_3's answer (linked above) points out:
>
> ...part of the job you need to achieve in your application portfolio is telling the admissions committee ***why*** it is important. (emphasis added)
>
>
>
*Lean in* to the skills you have developed in your undergraduate research and in your industrial experience. You can DO stuff on day one, you can be a positive influence on others and bring perspective from an industrial setting at least to laboratories where research may overlap with industry, e.g. research potentially contributing to the development of new equipment, techniques and technology, drugs, biomedical materials and procedures, etc.
Actually, when you specifically say bio*medical* rather than biological, some overlap with industry seems to be guaranteed one way or the other.
Upvotes: 2
|
2022/10/08
| 675
| 2,864
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm applying to grad schools in the US for a PhD in math and have managed to convince five professors to write a letter of recommendation for me. One of my referees requested me to send a "rough draft" of the LOR after mentioning that she's very busy currently due to exams and "would modify it accordingly".
I've read several posts here that indicate that this is a bad sign, but I've met her in person recently and did well in her class and it seems that she is genuinely willing to write a strong LOR, but is just hard pressed for time. I think the best course of action here would be to provide her with a list of relevant questions and topics that she could address, while also politely stating that my direct involvement in the writing process would be unethical or unproductive as these are meant to be confidential.
Kindly let me know if there are any good guides out there for writing a LOR so that I can prepare such a questionnaire for her, as most of the guides that come up are about how to ask for a LOR. If this would not be the best course of action, then kindly let me know how to handle this situation. She is number 3 on my list by seniority and a lot of universities ask for 3 main and 2 supplemental LORs. Would it be wise to swap her with a supplementary letter writer who has been very helpful and involved in my application process?<issue_comment>username_1: My suggestion is that you give her an outline, rather than a draft. In the outline mention what you think are the important points, not just in your immediate relationship with her but overall. But don't neglect to include some personal 'interaction' material to remind her.
I've had students ask me for letters after a long gap (not your case, of course) where I generally remember them as good students with potential, but forget the details. I've asked them for such to help me write a better, less general, letter.
Sort the outline points in order of importance as you see them. Add a few personal details if you like.
The reason for an outline and not a draft is that she will use her own wording, making it more authentic.
If that doesn't work for her then migrate your outline into a draft.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I do not think this is a bad sign: professors are overwhelmed with tasks, among them writing reference letters. It often happened to me that a professor agreed to submit a reference letter, but that I had to write it myself (context: Western Europe) - after them revising and approving it, of course.
To build on username_1's answer, I would even suggest that you submit both an outline (to show the professor what are the important points and requirements for the letter) *and* a draft (so that the professor can use your wording to save time). If that does not work for them, they will let you know.
Upvotes: 2
|
2022/10/09
| 1,685
| 7,100
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<issue_start>username_0: In the 17th century, there were some mathematicians who learned math by themselves, such as Fermat. They were amateur mathematicians, and didn't have a degree in university. But, in the 20th century, there aren't, and the only counterexample may be Ramanujan.
There may be two reasons caused this difference:
1. Mathematics gets more difficult so that amateurs aren't able to learn it by themselves. Only professional mathematicians have enough time and resource to learn it.
2. People have more chances to get into university. If someone wants to learn math, theoretical physics, or other science subject - he can easily apply to a university, and for talented students, there are full scholarship awards so he needn't worry about tuition fees. And, in the 20th century, before the internet was invented, the usual way for self-teaching math is reading books in library. However, the city which have libraries usually have universities - and they can just apply for it if they want.
The other problem is the concept of "amateur" is ambiguous. For example, this word usually denotes people who work during the day-time and learn math in the rest time. However, the situation is vastly similar to some international students who work part-time jobs to pay for their tuition fees. These students usually don't want to be seen as amateur learners.<issue_comment>username_1: Many years ago I thought about it as well when I was drinking with my friends, forming some stupid hypotheses to keep the conversation going. One of them was about economic specialization. This could be partially or totally wrong. I wrote in hurry, so I might probably provide some absurd examples.
Unlike previous eras, it is not easy to find someone "who knows everything" (relative to what people know nowadays). Even if you manage to find one, maybe you will be disappointed because they do not have deep understanding for things they know.
Does it mean that we get less smart? Absolutely not true. I argue that it is better for modern society to have less people **who know everything**. We have learnt that collaboration and **specialization** will increase our productivity significantly. Having too many prominent figures who knew everything was probably an indicator of a much less advanced economy/society.
In a particular poor pre-modern society, there was probably not much difference between those who wanted to learn everything and those who decided to become farmers. Of course, the former was highly respected, but economically they were much poorer compared to our standard, so it would not make a substantial difference no matter what you chose to do. There was no **penalty** (trade off) for not specializing as there is today. *This statement is clearly wrong and absurd as I could not give a good example to demonstrate what I believe.*
People did not have an incentive to specialize until specialization was "invented". There were forced to specialize by an invisible hand.
As time went by, the human knowledge increased and the society got better, but it also means that it became harder to master and have an influence over all fields of knowledge. "Good" people chose to specialize into a specific field, for example, **mathematics**. It was still very broad, but at least much better than specializing into maths, alchemy, philosophy, politics, etc. at the same time. Luckily for them, there were a lot of low-hanging fruits waiting to be picked. Doing everything on your own was not a bad idea at all. Maybe it was a good one. Welcome to the Age of Enlightenment!
Nowadays, human beings have accummulated a huge amount of knowledge about anything imaginable. No one is capable of advancing all the areas of Mathematics unless some truly fundamental things are invented, and it is hard. In order to be useful for the society, it is probably wiser to specialize into something rather than "everything". As you enroll to universities for your first degree, your second one, your third one,... you are **specializing** into something. You are contributing something to that tiny field, but we are, **collectively**, contributing to advance human knowledge.
When there were many low-hanging fruits, probably, it was not a bad idea to pursue research on your own without any guidance. A professor (probably <NAME>) said that "Gaussian elimination was named after Gauss just because he was born earlier". If I am not mistaken, Gauss did not invented it, but clearly, Strang was right. This is not to say that Gauss was not great (indeed he is undeniably one of the greatest mathematicians). You know what I mean.
Nowadays, you may easily get lost forever in the dark without a proper guidance (from supervisors?). We all need a good direction. No one wants to do everything on their own to reach a dead-end. Learning, interacting and collaborating with other excellent people in the field will not only accelerate the researching process but it will also "gear" you towards the right direction. Doing everything on your own is risky.
Furthermore, in the past, going to university was not an option for many people. My current university is very old, and it was initially created for the rich people. They hired "professors" to teach them what they wanted. If you were not a wealthy man, probably your only logical choice was to do everything on your own.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I do think that the premise (that there are few mathematicians nowadays learning math by themselves) is inaccurate: quite a few mathematically precocious kids, unless they have the unusual socio-economic-intellectual situation to be recognized and given serious support, will/can learn more things from books/internet than from typical school teachers, or from their parents.
So, I would seriously claim that any current population of the most mathematically talented kids will have necessarily taught themselves waaaaaay more things than their school, or even "enrichment" or "accelerated" programs will have taught them (or even *exposed* them to).
In particular, I'd wager that the fraction of the population that "teaches themselves" math is not so much smaller than it was 100 or 150 years ago, despite the drift in agrarian/industrial employment.
My mother's mother's father, a small-time farmer in rural Indiana in the mid-1800's, sent away for an "algebra" book, whose exercises actually included many Diophantine problems, etc. What strikes me here is that he farmed all day, but wanted to do math in the evening...
EDIT: oop, and, by the way, I myself "read" (in some sense) all the "math books" in the county library, while, in high school, being somewhat repelled by the culture of high-school math. Rules. Antique terminology. Disallowing complex numbers to explain things about trig functions. It was depressing. I did not quite realize that "math" could be a positive, forward-looking thing, until a few years later, by accident. I do still say to the grad students here at my uni, that "school math" is a bad perversion of the sense of math. :)
Upvotes: 2
|
2022/10/09
| 1,593
| 6,648
|
<issue_start>username_0: I am a third-year mathematics major from outside the US and intend to apply for a US or Canadian Phd program in statistics.
The issue I have is that I will be taking measure theory in my 4th year and I hear that this is very relevant to a stat grad program. This means if I were to apply for the Fall intake of 2024, Measure Theory and some other advanced math courses would not appear on my transcript. I could of course wait till Fall 2025, but I would like to start as early as possible.
Do you think the absence of these courses in the transcript I submit will affect my admission chances? (FYI: I have already done all my stat courses in my 1st and 2nd years and have good grades on all of them; I did stat for a minor)
Also, would it help if I took the Math GRE test to make up for missing courses of the 4th year? Thanks in advance. Any other PhD related advice is also most welcome :)<issue_comment>username_1: Many years ago I thought about it as well when I was drinking with my friends, forming some stupid hypotheses to keep the conversation going. One of them was about economic specialization. This could be partially or totally wrong. I wrote in hurry, so I might probably provide some absurd examples.
Unlike previous eras, it is not easy to find someone "who knows everything" (relative to what people know nowadays). Even if you manage to find one, maybe you will be disappointed because they do not have deep understanding for things they know.
Does it mean that we get less smart? Absolutely not true. I argue that it is better for modern society to have less people **who know everything**. We have learnt that collaboration and **specialization** will increase our productivity significantly. Having too many prominent figures who knew everything was probably an indicator of a much less advanced economy/society.
In a particular poor pre-modern society, there was probably not much difference between those who wanted to learn everything and those who decided to become farmers. Of course, the former was highly respected, but economically they were much poorer compared to our standard, so it would not make a substantial difference no matter what you chose to do. There was no **penalty** (trade off) for not specializing as there is today. *This statement is clearly wrong and absurd as I could not give a good example to demonstrate what I believe.*
People did not have an incentive to specialize until specialization was "invented". There were forced to specialize by an invisible hand.
As time went by, the human knowledge increased and the society got better, but it also means that it became harder to master and have an influence over all fields of knowledge. "Good" people chose to specialize into a specific field, for example, **mathematics**. It was still very broad, but at least much better than specializing into maths, alchemy, philosophy, politics, etc. at the same time. Luckily for them, there were a lot of low-hanging fruits waiting to be picked. Doing everything on your own was not a bad idea at all. Maybe it was a good one. Welcome to the Age of Enlightenment!
Nowadays, human beings have accummulated a huge amount of knowledge about anything imaginable. No one is capable of advancing all the areas of Mathematics unless some truly fundamental things are invented, and it is hard. In order to be useful for the society, it is probably wiser to specialize into something rather than "everything". As you enroll to universities for your first degree, your second one, your third one,... you are **specializing** into something. You are contributing something to that tiny field, but we are, **collectively**, contributing to advance human knowledge.
When there were many low-hanging fruits, probably, it was not a bad idea to pursue research on your own without any guidance. A professor (probably <NAME>) said that "Gaussian elimination was named after Gauss just because he was born earlier". If I am not mistaken, Gauss did not invented it, but clearly, Strang was right. This is not to say that Gauss was not great (indeed he is undeniably one of the greatest mathematicians). You know what I mean.
Nowadays, you may easily get lost forever in the dark without a proper guidance (from supervisors?). We all need a good direction. No one wants to do everything on their own to reach a dead-end. Learning, interacting and collaborating with other excellent people in the field will not only accelerate the researching process but it will also "gear" you towards the right direction. Doing everything on your own is risky.
Furthermore, in the past, going to university was not an option for many people. My current university is very old, and it was initially created for the rich people. They hired "professors" to teach them what they wanted. If you were not a wealthy man, probably your only logical choice was to do everything on your own.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I do think that the premise (that there are few mathematicians nowadays learning math by themselves) is inaccurate: quite a few mathematically precocious kids, unless they have the unusual socio-economic-intellectual situation to be recognized and given serious support, will/can learn more things from books/internet than from typical school teachers, or from their parents.
So, I would seriously claim that any current population of the most mathematically talented kids will have necessarily taught themselves waaaaaay more things than their school, or even "enrichment" or "accelerated" programs will have taught them (or even *exposed* them to).
In particular, I'd wager that the fraction of the population that "teaches themselves" math is not so much smaller than it was 100 or 150 years ago, despite the drift in agrarian/industrial employment.
My mother's mother's father, a small-time farmer in rural Indiana in the mid-1800's, sent away for an "algebra" book, whose exercises actually included many Diophantine problems, etc. What strikes me here is that he farmed all day, but wanted to do math in the evening...
EDIT: oop, and, by the way, I myself "read" (in some sense) all the "math books" in the county library, while, in high school, being somewhat repelled by the culture of high-school math. Rules. Antique terminology. Disallowing complex numbers to explain things about trig functions. It was depressing. I did not quite realize that "math" could be a positive, forward-looking thing, until a few years later, by accident. I do still say to the grad students here at my uni, that "school math" is a bad perversion of the sense of math. :)
Upvotes: 2
|
2022/10/09
| 621
| 2,554
|
<issue_start>username_0: I was awarded PhD in 2020 by a University as per regulations applicable at the time of my admission where Coursework requirement was only 4 credits ( One course) + Comprehensive Exam + Publications + Thesis + Viva Voce etc... To get equivalency on par with US university PhDs which have more coursework (say 32 credits of coursework), can I now do additional coursework from other universities and add additional 28 credits of coursework to my already awarded PhD by any means? or Should I show them as postdoctoral courses? How to add value to my PhD with these courses done after PhD?<issue_comment>username_1: There would be little point in it actually.
Note that doctoral students in US normally start with only a bachelors and the coursework is to enable them to pass comprehensive exams. They likely need advanced coursework beyond the bachelors. It has little additional purpose other than to assure a broad in-field education.
But you have fulfilled the purpose already.
It might also be difficult to do unless you want to enroll in another degree program, though some universities will let you enroll in individual courses.
I'd spend the effort on research in field, rather than courses, unless a specific course would help in the research.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The US Ph.D. tradition is a bit sui generis. In order to get admitted to a Ph.D. at an Indian university, you always need to have an M.S. degree in the subject. In a US type Ph.D., you can get admitted into the program right after finishing the B.S. (which does not have to be in the same subject matter). You can equate the Indian Ph.D. program with the US type Ph.D. program after the comprehensive examination.
The reason that you might feel the need to update your Indian Ph.D. is that US (and Canadian, ...) degrees have usually a higher reputation, because they demand more from a thesis. In Academia, you could upset with good publications, e.g. in Computer Science at highly ranked conferences to which US Ph.D. candidates submit, (which is of course very difficult since you graduated from the program and no longer have easy access to a mentor.) Additional course work will not be impressive and rather seem an indication of a fundamental mis-understanding. In Industry, it is your skills that matter and more academic courses might not be the best way to gain additional skills.
How to add value to your Ph.D. is an important question to you, but the answer will depend very much on your goals and circumstances.
Upvotes: 2
|
2022/10/10
| 1,096
| 4,410
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<issue_start>username_0: Suppose I already have a PhD in computer science. I want to do a PhD in history, not to pursue a career but to make my extensive background knowledge official.
Is there any better way to make my extensive knowledge of history official?<issue_comment>username_1: The purpose of a PhD is *not* to certify extensive background knowledge, but to certify research skills. Background knowledge gets outdated really soon, even in history. Skill last longer (not forever, but longer). Many people focus on a PhD as "the highest level of education". A more realistic characterization of a PhD is "vocational training for researchers".
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> *Is there any better way to make my extensive knowledge of history official?*
>
>
>
I assume you mean that you are looking for evidence that you are considered an expert in history. Present papers in reputable conferences, publish articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: There are no officials that sign a piece of paper that says "Person X is authoritative source on the topics of the american revolution, invention of computers, and dinosaurs". Your signed & certified PhD diploma or a "Dr" in front of your name are corollary of being part of the academic community. Plenty of people have PhD and carry no authority, as well as some people have a lot of influence in academia without a PhD.
As someone mentioned, history is very much "book" field. So you should consider writing a book:
1. using self-publishing method without collaboration with academics
2. finding academic co-author, while trying really hard [to not look like a crank](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/111413/what-is-the-best-way-to-deal-with-cranks)
The only reason for you to pursue PhD is that it will make (2) easier in theory.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: In a comment you cited your motivation as
>
> I want to become an authority on a certain topic
>
>
>
What you’ll need to do to become an authority on a topic is to write and publish extensively about it. One full-length PhD thesis or book would be de rigueur, and even then I doubt you’d be considered much of an authority by most actual historians (as opposed to lay people) until you’ve published several books, or a book and multiple articles — in academia a PhD is basically table stakes.
Moreover, the publications need to carry the official stamp of legitimacy of an established bestower of academic authority: either a university (in the case of a PhD thesis), or a reputable academic press in the case of books, or reputable peer reviewed journals in the case of journal articles. Self-published work won’t count, since it won’t set you apart from the many people who *think* they are an authority on something but can’t get anyone to vouch that their knowledge is correct, let alone interesting.
The thing to keep in mind is that these authorities who are in a position to give you “official” credit by publishing your book or awarding you a PhD are setting the bar much higher than just you having knowledge on the topic you are writing about. For example, you may know the dates of all the battles of the [Russo-Japanese war](https://www.google.com/search?q=russia%20japan%20war&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-us&client=safari), precise numbers of casualties, and have an extensive knowledge of the political and diplomatic machinations that led to this war, etc. Still, it’s almost certain that no one would want to publish your book about this war unless you find something *new* to say about it, or about its connection to other historical events of the period or of other periods. In other words, *having knowledge* is not really sufficient, in the academic context at least, to be considered an authority. *Creating* knowledge is the way you gain authority.
To summarize: neither getting a PhD nor publishing offer anything other than an extremely arduous and lengthy path towards becoming an authority on a historical topic, no matter how extensive your knowledge on the topic already is. As an alternative and more feasible plan, maybe consider becoming a regular poster on history.stackexchange and acquiring a high reputation there. Perhaps it won’t be “official”, but you can still have fun and collect some concrete evidence of your knowledge and understanding in history. Good luck!
Upvotes: 4
|
2022/10/11
| 962
| 4,098
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<issue_start>username_0: "My question is whether I will be able to find an academic job after leaving a Tenure-Track position, with about 1 year gap"
I am currently in a situation to leave my assistant prof position (TT) in the area of business and management due to personal reasons- relocating with my partner overseas. I like my job, and I intend to reapply for academic positions in about a years time, and meanwhile will try to publish with my former colleagues and find casual teaching in local universities.
I have heard of frightening stories that once you leave academia you can never come back, unless you are a research superstar.
Just for further info, I have been working in a relatively reputable East Asian university, and my PhD was completed in the Australasia region. However I am relocating to US/Canada.
I have 5 years experience working in my current role, with ok publications - I am not a research superstar but I am regularly publishing in relatively good journals (but not top, approx 1-2 articles per year). I have extensive teaching experience and can cover more than usual topics in my area.
I don't think getting references would be a problem, but am still worried that i will not be able to make it back into academia due to the unusual career gap. Taking an unpaid leave is not an option as I do not intend to stay/come back to my current institution. Also I have been making last minute job applications to US/Canadian universities but haven't heard back from them yet (the relocation decision was made recently, so I wasn't able to target the full recruitment season).
I have seen similar posts but in the area of science - any comments on business/management area or something that may be applicable to social sciences would be greatly appreciated!<issue_comment>username_1: There is risk, of course. Nothing is assured. I suggest that you prepare for the worst and work toward the best.
Academic positions are difficult to obtain at the moment. That doesn't seem likely to change soon. So, make sure you have a plan that is acceptable if you can't return.
Your plan to stay connected during your absence is a good one. Keep up with your circle of collaborators.
You can also judge to some extent how hard it will be for you to return if you examine how hard or easy it was to obtain your current TT position. If you were highly desirable and had multiple offers, is certainly much better than if you had to do several postdocs and then compromise at the end.
Good luck.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't know that you can "never come back", but just purely by the numbers the odds are likely not in your favor. Most people find getting a teaching position a challenge even in the best of cases, and one's research CV tends to decay the longer one works outside of academia. That is to say, I believe it's not that search committees are somehow biased against people who worked in the real world, but regular jobs just don't give you much opportunity to build your CV in aspects that are normally looked at by academic search committees (papers, acquired grants, taught courses).
When I see people move back from business to academia, they usually fall into one or multiple of the following groups:
* People who acquired marketable skills in industry, which sufficiently compensate for a slightly lower paper count. In my field these are mostly people working in industrial research labs or on well-known products.
* People who re-enter academia in lesser-known or more practice-focused universities. Clearly, at a University of Applied Sciences some time in industry would be beneficial rather than detrimental to your application, but these positions tend to be teaching-focused (nothing wrong with that, but it may be something to be aware of).
* People who re-enter academia in very specialised roles, sometimes roles specifically created for them. This tends to be the case mostly for (very) high-profile practitioners looking to transition, and will likely not apply to you as a junior with only a year or two in industry.
Upvotes: 3
|
2022/10/11
| 613
| 2,419
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<issue_start>username_0: I am writing the bachelor dissertation. I have two options.
**The first option** is to choose the topic that a professor suggested
me to do which is *somewhat* novel. The professor likes it, but I do not like it. It does not align with my future (research) plan as well.
**The second option** is to write about something I like but not in the interest of the professor. The topic is not novel at all but quite heavy, and it will require a lot of reading (journal papers & books), simulations, so it is not easier than the first one. The professor can still supervise me.
Which one do you think is better for me? (for graduate school application)<issue_comment>username_1: One of the strengths of faculty is usually their ability to devise feasible research plans. I would go with option 1, as it is much less risky and will be more likely that your efforts will provide you with something positive to talk about after you graduate. If you go on in a research career, the bachelor thesis will be the worst piece of research you ever complete- but the goal is completion! Trying to make it into a magnum opus is not a strategy for success.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This isn't exactly an answer, and [user username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189505/75368) gives the correct advice, IMO. Rather it is an anecdote from when I was your age, deep in the previous century.
I did something like your second option. I studied math and wrote something like a thesis (honors thesis) in the philosophy of math. Lots of reading, thought, writing, but no real guidance. It was pretty muddled at the end, though I guess the grade was good. Not something to look back on with a lot of pride years later though.
But, this being the US, where few undergraduates do much actual research due to inexperience and severe time constraints, I came out ok and was invited to grad school, though not on the basis of that paper (never published, thankfully). You don't say where you are applying for grad school, but in the US, the admissions committee looks at a lot of things and all positive indicators are, well, positive.
See the canonical question for information about how doctoral admissions works various places around the world: [How does the admissions process work for Ph.D. programs in Country X?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/176908/75368)
Upvotes: 2
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2022/10/11
| 873
| 3,517
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<issue_start>username_0: Basically I'm at the last stage of the article review process. We've already been through 2 rounds of copyediting (after the peer review stage), which none of my supervisors read as they trusted me to do the donkey work. (I don't blame them).
So far I've asked them to notify me at every stage of the review process, which has slowed down the process as I've had to wait for all 3 supervisors to confirm they are happy before I send off the article for another round. At this last stage I have read the paper thoroughly and can't find any issues and am keen to get it published asap. Am I still obligated to get my supervisors' approval at this stage, or should I just send it off?
I'm asking so I know the etiquette for future papers as well - I don't want to waste my (and my supervisors') time any more than necessary.
EDIT: all of the supervisors are on the authorship team.<issue_comment>username_1: You would be wise to at least offer to let them review it again. Tell them it is done in your opinion and ask if they'd like one more quick look.
All authors need to agree on what is published and, as a junior member of the team, it isn't a good idea to make assumptions.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Given that:
>
> they trusted me to do the donkey work
>
>
>
You don't have to send them the article again. With another set of collaborators who want to be involved with every step, then yes you should send the article to them.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Since they are co-authors you should definitely give them the chance to look at the manuscript again. But you also don't want to waste more time - this is reasonable. I would therefore suggest to add a deadline. Something like
>
> Here is the latest iteration of the manuscript, please have a final
> look. I plan to submit it in one week unless I hear from you.
>
>
>
This gives everyone enough time to check the manuscript, or at least to inform you that they do need more time.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Since you ask about etiquette. As other answers stated, you need to let them see the manuscript. But the time is also very important. Sometimes publishers also encourage quick feedback. You can do the same with respect of your collaborators. Put a deadline by saying:
"I am going to resubmit our manuscript on xx.xx.xxxx, please let me know if you are having any further comments/suggestions by that date".
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: I agree with those that say there's no pressing need to pass the document around again. If you don't trust your own review to catch every mistake, you might ask one of the authors to give you a hand.
Beyond that, I, personally, would probably send around the galleys to all the authors, with a note to say "I think I've got this, and I intend to return this by date X. If you see any issues, please let me know about them by Y". It is a bit of a courtesy.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: A small addition: To speed up the process of checking updated versions you could add an explicit list of changes when asking supervisors/collaborators/coauthors for approval. If you don't have changes tracked in your manuscript you could even point to line numbers and explain what has changed and for which points (if any) you would like additional input from them. This will make it easier for others to budget time and make it less daunting than going through an entire manuscript (& supplements) again.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a fresh master degree graduate from central Europe. I would like to apply to selected top graduate schools in US and Europe, and hopefully pursue a PhD degree (in applied math field). I searched though PhD programs in selected universities in US and Europe and I have a clear understanding what the program looks like.
However I'm not still sure about the topic, and if my experience is competitive enough to get accepted. I think that I would like to spend another year expanding my knowledge and have that effort recorded.
---
I wonder if there's a notion of "one-year-placements"/assistantships for people with Masters diploma but who aren't enrolled in PhD program yet. How I imagine such "placement":
* I would like to be able to complete selected courses,
* I would like to cover all expenses (!) by e.g. being a teaching assistant,
* I would like to be part of a research group/doing research so to gain additional research experience and publications contributions.
So I guess it's exactly an initial stage of a grad school PhD program but without starting actual PhD (I see that in US, grad schools often have this first year filled with courses and after that a selection of PhD topic is made, rather than finding topic on entry).
---
After such year, if successful, I would like to actually apply for grad school PhD program, with completed "placement" year that would make me more competitive, i.e. I could complete such placement in middle-tier university and after that try to get to top-tier one for PhD.
(Would applying for another Master and asking for getting hired as TA fulfill this scenario?)
Please share your thoughts if my considerations make sense, and if such academic engagements are actually formalized.
Thanks for any guidance!<issue_comment>username_1: I'm aware of this sort of thing for masters and professional programs (for example, MD or nursing programs) in the US. Simplifying a bit, the programs are generally designed to steer students to choose a particular university as an undergraduate with a promise that if they achieve some goals (such as a threshold GPA) they will receive automatic acceptance into the next stage. The benefit to the university is that they attract a high value and tuition-paying undergraduate student; the benefit to the student is that they get to skip a stressful application process.
I have never heard of a PhD program that offers similar guarantees.
Your "offer" to be a TA is not a compelling offer: TA slots are limited, and often the number of students fully admitted to a PhD program is related to the number of courses available to fund students as a TA.
Successful completion of PhD coursework is the *bare minimum* threshold for continuing a PhD program; completing those courses does not itself demonstrate your potential for successful research, which is the primary criterion evaluated in PhD admissions. For top programs in particular, it is not sufficient to be merely qualified: these programs receive too many qualified applications for the number of positions that they have available, so they need to reject a number of very good applicants in order to admit only the number they have space for.
Though there is no guarantee possible, yes you can improve the research potential that your resume demonstrates by doing research in an academic lab. Depending on your field, a masters program may be an avenue for accessing those opportunities, or there may be paid positions for recent graduates. Applied math is on a bit of a tricky boundary from my perspective, because while there are likely to be available positions for *applying* math, these may not be very closely related to *doing research in* applied math.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This might not exist (yet) in all fields (in particular your field of interest), but what you describe sounds like the so-called "predoc" position, which is increasing common in economics and maybe some other fields.
In economics and economic-adjacent fields, some departments now hire predoctoral fellows (or similar titles), sometimes as part of a structured programme. The position is aimed at those who are interested in pursuing a PhD. The role of a predoc is essentially that of an research assistant, but the position is one or two years long and is (roughly) full-time. A predoc is paid a stipend (or salary) and may have the opportunities to follow some courses as well.
The selling points of a predoc position are usually (1) a stronger PhD application due to research experience and recommendation letters, and (2) an opportunity to learn more whether one actually likes and wants to pursue a research career.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I contacted potential supervisor A (UK university), and A told me he is not sure whether he could supervise me. He copied my email to potential supervisor B (UK university), and the very awkward thing is that B has already rejected my application before I contacted A. So awkward! What should I do? Do I need to send an email to A to say something?<issue_comment>username_1: It could be that A was not aware that B had already rejected your application. So, maybe, A was trying to help you by forwarding (CC) your email to B to see if B is interested in being your supervisor.
For now, it seems that both A and B have rejected your request to be your supervisor. Is it true ?
If yes, then you should probably move on and look for a different supervisor. There is no need to talk to A about the fact that B already rejected you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Person A has not rejected you. They were, perhaps, trying to be helpful, possibly thinking B would be a better choice. While the situation seems awkward to you, it may not seem so to them, if they are friends/colleagues.
Person A hasn't said why (unless you omitted it) that they "may not be able" to supervise you. Perhaps it had to do with themself, not with you. Perhaps they could change the balance. If they hadn't seem something positive in your request, then they wouldn't have passed it on.
I would continue to try to get A to supervise you, provided that you believe they would be a good choice for reasons you've looked in to and not just a random ask. Give them a good reason to overcome their potential reluctance.
But, pursue all other options in tandem. There is no reason to step back from other possibilities.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I disagree that this is all that awkward: students are expected to correspond with multiple professors looking for a PhD position, and most of them will not have space for the student or will choose someone else (or the student will!). In this situation, both supervisor A and the student thought supervisor B might be a good fit for the student's interests - that validates both supervisor A forwarding the message to B and the student's original contact to B.
I think it's fine to do nothing, but I think it would also be fine to reply-all to the email thread between professors A and B and say both 1) a brief one-sentence 'thanks' to A for considering you and for helpfully suggesting professor B, and 2) acknowledge briefly (one sentence) that you've already heard from professor B that they do not have a position for you.
This accomplishes two things at once: it shows you are gracious, as you'd like to be seen by both A and B as they are professors in your field and will be your peers in the future if your plans work out, and it lets professor B off the hook for needing to respond to A.
No need to apologize for awkwardness or go overboard. Focus your remaining energies on other opportunities.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: You should do nothing. B will probably say thanks but then ignore the suggestion. You both already know B is not interested.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I finished my post-doc and am now faculty of computer science in India. My university was established just 5-6 years ago, and I was hired 7 months ago. My teaching workload is very high: two classes of 70 students each, no TAs. I am always either in the Head of the department's room or in the class. I am honest about this thing; I am not complaining.
My research area is theoretical computer science, but it seems that I will not be able to continue my research due to my workload. In my university, there is no motivation for research (no funding, and it does not matter to the university), but I am interested on my own accord. My contract is vague (just says "teaching and research activities").
**Please suggest me some solution that allow me to do research at the same university.**
Clarifications:
* The real problem is that I have to prepare the teaching slides and preparations at home, time which I could have used for research. I try to wake up early to do research, but half of my time goes in preparing slides and teaching. I try to work on holidays for two-three hours.
* I spend so much time in the department head's office because the head needs to sign forms for students. I have to wait 2-3 hours per day, along with the other faculty members, until he is ready to meet with me. Yes, this is inefficient, but trying to improve this would probably be seen as disrespectful.<issue_comment>username_1: Let's rephrase your problem:
1. I am being paid to unload boxes for 8 hours a day
2. I would like to play soccer, but all my time is dedicated either to family, sleep, or work unloading boxes
3. How can I play soccer more than a few hours a week?
Renegotiate your contract, change the job, or cut sleep/family/personal time to accommodate your other desires. There is no other way.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Preparing slides is a daunting task. However, you get better with time **and** hopefully you will teach the same courses next year, so, breath in breath out, you will have some time to do research in one year or so.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In a comment you said "I have to wait sometimes 2 hours some time 3 hours". Assuming you don't have to prepare for the meeting during this time, you could use this time for some or all of the following:
**1.** You could bring hardcopies of papers or books with you to read over during this time.
**2.** You could bring with you a paper you've been asked to referee, and work on that.
**3.** If you can have a laptop computer with you, then you could spend the time looking over papers or books or preprints related to your research that you have downloaded to your laptop.
**4.** If you can have with you a laptop computer with internet access, then you could spend the time scanning over online journal table-of-contents pages and paper abstracts, or looking though sites such as arxiv, for publications that you might want to look at in more detail at a later time.
**5.** If you can have with you a laptop computer with internet access, then you could spend the time downloading papers relevant to your research, rather than doing this possibly lengthy (depending on the internet speed you have) drudgery time-sink work at other times, times that would be better spent on research-related tasks that require uninterrupted periods of time.
**6.** You can also take care of teaching tasks such as lesson planning, writing lecture notes, grading student papers, and/or updating daily student attendance records. The last is probably not something you have to do, but I included because it is intended to be suggestive of any of the many mindless but time-consuming tasks that you probably need to take care of. This would free up time for research that you would be spending on this stuff at other times.
At least some of these are things that people do when a lot of their time is spent travelling by train or subway or plane, and this is certainly not new. For example, the author of [this review](https://books.google.com/books?id=yFU_AQAAMAAJ&pg=PA196&dq=%22was+made+one+night+as+we+were+crossing+from+Holyhead%22) of Hime's 1894 book **The Outlines of Quaternions** begins by mentioning he (pronoun almost certainly correct) became acquainted with quaternions around 1862 during one of his many and frequent steamship trips made from Holyhead to Kingstown [a 64 mile trip across the Irish sea to Kingstown (southeast portion of Dublin), lasting approximately 5 hours between 6 PM and midnight].
For what it's worth, I did #4 a lot for years in a non-academic job I use to have (laid off a few years ago, but not for that or any other performance reason), and during the past few hours I've been doing #5 (math journal volumes at google-books) while taking care of contract work I now have (editing math items for a couple of high stakes graduate school admissions tests).
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I can feel your frustration. But as others have alreasy mentioned, you get the hang of things after some time. In my case it took me the first 1-2 years to work faster and more efficiently when i started my new role.
However, before you get to the grips of things you may need to work during evenings and weekends. Universities with high teaching loads do make it difficult for academics to research, but if you want to improve your cv and perhaps move onto your next job this may be the only solution.
Or if possible, talk to your hod about this issue, and whether you could spend your time more efficiently? (I.e. visiting hods room on specific days of the week rather than everyday?)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: This is a very common problem nowadays, unfortunately. Academics struggling to get positions take up mostly teaching posts, lured by mostly-teaching institutions that advocate their posts as standard academic positions having potential for "research".
In my estimation you have about four options:
* Work extremely hard to make time for research. Make yourself extremely effective. And work yourself 24/7. This way you'd get some research done, but this is not a sustainable work habit.
* Work very hard as above, *while minimizing and in fact neglecting your teaching job* so that you squeeze more time for research. This is not sustainable, but after two to three years you'd establish a good research to be able to **move to a better university**.
* Try moving now to another more research oriented university.
* Try to renegotiate your workload (not really possible by your description though).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: There are already a few ideas how you can use your waiting time more effectively, but what I don't understand is why you have to wait for your department chair *at all*. If you and your colleagues all spend hours *daily* waiting around, it's quite frankly in the clear best interest of everybody, including the department chair, to reconsider the processes in play. Simple, obvious ideas include:
* Having the department chair (or their secretary) notify everybody when he comes in to get your stuff signed.
* Establishing a post box where you put stuff that needs to be signed.
* The department chair making rounds when they come in to sign everybody's papers.
* Or **getting rid of signing all that stuff in the first place**. I don't know what specifically you need to get signed all the time, but if it happens *daily* it is certainly too micro-managey and your university should seriously consider why it does not trust faculty to do their daily job without the approval of somebody higher up. I understand that cultures vary, but everybody (including the department head) would profit tremendously from a more empowered faculty. As you say you are still a very young university, so there should still be hope to re-consider your general way of working.
That all being said, it is not clear that doing these things would *actually* give you more time to do research. You say that the university does not care about research at all, so there is a distinct possibility that at some point all of this waiting-around time is eliminated, but now you are expected to teach 3 courses rather than 2. At this point it's back to aaaaa's answer - if your university does not value research, you will never be able to convince them to give you time to do it.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: I know that the question is serious, but sometimes a bit of humor is fine...
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/g34Cp.png)
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I have a joint PhD between my university and an overseas university, so in total I have around 4 PI's. I usually communicate and give regular updates to the one who is in my institute but to the rest its usually once every month. The issue is regarding the advisors in the overseas university. One of them replies to my emails but only after sending numerous reminders and the other one doesn't even bother to reply. He was there in my confirmation seminar but he never really communicates. I am supposed to be joining there in Feb 2023 but I am not sure how everything will turn out to be. I am a bit scared as they haven't been that responsive or interested over the emails, but since I am already enrolled in the PhD Program, with no option to change my advisors, what should my plan of action be? Should I confront the one who barely replies? Should I talk to the one who does reply, about the involvement of the 4th PI?<issue_comment>username_1: What happens over email is not the same as what happens in person. So your experience with those advisors over email will likely be very different from your experience with those advisors in person.
If multiple people are responsible for the same PhD student without clear agreements about who is responsible for what, then you can quickly end up with a dilution of responsibility. If some are not physically there and there are no such agreements, then you will very likely just fall through the cracks, and you will be just the local PI's responsibility.
That is not nice. It is not professional. It should not have happened. But is not necessarily a disaster either. If this is what is going on, then it is likely that when you show up at the oversees university, you will be seen by the oversees PI as her/his responsibility now (at least for the duration of your stay) and everything will be just fine.
I would just ask your local PI what they think. They know the other PIs better than we do.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I'll give a slightly different answer to supplement what username_1 says. While it is certainly not polite to ignore email from a student advisee, remember that some (a handful) faculty take the "squeaky wheel gets the grease" principle to an extreme. If they feel it's not urgent, or referees / colleagues / students aren't clamoring for it to get done, it just does not get attended to. Your non-responsive advisor might be of that ilk.
From his perspective, you're a co-advised student who is yet to join. He might not have considered your emails to be sufficiently research focused to interest him. He might have assumed that if there are things to discuss, you're likely to do so anyway after you get there. You also have other advisors, so someone else is there to attend to you. Ergo, no reply needed.
Not saying this is the way things should be, but faculty have limited bandwidth and optimize in ways that might surprise students.
Here's a suggestion: Ask for a Teams or Zoom meeting **in the subject line of the email**, with a research-related proposal or question (which you undoubtedly have) in the body of the email. That might get the guy to take more interest.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: Say I work on a project as a Postdoc/PhD student and conduct an experiment or study, and this results in data that leads to another interesting follow-up question, or possibly even indicates a major area for new investigtion. Can my PI then use this unpublished data, without including me (and other coauthors) to try and win grants?
Im sure this must happen alot (also Postdocs doing similar things i.e not including the PI), but is this ethical? Is it policied? Could doing this practise result in the funding being withdrawn?<issue_comment>username_1: What you're asking about is who "owns" the results and data of a study. I don't think this is generally defined between researchers in academia. This is unlike in industry, where all of this is "intellectual property" owned by the company that employed the people who conducted the study. In that sense, the *university* owns the results and data, but that is not generally an ownership that is asserted (with the exception of patentable or marketable material). As a consequence, it is typically left up to the researchers themselves how they want to handle that ownership, but it is rarely done in any formal way.
At least informally, though, every participant to a study can use these results however they see fit for purposes other than publication (where one would typically expect that everyone who participated also becomes an author). Thus, most researchers would agree that for presentations at conferences, grant applications, etc., use of study results and data is fair game. I cannot see anything unethical in using data that way in grant applications, for example, and I certainly wouldn't know why anyone would "police" this or withdraw funding.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Your question seems to assume the premise that being the co-participant in the collection of research data (or more generally in the creation of knowledge in the context of academic research) confers you with certain rights. That is correct. However, I think you fail to identify correctly what those rights are: you do not get a right to *control what is done with the data* by the other people who have it. The right that you have is a right to *be identified as a co-creator of the data*.
In other words, I think the right way to look at this issue is that academic knowledge such as research data is not “owned”; that is, it is not conceptually correct to think of it as a form of property (even intellectual property). Rather, it is knowledge that is *labeled* with the identity of its discoverers/creators. To make clear the distinction between those two things, consider that a researcher cannot create knowledge and then *sell* to someone else (in a confidential transaction, obviously) the rights to be labeled as the creator. The lack of the ability to sell this right is one clear thing that sets it apart from a property right, including intellectual property.
Coming back to your question, following the above logic, I’d argue that what *would* be unethical is if your PI were to intentionally misrepresent who created the data. But if they state in their grant application that the data was collected by their lab members and students (and/or state the individual names of the discoverers, assuming that’s relevant enough to be included - in a grant application it might not be, but in a formal publication it probably would be), then it seems to me that they are respecting your rights and the rights of the other data collectors, so I don’t see a reason why that should be considered unethical or problematic.
A famous case in which the rights of the creator of a very important piece of experimental data to be identified appear not to have been honored is the story of [Photo 51](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photo_51). Whether the photo was actually significant enough to suggest that <NAME> was robbed of a Nobel prize, is a separate and, from what I’ve read on the topic, much more controversial question that I don’t have a firm opinion on. But, Nobel prizes aside, credit for the photo to Franklin and to her student <NAME> (who took the photo while working under her supervision) should in any case have been given in the initial publications announcing the double helix structure of DNA, and from what I understand, it wasn’t.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I've seen this happen enough times to start wondering.
For example, take the name "<NAME>", a Chinese-American Nobel laureate. Ting (丁) is the last name, and "<NAME>" (肇中, which is two characters in Chinese) is the given name. But if he were to enrol as an undergraduate in a Western university, his student card would read something like "<NAME>" instead of <NAME>, leaving his name incomplete. I know one pair of twins who ended up with the same name on their student card this way. Their names are different, but if you throw away the second character, then the names become the same.
Why do Western universities seem to struggle with parsing Chinese names? The Chinese students that I've asked have generally said that the university refuses to use the right name (although the name on their degrees look correct), which doesn't make sense to me.<issue_comment>username_1: For a name that uses two characters in Chinese, I think it is common to treat it as a single word with no spaces in English.
There are lots of ways of writing Chinese names in the Latin alphabet. You could just as well say that <NAME> is wrong because it should be <NAME>.
Not all Western universities write students' names on student cards in the same way.
Perhaps your hypothetical university has a system where all names have to be of the form INITIAL-OF-GIVEN-NAME FAMILY-NAME. This would also mean that Spanish names cannot be written fully.
I don't think it is just universities that have these issues with non-English names. Probably all sorts of organizations do.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Countries differ with respect to what a name is. These differences are both cultural and legal. All organization struggle with people who have names that do not conform to the national standard. That is not just limited to universities. It is also not limited to Chinese in Western countries. Even within the EU there are different standards, and there is friction. Or think of people who come from societies without a last name. In practice, most administrative staff at universities tend to be as accommodating as their software allows...
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I am in need of some research experience, so I want to email some foreign professors whose work I'm genuinely interested in to ask if they can take me as research assistant (online). It is not a problem if it is unpaid because my goal is to get research experience for graduate application. I will do the job seriously because I need to cultivate necessary skills.
Is that a dumb thing to do? or is there any drawback?<issue_comment>username_1: "Volunteer research assistant" is a problematic term. It sounds like something I should be asking HR about before I could agree to anything, and you being overseas would make things even messier. "Research assistant" is a job title, and being one might make you a member of the hosting university. Not asking for money means that no funding is needed, but this doesn't necessarily make the paperwork any easier. Also, some (many?) people feel that it is unethical to volunteer for something others would expect to get paid for.
In my eyes, it is a completely different picture if instead you seek to collaborate with a researcher on a particular project. This wouldn't put you in any kind of hierarchical structure, and being an independent researcher is a perfectly valid hobby.
The second issue is the question what you can actually offer. Most opportunities where inexperienced people can contribute well are in-person tasks (cleaning laboratory equipement seems to be a popular task to give to students seeking research experience). In my area (math/TCS), it would be very difficult for someone lacking experience to make any positive contribution, and accepting to work with a stranger would make little sense to me. Whether you have something to offer will depend both on your current skills, and on what exactly people in your area do in their research.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: It is not a dumb thing to do from your end. You aim to seek knowledge and improve yourself, especially when you are in an environment that lacks such opportunities. This is admirable.
The drawback is that you are unlikely to get a reply or an 'honest' reply, meaning someone that seeks to exploit you may reply.
In general, professors will not reply because they will not spend the time on a student who is not enrolled in their institution. Another reason: such a student may run off with their idea(s). Further, you could be a scammer. Nowadays we receive many unsolicited messages that aim to pilfer private information.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm new to this website and am posting this question to ask for advice. I'm really stressed and don't know what to do.
I went to a conference with a few researchers from our group. After the trip, one of them approached me and asked me to do him a favor. It turned out he had considerably overspent his limit for meals because of a misunderstanding of the rules. To get out of this, he wanted to claim to have paid with his university credit card for group meals and thereby split his meal expenses between his account and the accounts of others including mine. I didn't want to participate in this, but he literally begged me and said others had already agreed. We logged on to the online tool and did what he wanted. Now I've gotten an email from finance asking me to confirm whether I actually participated in those group meals.
I don't know why they are asking. The email is very short. It may be just a routine verification. But I don't know. They may have found something wrong or suspicious. They may have been tipped off. They may be wondering how we could eat together if my university credit card was charged at a different place at the same time.
Am I likely to get fired by the university if I just tell the truth? I want to be honest, and I hate myself for getting involved in this fraud, but I can't afford losing the job in my life circumstances. I am on a relatively long fixed-term contract, just like that guy, and we are both funded from the group's funds and report to the head of the group. Is it safer to say that I don't want to discuss how we ate and prefer paying out of my pocket if there's any issue? It's just a few hundred bucks in total for my meals and my share of help to that guy. What's my best bet?
Please don't be too hard on me. I need advice. I've learned my lesson and will never let anyone manipulate me into participating in fraud.<issue_comment>username_1: No one can guarantee an outcome.
I suggest, however, that one option is to get everyone involved in this together in one place and discuss it. I'd advocate for honesty and maybe a joint statement (confession).
Ideally, the person that instigated it should be the one to come forward and honestly explain it to the bosses. While it is you that has "involved" yourself in fraud by agreeing, they likely used a form of friendly coercion to get you to act as you did.
You can promise joint restitution. It may or may not be sufficient, depending on how understanding or severe the system chooses to be.
People err. Everyone. Most people tend to be forgiving when it is possible. Most, not all. But restitution is required in such a case.
Refusing to discuss it or continuing the fraud seem to me like poor choices that would have more severe outcomes than honesty.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: "It's not the crime, it's the coverup."
You messed up—you shouldn't have lied about attending these meals. However, this is a small mistake, and it is likely that if you tell the truth now, there won't be too many serious repercussions (particularly for you—the person who pressured you into lying may be in a bit more trouble). There is some small possibility that you could be in real trouble, but most institutions try not to throw the book at people who make one mistake.
Do not cause yourself further problems by lying.
Falling to peer pressure and fraudulently signing off on reimbursement forms is a mistake, but it is one that you can likely recover from. Engaging in an extended coverup of a small fraud is, potentially, career ending.
If you do as username_1 suggests, and discuss this with other members of the group before moving forward, I would *strongly* suggest that you go into those meetings with the attitude that you *all* need to come clean, and that you are not going to lie to protect them.
I would then respond to the request for clarification with the truth. You don't have to volunteer information which is not requested (e.g. in response to the question "Did you attend these meals?", a simple "No" is sufficient—you don't need to go into details about why you said you did unless you are asked), but you should answer any questions you are asked *honestly*. Don't compound your error by lying.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am working on my PhD thesis. This study was funded the Foundation for Joint Russian-Finnish Scientific Innovation Projects (TEKES - Funding Agency, Finland). The grant consists of two intermediate stages, at the end of which it was necessary to report on the research carried out and on the published works.
The final report must contain information about the defended PhD thesis. I successfully completed the first two stages. But then the circumstances were not the best for me. And this caused a delay in the submission of the final report. I haven't completed my dissertation yet.
The foundation that sponsored my research requires one of two ways:
1. Submit my report as soon as possible (I can't do this because I haven't completed my thesis).
2. Letter explaining the reasons for the delay and requesting an extension of the submission of the final report.
The letter obviously needs some good reason. Because TEKES cooperates with Russian funding agencies, I can’t say that by the time the third stage was over, well-known events had happened in Ukraine and this had affected my distant relatives and close friends, which unsettled me.
In addition, I worked almost to the point of exhaustion, did not allow myself to rest and fell victim to procrastination and laziness.
Although the study is almost completed and does not require additional funding, but only 2-3 months, I do not know how to get out of the situation that I am in.
This may affect my career, and sanctions may be imposed on the institute and the scientific advisor. **How should I proceed?**<issue_comment>username_1: A funding agency that expects that all research projects are successfully completed on time and within budget is being unrealistic. Research ain't like that.
I don't know how this would be received, but I suggest that you submit a report stating the current state of affairs and the expectation of completion. Make it as complete as a final report. Say what was accomplished and what still needs completion.
But, within the report, offer to submit a supplement later, at some specific date.
I can't predict how it would be received, and it might even mark your project as "failed", but, again, people funding research need to understand that exploring the unknown is impossible with a firm schedule.
I suspect that they get lots of such reports if people are willing to be honest, though not all are.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> I worked almost to the point of exhaustion ... and fell victim to
> procrastination and laziness
>
>
>
How could you work hard and be lazy at the same time? :)
Anyway, the reasons listed in your question won't look good to any funding agency, but there's an elegant solution: "unexpected" "difficulties" in research. Sure, it is not ethical to make up things, but hey, we are talking about just two months and you are not even requesting additional funding.
Come up with an idea about something that you can claim to be an unexpected difficulty. For example, a multidimensional integral turned out to converge much slower than expected, which necessitated developing a highly complex numerical procedure to tackle the problem. Or your statistical calculations had to be adjusted for an additional factor. Or your cat ate the lab mice. Kidding about the last one.
And the funding agency will buy it. After all, they are not experts in your field. Even if they were, they wouldn't check the details of your explanation anyway. They each have a too large pile of paperwork to enjoy, so don't expect your carefully worded explanation to get more than a few minutes of their attention.
Good luck with your deadline extension request and don't be a penguin next time. Couldn't resist typing the penguin part - I'm a learner of Russian and you are Russian. Спит пингвин который день - a всему виною лень :)
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: As nobody here would have any reason to know what that funding agency would require in this case, you should probably call the funding agency to find out how they want you to proceed.
It's probably a good idea to make this a conference call with your advisor on it.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an independent researcher in the field of data science, discrete mathematics and parallel computing. I looked up Elsevier and MDPI. They all ask for affiliations to allow me to peer-review. Is there a place I can peer-review articles without having to be affiliated to a university or research institute?
Edit: I am asking this because I am applying for green card under EB-1 category which has one of its requirement as peer-reviewing or judging someone's work. I have 3 publications in decently popular journals and about 45 citations in total for them. Alongside, I have written a chapter in a book, published abstracts and represented myself in 3 global conferences.<issue_comment>username_1: If you are in the US, you know that you cannot volunteer for jury-duty even though most people hate the idea of having to do jury-duty. It is similar with reviewing. We assume it is better if people get drafted into reviewing.
How do Associate Editors (AE) select reviewers? Usually by looking a people who wrote papers in the field that are knowledgable about the paper. Some journals have editor assistance software that tries to find these people for the associate editors such as MDPI. Usually, an AE reads through the submitted paper and places special attention on the papers cited, as the authors of these papers should be knowledgable, especially if the papers have a good citation count themselves or a published in difficult to get in outlets. If it is a conference, they usually first form a program committee and then papers get reviewed by the committee. Members of the program committee can ask others to review. It's supposed to be highly co-operative. Journals keep tracks of reviewers and ask the AE to grade the reviews. Someone giving poor quality reviews is not likely to be invited again.
If you want to review, you are best of publishing papers in reasonable outlets in your field. It used to be that professors would give their Ph.D. students papers to review (for which they themselves were invited to review) and then discuss the paper with them and the student's review. This is now considered to be a breach of reviewer confidentially if it is done without the knowledge of the AE, but at least it taught students to write good reviews and in the process learn what a good paper is like. This also helped the students to write better papers themselves, of course under guidance and supervision. Being an independent researcher means of course that you are cut of from this type of training.
To get invited to review you first need to have some (good) publications under your belt. If people active in conference organization and journal editing know about you, they might ask you to get involved. It is the quality of your publications that ultimately qualify you as a reviewer. Once you are considered "reviewer material", if you accept the invitation to review, make sure that you submit a good review in a timely manner and communicate with the AE if there are any problems.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: As @username_1 says, conventional peer reviewers are almost always invited by editors / associate editors based on their prior contributions to a field.
However, there is an alternative of sorts: Have your considered taking up post-publication review? There are sites like [PubPeer](https://pubpeer.com) that allow technical comments on articles that have already been published. PubPeer is useful in that it allows experts to flag potential issues or raise concerns that have been overlooked during the peer review process itself.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: The easiest way to get articles to review is to sign up as a reviewer for the journals you're interested in. It's certainly a lot easier to email the journal office than it is to publish tens of articles in the field to establish that you're an expert. Unless (possibly even if) those are top-tier journals, odds are they'll be happy to register you as a reviewer. Doesn't mean you'll get something to review, but your name will in the database, and you will show up whenever they conduct searches for reviewers by research interests (so be sure to keep those updated).
I don't know about MDPI (I've never used Susy, plus MDPI's reviewer selection policy is apparently very strict), but I'm confident that you don't need an affiliation to review for any journal that uses Editorial Manager, which most Elsevier journals use.
Another alternative is to use freestyle, non-journal related platforms like Researchgate to do peer review. It won't be the formal kind that decides if papers are accepted, but it'll still be peer review.
**Edit:** I've used Susy now, and you can indeed be registered without an affiliation. However, it's a non-negotiable MDPI policy that reviewers [must have PhDs, or MDs if you work in medicine](https://www.mdpi.com/reviewers#_bookmark2). If you can prove that you have a PhD (e.g. you have a personal website with your educational history) then MDPI will probably be happy to register you. You can reach the journal office at <EMAIL>; you can also send me your details and I'll register you myself.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Depends on the venue but there are generally 3 ways to become a reviewer:
1. Get invited (either by the editorial board/area chairs/etc. or by another reviewer).
2. Apply.
3. Submit a paper to the venue (some venues automatically invite submission authors as reviewers).
But please don't review for pay-walled journals or for outrageously for-profit businesses such as Elsevier: they suck up research budgets, slow down research, and prevent taxpayers from accessing the research they help fund.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: There are a number of aspects. For conferences etc. it is generally about being known. Publishing more than once (esp. as non-PhD student) works well. For journals register an account (as if you wanted to submit a paper). Be careful though, you need to do more: you want to be found by the AE. Make sure to fill in the the questions about research areas and keywords (and tick yes on your availability to review). Also make sure that you provide your orcid, and that you have filled your orcid account with as much information as possible (editorial manager provides direct links from the reviewer selection to their orcid).
Then don't aim for the top journals, but be realistic (doing the top journals cannot hurt, but be careful). You can also try to identify a the associate editors that fit your field best and send them an email (it is often hard to find responsive, diligent reviewers).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: Every time I peer review for a well-known journal, they ask me to suggest other peer reviewers. If you can convince some people who get a lot of review requests to suggest you, soon you will have many articles to review.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I have come across a couple of math articles published between 2005-2010 that have clear errors in them (the articles have a common author). Most of the errors are typos but a couple of errors, let's say, reinterpret basic theory. No erratum has been issued for the articles. The journals are peer reviewed (which is another story) but they are not from what one would call top-tier journals. However, I note that these articles have been, and continue to be, cited despite the errors - sometimes by articles in journals that are considered top-tier. In one case this has kept perpetuating a typo error in an equation. (It seems those citing the articles just accept what was written - again another story).
I have written to the author but no reply. The journal response was basically that unless the author wants to correct it, nothing much can be done. It was also said that as the articles were now 'old', correcting them was - in their words - *not efficient*.
My question is should I persist in having the errors corrected? Or do I just leave such errors to be repeated? I have considered writing a letter to the editor for publishing to highlight the errors - in the hope it will 'force' a correction the original articles (assuming the letter would be published). Ideas welcome.<issue_comment>username_1: Neither the journal-level impact nor the age of the papers should matter. The articles still form part of the current stock of scientific discourse, especially if they remain to be cited.
You already reported it to the editors and the authors first. They did not bother to publicize the error.
A next step could be to publicize it either in a letter to the editor, as you thought about already, or to do it via 'post-publication review' platforms like [PubPeer](https://pubpeer.com/). You can do it anonymously or with your name attached to your comment.
(Note that [PubPeer comments do sometimes lead to corrections or even retractions](http://retractionwatch.com/?s=pubpeer).)
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Have you considered publishing an erratum / corrigendum yourself? An introduction to the topic with a correction (and possibly some other minor additions) would be welcome in a lower-tier journal, I believe; this especially if the error continues to get cited and propagated.
You can cite several examples of other papers that build on the incorrect result, so that their authors also have the occasion to get notified (I believe many authors have a 'vanity search' active so that they get notified for citations to their own papers).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: Note that not every error in a math paper necessarily invalidates the entire paper. You don't say that what gets referenced in those citations implies that what is false (or unproven) is actually true. The citations could, in principle, be of other, correct, parts of the paper.
Moreover, if the errors are widely known but not considered important or relevant to the purpose of the citation then those errors matter little, except to novices who might be misled.
Another issue in mathematics is that some papers have flawed proofs, but no one doubts the validity of the theorem. I once worked in an area with the reputation that all papers had such errors. Many of those "flawed" papers were by very eminent mathematicians.
And, if the errors are both serious and you have evidence questioning the results themselves, not just the correctness of the proof, then you have an opportunity to write a correcting paper. If you get that published, people will wake up to your concerns, especially if those results are important to what is cited from the flawed paper.
---
Note that in Real Analysis, epsilon-delta proofs that are three or so levels deep are devilishly difficult to get right - even for experienced experts in the field.
And note [The Magical Number Seven ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Magical_Number_Seven,_Plus_or_Minus_Two).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: If a paper in a top journal cites and uses a flawed result in an important way, I'm sure the author of the paper would like to know about it. You could write to these authors and say you believe there is a mistake in the cited work, which led to a mistake in this author's paper. This would both serve the purpose of correcting that particular top-journal article, and raising awareness of the issue.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a mathematics PhD student in the Western world.
I have a (single author) preprint in mathematics that I think will help my postdoc applications a lot. I wrote up the preprint about a month back, and gave it to my advisor for corrections. They did not have time for corrections as they were busy with their other duties. I asked them whether I could post it on arXiv, circulate it amongst people I want to work with, put it up on my website, etc. They asked me not to, as it might contain mistakes, which might be more embarrassing. However, I have job applications due in a couple of weeks, and really want to add this paper to my portfolio.
They have now read it and verified the accuracy of the results, although the paper might still need some re-structuring, etc. Is it now ethical to distribute it amongst my future employers, recommendation letter writers, etc without asking them?
I could of course just ask them, but I feel that they might not want me to do it, as their style is to only circulate extremely polished work, etc. However, for making myself more employable, and also because the paper is really my intellectual property and I should be free to do whatever I want, I do want to circulate it and share my results.
1. I know it is legal for me to circulate my work, as it is my property. But is it ethical? I don't agree with my advisor's assessment that I should suppress my work, and that they can mention it in their letter without me putting out my work.
2. Will it burn bridges with them to circulate it? I am not yet posting it on arXiv, as I feel that will be too incendiary, but I do perhaps want to share it with the schools I am applying to.<issue_comment>username_1: It seems like you know the answer you will be given, it is the general best advice to only circulate finished works. Circulating unpolished work is unwise- unless you are explicitly looking for feedback to help polish it (additional review, requests for comments, etc). A history of sloppy work will open the door to the idea that your work is inconsistent.
Note also, some journals will not publish if an article is placed in other locations. I have heard rumors (horror stories?) of journals refusing to publish articles because it was already put online in some manner and had gained traction as an unpublished article.
Suggestions if you distribute this unfinished version anyway (against my advice and the anticipated advice of your supervisor): watermark all documents as "drafts", make sure you track where it is posted so you can update with a polished version later or takedown as appropriate.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Actually, there is no ethical issue with distributing your own work in progress. Your advisor is giving unnecessarily conservative advice as long as you indicate that things you distribute in a small group are still in progress.
I assume that the people writing for you know you well and your work. I assume that they won't be shocked (shocked) if the work in progress isn't perfect. I see no issue at all in that.
As for distributing it to potential employers, again, work in progress is fine when labeled as such. Alternatively you could indicate that you have such work and are willing to share a draft if they would like with caveats that it isn't done and that it shouldn't be further distributed.
It is always good to have "Work in Progress" in your CV, even when you don't distribute it.
I agree, however, that it is probably a mistake to publish it on arXiv or elsewhere (website...) until it is quite refined, though much work there isn't yet "perfect", and people expect that.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: First of all, I am a second-year PhD student in pure maths in Italy, in case some of this information is relevant.
**My situation:** around a month ago, my PhD advisor posed me a question (related to my previous research, I also had this question in mind) and told me we could **work together** since he had some ideas. Two weeks ago I found a full solution to the problem, quite interesting also and I told my advisor. He told me he also is thinking on some ideas for the problem but I think they won't be needed.
**Question:** Would it be OK to ask him if he can withdraw from the project since I think I can finish it by myself with my ideas? In case it's OK, any advice on how to tackle such a complicated discussion?
**Extra info:** I'm very happy with my advisor. He does not demand authorship for all papers, many papers of his former PhD students have been solo. My solution to the problem does not use any of his current ideas. I have the feeling that he is quite interested in the problem though.<issue_comment>username_1: In an ethical and humane world, yes, you can ask and he will say OK. But I don't know if that is your world. You have to make an analysis of what his reaction might be.
But if you approach it right it will help. "Dr. M, I'm confident that I can finish this on my own and get a sole author publication. It would do me a lot of good. What do you think?"
That is sort of a US approach, however, though normally US doctoral advisors in math don't assume authorship on their students dissertation work. From what you say about him, I'd guess he will go along.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Would it be OK to ask him if he can withdraw from the project since I think I can finish it by myself with my ideas?
>
>
>
Yes, it’s okay to ask.
>
> In case it's OK, any advice on how to tackle such a complicated discussion?
>
>
>
Your assumption that it’s a complicated discussion is part of the problem. It isn’t. Your advisor may be disappointed by your wish, and might even push back on it or outright say no — we cannot predict the outcome. But he is a grown-up and does not need you to tiptoe around his feelings. Your question is both reasonable and straightforward, so just go ahead and bring it up, and you’ll be fine. Good luck!
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> He told me he also is thinking on some ideas for the problem but I think they won't be needed.
>
>
>
You may be jumping the gun here a bit. Yes, perhaps you can finish the paper on your own and have a solo publication. It may also be that your advisor's ideas will result in a better paper or open avenues for further research that you might not notice on your own. It rarely happens that solving a problem is an open and shut case with no further avenues to build on the solution, or to look at it from different perspectives. Preemptively asking him if he can withdraw from the project without hearing out what his ideas on how to approach the problem are therefore seems premature to me.
Certainly *if* he has nothing crucial to add to your solution to the problem, it makes perfect sense to ask him whether you can turn your solution into a solo paper.
On the other hand, asking him to withdraw from the project *so that* a situation where he has something crucial to add to your solution doesn't have a chance to arise (and mess up your would-be solo publication) is a different story.
A solo publication would certainly be valuable, but also don't underestimate the value of a lively on-going collaboration with your advisor which can lead you to places that you might not foresee yourself. Especially if you're not in a hurry to amass as many solo publications as you can.
The way you phrase your question makes it sound like you want to say: let's not collaborate on this topic any further so that I can get a solo paper. I would consider thinking of it instead as: let's continue working on this topic together, and in the meantime I suggest that I write up and submit my solution as a solo paper.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Might be useful to wait for review to see if their contribution is necessary in the opinion of refs/ed. If after review their contributions aren’t necessary then you have a solo paper, else you have helped your advisor hook into the topic.
If you accept their contribution and it makes publication that will be something they won’t forget. If the contribution is thought superfluous in review then you have a solo paper.
I don’t really know the advantages one way or the other, just consider your long term goals and know that you might find yourself on the other side of the symbiosis in the future.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: So you advisor gave you an idea and you want to publish a solo article based on that idea?
Okay, I am not a mathematician and not Italian. Every research field is different, and every country is different. Maybe this is totally fine for mathematics in Italy. Maybe your professor will say, "Yeah, sure, go for it!"
But that would definitely not go in Japan, at least in most research fields. Everyone would be appalled by the fact that this came to your mind. A solo article is when you come up with an idea yourself, do all the work yourself, and write the manuscript yourself. And if you don't want to find yourself in the grey area of ethics, you shouldn't get any help or advice whatsoever in relation to your article. Ideally, you don't even let anyone know until the paper is published - otherwise people may give you advice and you won't be able to unhear it. And it's really not nice if you publish a solo article while being funded from a grant secured by someone else.
(Update: a comment below says that in mathematics, merely asking a question without contributing to its solution does not normally justify authorship, and obtaining funding doesn't either. Lucky you mathematicians. But read on. There's a totally different thing to consider.)
Another aspect is that even if you come up with an idea yourself, do all the work yourself, write the manuscript yourself, are being paid not from anyone's grant, and are thus perfectly positioned from the ethics standpoint to submit a solo article, you might later find yourself truly regretting publishing it. It happened to one of my colleagues. He wasn't experienced enough. He wishes he could unpublish it.
Look, you are a PhD student and don't have a lot of experience. Are you really sure you can write a paper you won't later regret publishing? Are you sure you won't overlook a serious issue?
There are a multitude of ways to screw up. If you make an error or a wrong statement in your paper, someone may publish a comment, and it will be a huge blow. If you write your paper poorly in terms of the language, structure, clarity, etc., this will seriously affect how others see you. If you publish your paper in a subpar journal, others will think it's what you and your work is worth. Your first papers set the expectations of others - it's called the anchoring effect. if you submit your paper to a high-profile journal and the referees say that your work falls very short of meeting the acceptance criteria, the editor may well have prejudice against you next time - that is, when you submit another paper to that journal. Remember, the editor chooses the referees, so you don't want the editor to have prejudice against you. And this might make it almost impossible for you to publish anything in that journal later. Also, if you publish an article and no one cites it, it won't look good to anyone looking at the citation stats of your papers - and that's what many referees do.
If you have your professor as a co-author, he'll ensure your paper won't have any serious issues. It's about his or her reputation. And having your professor as a co-author is likely to have a positive effect on the recognition of the paper by the referees and readers as well as on its citations.
My advice is: think twice whether you really want to proceed with this on your own and publish a solo paper. That's the very first thing to decide on. Make sure to take a well-thought decision. If you do decide to talk with your professor, do your best and utmost to ensure he or she won't feel bad about you. One of the key factors is whether you are a paid a salary or a stipend from a grant secured by your professor. If that's the case, he might feel as if you were trying to steal his money. Remember, you depend on your professor. The relationship is extremely important. Focus on that.
Consider this:
>
> Hey boss, I've noticed some of your PhD students published solo
> papers. Is there any chance I can do the same and you'll be fine with
> it? If so, how?
>
>
>
That's a good start, and his reaction will show whether it's a good idea to talk about that particular paper.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: My advice would be to be generous.
In the long view of life, it doesn't really matter if your paper has 1 or 2 authors, particularly if that author is in a position to contribute to the work, either now, or at the time of manuscript revision, or both. So, by erring on the side of generosity, you have much to gain (including learning new things from your advisor).
On the other hand, if you chose to go solo, that's fine too, but this attitude can quickly become about "I/me/mine" rather than the far more sublime attitude of the service of math/science. There is also the very real possibility that over time people will be reluctant to discuss ideas freely with you, because there is the possibility of an impression that if you cross the "least publishable unit" boundary by yourself, they get cut out.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: My advice would be to ask not *if* you can publish this solo, but *whether you should*.
Assuming a reasonable supervisor open to solo papers from their students, you have two options here:
1. You carry on this project on your own and gain a single-author publication
2. You and your supervisor work together on this problem, developing a potentially richer and more interesting paper in the process
The difference between the two is your supervisor's contribution, and it's up to them to decide how much they are willing to commit. Therefore, you should ask them whether they wish to spend time and effort on the current work (option 2), or not (option 1). This doesn't rule out collaborating in the future on the same topic, of course.
Note that it's really the same question but with a subtle difference in focus - instead of "I'd like you to not contribute so I can have a single-author paper", it's "I'm happy to go ahead and publish this single-author unless you tell me you want to contribute". However, presenting it as two options is less confrontational, makes you look more collaborative, and if your supervisor isn't actually happy to let you publish this solo, by picking option 2 they have implicitly committed to doing active work on it (which honestly may be more useful for you at this stage than a solo paper).
Disclaimer: I'm from a field where solo papers are uncommon and typically reserved for reviews and minor work. My impression, but it's coloured by my field, is that the value of solo papers as proof of independence can be overestimated, especially by very early career researchers - I'd be more impressed by a collaborative paper that does not include your supervisor (for example, together with other PhD students).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: I refer you to lots of good answers here that advise whether or not you should do this, but if you are set on publishing solo, I just have one piece of advice: **write a manuscript first, then have that discussion.** If you put a fully written paper in front of someone, they are more likely to see that they have not contributed to it and might decline authorship on their own (if they are reasonable).
I did a similar thing. I sent my postdoc advisor a manuscript (though it was completely my own idea). She gave me useful feedback on the manuscript, then I asked her if she wanted to be a co-author. She said that she didn't think she had contributed enough, and I ended up publishing it solo, only mentioning her in the acknowledgment. That paper landed me an academic position. Don't underestimate the power of single-author papers (note: I'm not a mathematician, so this may not be as important in your field).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: Reminds me of a paper I wrote in grad school, it was a term paper, and I did all the work upfront. All of the ideas were mine from start to end. I wrote the paper up. I made all of the work and effort. Turned it in, and was advised via a note at the top of the paper, that with a bit of polishing, it could be made publishable. I took the paper to my advisor with the notes and all. He agreed with the other professor's assessment and he helped me add some shine to the paper, but otherwise didn't contribute much to the substance of the ideas I put forward. We submitted it as coauthors.
Why?
Without his contributions to the actual writing to get it to an acceptable state for a journal, the damned thing wouldn't have been published, or at least if I did manage to get it published, it would have been published in a lower-tiered journal. I learned a lot about the publishing business in academia by allowing my advisor to help me and share credit along the way. Lessons that were invaluable later on.
I would suggest being generous on this one and learning from someone that has been in the trenches for some time on how to get the publishing done. You might actually learn something different than you think about the business of a career in academia that you wouldn't learn in any other way.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_10: On all my PhD papers I included my supervisors as authors, not because they contributed but because they stood behind me, guided me and I benefited from fruitful discussions with them.
If you are first author then everyone who reads your paper will know that you are the primary contributor and you will received due recognition. Bear in mind you will awarded your PhD on the basis of the Supervisor acknowledging your contribution - not because you are sole author on a particular paper. Take the time to read some papers by some of our great scientists and you will see that none of them were afraid to recognise the contribution of their supervisors.
Have confidence. Asking to be a sole author will prove nothing and your risk being seen as churlish.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I am planning to do my Bachelors in Germany. The subject I wish to do is Math. Most probably, I will be taking a course in German. I wish to ask, what are some tips to make life easier when studying a subject in a foreign language other than the obvious "be good at the foreign language"?
Edit: People! You need a B2/C1 on CEFR for undergraduate in a German course in Germany. The schools won't take you in unless you have that.<issue_comment>username_1: I am sorry but I disagree with the first half of padovapadova's answer. Knowing the language before you start is an advantage, but it is not impossible to pick up the language in your first term and not fail the courses (the disadvantage is that you will have lower grades, especially if the teachers are not supportive).
As for tips:
* **Unless you speak the language at an advanced level (C1-C2), you will have a disadvantage, so prepare for it**. Do not get frustrated when you cannot fully express your thoughts (*OK, this is impossible, you will be frustrated but try not to remain frustrated with yourself*). Prepare typical responses for (exam) questions. Prepare for misunderstandings.
* **Avoid your own language**, except for contact with family and close friends, and spend time with people who speak your target language. Ask them to speak that language to you (and not English or another shared language).
* **Make yourself home in your target culture**: Read children's books, watch movies you already know from target culture, small news items, etc.
* **Local support people**: try to join a study group of local students, find a buddy/mentor for incoming foreign students, both to practice the language and to lear about university culture and expectations.
* **Talk to your teachers**: discuss your (potential) issues with you teachers, if there is extra help, more time for exams, etc. If there is a programme director, also talk to them.
* **Have fun and a positive attitude**. Performing well in a foreign language and culture is tough but doable. And your chances are better if you are enjoying your university experience.
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(For the record, I got my degrees in four different languages, sometimes I knew the language in advance, sometimes I was dropped in deep waters. It is much harder than learning in one's mother tongue but certainly not impossible. If learning math in German is what you want, I am sure you will be able to do it if you persevere. Good luck!)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I would suggest that you make yourself familiar with the formalities and culture of German universities. The structure is very different when compared to American colleges.
If the bachelor is taught in German (which is the case for most bachelors) you simply have to learn and improve your German. It might be necessary to get an appropriate certificate of either B2 or C1 to get admission at all.
However most masters are at least partially taught in English.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: Some specific tips:
Many Germans (especially the younger ones) are quite proficient in English and are eager to use their English knowledge, so it can sometimes be hard for people coming to Germany trying to learn German (friends that came from abroad told me so themselves), as almost everyone will try to speak with you in English. So try to keep your fellow students from trying to speak English with you (as it probably will happen).
Some people trying to learn the language have good experience with a so called language tandem partner, a native German speaker that wants to improve their knowledge of your language. The way this works is that you regularly meet and when its their turn to help you, you will only converse in German, and they will tell you what you can improve on and point out mistakes. The next time you swap and converse only in your language and you help them. You can find a tandem partner buy putting up a not on the universities' black board (digital or IRL).
Try to find a specialized dictionary catered to academics / mathematicians, as the German you will have learned in a regular course will probably lack specific vocabulary that you will need during your studies. Some universities will also offer German courses for international students (that might be more focused on "academic" vocabulary)
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently attended an online seminar related to building scientific writing and research skills. The TA started by saying he wanted us to introduce ourselves and asked each of us to tell everyone where they were born, currently live and what they do in their free time.
Is it valid for me to having felt uncomfortable with sharing personal information? I fail to see how this information was relevant for completing the seminar. From my point of view, it may introduce bias, if the TA dislikes some of the things he hears from an attendee.
Moreover, not everyone may have a socially acceptable answer to the question what they do in their free time. This leads to an uncomfortable situation where you either lie, not answer at all or say the way things are and face the consequences.
For clarity, one could, as an extreme example, imagine someone suffering from severe depression/crisis and university related work being the only thing they do. Or someone has unconventional interests. Being asked this question puts them in an uncomfortable postion.
I wanted to confront the TA with my concerns and not answer the questions, but I feared that it may have impacted the grading of my performance, so I didn't. I feel it's unethical to, even indirectly, "force" students answer questions that may put them in an uncomfortable position by using your position of power. Am I missing something or is it valid to feel this way? How could I go about dealing with similar situations in the future?<issue_comment>username_1: For a shy person or someone from a minority or someone ... yes, these can be disconcerting at first. Eventually, if you work at it (the shy person especially) you can get over it.
But no, you don't need to tell the truth and certainly not all the truth. Nor do you need to be very specific. What do you do? Well, I read a lot. What do you read? Popular fiction and tech stuff. Where are you from? The Middle East (Africa ...). Where do you live now? Ohio (Finland...).
The general answers reveal little and the asker will move on, though it is good to have at least one follow up.
Now that you know this happens, you can construct some non-committal answers.
There is no reason to take offense, though. I ask everyone where they are from, but because I like connections. Generally, connections are good, even for introverts. But they develop over time, not as a result of simple questions like these.
Also, it is important that you reach a point where you feel comfortable interacting with them. Asking questions, especially.
---
Some questions are off limits, however. Questions about medical issues or about performance in other courses.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> and asked each of us to tell everyone where they were born, currently live and what they do in their free time.
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These are routine questions that you should be(come) comfortable answering. No, it is not unethical to ask students to answer questions like this. Classes do not happen in a vacuum; even in a math class, it is fair to expect students to have basic skills in other areas, including basic social skills.
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> I fail to see how this information was relevant for completing the seminar. From my point of view, it may introduce bias, if the TA dislikes some of the things he hears from an attendee.
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The TA was probably trying to create some rapport with the students. Having a go-to fact about each student might help the TA to remember names. And having the students speak aloud might help wake them up, especially in an early-morning class.
In a larger sense, I would try to worry less about the TA's opinion and bias -- the TA is just a student a few years older than you, what do you care what they think? It seems pretty unlikely to me that the TA would hate your answer so much that it would affect their grading. On the contrary, to the extent that the TA cares at all about your answer, it is probably that they are hoping for enthusiastic, genuine responses.
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> How could I go about dealing with similar situations in the future?
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Have stock responses. For "what do you do in your free time," a good quick answer is "what free time?" But it's a good idea to think of something genuine you are comfortable sharing. For example, if you like dogs, a fair answer is: "I like to play with dogs." It doesn't matter at all if you don't actually spend much of your free time playing with dogs -- the point of the question is not to audit your timecard. Rather, the point is to state something that you enjoy doing, so that others can feel like they know something abut you.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Is it valid to feel uncomfortable with questions unrelated to the grading of your performance?
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Yes, definitely. Note that "Are there legitimate reasons to ask this question?" and "Is it legitimate to feel uncomfortable with being asked this question?" are completely different questions. You are completely entitled to your feelings, even if they include discomfort at legitimate questions.
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> I fail to see how this information was relevant for completing the seminar.
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People tend to find personal interactions aid collaboration. Even if the content of the personal interaction is not relevant, the mere fact of there being personal interaction is therefore relevant.
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> From my point of view, it may introduce bias, if the TA dislikes some of the things he hears from an attendee.
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Yes. And the degree to which personal interactions help varies from person to person, and from moment to moment even for the same person. While an extrovert may find the questions fun, a shy and/or neuroatypical person may find the questions to be a completely unnecessary and sadistic [spoon expense](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory). The question of how to balance this issue with the general usefulness of personal interaction is not a simple one. Creating an environment where people don't feel put on the spot should be a consideration, such as making it opt-in, or giving participants various options. In the case of "where they were born, currently live and what they do in their free time", the TA could have phrased it as "Tell me about yourself, such as where you were born, currently live, or do in your free time". That phrasing would make it seem more like suggestions of what to talk about, rather than a checklist that they have to get through.
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> I wanted to confront the TA with my concerns and not answer the questions, but I feared that it may have impacted the grading of my performance, so I didn't.
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There should be a means of providing anonymous feedback; if there isn't, that's even more of a concern than the personal questions themselves. It's perfectly valid to share your concerns and ask the TA to take them into consideration.
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> I feel it's unethical to, even indirectly, "force" students answer questions that may put them in an uncomfortable position by using your position of power.
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It's not exactly forcing them, it's just making them uncomfortable if they don't want to, and the catch-22 about consent is that it's difficult to ask for consent without making someone who doesn't want to give it uncomfortable.
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> How could I go about dealing with similar situations in the future?
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Look for when you might be dealing with an [X Y problem](https://xyproblem.info/). When someone asks you for Y and you're uncomfortable giving Y, consider whether there's some X that is really what they want. Your TA says "I want you to tell me what you do in your spare time" and you hear "I need to say what I do in my spare time". But the TA's ultimate goal isn't to collect dossiers on what the students do in their space time (probably), it's to have personal interactions. Asking what people do is a means, not an end. What they're really saying when they say "I want you to tell me what you do in your spare time" is "I want to have a personal interaction with you". So have a personal interaction with them. Tell them what your favorite subject is. Tell them your pronouns. Tell them about your pets. If you spend several minutes talking about yourself, is the TA going to pipe up at the end and say "Hey, you never told me what you do in your spare time"? Possibly. But quite likely not. If they do, they're showing they're prioritizing sticking to a formula over teaching the actual people they have as students.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: These kinds of ice-breaker exercises are common in academic activities and also in the professional workforce. They typically involve sharing basic details about your background and interests so that others can get to know you. (In this respect, they are not atypical of the types of questions people face in ordinary social situations.) It is a good idea to become comfortable with these exercises as a basic form of sociability. If you have hobbies, interests or life-circumstances that you don't feel comfortable sharing, learn to give some stock answers that get you through these questions without disclosing details you're uncomfortable with.
I would recommend that you take a more open-minded view of this activity and consider that it is probably designed to help people get to know each other, in order to facilitate greater collegiality or enjoyment during the seminar session. The *vast* majority of people take the answers to these questions in good spirit, so unless your hobby is cutting the ears off puppies, you are probably going to be fine. It is fine to feel uncomfortable in these situations (some introverted people do). However, while it is not impossible that disagreements over background, personal activities, etc., could lead to bias, focusing on this highly unlikely outcome at the expense of the more general positive effect strikes me as a kind of paranoia.
(It is also worth pointing out that your position here has all the hallmarks of the deleterious effects of "call-out culture". You seem to be taking a relatively innocuous social situation, confecting a very marginal possible negative outcome based on presumed discriminatory intent, elevating that hypothetical negative to be the sole focus of attention, and then expressing a desire to "confront" the "unethical" action of the identified malfeasor. In such a circumstance, I would suggest some introspection on that aspect of the matter and some reconsideration of whether that is a good long-term strategy for dealing with people.)
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_5: Usually people don't insist on getting every question answered. If you feel uncomfortable answering your origins, just skip the topic and tell more about your hobbies or your pet. If you don't want to share your hobbies, watching TV or listening to music is always an option.
People want to get to know with whom they are working. They are not interested in your personal secrets or inner struggles. Don't get intimidated by such questions, they are not posed in bad faith.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: It's an invitation to participate in an elementary social interaction. You can either accept that invitation or effectively refuse it by providing a minimalistic response along the lines of "I like reading books and watching movies" or "I like the outdoors" or "I don't really have much free time these days". Realistically, no-one is going to pry for more detail.
Yes, some people find it difficult to imagine that others might not enjoy such interactions. Conversely, some people might find it difficult to imagine that others do benefit from or expect such interaction.
I suggest that what's going on here is that you are (i) misunderstanding a request for engaging an elementary social interaction as an attempt to pry into your privacy, and (ii) vastly overestimating "the consequences" of "saying the way things are". In other words, you are overthinking it. Just provide a polite non-answer and move on.
As an aside which might not apply to your situation, people are sometimes uncomfortable with such questions not because they fear "the consequences" of "saying the way things are" (really, what do you imagine these consequences to be in an online seminar on research skills?), but because they are in some way or another ashamed of "the way things are". For example, they feel that they should have an interesting hobby and that it reflects badly on them if they don't, or that they should lead an active social life and that it reflects badly on them if they don't. I would venture to guess that this is far more common than an actual fear of "consequences". In that case, the best thing to do would be to confront such feelings of shame rather than trying to blame the situation which instigated them.
Anything *may* make someone uncomfortable. Someone could be self-conscious about their voice and might prefer to stay silent. Someone might not want to share their name. Someone might detest being asked where they are from. Someone might despise being asked anything at all about their childhood. There is no obligation on people to avoid doing things that *may* make someone uncomfortable. If you have an unusual thing that makes you uncomfortable (such as stating what you do in free time), it's on you to be able to handle such elementary interactions, not on someone else to foresee this. Just because someone might have, say, social phobia does not mean it's some sort of illegitimate power play to expect them to engage in elementary social interaction.
**All that said,** I do sometimes find it obnoxious when people do this and I find it's better practice to ask a more open-ended question and explicitly indicate that there is no obligation to answer. That is, *tell us something about yourself if you like* rather than *where were you born, where do you live, and what do you do in your free time*.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: First of all, you don't need to ask anyone permission for what you feel. If these questions make you uncomfortable, they make you uncomfortable, and that's valid because it's *true*.
A few people have given you suggestions as to how to handle this situation: it's a social opening, not an interrogation, so you're allowed to deflect, skip, (gently) lie and otherwise disengage. Learning how to use these techniques will be helpful in general. "Grow a thicker skin" is obviously neither helpful or constructive, but such a strong reaction as you're having can be a symptom of deeper issues, and if you think this is the case, I encourage you to seek some support.
But also, your discomfort is not that unusual. I have done a little bit of training in "audience management" as part of a job in healthcare - a field with perhaps more attention to sensitivity and empathy than academia. Like your TAs, we were encouraged to use "icebreakers", but we were advised to ask "small" questions: not "what are your passions" or "where are you from" (this in particular was highlighted as a rather uncomfortable question for many people), but stuff like "what is your favourite biscuit" or "share a cool fact that you've learnt recently". The aim is to give people a "hook" to introduce themselves, but at low stakes - nobody cares if you say ginger biscuit when in reality you like custard creams better, and you'll probably find it easier to share these tidbits than a significant aspect of your personality, like your hobbies or your origin.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: It's just meaningless small talk so you are allowed to interpret things as broadly as possible and ignore some questions as long as you give some answer, any answer to most of them. For example: What do you do in your spare time could be answered with something you like, even if you don't have time to do it, even if it's not an activity. For example, "I like cats/dogs/cars/animals/food". You could even just ignore some questions and just say something else about yourself instead. No one is going to call you on it because no one actually cares. It's not an interview.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: I am answering this on the basis of what it would be like in Canada. It may be very different in other cultures.
I fairly strongly disagree with many of the answers, and very strongly with many of the comments.
The situation here is supposed to be professional. It is supposed to be an instructional session in a professional activity. It is **not** a social occasion.
It is offensive to suggest that “you are going to face a long hard road in all avenues of your life” because you don’t want to spill out your life story at a seminar. This is essentially social blackmail, i.e.: Do what we are all doing or you are a pariah.
Turn it around. If you can’t handle being told that invasive questions are invasive, then your road is going to lead to some mighty dark places.
The personal questions that would be acceptable would be things like name, academic level, school or institution, and such. If the TA had asked something like “what do you hope to get from this seminar?”, that would be very different.
But “where were you born?” is not acceptable. I have worked with people for twenty years, gone to their weddings, and I don't know where they were born. And "what do you do in your free time?” is just plain invasive.
I agree with the OP that these questions were out of bounds.
Upvotes: -1 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_10: I think most of these answers are failing to make an important distinction.
The question "What do you do in your free time" (or variations of "Tell me about yourself" or "What's a fun fact about you") etc. can be answered with graceful evasion. Nobody really cares, it's just a chance to make a connection with people with similar interests. If OP is concerned, it would be wise to have a harmless stock answer prepared. (Though there's always the risk of exposure as a result of enthusiastic follow-up questions, however well-intentioned.)
On the other hand, the question "where are you from" or "where were you born" can be *colossally* loaded--so much so that it isn't even legal to ask it in US job interviews. Members of groups who are frequently discriminated against get asked variations of this *all the time*--and even if the TA doesn't mean it this way, that can potentially remind them of every time they said "Cleveland" and then had the follow-up "No, but where are you *really* from?" Apart from that--I'm writing this in October 2022; can the other answerers *really* tell me that saying "I was born in Russia" is guaranteed not to lead the TA and fellow classmates to draw prejudicial conclusions? I think not.
Whatever the TA's intent, asking questions that can potentially cause disproportionate discomfort to members of minority groups is neither appropriate nor an effective means of building camaraderie.
---
As I said above, I think the "say your hobbies" question is more neutral and manageable, and thus more permissible. But I think other answers have underestimated the risks posed to those who give unconventional responses. I can point to two actual situations where people were asked these questions in job interviews and were passed over, in part as a result of the response.
In one case, the interviewee answered a "what are your hobbies" question by saying they were interested in locomotive engineering. The interviewer asked a follow-on question: "Oh, what interests you about that?" The interviewee didn't know what to say and responded "It's just a personal interest." Interviewer pressed further but interviewee couldn't come up with anything else and just repeated "Oh it's a personal interest"--shy, neuroatypical, polite fiction, who knows why? But the interviewer talked about how they "obviously wouldn't be able to work with that weirdo" and shared it as a "funny story" for a long time afterward.
In another instance, the interviewer noted that the interviewee had a two-hour-long commute, and asked what he did to pass the time. He said he liked to "just sit and think about things," which the interviewers thought made the candidate seem sufficiently unrelatable that it was a factor in making them choose someone else.
Obviously that's an interview situation and not a seminar icebreaker, but I think other answers to the question have been a bit too dismissive, even of OP's concern over admitting to an unusual hobby. It's probably a better practice to favor more open-ended questions (or ones more specifically focused on trivia) and to give participants advance notice that they'll be asked to share something, in case they need to make something up.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_11: I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the TA should not have asked these questions. It's too personal, not to mention risky, if answered. username_10's answer explains why the first two are not harmless. This one explains why the third question is also a dangerous one to ask.
**People do things in their free time that not everyone else approve of**. This does not mean "illegal". There are plenty of legal things that others can find uncomfortable. Examples:
* Maybe the student is politically active for a cause they passionately believe in, but the majority are against it. For example, maybe they think everyone should stop eating meat because it's animal cruelty.
* Maybe the student believes in some evangelical religion and spends their free time spreading it.
* Maybe the student writes erotica for leisure, perhaps publish the work under some pen name. Maybe the student even [works as an escort/stripper](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/8194/sex-worker-student-offering-her-lawful-services). Imagine the consequences if the student actually says this, with the implicit offer of their services to the class. One could easily get complaints to the university.
Some answers above suggest the student might be able to give some stock response instead. The problem with this is that it's lying. Even if one is willing to bend personal moral codes to avoid a scene in class, [all religions are likely to prohibit lying](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou_shalt_not_bear_false_witness_against_thy_neighbour). Once religion gets involved then all bets are off.
The TA should not have asked these questions. Given that they already did, then perhaps the best the student can do is to say they won't answer in public but can tell the TA in private after class if they really want to know. This should warn the TA that they are treading on thin ice. If the TA is perceptive, they might swap to less controversial questions as a result.
I once witnessed a similar conversation where someone asked what they must have thought was a perfectly innocent question. The second person said "are you sure you want to know?". The first person said yes, then after getting the answer, they realize that they didn't actually want to know. C'est la vie. You live and learn.
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I got minor revisions and sent the updates by 20 September but didn't get any response yet. I asked the editor by 10 October for the status and he replied that “the paper is with the editor for the evaluation”. The status changed twice, on 24 September with the editor and 7 October with the editor too.
As I need the acceptance by 1 November, should I send another email to the editor asking him for a fast decision or will it not be allowed?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, you can ask, but it may be in vain. They may try to accommodate your wishes but it might not be possible. Of course, a rejection is easy to do, but an acceptance needs time and feedback from possibly several people. But yes, you can let them know of your deadline and why it is important.
But, make sure you have options for the paper if they can't hit the deadline. These are probably few and won't happen in a short time in any case.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: You can ask but basically everyone would like a fast turnaround so the odds are it will serve no purpose. The only way to guarantee your paper is refereed in time to be accepted by a given date is to submit *well before* this date.
“Well before” can mean several months depending on the journal. (Some journals actually publish average times between initial submission and acceptance, so you can gauge what “well before” actually means.)
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<issue_start>username_0: In the case that one academic institution publishes a journal but also they organize a conference each year in the same area. Would it be possible to publish the articles accepted at that conference in a special edition of this journal; instead of having separate conference proceedings? This journal is published quarterly. Is there any problem doing that or is somewhat atypical?<issue_comment>username_1: You need permission of all authors. You need permission of any copyright holders.
Usually it is the conference that arranges such things in advance and the conference submitters are fully aware of what will happen with their work. Doing it after the fact is much more problematic in terms of getting all necessary permissions.
If the authors have retained copyright then it is a logistical problem.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This set-up is quite common in Computer Science. The Association for Computing Machinery (one of the two dominant scholarly associations, the other one being IEEE) publishes a number of *Reviews*. The conference proceedings of a few stellar conferences are published as special editions of this otherwise "lightly reviewed" publication.
Second, many conferences make a deal with a journal for a special edition. The authors of the best papers at the conference are invited to submit an extended version of their paper to this special edition. An extended version is very briefly defined as having 30% additional material. A conference will often advertise this because it allows authors to claim a second publication in a more permanent form, important e.g. because some combined EE / CS departments insists that only journal articles count fully for promotion. The 30% rule also helps with the publisher of the conference proceedings who in general apply rights to the articles published. If your institute usually publishes the conference proceedings themselves (as opposed to e.g. IEEE Digital Library), there are no problems, provided the authors know about it beforehand.
As username_1 pointed out, you need to make sure that authors at submission know about your plans. In short, at least in my field, a special edition of a journal is reasonably common.
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<issue_start>username_0: Upon publication, many of my peers share their articles on Facebook, Twitter or their personal blog. I do not have an account for such tools (because I simply do not need them for other purposes). One of my peers approached me telling me that I "waste a lot of potential" to distribute my articles. Would you agree on that? Is it necessary to "promote" articles post-publication?
Background: my field is medicine, I publish 80% of my work in open-access journals.
Balancing clinical work and research is tough, I fear that I have to spend a lot of additional time on such networks.<issue_comment>username_1: It depends on your goals.
If you are in the early stages of your career, then marketing your publications has real potential to improve your visibility with your colleagues and with that your career opportunities.
If your research has applications in the "real world", and you want your research to benefit people outside academia, then you need to reach policy makers, the general public, and/or businesses. In that case publishing even in open-access journals is nowhere near enough.
However, marketing your publications is less of a priority if you are happy with your current position and your research is mainly relevant to your discipline and others in your discipline take care of informing people outside academia.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: Research and the subsequent writing of papers uses up a lot of time and resources.
If by promoting your research after publication you increase visibility, readership and impact of your paper, it means a more effective use of those resources.
But choosing the right channels is key: professional and academic sites like LinkedIn or ResearchGate are probably a better place to promote your research to peers than Facebook, where your paper announcement might get lost between cousin Joe's wedding announcement and an ad.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I had this question recently myself and ended up creating (separate) professional account for the simple reason that in the - non-representative - sample of peers I observed, those who had these accounts were more successful (in getting promoted, grants, etc.). I do **not** think this is because of their use of social media, I attribute it to their **networking skills**, which are obviously very important.
I spend about 5-10 minutes per week on this, so it is not too much time, and I have ran into several calls for papers, seminar flyers and other relevant information I may not have found in time otherwise.
I do recommend keeping your personal and professional life/accounts separate, though, if you have both (accounts, I mean).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: It depends on your goals, but some sort of networking is pretty much needed, yes.
Most of the things published in journals are not some kind of scriptures to be etched in stone and left there for eternity. No, the entire point of publishing your results is **communication**. How "successful" you are by whatever metrics is not nearly as important as the fact you are not really advancing science if [no one reads your research](https://www.straitstimes.com/opinion/prof-no-one-is-reading-you). Blogs [can be questionable, too](https://clauswilke.com/blog/2013/11/03/no-one-reads-your-paper-either/), but it still widens the outreach. Rubbing shoulders at conferences, giving interviews, just chatting with people helps your research to gain visibility and, ultimately, provide you with much-needed resources to continue and improve.
Doing full-scale public education about your work is even better, but can be incredibly taxing. And some people absolutely overdo self-promotion - as in, it starts being detestable from a fellow researcher perspective, but bureaucrats love it nevertheless. So all in all, it is not an easy task to balance it well, but you should try to find what works for you.
I would not necessarily say you are crippling yourself by not wearing a SMM hat in addition to all the other ones you have, but if your peers constantly find themselves ignorant about your research because you are absent from all the platforms they are getting their feed from, it is time to change it.
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<issue_start>username_0: I have separated my question into sub-questions as suggested in the comment by user “padovapadova“ ( [see my original post](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/189566/first-year-phd-student-advices-recommendation-publication-and-conference))
>
> I started my PhD 3 weeks ago. I already read a lot of information,
> research papers, publication and so on regarding my topic, but I still
> don’t have a complete final idea about my topic. Before applying I was
> quite sure about my PhD topic idea, but after discussion with other
> members of research group, my supervisor and attending meetings… I
> think I have to work on my first idea. You probably had such
> experiences and can share your advices, tips, hints which were helpful
> for your first year in PhD
>
>
>
How do you organize your work on your project? Do you save your files on cloud (Dropbox, Mega, OneDrive, iCloud, Google drive…) or just on your PC?<issue_comment>username_1: I'm going to suggest what you want is some minimal kind of thing that takes as little time as possible. Don't become a sys-admin to support your studying. The place you should be trying to cram in as much information is your brain rather than some computer disk someplace.
Get something that works without too much trouble. Make sure you can store binary files so that you can zip stuff (or whatever your favorite file compression software) and shove it in the archive. And make sure you can take it with you after your degree.
Depending on how much data you produce, you could probably just carry around a thumb drive or some such. $20 of thumb drive on an attractive lanyard of some kind, and you can probably hold more text than you can type in your life.
Organizing the files then depends on how many and how big and how often they change. What works for me is, at the end of the day, to grab all my files from my working directory and copy them into a named-for-the-date directory on an archive drive. If I am working intently I may shorten that to every 4 hours or even every 1 hour. Storage is cheaper than my time in most circumstances. A simple named-for-and-saved-every-day file system is usually quite convenient if I need to back up or restore.
I tend to work on the hard drive on my desktop. Then I archive daily to the LAN drive on our office system. It's backed up automatically. Then periodically I will copy the whole thing to something like a thumb drive or a second LAN drive or some such, depending on the project.
Your experience may vary. If you are producing 100 GB files every hour or two then storage may be a challenge.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Here is my foolproof aspiration for organizing my academic data. Take what you will and find what works for you!
Step -1: No Software
--------------------
A few years ago my university shifted from physical lab books to a fancy digital note-taking software. I thought it was going to save my life! I have always been, and still am, incredibly disorganized. I thought having all my note-taking happen in a simple browser window would turn my research life around.
*It did not.*
Now, *if* you find a piece of software that works for you, by all means, use it and never let go! But if you have trouble adopting one, you may be suffering from *digital [cognitive friction](https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/cognitive-friction)*. After all, in theory, you just need a stack of notebooks to stay organized. In theory that's all it should take me. And yet I am not even physically notebook-organized, which means that any successful organizational system must be even simpler than opening up a notebook and writing.
No logins. No menus. No side-by-side panes. We need to go all the way back to basics.
Step 0: Open a new folder
-------------------------
And pat yourself on the back. Organizing a project from the beginning is *much* better than trying to organize a sprawling disorganized year-old festering mess.
Step 1: Simple folders, simple files, simple filenames
------------------------------------------------------
**Simple folders** mean things are stored by kind. Here's a sample directory structure:
```
flux-capacitor_1985
|
|--papers
| |--Einstein_relativity_1915.pdf
| |--Brown_gigawatt-energy-requirements_1955.pdf
|
|--notes
| |--DeLoreans-are-cool_1980.md
| |--possible-teenage-collaborators.md
|
|--invoices
| |--Libyan-Glowies_1984-06-21.docx
[...]
```
If you can organize things more deeply into subfolders, good for you -- if you find yourself agonizing between "physics" and "mathematics" for Poincare's papers then *don't bother*. It is better to have a folder full of thousands of well-named simple files than to have an folder empty of files you couldn't organize because you couldn't pin down a sub-organization system to your liking. Remember that if they are well-named simple files then *your computer can search through their contents for you*. (This is an adaptation of the [YODA principles](https://f1000research.com/posters/7-1965) for data organization.)
**Simple files** are, as far as possible, plain text. Store written documents as Markdown plain text files, which are both very readable in Notepad and very pretty when formatted. Store tables as column-separated plain text files for easy [AWK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AWK)-ing. Store plots as plain images (and generate them from scripts which have the filenames coded in, so you can search your `scripts` directory for a plot's filename and have the relevant plot's name come up). Of course, you will have PDFs of journal articles, PPTXs of presentation slides, and binary output from instruments or programs you can't control -- but that should be just about it.
**Simple filenames** make it easy for either you or your computer to decide what's in a file based on its name. Here is an excellent presentation on [how to name files](https://speakerdeck.com/jennybc/how-to-name-files) -- read and apply it.
Step 2: Frequently backup
-------------------------
There are all the usual cloud solutions like Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive ... But if you have an external storage server, you can use [SyncThing](https://syncthing.net/), and if you want to backup to a thumbdrive you can use [FreeFileSync](https://freefilesync.org/).
Notice that since you have organized your files using folder structures and filenames, the organization *automatically travels with any backup*.
Step 3: Version control
-----------------------
*Are you not organized?* Then here's the next level: turn your project folder into a [version-controlled repository](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repository_(version_control)). Version control means you'll be able to track and revert changes across *everything* you do. No accidental deletions, no uncertainty about when a script suddenly stopped giving the "correct" results, and no more worrying that you won't be able to backtrack your steps.
If you can learn [Git](https://xkcd.com/1597/), you can even host your repository on GitHub! And guess what -- it automatically formats your Markdown files for you!
One Step At A Time
------------------
Notice how each step is worthwhile in itself. This way, no matter where you stop, even if you don't get all the way to creating a fancy-as [research compendium](https://the-turing-way.netlify.app/reproducible-research/compendia.html), you can pat yourself on the back for being more organized ~~than me~~ than you would otherwise have been!
Also notice how the steps synergize with each other. Simple folders and files mean you can automatically apply version control, and mean that a GitHub repo will be as perfectly navigable as your desktop folder. They also make it easy to back up your work.
Also notice that this is a bare framework on which you can add things. You can absolutely run Mendeley or Zotero off your `papers` subfolder (and thus make sure, by the way, that it can't corrupt anything else). You can experiment with Jupyter Notebooks or the [DataLad](https://www.datalad.org/) system or anything else you please -- again, having a simple folder of simple, well-named subfolders and files can only help. You can almost certainly do better! But these suggestions, I think, are a good *starting point*.
All the best!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I routinely work with dozens and hundreds of gigabytes of data and have to perform quite a bit of housekeeping after each experiment session to ensure we have enough backups. If you can offload at least a bit of that to the infrastructure at your lab/university or not handling it in the first place, great!
Overall, my organizational rules would be:
1. A lab should have a centralized data storage and a backup system. Students come and go, you sometimes need to revisit old data and results. I have found that by-year->by-project folder structure works better than the other way around; it feels easier to navigate (YMMV!).
2. Raw data should be stored separately from the rest of the artifacts you produce and no one should ever write over it, including in the same folders.
3. Split work into stages and keep a document describing what goes where alongside the processed data - you do not want to revisit it three months after and spend a week figuring out if you should take files from "preprocessing" or "stage 2a" folder - it may make perfect sense in the process, but you will forget this structure in a heartbeat. Write it down.
4. You may (and should) have a working copy of your data locally, unless there is a binding agreement like NDA prohibiting it. Better safe than sorry. That said, this is more of a backup solution in case EVERYTHING goes wrong with the existing lab storage, do not spend a ton of time and effort trying to keep it as neat as the "main" storage.
5. Notes you are taking will be mostly temporary, I find it impossible to keep them loaded into my brain at all times. Go through them periodically: weekly is a good periodicity for meetings and for writing down what seems the most important at the time. If you do not produce an article in a few months, write down your findings in a similar, more detailed fashion to keep things orderly. Keeping one "master document" describing what you know about the current project up-to-date can help.
6. As others have already pointed out, text files are the most valuable. Thankfully, they are extremely lightweight and between code, .md (which is fantastic indeed!), and text documents you should be using cloud and, possibly, version control for storage.
7. Keeping your knowledge base healthy is what I struggle with the most personally. Reference managers help a bit, but it seems the bulk of it gets to stay inside your head for you to be able to navigate your field.
Upvotes: 1
|
2022/10/17
| 1,080
| 4,680
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a postdoc at a research-only institution in Europe now. I am applying for US postdocs in research university in mathematics. Even though not all job advertisements mention this, but it is customary to include a recommendation letter in the application dossier.
When I was a graduate student, I taught several courses, but most of them were as TA, and the only course I taught as the main instructor was during the lockdown, where no faculty oversaw me. The instructor of record on paper for the latter offered to write me a letter that basically just says that I indeed taught in my graduate school, but nothing more.
My current boss suggested that our institution could issue an official letter explaining the lack of teaching duties or opportunities.
What should I do in answering job calls that formally includes the teaching letter requirement and that don't?<issue_comment>username_1: The letter about teaching may be "customary" but probably not "mandatory" at most US research universities. But, in a situation like yours, you use what you have. Make sure that your research recommendations are very strong and that your application supports you strongly in research.
I doubt that you need a letter saying you've had few opportunities. You can say that yourself, and then have the third (usually) letter give additional support to your research.
But if your research has aspects that might be useful to undergraduates then it would be good if someone says that.
For a TT position in the US, you will have six years to develop in all aspects that the university values. You probably aren't being hired as an undergrad instructor at an R1.
But, make the best case you can. Put your prior teaching experience in the CV even if no one attests to it. You can explain things in any interview.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> My current boss suggested that our institution could issue an official letter explaining the lack of teaching duties or opportunities.
>
>
>
This seems like a bad idea to me; these letters aren't a place to make an excuse that you don't have an opportunity to teach, they're a place to highlight your qualification for teaching.
>
> the only course I taught as the main instructor was during the lockdown, where no faculty oversaw me. The instructor of record on paper for the latter offered to write me a letter that basically just says that I indeed taught in my graduate school, but nothing more
>
>
>
*Someone* is responsible for the course you taught: that's oversight, even if they weren't literally in the room observing you. In some cases that might be the leadership of a department that assigns courses to particular instructors and would manage any complaints if they arose; however, for you it sounds like the most relevant person is this "instructor of record on paper" who is clearly the person overseeing your teaching (again, whether or not they actually stood in a room or whether there was a room at all).
However, they should also know that within the US if you write "I can confirm that Pteromys taught a course" and nothing else, [this could easily be taken as a *negative* letter](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damning_with_faint_praise) (a colleague of mine likes to use the joking phrasing: "of all the students I've met, this applicant was one of them") unless the person reading the letter recognizes this as a style from a different cultural context.
Recommendation letters do not necessarily need to be based entirely on first-hand experience. If I was the instructor of record for a course you taught in, I would ask you to give me your resume that includes all your teaching experiences, and I would write a prose letter about these experiences, mentioning the specific subjects of the courses and scope of your duties and punctuating it with how I personally knew you and vouched for your work. Critical to this letter would be your *independence*, which you phrase here as "no faculty oversaw me" when an appropriate positive spin would be that *no faculty needed to oversee you*, or rather that you taught the course independently and did not need require day-to-day supervision. It would be further worth mentioning the circumstances under which you taught and any special preparations you needed for that teaching: for example, if you had materials designed for in-person instruction and you successfully adapted these for online instruction, congratulations: you've successfully passed a pandemic test that many more experienced instructors struggled with mightily, and I'd sure hope a recommendation letter would highlight that.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
|
2022/10/17
| 781
| 3,245
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<issue_start>username_0: I was asked by a former student if I would supervise their honors thesis. The research paper that they want to develop pertains to a paper they submitted for a class last year on a topic I specialize in. I want to say "yes," however, I am an adjunct in a different department. Usually the supervision of the honors thesis paper takes place by a full-time, salaried faculty member who is not paid additionally. As a part-time adjunct in the U.S., I am paid by the course. I would really like to supervise the student, but I do not want to do this for free as it also requires meeting with the student throughout the year regarding edits and revisions. (In addition, at my current university, I am not expected to meet any service requirements as a part-time employee; neither would this help me to get a full-time job with them as their resources are quite drained.) When I have held positions as the supervisor of independent study courses or theses at other universities, I have received at least a small stipend for performing such service. My questions are:
1. If you've served as the supervisor for undergraduate theses before, what is the range of stipend you've received, if any?
2. If you've been an adjunct or part-time faculty, have you encountered any similar issues with advising?
**Update:** Good news! I sent an email to my chair and my department is going to offer a nominal stipend for me to supervise the student's thesis. It doesn't hurt to ask!<issue_comment>username_1: I suggest you approach both chairs (your department and the student's) to say that you would like to do this and ask for some compensation, even if it's only nominal.
When I was chair I always pushed for fairer compensation for part timers, who often did more than just meet their classes. Sometimes I was successful.
Good for you for wanting to do this in spite of the unfortunate working conditions.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Ideally, since you are paid by the course, this is worth a course stipend, which I suspect is very low. I don't know if it makes any sense to ask for that, but that is what its value is to the college.
Hopefully the college pays its faculty a living wage already, so advising is just part of that contract, but adjuncts don't get the same consideration.
I know one or two adjuncts who might do it for less, or even for free, but they are long term adjunct faculty with very good salaries at research institutions and they might just do it as a sort of hobby, but those people also are otherwise connected to the regular faculty and so have some intangible benefits (collaboration and such) that makes it worth their time.
But, talk to the chair and explore options. The college has a responsibility to cover fair compensation for its faculty. It also has a special interest in treating its advanced students well. Maybe the chair has some options other than stipend that would be valuable to you.
---
Note that for regular faculty, while there may not be an additional stipend for advising such projects, the chair has options such as a future course reduction or paying for a distant conference. These aren't normally open to adjuncts, but something might be available.
Upvotes: 3
|
2022/10/17
| 538
| 2,301
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<issue_start>username_0: I am currently applying for multiple graduate art programs in the UK, and I asked a former professor of mine to write me a recommendation letter. However, because I am applying for quite a lot of schools (specifically eight but all similar programs), will it be annoying for my referee to submit the letter for me over and over again (since they all have their individual website)? Or is it appropriate for me to ask my professor to send me the letter directly, and I submit it through my own application portal instead?<issue_comment>username_1: I suggest you approach both chairs (your department and the student's) to say that you would like to do this and ask for some compensation, even if it's only nominal.
When I was chair I always pushed for fairer compensation for part timers, who often did more than just meet their classes. Sometimes I was successful.
Good for you for wanting to do this in spite of the unfortunate working conditions.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Ideally, since you are paid by the course, this is worth a course stipend, which I suspect is very low. I don't know if it makes any sense to ask for that, but that is what its value is to the college.
Hopefully the college pays its faculty a living wage already, so advising is just part of that contract, but adjuncts don't get the same consideration.
I know one or two adjuncts who might do it for less, or even for free, but they are long term adjunct faculty with very good salaries at research institutions and they might just do it as a sort of hobby, but those people also are otherwise connected to the regular faculty and so have some intangible benefits (collaboration and such) that makes it worth their time.
But, talk to the chair and explore options. The college has a responsibility to cover fair compensation for its faculty. It also has a special interest in treating its advanced students well. Maybe the chair has some options other than stipend that would be valuable to you.
---
Note that for regular faculty, while there may not be an additional stipend for advising such projects, the chair has options such as a future course reduction or paying for a distant conference. These aren't normally open to adjuncts, but something might be available.
Upvotes: 3
|
2022/10/17
| 3,263
| 13,934
|
<issue_start>username_0: During the reading of a paper, published in the proceeding of a prestigious computer science conference, I noticed a logical error in the results presented in the paper.
I contacted two of the authors who are my colleagues (one is a PhD student in the same lab where I am a student) to ask for clarification. After hearing what they had to say, I was under the impression that they mainly tried to convince me that the results were OK. One argument they used was that because the paper was already published in a prestigious conference and passed the peer review, the results couldn't have been wrong. That didn't satisfy me; rather, their answers made me suspicious that at least parts of the results, presented in the paper, are fake (I mean, are not real). Moreover, that the authors tried to hide the problem with the results. Finally, I believe I have strong evidence to support my belief, which, at the moment, is that the results are fake.
What is the normal course of action in a case like this? If someone has some evidence indicating that a paper published in proceedings of a (computer science) conference includes fake results, what should that person do?
Additional information:
It's been more than two years since the paper was published.
The evidence that the paper is "fake" rather than merely wrong is that the method claimed would not be computationally tractable for the claimed data size without some special innovation that was not described by the authors.<issue_comment>username_1: Confronting them or fighting with them is not going to get you anywhere. Not anywhere positive, anyway.
But you can always write a follow-on paper that improves/corrects the error and submit it, perhaps to the same journal. It will force you, however to completely verify your claims. That would be one of the valid ways to proceed if you were at a different institution.
The other alternative is to create a note pointing out the error, and the effect on the conclusions of the paper and send it to the editor. This is a little bit less work, but you still need to be very sure of your arguments.
And if you are alleging "fake" rather than mistaken conclusions you need to be especially certain that you've got it right. But if you can find the correct result, then you don't need to charge them with misconduct. The community will do that if they see the alternative.
Having been published in a prestigious journal isn't proof of correctness, of course. There are plenty of counterexamples, both in technical and non-technical publications.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm a fresh graduate and am not very experienced, but your question doesn't seem to be difficult to answer. You have two options: (1) you can do nothing, and (2) you can start a fight. To start a fight, you have two options: (2a) you can fight in the battlefield of research journals by publishing a critical article or a comment, and (2b) you can fight by lodging a formal complaint with the universities the authors work at.
The article was published in the proceedings of a conference, which means that publishing a comment there isn't an option. And I don't think that a journal will accept an article whose purpose is to criticize a paper published in conference proceedings. This means that Option (2a) is unavailable unless the authors publish the same results in a journal.
Option (2b) should be used only if you can prove that the results were fabricated.
At any rate, you should think twice before starting a fight. Ask yourself the following two questions: (i) What's in it for me? In other words, is this worth spending time and making effort, or is it better to focus on my own research instead? What will I gain from this fight? (ii) Do I have a proof? To use Option (2a), you have to have a proof that the results are wrong. To use Option (2b), you have to have a proof that the results were fabricated.
I personally would start a fight only if someone published results contradicting mine.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: As mentioned in the comments, there's a major difference between "fake" and "incorrect".
If the results are fake, then you are alleging [scientific misconduct](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_misconduct). If true, this will have serious consequences and you will need serious proof. The process varies by institution, but here's an example from the [University of Manchester](https://www.staffnet.manchester.ac.uk/rbe/ethics-integrity/research-misconduct/research-misconduct/). Here misconduct is defined as fabricated results, falsified results, plagiarism, failure to meet legal/ethical/professional obligations like ethical guidelines when conducting human research, etc. If you observe these things then you are *required* to report the fraud (clause 5.2). There is a person at the institution which you can report the alleged fraud to, to whom you file a report. You are given legal protections for raising concerns about fraud, but you need to bring evidence. Once fraud is reported the university will investigate, and the affected people will get the chance to defend themselves. Needless to say, this will have serious consequences at personal level, regardless of whether the allegations are true or false.
If the results are incorrect, then it's a different matter. The "standard" way of dealing with this is by writing a new paper highlighting the error. Published papers can be wrong, so "the paper was already published in a prestigious conference and passed the peer review, the results couldn't have been wrong" is not true. Here's an [example](https://arxiv.org/abs/1109.4897).
In your case, given that the author is a member of your research group, I would expect to start internally. If the results are fake, then I'd talk to the supervisor first, before escalating if it looks like the supervisor is also involved in the fraud. If the results are incorrect, then I'd convince the other author first, or at least the supervisor. If you can convince the supervisor there's a problem, chances are they'll tell you what to do next (e.g by getting more data).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: Let’s hold our horses here for a moment. Unlike the other answers so far, I see *three* options:
1. The results are “fake”, e.g. maliciously, knowingly fabricated
2. The results contain a mistake, made in good faith
3. The results are absolutely fine and you’re misunderstanding something
Option 1 is an extremely serious allegation and you should make sure you’re certain of misconduct (as opposed to honest mistake). This is not only to protect these colleagues: if you accuse someone (especially in your own group) of faking data, and are later found to be in the wrong, you will acquire a reputation that’s going to weigh you down a lot. Your use of the word “fake” is also confusing: do you mean “fabricated” (getting one number but writing down a different one) or “incorrect” (overlooking a flaw in the calculation and getting the wrong number, but writing it down faithfully)?
Option 2 is very common and you have already done the right thing: spoke to the authors about it. Since it’s your current group, it’s much better at this point to discuss your concerns with your supervisor than to escalate or publicise this. If it’s a mistake, it’s still potentially embarrassing for the group and your supervisor will probably be grateful to be alerted. If on the other hand there is indeed misconduct, and assuming your supervisor is not aware or complicit, it’s in their interest to resolve the situation delicately, and they have many more tools at their disposal than you (e.g. issuing a retraction, disciplining the relevant researchers).
Option 3 is also possible. Since we only have your side of the story, it’s very hard to tell the difference between “they mainly tried to convince me that the results were OK” and (from their perspective) “we tried to explain our results to OP but they’re still stuck on that step”. Can you work through the paper with a peer and see if they also agree with your interpretation? You should try to do this neutrally: “I’m not sure I agree with this, what do you think” and not “This bit here is clearly fake”
Finally: you may want to avoid using your real name when discussing serious scientific misconduct on a public forum.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_5: There are many fake results out there, most of them are never denounced or corrected. People who blow the whistle through the official channels (journals, institutions) often suffer more than the fraudsters. Official procedures tend to take years, and to waste an unreasonable amount of your time even if you ultimately prevail. See [<NAME>'s blog](https://forbetterscience.com/) for many examples in biology and medicine.
Fortunately, there are ways to raise concerns without jeopardizing your career. In particular, [PubPeer](https://blog.pubpeer.com/static/faq) allows you to publicize your remarks anonymously.
You do not need to be sure that there is fraud for raising concerns, provided you do it in a professional manner. After all, it is the author's job to explain their results clearly and convincingly. If their work is correct they should be able to easily answer your concerns.
Asking people who suspect scientific fraud to be absolutely certain and to go through official channels, is one way to make sure that most fake results will never be corrected.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: Whether your suspect simple error, outright fraud, mind control by nefarious evil forces, or whatever, the best way to challenge results is to attempt to replicate them.
If you faithfully follow their methodology, use the same input, and get the same output, then you'll have learned something.
If you get different results, then you can publish those results, and third parties will take note and get involved.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: To add to the other answers, let me expand on Option 3 of the great answer by username_4: **Consider the possibility that you are wrong.** You spare us the details, but of course details matter to make a decision on the fact. If I understand you correctly, you base your belief that the results are wrong because they seem to have solved an NP problem in reasonable time. Strictly speaking, an instance of an NP problem, even a very large one, can still be solved in reasonable time. Also an instance can have a property that can be exploited or can be solved by a heuristic and the solution can be verified as optimal in polynomial time (that is actually the definition of NP, a problem can be verified in polynomial time). What I am trying to say is that it is very easy to draw a false conclusion based on the fact that something is NP. The story of encryption based on the insolvability of the knapsack problem comes to mind [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle–Hellman\_knapsack\_cryptosystem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merkle%E2%80%93Hellman_knapsack_cryptosystem). As you can see, you would not be the first one to believe falsely that something is computationally infeasible.
If you want to move forward from your obvious frustration with the authors and the paper, you should go through their explanations again, assuming that it is correct. If you want to involve someone else (after announcing results to be fake the authors are probably out), you should follow the advice given to you and asking in help understanding each step. It might be that there is a relatively minor error, such as claiming a sub-optimal but close solution to be optimal. Only after making doubly and triply sure should you escalate to your supervisor. If the supervisor does not react, then you could go to the university level or use one of the publication checking outlets that you have been told about. This is to make sure that you (1) do not make a false allegation that (2) could have serious impact on your career at your institution. If the supervisor does not find a problem, you have the choice to believe the supervisor's judgment or not. If not, you are making a strong statement and strong statements need strong proof.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: There are two questions in the scenario that you posit.
1. Is there a real error in that conference paper, as you seem to think ?
(Let's put to one side whether the error is an honest mistake or a deliberate attempt to deceive since this would be almost impossible to prove and any effort to do so may well signal a sort of false vindictiveness on your part.)
2. If an error really is there, what should be done about it ?
This erroneous conference paper should only be a real concern to **you** if its assertions are likely to be a problem to you in **your own anticipated published work for your doctoral thesis**.
If it's not a particular issue to you in your own work,i.e. if it's just something wrong that you noticed in another person's work, then you just note it and proceed with your own studies. You should do nothing about it until after your next position is secured.
If it really is going to become an issue with the reasoning that you are adopting for your research and the eventual assertions coming from your own work, then you will have to address it with your supervisor. It then becomes a matter for your supervisor to consider.
There are sensitivities involved here since the authors of the erroneous work were (or still are ?) in your own department. But it is your supervisor's job to negotiate a way through these sensitivities that is at least fair to you.
Given what you have told us so far, that is as much as I can advise for now.
And please change your SE name to something that will not cause you or your organization to be identified by readers here.
You can ask SE Academia moderators to remove @ references to your name.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2022/10/18
| 839
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<issue_start>username_0: I am seeing some online lectures and it seems so that my attention is decaying quite fast as time progresses in the lecture. Most lectures I find on the internet are 1hr yet the the time I can focus above 90% is like only 20 mins. So, often I end up chunking the lecture into small pieces. Another tip I found is to eliminate distractions and block out addictive social media sites before beginning the lecture.
What are some other tips I can keep in mind?<issue_comment>username_1: In general, you learn best by doing. Is the topic of the lecture amenable to a small coding project?
You learn by doing. Is there an associated set of homeworks?
You also learn by teaching. Make a presentation based on the lecture that summarizes it, mainly from memory.
I am afraid your question is too generic in order to give you concrete suggestions for improving your outcome.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: Take notes during the lecture. Preferably hand written notes as the better engage the brain in learning. After the lecture, write out a summary of the lecture capturing the, say, three most important points. Try to do this immediately.
I also suggest doing this on index cards. At least the summaries. One big idea per card. Use your own words. Number the cards sequentially.
Now you have a deck of cards from which you can select several to carry around with you for a few days for quick review while you need to wait for anything (bus, meal delivery, ...). You can also use the backs of the cards for notations of ideas you have as you travel about. Maybe add keywords to the cards as you think of things.
Finally, when you need to review for an exam or other use, the cards give you a way to recall the key points.
---
Orthogonal to the above is a suggestion that you put what you "learn" in any lecture to practice. If they provide exercises do them. If they don't then I question their overall merit. But you can compensate for that in many cases by finding a textbook on the same subject, perhaps one recommended, and do the exercises in that. Much harder, however, is to get feedback on your solutions. This is one of the biggest advantages of face-to-face education over online; personal individual feedback.
---
For (much) more on the idea of using note cards see the description of the [Hipster PDA](https://cseducators.stackexchange.com/a/1168/1293).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: **Increase playback speed**
If your attention span is shorter than the video, you could try shortening the video. Many video players have an option to increase the playback speed - an hour-long video played at 1.25x speed takes only 48 minutes. Your comprehension ability may suffer somewhat with increased speeds, but there is some evidence that losses can be mitigated by continuing to study with the saved time. Watching an hour-long video in 45 minutes at 1.33x and continuing to study for the remaining 15 minutes, or just watching the video twice in an hour at 2x speed, may yield similar retention results. Your ability to turn up the speed will depend on the subject matter and speaker, but it can be a good way to increase the "information density" of recorded lectures.
Here is a study examining the effects of playback speed on retention:
[Learning in Double Time](https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/acp.3899).
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm currently working as an accountant, I work out regularly, 6 times a week, and my gym sessions are around 1h, but I could reduce them to 30-40min if I'm focused. I'm about to start a PhD and I'm asked to dedicate 2.5 days per week to research, around 8 and a half hours per day. I'm currently looking forward to working as a teaching assistant, which I assume is around 20-30h per week, 4-6h per weekday. I have no problem in reducing my workout sessions to 3 days per week.
How do you find work-research-exercise balance?<issue_comment>username_1: Your estimates seems to me a bit too rigid.
Calculating the time you work in such a "corporate" way is probably a healthy thing to do to correctly assess and preserve your work-life equilibrium.
However, if you do that estimate about PhDs work, interviewing recent graduates, you would probably discover that to finish the median PhD, it takes 5 years of dedicating 5 days per week to research on top of 3.5 days per week to TA role. You are lucky that academic are able to create negative time, where they actually relax -1.5 days per week, which means they not only *not* relax, but they actually get more and more tired every week that passes.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: Actually, an hour or so break during the day, especially for somewhat aerobic exercise, can increase productivity. This was my experience, though not at a gym; bicycling (25 miles or so), racketball, ...
It is easy to get stuck on problems and research. The brain benefits from periods of rest. It doesn't stop working, but lets things come in to focus subconsciously. It is to easy to over-focus when working on some sorts of problems. Many people have had the experience that the solution to a tricky problem suddenly appears after a period of rest or a change of focus.
Exercise breaks also help you avoid burn-out, which can be an issue for some in doctoral study.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I pumped iron about 3 times per week, at least hour per session, and still had time to do research and socializing, with schedule just a bit less tense than yours.
I could do more, but I am too lazy. I think that workout time is the smallest issue here. After all, you can ponder your research while exercising. But the biggest limitation could be commute to and from the gym. It's boring, tedious and inconvenient to think/work.
Just make sure your gym is no more than 30 minutes away from your home, and you can enjoy them gainz the way you like.
Important note: I can't FULLY comprehend your workload, so before you take my advice, just get one month gym membership and see if it's feasible.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: Most universities have their own gymnasium onsite, which makes it pretty easy to steal an hour for a work-out during a day where you are on campus doing research. Many students and academics who are interested in this will do a work-out in the morning or evening while they are on campus, or sneak a break for it during the day. Moreover, a great deal of research is done by mulling over problems outside of the office, while walking or exercising, or even while sleeping. (Many a PhD student can attest to the research breakthrough they dreamed while asleep.) It is possible to exercise while mulling through research problems and this type of break can actually contribute positively towards your health and thinking --- don't see these things as mutually exclusive; instead look at workout time as a time to get some physical exercise while you mull over problems at your own leisure.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Leave the gym, get a bike and integrate the workout in your commute. You can easily get 60-90 minutes workout every day you go to the office if you want. Rent places accordingly such that you have a good set of routes between home and work. Prepare some answers for weird questions of colleagues. Find out where you can use a shower at work (universities usually have some, or those at the university gym).
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: While in my own PhD, I did make a point of reserving an hour a day, 7 days a week, for various exercise bits... which I did in my small apartment, to avoid the complications+time of going to a university gym. And I did bike everywhere. Also, at least 5/7 days per week, practiced piano for an hour.
Not necessarily morally virtuous, but mainly substituted for other, relatively non-constructive, activities. Yes, some things sacrificed were social... but/and socializing does all-too-easily soak up huge amounts of time. Possibly *fun* time, yes, but, ... Yes, there are quite a few hours in the day, but not an unlimited number.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: There are many practical solutions suggested in other answers. Two thoughts about what worked for me:
1. At least where I was a student, the University had a gym and there were personal training sessions that were relatively inexpensive. Setting up a time with a personal trainer can force you to keep to a regular schedule, since you are investing some money and also since you have an appointment. (It also gives you a legitimate reason to say "I'm sorry I cannot meet at X time because of a regular appointment" -- just try not to schedule sessions during hours you'd normally be expected to be available).
2. If you ever find yourself wanting to give up the gym to have more time for research, please consider that you can't do research if you don't have your health. Maybe occasionally you'll need to move a time around to accommodate work, but don't compromise on making time for yourself to do important things that are not research.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: This spring I ran away from Russia due to increasing repressions and other risks. Long story short, I got a Ph.D. position in quantum computing at Stuttgart University in the state of Baden-Württemberg. I was told to be in Germany at the 1st of June to sign my contract and start my Ph.D., but after my arrival university staff notified me that I am under check up by BAFA (an organisation dealing with export). After 3 months I was rejected from the promising position. Arguments were that I could be a spy and also could steal important knowledge from the university.
I also recently was told that even the fact that I studied in Russia is a problem. As far as I know I am the first such case, I've asked people that got a degree from my university (Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology) and all of them are doing fine in Germany.
I've heard people from China and India sometimes face such problems. I would like to know if anyone is familiar with my case and if there is some solution to it or what organization I could ask for help.
Because the decision was made after 3 months in September. I don't have enough time to get an employment contract in another Ph.D. program. I spend almost all my money only to get to Germany and now I really don't know what to do.
UPD1: Thanks everyone who sent their support and gave me advice.
UPD2: If you would like to blame me for the war, because I am russian and I deserve everything what is happening to me, please, do not do it here, do it there <EMAIL>, it is my email.<issue_comment>username_1: There is a lengthy discussion in the comments already, and I hope people more familiar with the German side of things have sufficiently elaborated on that.
I would instead try to offer you an analysis from the perspective of someone still planning the move.
You have a pool of resources available to you and a bunch of liabilities. Your biggest liabilities are:
1. Money. You need money to survive, at the end of the day, and will need to sort it out somehow. From your post, you do not have much left and spending an year or two on tropical island vacation arranging your next position is understandably not on the list.
2. Legal status/background. Goes without saying.
3. Poor social capital. You do not seem to have a strong network, especially outside of Russia. Your research profile is okay, but not stellar.
4. Doing anything outside of continuing research is clearly not optimal in the long run, but you might need to make concessions as you go.
Your main recourse lies in whatever reputable contacts you do have and in what skills you demonstrably have. In this case, it seems like the professor has jumped the gun and decided to avoid any potential complications - after all, they have not that much to gain and a lot to lose. That you have not managed to make a convincing case in over 4 months since the date your contract was supposed to start is hugely problematic. I am afraid convincing the university to reverse the decision *within a week* is, essentially, an impossible task.
Given the visa expiration date, your immediate next step would be either moving somewhere else for the time being (this may prove impossible due to money issues), applying for the asylum or getting stuck in the legal limbo. Like @Dr.Snoopy points out, you could, in theory, live in Germany without having the paperwork and try to find employment, but this is also problematic for obvious reasons. I would advice at least consider applying for the asylum: that way your stay will be legal while your application is being considered (of course, it is not of much help if you get a desk reject the very next day).
Another immediate action is contacting whoever you believe could support you one way or another - your advisor and colleagues are probably your first option here when it comes to job seeking, but pursue as many leads as you possibly can at once.
Finally, have a plan of action for when things go wrong and do not put all eggs in one basket (I guess you have learned that lesson the hard way). Your current situation is fairly bad, so adjust your expectations accordingly - it will give you a different perspective on your options.
It is soul crushing to have a bright future taken away from you by something you did not really have influence over, but, IMHO, it is better to view your circumstances pessimistically and be ready to work hard and build your career from the ground up. On the plus side, you do not have to leave behind some 20+ years of your work.
I sincerely hope you will be able to turn it around.
UPD: Things seem to get increasingly complicated with respect to being able to move outside of Russia once you are here. Treat the returning option as your very last resort, and maybe not even that.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If you went to Germany, I assume you have at least a minimum knowledge of German.
Then just move to Austria. They always had a more neutral attitude, plus it is much cheaper to live there.
Given the boundary political condition, you will probably have to deal with low-paying, low-qualified jobs, for a short or long spell of time. But Austria has a much more balanced salary-cost of life ratio. And Austira is a overlooked destination, so you will be able to find a technical job much quick there. Not ideal, but you have the knowledge to boot yourself up and become a programmer. And after a couple of years you will be able to get into a Ph.D. program.
The bottom line is: now you have to fight for your political ideas, do not expect you will always find someone supportive. You are unfortunately fighting for a repressed idea, which is "russian are humans, russian deserves some right, russian politician invaded a foreign country" and it is a very unpopular idea in the West, because the West is now thinking "Putin is a psycopathic, invading for no meaningful reason a foreign country, therefore Russia is a country of psycopathic", which has been very recently summed up by the vice-president of the European Union "we are a garden, outside there is a jungle" (Borrell, 2022 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D7f_XLuiNa4>).
Good luck, and enjoy the ride, your voice in the West is not censored, but unfortunately it will be voluntarily not heard.
P.s.: because of the war, you are facing these temporary issues that are preventing you from getting into your dream path. Whenever one of these temporary issues is death, the prevention from getting the dream path becomes permanently. I feel a bit for you (let's say a bit more for you than the average yemeniti and somali, because I am an horrible person), but I feel much more for all the Ukranians and the Russian being slaughtered in this proxy conflict.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: If I were you, I would do everything to prove that I am neither a spy nor dangerous in some other way.
They told you that there is an investigation against you. You did not say anything about the results. If you know them, try to prove them wrong. If they have not told you the results, this might be illegal - I am pretty sure that you have a right to know what they are holding against you. Try to find out who is responsible for this and get the details of the investigation. What do they hold against you? Can you prove them wrong?
I would also try to find other scientists from Russia who work at Stuttgart university, ideally in your field of research. Get in touch with them and tell them your story. Can you prove that you are not a part of the Putin system? Did you take part in demonstrations, do you have friends that fight for democracy? If you can convince them that you are not a spy, they can help you to find a way to solve this problem.
Even if there is no chance to get the job at Stuttgart university again, you should do everything to get rid of this accusation.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_4: I've thought about my answer for a few days, it will probably be unpopular, but here goes:
What did you do while in Russia to try and keep the peace? What did you do when your country just annexed a piece of another country (the Crimean peninsula) in 2014? I assume you were "just" a student. But the country you are apparently from is an aggressor that is waging war on the civilians of the Ukraine. Germany has given many Ukranians refugee status. You left, because the sanctions are making life in Russia uncomfortable, and you were perhaps (rightly) worried that you could be conscripted into the army.
You were probably promised the position by a professor who had not checked with the university administration that new hires of Russian nationals are no longer permitted. There will be nothing much you can do about that. Russians who are already here and have jobs can, naturally, keep those jobs.
Your visa was probably contingent on you getting a job here. Since the job has disappeared, that may mean that you need to apply for refugee status, and you should have done that as soon as it was clear that you were not getting the job. As a refugee applicant, you will not be permitted to work until your status is approved. If you are found not to be a refugee, you will be sent back to Russia, or given the status of 'Duldung', being tolerated, because there is currently no air traffic between Germany and Russia. You should contact a lawyer.
The nice world that we used to have with exchange of researchers and free movement pretty much everywhere has been drastically changed by the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.
Here are some links that might help you. If you don't read German, DeepL is your friend.
* <https://www.nds-fluerat.org/54499/aktuelles/flucht-aus-russland-was-wir-aktuell-sagen-koennen-23-09-2022/>
* <https://www.uno-fluechtlingshilfe.de/hilfe-weltweit/fluechtlingsschutz/asyl-in-deutschland>
* <https://eriwan.diplo.de/am-de/service/05-visa-einreise/-/2521580>
* <https://www.vorwaerts.de/artikel/deutschland-russischen-gefluechteten-asyl-gewaehren> (from March, may be too old)
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_5: I'm sorry to hear about the situation you are in. I have been hesitant to post an answer as it's not really a clear-cut solution to your question. However, since I realized that in the current situation there is probably nobody who can give you a definite solution I'll give it a shot and hope that it helps you and others in your situation.
I can imagine a few options to explore, I'll try to outline what I know about them and where you can get more information. I'll assume that you are located in our near Stuttgart- if not, you can find similar organisations in all major German cities.
**1. Immediate help:**
I don't know how much money or time on your visa/residence permit you have left. If your situation is desperate and a return to Russia is impossible you really might want to think about whether you will apply for refugee status or not (as already mentioned by other posters). From your description I got the feeling that this is not what you are aiming for, but if your only alternative is living under a bridge, this might be an option. If you go this route I suggest to open another topic in a different stack to get more information.
* If you are not yet sure what to do this contact might be helpful (in German): <https://www.elk-wue.de/helfen/fluechtlinge-und-migranten/asylpfarramt>
Short summary: It's an offer by the Protestant church aimed at everybody who seeks advice for (im)migration topics. They explicitly mention that they also offer guidance to illegal immigrants who have no other place to go; I therefore assume that you will be able to have an "unofficial" chat exploring options for immediate help.
* Side-note: How Germany will behave with respect to Russian refugees is not yet clear. Information in German and English (by Pro Asyl, a well-known association fighting for rights of refugees; I have not managed to find a more "official" source): <https://www.proasyl.de/news/flucht-aus-russland-was-wir-aktuell-sagen-koennen/>
They also offer advice (in English): <https://www.proasyl.de/en/pro-asyl-advice-in-individual-cases/>
* I was hesitant to post this, as not everybody is religious and I cannot offer any experience on their political stance, but then I thought it's up to you to decide whether it's interesting for you. The Russian parish in Stuttgart ([contact details in German](http://www.rok-stuttgart.de/index.php/de/impressum.html)) consists of Ukrainians and Russians who, according to [this interview (in German)](https://www.swr.de/swraktuell/baden-wuerttemberg/stuttgart/russisch-orthodoxe-kirche-stuttgart-und-der-krieg-talk-limberger-100.html) try to master the crisis together.
If you have a bit more time and money left, you might find the following information interesting:
**2. Official German job portal aimed at Russian immigrants**:
Not specifically aimed at academia, but there exists a special program by the German federal government for recruiting qualified Russian immigrants who are leaving their homeland due to the current situation. Information in [German](https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/krieg-in-der-ukraine/russische-fachkraefte-2051070) and [Russian](https://www.bundesregierung.de/breg-de/themen/deutsche-einheit/%D0%BF%D1%80%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B6%D0%B5%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%B5-%D0%B4%D0%BB%D1%8F-%D1%81%D0%BF%D0%B5%D1%86%D0%B8%D0%B0%D0%BB%D0%B8%D1%81%D1%82%D0%BE%D0%B2-%D0%B8%D0%B7-%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%81%D1%81%D0%B8%D0%B8-2052768), website aimed at Russians: <https://www.make-it-in-germany.ru/>
As you were planning to start a PhD you have presumably a master degree and therefore might be considered "qualified". Perhaps you can find some useful information there that allows you to find a job that pays the bill and gives you a residence permit until you can sort out PhD positions.
**3. Stuttgart University/ PhD supervisor**
* Make sure to collect as much information about your situation in writing as possible. Who made the decision not to hire you? The professor, the university or was it a blanket decision by BAFA (which I do not believe)? On which grounds? It's important to know whether you will face the same challenges at every other position you could apply for. I strongly suspect that it's the field that triggered the problems as I know several Russian scientists which are employed without problems in Germany.
* If it was the professor's decision and not that of the university: Are there any other free PhD positions in related but not security-relevant fields? Have you checked with the student advisors of the university? Might be a long shot, but who knows... Information for doctoral students [doctoral students](https://www.uni-stuttgart.de/en/research/early-career-researchers/doctoral-degree-studies/) (in English) and generally for [international students](https://www.uni-stuttgart.de/en/study/counseling/international/).
* Whether your degree itself is a problem, can be checked via the anabin database. This database allows users to check whether a given institute/university is considered an accredited university and whether a given degree has a German equivalent. The website is in German and as I don't know the official name of your degree I cannot check whether it's listed. If you want me/us to check you might want to post the name of your degree. Please note: the universities are the ones which in the end can decide whether to employ you or not; rules for universities vary from one German state to another.
**4. other German universities/ research institutes**
* Check other universities whether they have international offices which offer **fast** help for people stuck in Germany because of the current situation. Many universities started programs/stipends for helping Ukrainian students and researchers in a fast and unbureaucratic way. Some of them expand the help beyond Ukrainians to "everybody affected by the war". Again, it's a long shot, but perhaps you can find some help there.
* Another long shot, but perhaps the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) can advice you: <https://www.daad.de/en/the-daad/information-for-russian-students-and-researchers/>
**Final note:**
As you can see there is quite some information aimed directly at Russians, therefore I conclude that your nationality is not principally a problem and there is hope that with some adjustments to your original plan you might be able to make it work at a different university.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: Some of my colleagues and I have become aware of an individual (name withheld) who makes a habit of attending math conferences on false pretences in order to get travel support.
I have second-hand knowledge of a conference where they claimed an affiliation that they no longer had and they presented a paper that was blatantly plagiarized from a publication in another language. (My sources are attendees and organizers of the conference, who checked with the institution and found the source paper for the plagiarism.) A search on the web for this name (an uncommon name) shows participation and speaking at conferences in a ridiculously broad collection of mathematical areas. No one person could do original research in all those areas, so I conclude that this is serial fraud.
A few days ago, a conference for which I have some supervisory connection received a query from this individual asking for travel support. Of course, we will not be fooled, because we know better. But how many other conferences will be fooled? Is there a mechanism for stopping this sort of thing?
(One thing that I think will not work: Contacting their current institution, because it's likely that they are currently unaffiliated.)<issue_comment>username_1: "The community" can't really do anything. The conference committee can contact the institution to verify affiliation. I don't see any issue with that. But they can put them on a list of "auto reject submission" until they clear it up.
I worry about the conference if they pay people for travel without verification and any review process should find "blatant" plagiarism. Perhaps you need to update your acceptance process.
The conference, can also open a dialog with them and let them know the consequences of bad action.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: I am not a lawyer..
If the query about travel support that you recently received contains lies (e.g., he claims to be a starving doctoral student at a particular institution, and the institution says he was never affiliated in any way) then see if you can interest your local district attorney in a criminal fraud case.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: You indicate that conference grants are involved. You should report the fraud and "waste" in accordance with the funding agency's fraud office as well as your local institution's procedures. You may even have a duty to report this misuse of funds in accordance with funding regulations and local institution policies.
For example, if NSF funds were involved, you should report it to the [NSF Office of Inspector General](https://oig.nsf.gov/contact/hotline).
Local police and the DA may not have the jurisdiction, as the fraud presumably occurs across state or national lines, and federal funds are involved.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: You should tell the institutions that they falsely claim to be from, for one thing. They certainly have an interest in this since it harms their reputation if someone actually believes this person. I'm guessing a letter from the university lawyer saying "please stop claiming to be affiliated with us" would go a long way. Even if the previous conference checked with the university you also should so that they know this person is continuing this behavior.
Likewise you should tell anyone they have plagiarized--or any journals if the papers were published. Individuals probably won't be able to do much (although at least they will know what's up in case anyone asks why they have the same paper as someone else) but publishers also have corporate resources to get this kind of thing stopped.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_5: Nathan, you claim that your approval process does not have a problem - yet your "community" constantly approves this guy who is a fraud. Call apples, apples and oranges, oranges. You have an approval process problem.
Now, so far from reading all of your commentary, you do not want to prevent future bad actors from getting in nor do you want to prevent fraud by implementing a better approval process. You simply want to know what you can do to this one guy.
Well in that case, contact the police - notify others in the community and that's it. Anything further and he might just sue you.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I have written a manuscript and sent it to a journal. Right now they are reviewing my manuscript. In the meantime I have rewritten the manuscript due to mistakes, and now it is entirely new, in the sense that the method and the conclusion are new.
Should I submit this new version of the manuscript to the journal? Or just find another journal to submit? I am afraid the referee will not read my new manuscript because they have spent lots of effort studying the old one but they gain nothing. How should I proceed?<issue_comment>username_1: Ask the editor how to proceed. They can probably respond fairly quickly after consulting with any reviewers. You will need to assure them that the new "version" is better than the old and clears up deficiencies. Maybe outline the changes. If the result is improved, indicate that.
The alternative of waiting for a decision seems worse in many regards. If the decision is to reject, they may not be interested in a new version. If it is to accept then you have a real dilemma.
But by getting the editor involved you may save reviewers some fruitless work and also get a better chance for success.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: At the very least, you should retract your paper asap because of mistakes. Even if the editor is for-profit (e.g. Elsevier, Springer), the reviewers are usually volunteers and you are wasting their time.
If I were an editor receiving an update like this, I would be miffed. You did not check your manuscript sufficiently before submission and now you are submitting again. But I would appreciate your honesty in admitting the mistake, which might allow me to not desk-reject the second submission.
I would recommend you send a very apologetic letter to the editor with your new version, assuring the editor that you did check the new version over and over again. People make mistakes and can be forgiven for making mistakes.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I am applying to math Ph.D programs from U.S universities for next fall.
Frankly, I was not a good student during my Bachelor's degree. Instead, I did many things towards finding my real dream: what I really want to do. After I got my B.S in math, I did teaching in academies, and learned some skills for analyzing football statistics from a private academy. (Actually, I was crazy about football at that time, so I wanted to get a job related to it.) After that, I met a consultant and he advised me that it would be much better to utilize my major.
So I got back to my university to get my Master's degree, and I think I did quite well. I want to research on AI and math. My thesis is about graphs, which is related to expressing our body through graphs (to research related to football, too). I got my Master's degree in August this year and am now preparing for applying.
I wonder if I should write the story above, to compensate for my lower B.S. degree and to emphasize that now I am quite a motivated researcher and totally different person than about 10 years ago. Also, in Korea, there is an "age stereotype" in society. I am now 31, I am worried about the committee thinking I am too old to study.<issue_comment>username_1: (Context: I’m a computer science professor in Canada who’s been on the other side of admissions a handful of times.)
If I were reading such a statement of purpose: yes, in this case a *brief* explanation of your path to wanting to do research (more or less as long as you wrote above) would be helpful to me. It helps to understand your motivation for wanting to do research, and justifies a bit not only your lackluster undergrad but also your somewhat-nontraditional experiences in between. ([Not everyone necessarily agrees](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/175920/childhood-story-on-my-masters-sop) about motivating stories, but here in particular it also helps explain some things about your undergrad and work experience, so I think this is a meaningfully different situation.)
But make sure that, while this is a motivation, you convey your legitimate interest in the math itself. I’d personally be a little bit wary of a student who seems to only be interested in one particular application (if I’m not especially interested in it) – if the research ends up wandering a bit, I’d want to think that you’d still be okay with that.
I wouldn’t especially worry about your age: 31 is young enough that you’ll only be older than the very youngest professors, who could potentially feel a little weird about that, but for most professors it won’t matter at all. It’s also not like you can do anything about it at this point anyway!
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Actually I'll give the opposite advice than the [answer of username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189734/75368). You have a misunderstanding of the purpose of the SoP. Some places also ask for a letter about motivation, but that isn't the SoP, which should be entirely forward looking. It isn't well used if you just write about the past to try to explain away shortcoming.
In the SoP write about what you intend to study, being as specific as you can without being too insistent on a particular, narrow, research topic. Write about you goals for doctoral study. Also add some things about your goals thereafter. What career are you working towards.
If you focus on the past, then you are wasting an opportunity. However, you can include some short phrases in the SoP that indicate your readiness for starting on you plan. You can also put short phrases of motivation as long as they are strongly connected to the plan for the future.
The CV details the past. The SoP looks to the future.
Note also, that in the US, for someone with a masters already, the undergraduate grades will mean much less than the more recent results. If your math performance has noticeably improved then you should be fine. If your masters thesis is good, even better. The CV already contains that sort of information.
The admissions committee needs to make a prediction of your likely success in the program. Make sure that your letters of recommendation are strong and support that view. If they focus on your current readiness for doctoral study, the older grades mean much less.
---
The reason for not being too insistent on a research topic is that you will need to find an advisor who is willing to take you on. If few are interested in what you want to do, then it will be much harder. Keep some flexibility within the plan and how you express it. You can specify the fairly narrow area you'd like to work in.
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<issue_start>username_0: I found something very novel during my Ph.D. and we have published this finding. However, many people don't believe in our work and it has been a year since I published my paper but I found very few groups citing this work. Scientists from renowned institutes are writing commentaries about the false belief that they have had for over more than 50 years. I feel really disappointed that people are occupied with fixed beliefs and the media gives full coverage to their research. They are spreading wrong information and this information is being taught to students during their school life. All textbooks in biology keep on talking about that belief. Though I am not the first one to discover something novel in this field but my research has provided evidence that the discovery was not cooked up. I believe that my research although very basic will change the course of this field. One such example is the discovery of the process of neurogenesis in the adult brain. Initially, people didn't believe it but later a simple experiment using BrdU proved that neurons are regenerated in the adult brain.
Please guide me on how to convince scientists around the globe. Can I send links to my papers to them so that they can read and repeat the finding? Will it give a negative impression? Please tell me how to spread awareness.
I am not the first one who made this discovery but the evidence provided by my study will significantly contribute to the current understanding of this process.<issue_comment>username_1: (Context: I’m a computer science professor in Canada who’s been on the other side of admissions a handful of times.)
If I were reading such a statement of purpose: yes, in this case a *brief* explanation of your path to wanting to do research (more or less as long as you wrote above) would be helpful to me. It helps to understand your motivation for wanting to do research, and justifies a bit not only your lackluster undergrad but also your somewhat-nontraditional experiences in between. ([Not everyone necessarily agrees](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/175920/childhood-story-on-my-masters-sop) about motivating stories, but here in particular it also helps explain some things about your undergrad and work experience, so I think this is a meaningfully different situation.)
But make sure that, while this is a motivation, you convey your legitimate interest in the math itself. I’d personally be a little bit wary of a student who seems to only be interested in one particular application (if I’m not especially interested in it) – if the research ends up wandering a bit, I’d want to think that you’d still be okay with that.
I wouldn’t especially worry about your age: 31 is young enough that you’ll only be older than the very youngest professors, who could potentially feel a little weird about that, but for most professors it won’t matter at all. It’s also not like you can do anything about it at this point anyway!
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Actually I'll give the opposite advice than the [answer of username_1](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/189734/75368). You have a misunderstanding of the purpose of the SoP. Some places also ask for a letter about motivation, but that isn't the SoP, which should be entirely forward looking. It isn't well used if you just write about the past to try to explain away shortcoming.
In the SoP write about what you intend to study, being as specific as you can without being too insistent on a particular, narrow, research topic. Write about you goals for doctoral study. Also add some things about your goals thereafter. What career are you working towards.
If you focus on the past, then you are wasting an opportunity. However, you can include some short phrases in the SoP that indicate your readiness for starting on you plan. You can also put short phrases of motivation as long as they are strongly connected to the plan for the future.
The CV details the past. The SoP looks to the future.
Note also, that in the US, for someone with a masters already, the undergraduate grades will mean much less than the more recent results. If your math performance has noticeably improved then you should be fine. If your masters thesis is good, even better. The CV already contains that sort of information.
The admissions committee needs to make a prediction of your likely success in the program. Make sure that your letters of recommendation are strong and support that view. If they focus on your current readiness for doctoral study, the older grades mean much less.
---
The reason for not being too insistent on a research topic is that you will need to find an advisor who is willing to take you on. If few are interested in what you want to do, then it will be much harder. Keep some flexibility within the plan and how you express it. You can specify the fairly narrow area you'd like to work in.
Upvotes: 4
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a non-US citizen applying for PhD programs in pure mathematics in the US. I'm mainly aiming for top schools, e.g. Harvard, MIT, Yale, Princeton, Stanford, UCLA.
I have taken the GRE mathematics subject test and scored 880 (91st percentile). In many universities the GRE subject score is optional, so I am wondering if I should submit it. I believe this is a good score, but I want to verify it because I don't know how it compares with other applicants to top schools. If it is relevant, my undergraduate studies grades are very high.<issue_comment>username_1: If the result is optional then expect that it also has a lesser impact on any final decision and other things will be weighted more heavily.
However, since the subject pool consists mostly of quite good math students, achieving in the 90s is very commendable. It would be very unlikely to count against you anywhere.
Note that for the schools you name, the applicant pools are large and the number of available slots are small, so the competition is fierce. There will be a lot of applicants with a similar record. You would be wise to apply to some other "lesser" places as well. If your search is too narrow, then if you are rejected by one for some *reason* that same reason might be noticed by others. Cast a wide net.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Luckily, GRE is not a measure of how good you are.
GRE is used as a minimum cut-off threshold (for example: a minimum GRE is required to apply, but no one cares how much above the minimum threshold you scored).
Even that way, I am not sure it is a meaningful indicator of anything, but it make sense in screening huge numbers of applications to have a quick number.
If you say you have very good grades (i.e. you are in the top 90% of your class, or at least I would read very good as that, please provide a quantity if you prefer not being misunderstood), GRE is just confirming that. The 1% of percentile difference that GRE gives to you makes no difference, you are still about in the top ~10% of your class, therefore **on paper** the candidates being in the top 5% are better than you. And there will be candidates up there, even candidates in the top 1% will apply to the schools you mention. However, please note: **on paper**. Don't let these indicators fool you.
Good luck with your application.
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<issue_start>username_0: I have chosen money over h-index / google scholar profile fame. Now I am working on applying the things in reality, giving me a big chance of a great contribution to the company. However, I am not feeling very well as I know that I never will publish a paper, never work on improving algorithms, and never read the current top-tier conference proceedings.
I am in fear of losing the cutting edge knowledge and decreasing h-index, and not being able to show the world what I am working on via publishing papers. I will use more established technology to apply it to the problems.
How to deal with not publishing anymore, losing my cutting-edge knowledge and decreasing of my h-index?
I am not confident about my decision. The team will not publish any papers. What are good arguments for persuasion, and how can I still remain visible in the academic environment?<issue_comment>username_1: You cannot do both. You made your choice by joining a "non-publishing group". In all likelihood, you will find your new career to have many challenging problems to solve. You will not loose your edge in thinking and problem solving and you will have to continue to learn new things. The relative paucity of people trying to join academia from industry is witness to life in R&D to be interesting and rewarding.
Please remind yourself that an h-index is not a measure of happiness and of personal worth. In fact, if you derive your feelings of self-worth from work, you are running big risks of being unhappy for long periods of your life. Some people need therapy to get over bad thinking habits like that.
All big decisions usually involve moments of regret for the path not taken. Your feelings of regret are normal.
Industrial R&D is not a prison. There are examples of people leaving industry in favor of an academic career or within industrial R&D choose a less remunerated job with more interesting tasks.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: If you are considered highly valued by your company and you live in the right place you can, in fact, do both to some extent. I don't know (or care) about h-index, but you can keep your skills up. It involves getting yourself associated with a university as a "highly valued" adjunct instructor/professor. I've known people to do this.
Some people in large corporate research organizations, who don't publish there, negotiate a bit of space for themselves (time, effort,...) and become adjuncts at universities. They can employ their normal field skills in teaching, perhaps advanced courses, but also, and more important, develop collaborative relationships with the research faculty. As long as their research doesn't impinge on the company's interests this can work.
It may take some effort, however, to develop such a relationship, both negotiating with the company and becoming known to an academic department and finding ways to participate. You have to think of it in other than economic terms, though, since adjunct pay is normally very low (sometimes insultingly so). But keeping your mind alive on interesting problems can be its own reward.
This probably requires a lot of face to face interactions, hence the importance of "place". And it requires that you stay highly productive in your main employment.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: I think it's very telling that you mention things like "h-index" and "showing the world what I am working on". These are signs of external validation and prestige, and academia has a highly structured, very inward looking ranking system (nobody, and I mean nobody, cares about your h-index outside of academia, and relatively few within it, actually) that people tend to internalise to the point that they can feel diminished as a person if they are not successful in *those* specific metrics.
If you had said "I'm worried that I won't be allowed to pursue non-conventional ideas" or "I will miss theoretical discussions with other really clever people", I would perhaps try to reassure you that these things exist in (parts of) the corporate world too. But you didn't. So my recommendation is: make like Elsa and let it go.
Personal anecdote time: some years ago, I slowly became aware that I did not, in fact, relish the idea of leading a research group. But I felt that not pursuing a PI job would prove that I was, after all, a failure; that all the work I'd done until then was for naught. *Those are not good reasons to stay.*
Shortly after, I left academia, and I am now a clinician. Because of my field, I actually have a lot of chances to contribute to publishable research. I rarely do it, because, to be honest, it's the least interesting part of my job. I have stimulating conversations with clever colleagues from much wider fields than before. I do novel stuff - not high-impact-factor novel, but this-didn't-exist-and-now-it-does novel. I've not looked at my citations in years, and my h-index is probably stuck - I've no idea. I still lurk on Academia SO because I like to be reminded that my decision was right :)
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: Disclaimer: I think you used them as a rethoric figure, but I still think it is indicative or a certain "affirmation through science" bias.
>
> I have chosen money over h-index / google scholar profile fame.
>
>
>
I think you made the correct decision, because chosing h-index / google scholar profile fame over money would have been a choice you can afford only if you are **rich**.
And even then, no one cares about h-index or google scholar profile fame, so it would be a choice like "I have chosen to wear my underpants inside out over money".
Who knows if Einstein was wearing his underpants inside out while he was thinking about general relativity. And who cares, if you do interesting thing your h-index or google scholar profile will be more interesting, but the contrary is not given (and absolutely not necessary).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Not knowing what field you're in, I do know of some researchers in social sciences who formally leave academia to work in industry but still want to do some research (but aren't really interested in teaching or be an adjunct). What they do is become "affiliated" with a center at a university, rather than a department. This allows them an institutional seat where they can access institutional resources (like journal access to stay up to date on the latest research) and a home they can use to publish from. The university benefits because they don't have to pay the individual and potentially get their name on research, and you get the institutional home. Obviously, the success of this depends on how supportive the company is with you spending time on research, and that's going to vary by manager/team/org as well as finding the right type of center that fits your research interests. But I think it can be done if continuing to do research and publish is really important to you.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_6: Many, but not all, companies encourage people to write articles about non-confidential parts of their work, or personal projects. Especially if the article helps showcase something the company would like to encourage. So there are opportunities to publish, if not usually in academic journals.
Companies also encourage folks to come up with patentable or near-patentable ideas. That's another form of publication, and even if you and the company aren't awarded the patent it certainly boosts your credibility. Indeed sometimes the goal is to establish that an idea is *not* patentable so it can be used safety but isn't restricted.
Depending on your field, there are also opportunities to present at industry conferences, or to get involved in industry standards, or things like that. Or to lead internally by researching new ideas and helping determine their value to the company, and try to lead adoption if you can show management they're worthwhile.
The company may also have a research division, which is often more like academia than the rest of the business and which in fact may have a publish-or-perish culture (though the publication may have to be internal).
In some companies, the only way to reach the highest technical ranks is to have a history of just this kind of technical leadership on top of performing outstanding work on immediate job requirements.
So if you really want to play public prestige games, your company may or may not give you opportunities to do so. Talk to your management.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_7: A couple of comments:
1. You might still publish papers in a future job. Many R&D teams in industry do in fact go to conferences and publish papers. You probably won't be in the same job forever, so at some point you may be able to find one which moves you closer to academia.
2. In some fields, academia is not as "cutting edge" as industry. This may not be true of your field, but in my field (machine learning) it is certainly true that many academics are working on things which simply aren't applicable in the real world. For example, there is a technique called SMOTE which is very famous. The paper in which it was introduced has 20,000 citations, and people are still publishing papers about it. To be blunt, it doesn't work. An argument could even be made that it is worse than useless, since it can easily mess up results if not applied carefully. There are many other examples too. Of course, your field may be different.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: The other answers cover the motivation/prestige aspect very well, but I wanted to touch on the concern about "never reading the current top-tier conference proceedings" and "losing my cutting-edge knowledge"
Since you mentioned algorithms, you're likely in a computer science or computer science adjacent field, which have greatly embraced open access publishing. Even in a more closed publication field, you can likely finagle some subscriptions as a member of a the R&D team. Read them! Early in my career the proceedings publication days for top conferences honestly felt like nerd Christmas. If I had a free hour throughout the day I'd read a paper or two. As I became more senior, I started a weekly reading group to keep the rest of the team up to date on our field. I never received anything but enthusiasm from management on these efforts. Even if I reach for more tested tools in the day to day work within industry, there's immense value in knowing where the cutting edge of your field is.
Academia is great for giving you time and space for studying your field deeply, and a rich community of brilliant minds to converse with. But don't underestimate how close to cutting edge you can keep just consuming hundreds and hundreds of research papers over the years.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_9: Responding somewhat narrowly to your "never work on improving algorithms" comment - I think you will find that industry R&D, which leans more towards engineering than science, still consists of making substantial novel improvements to existing art. The difference is merely in how the usefulness of improvements is judged - academia judges improvements on their novelty and ability to create new lines of questioning, while industry judges improvements on their usefulness to applications. Plenty of those useful improvements will happen to be novel, however! We don't have a problem of industry not producing novel ideas, we actually have a problem with industry producing a lot of novel ideas but not being very good at sharing them with the wider community.
Based on your comment I assume you're in computer science or an adjacent field. Working in embedded engineering, I can tell you that I use a lot of the ideas that CS academia outputs - and I have to modify them *substantially* for them to be useful in application.
So don't despair, you won't be stuck doing rote implementation of algorithms while academics are out having all the fun. You'll have plenty of novel work to do, and your publishing background may allow you to help with the problem of industry failing to share its improvements, your employer permitting.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: I did the same thing some 20 years ago and had severe doubts about my choice.
I was not a top-notch scientist, but very interested in new technologies. I loved to teach though. The jump was even bigger than you, going from physics to IT.
I never looked back.
Sure, I did not publish anything directly and my scientific knowledge was reduced dramatically.
But there were so, so many positive aspects - way bigger than the drawbacks (of course this is very individual and subjective)
* First, money. I have a family and a life outside of work so I want to be able to live comfortably while I can profit from it.
* Second, funding. I am not anymore in a frantic search for grants or kneeling before some boards to get money to travel, for a laptop or whatever.
* Third, the medieval culture. In academia, it was a [matrix](https://www.aaronslepkov.com/images/368831798.jpg) and you had to pay your respects. In the industry, you may have a lot of bullshit and buzzwords, but in R&D you will likely avoid it to some point.
* and then several others without a particular order: work/life balance, traveling, international relationships by default, ...
If you are very lucky, you may still publish - but it may not be that important anymore (no more publish or perish). You can manage PhD students which is very rewarding intellectually.
Science will always be in my heart, I kept very close relations with my friends who stayed in academia. I moved forward, though, and I am now part of a highly innovative industry and do not regret it.
I will probably discuss with my company about teaching at the university as a *pro bono* activity for our society (especially at less fortunate schools). This is another thing you can consider.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_11: I don't know what industry you're in or what type of company you're working for, but many of those aspects of academia you mention are still present in a corporate environment.
You mentioned worrying about not staying current with published research. The last two places I've worked have been fairly large companies, and they've had corporate subscriptions to various library services. Anybody in the company could freely access a wide variety of research journals. It's usually pretty easy to request the company add a subscription to another journal that's relevant to whatever I'm working on. You can have access to all the information you need to stay current, and the company pays for it. Some companies will even cover the costs for attending an academic conference on a relevant topic. If your company doesn't have resources like that, don't underestimate what's available in your community. Public libraries often have access to a variety of research journals (a good librarian can find you *anything*), and some community colleges will let locals use their library resources for a small membership fee. Professional societies ([ACM](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Association_for_Computing_Machinery), [ASME](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Society_of_Mechanical_Engineers), etc.) are also a great way to keep your knowledge up to date and have access to things like conference publications.
Also, companies publish research a lot more often than you might think. You can see published papers when companies partner with university research groups, or want to attract other organizations to research the same topic. One of the most common cases, though are so-called *defensive publications*. These are ways of releasing research publicly so that it becomes [prior art](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prior_art) and prevents anyone from patenting it in the future. Maybe the company decides not to commercialize the idea *right now* and doesn't want to risk someone else's patent blocking them if they change their mind down the road. Maybe they hope the technology will become part of an industry standard (many standards bodies do not allow patent-encumbered technology). I - despite being on a "non-publishing team" - was a co-author on a couple of papers for technologies that my company ultimately decided not to pursue, but were very similar to something that we *did* commercialize. Publishing our research helped build a safety margin against patent trolls. A lot of these defensive publications get published through special-purpose publication services (such as Questel's [*Research Disclosure*](https://www.researchdisclosure.com/), or IBM's own [Technical Disclosure Bulletin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_Technical_Disclosure_Bulletin)) that are designed for maximum visibility by lawyers and patent examiners, not necessarily maximum visibility by other researchers, so the academic world doesn't always see them. Those papers can, however, rack up a very large number of citations on patents.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: This question is egarding an article in a past publication in a journal or conference proceedings with two or more authors.
If subsequently, i.e., in the post publication period any of the authors desires to mention/record their respective individual contributions or part attributions, how may that be done?
Are there procedures by publishers to record comments by previous authors through any post publication consent form about authorship claims and copyrights?
Or is it better to write a separate new paper maybe including new updated exclusive individual researches?<issue_comment>username_1: There is no formal mechanism for doing what you're asking (if I correctly understand you). The only possible grounds under which a journal will agree to add a note to a published work is in the case of an error, or a retraction (for whatever reason). Any further work and contributions should go into a *next* manuscript, where you can properly record the author-wise contributions.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: No, it doesn't happen in a recognized forum and for a reason. It is a monumentally bad idea to regularly publish author disputes, which would happen inevitably. There are many (many) questions here from writers with disputes over authorship. Allowing them to continue in public post-publication will do no one any good.
The appropriate way to do this is in a "Contributions" section of the paper itself. All authors need to sign off on that. Some fields have traditions about author order, somehow expressing level of contribution, even if poorly. Other fields assume equal contribution, even if not the same *kind* of contribution in all papers unless otherwise stated in the paper itself.
But any authorship disputes or negotiations should end with the publication of the paper, IMO. Focus on the next intellectual contribution. Work with people you trust. Collaborate.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm currently a master's student studying theoretical physics. I've been really interested in a research project done by a postdoc from a different university. I was wondering if it would be appropriate if I ask him about the possible research opportunities. I'm not quite sure how I may want to ask, as I'm from a different institution. Should I also let him know I'm just interested in this project and would be happy to volunteer? Thanks!<issue_comment>username_1: If you want to ask about collaboration it is fine and collaboration with peers is not paid. But, you have to have something to add to the "team" to make this proper. If you just want their help, they will probably decline as it might interfere with their own duties.
If you want to ask them about life as a postdoc it is also fine. They might help or not, depending on how much time they have to spare.
If you want to ask them about whether their current institution is a good place to be it is fine, as well, but if it is really bad, they might not want to reveal their pain. That is an outlier, though.
But, if you are really interested in their work, then some sort of contact might be useful to both of you. Would you give them feedback on a paper in progress? That might be of mutual benefit. And a contact now might lead to more substantial things in the future once you get established. A wide circle of contacts and collaborators is a valuable thing.
But first, think about what you have to offer, not just about what you hope to get.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: This is called *networking* --- it's perfectly fine and appropriate and it is a normal part of building a professional career. Research collaborations across different universities are perfectly normal in academia and there is usually no requirement to be enrolled at, or affiliated with, another university in order to participate in research with academics there.
Researchers at universities are sometimes interested in having people help on their projects (particularly if they are volunteers) but as a Masters student you may or may not have enough background to contribute in a meaningful way. For these kinds of requests you should look at the matter from the perspective of the other party --- try to think of things you can contribute (taking account of the fact that you are only a Masters student) that can add value to the project.
In any case, it doesn't hurt to express an interest in the research field of another person and ask if there are opportunities. Good luck.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm writing a section of my thesis in LaTeX that belongs to a state of the art chapter. This section contains the summary of a scientific article (many sentences are copied literally while others are summarised) and also some figures coming from the same article.
I need to cite scientific articles and space missions about trajectories to near-Earth objects, hence everything I write comes from documents where I selected some paragraphs/sections and I want to report these in my thesis. From here, the need to put a single quotation at the beginning of my sections.
I would like to insert the citation once at the beginning so as not to repeat it in every paragraph as follows:
```
\subsection{title}
The article [1] reviews the methodology used by...
```
By clicking on "[1]" the reader can immediately read all information about the source, so this is an hyperlink to the bibliography of my thesis.
Is this correct? Should the figures be cited individually or is the citation as indicated above sufficient?<issue_comment>username_1: If you want to ask about collaboration it is fine and collaboration with peers is not paid. But, you have to have something to add to the "team" to make this proper. If you just want their help, they will probably decline as it might interfere with their own duties.
If you want to ask them about life as a postdoc it is also fine. They might help or not, depending on how much time they have to spare.
If you want to ask them about whether their current institution is a good place to be it is fine, as well, but if it is really bad, they might not want to reveal their pain. That is an outlier, though.
But, if you are really interested in their work, then some sort of contact might be useful to both of you. Would you give them feedback on a paper in progress? That might be of mutual benefit. And a contact now might lead to more substantial things in the future once you get established. A wide circle of contacts and collaborators is a valuable thing.
But first, think about what you have to offer, not just about what you hope to get.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: This is called *networking* --- it's perfectly fine and appropriate and it is a normal part of building a professional career. Research collaborations across different universities are perfectly normal in academia and there is usually no requirement to be enrolled at, or affiliated with, another university in order to participate in research with academics there.
Researchers at universities are sometimes interested in having people help on their projects (particularly if they are volunteers) but as a Masters student you may or may not have enough background to contribute in a meaningful way. For these kinds of requests you should look at the matter from the perspective of the other party --- try to think of things you can contribute (taking account of the fact that you are only a Masters student) that can add value to the project.
In any case, it doesn't hurt to express an interest in the research field of another person and ask if there are opportunities. Good luck.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I wrote a paper in mathematics and I would like to present it to the right community of experts.
I believe that the work might be of interest both to geometers and analysts. Hence I am thinking to propose it to two seminars on my department: analysis and geometry.
**Is it common to present the same work on two different seminars on the same department? Is there any conflict of interests here?**<issue_comment>username_1: It is not common. It would be easier to choose just one seminar, or try to arrange a "joint session" of the two seminars.
But if you must present twice, I think it would be OK, as long as you make a best effort to be transparent about it, and no one is surprised, especially the people who run the seminars, and those who choose to listen to both talks don't feel that their time was wasted. If you don't satisfy these conditions, then there's a problem.
I suggest that you make it clear in the announcement for seminar A that yiu will present substantially the same results that you also plan to present in seminar B, but from A standpoint. Likewise for B. And then you make the A and B discussions different enough so that listening to both won't be redundant.
Of course, this assumes that both sets of people who run your seminars agree to your proposal. If only one seminar accepts your talk, then you'll only present there. And if your department is so political that even proposing the above arrangement might unreasonably offend or anger someone, then you should not even propose it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't see any ethical issue here. Perhaps there is an institutional issue (time, space,...) but not an ethical one.
Comments have correctly stated that you can just use advertising among the various groups to get everyone to attend a general talk.
But, there is another option. If you want to give two seminar talks, make them sufficiently different and tailor them to the specific audience. If something in your work is especially interested to those in analysis, build a talk around that. Build another talk around another field. Offer them sequentially, perhaps, once you know how the first was received.
---
I think you are misreading the feedback you got at the conference. The person may have been unhappy that you were there feeling that you might poach on their work and that you had the skills and interest to do so. There is a fair amount of that going on, both fear and poaching. But it wasn't an ethical problem on your part.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: If these two seminars normally have disjoint audiences, I see no problem whatsoever with this. There is even an advantage to use exactly the same title and abstract in the sense that then it should be clear for people that it doesn't make sense to go to both seminars (which they wouldn't normally do anyway).
However I think it'd be a strange thing to do if seminars of one group are regularly advertised to the other group and there is regular audience overlap, because then "the standard thing" is that people from both groups go to the same seminar if they're interested, and two seminars on the same topic are not needed.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I finished my Ph.D. in mechanical engineering back in 2018. Recently, I found out that my Ph.D. thesis was not published by the university online. It is just in paper form at the university library.
Can I somehow publish my thesis online and get paid royalties for it? If yes, how? I know I have to ask permission to my university, but first I would like to decide what to do.<issue_comment>username_1: Most likely **no**. It is rather the opposite: you might be approached by quite a few publishers that offer to publish your thesis but you will have to pay them and you are most likely not getting anything (at least not financially). Yes, academia is quite an odd field.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: First you need to settle the copyright issue. Who holds it and if it isn't you then what license do you hold from the copyright owner? I doubt that even if a university holds the copyright that they would prevent you publishing your own work. It is more complicated, however, if the work can't be considered a "sole" work due to having been done in a research lab. But settle that first. Part of that is any issues of confidentiality that might arise.
In particular, I would consider a university explicitly monetizing the "sole works" of its students to be very wrong.
Assuming that you have the rights to do it you still have some issues. Publishing "online" is unlikely to result in any monetary payback unless you find a way to put it behind a paywall which has upfront as well as continuing costs. Publishing on arXiv, for example, doesn't pay you anything other than possible "reputation points".
You can, with the appropriate rights, turn it into a book. Some publishers might be interested and would pay royalties, but you will find, almost always, that those disappear within a couple of years.
You can also self-publish a book, perhaps through Amazon.com who provide support for such things. The upfront cost to authors is zero, but it is difficult for potential readers to find such things so the payment you get from the effort will likely be small unless most of the potential readers already know how to find it (and you). If you have an extensive online presence or otherwise high visibility in your field then it might be possible. I've self published textbooks successfully, but literally everyone interested already knew me and how to find my university website. But even that ends after a few years as the needs of the curriculum change.
Note that while a work might be important in a scientific field, the actual audience for it might still be small. The hugely profitable books are more likely to be popularizations of academic work such as those by <NAME>, who did real science, but was widely known for his more general explanations which were accessible to non-experts.
To sum it up. It is probably more effort than it is (monetarily) worth. There may be other "paybacks", but in visibility and reputation.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: About getting paid: A publisher can only pay you if someone else pays them for access to your thesis. That should prompt you to consider who the audience for your thesis is? Who would pay money to read it?
In reality, the market for PhD theses is quite small. Very few of us write about topics of either such importance, or so eloquently, that others are willing to pay for reading our theses.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: It's unlikely that you will be able to get your published thesis be paid. There might be a few people who would be willing to pay to read your thesis because many universities and institutes have switched to an open access policy.
If no one else pays for the privilege of reading or critiquing your work, then you should ask yourself who will be interested in seeing what you have to say.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: It may depend on the institution, but often in order to defend a PhD one has to sign an agreement which settles exactly what you are asking for. Could it be you have done it, and forgot?
Yes, there are books based on PhD theses. They often benefit from additional editing suggested or required by the publisher. Of course releasing such book, or even posting your thesis online requires to follow the agreement with the institution.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: If you are willing to put in the effort, and your dissertation is on an important-enough topic with a large-enough audience, it's possible a publisher will publish it.
Putting in the effort: see [this source](https://www.mup.com.au/blog/turning-your-thesis-into-a-book). You'll need some serious rewriting of your thesis, since it is now aimed at a different audience. Things like an Abstract or an Introduction need to be removed, and the common "this thesis is structured as follows, in chapter 1 we do X, in chapter 2 we do Y" also needs to be reworked.
Important-enough topic with large-enough audience: is your thesis on something trendy? Does it have major practical consequences? Did your thesis lead to patents or new + superior technologies that would not have existed otherwise? One way to tell if the answer is "yes" is if your thesis is generating a lot of views/citations/denials. If you don't know these statistics, you can ask your librarian.
If you are willing to put in the effort and your topic is important enough, then there's a chance a publisher will be willing to publish it. The next step is to approach a publisher with a publication proposal. Here's an example from [Springer](https://springer.public.springernature.app/link/publish-a-book). You'll need to show why you are qualified to write a book - a PhD alone is not enough to be considered an authority - and why you expect the book to do well (Springer does not explicitly ask for these, but I can virtually guarantee that they'll be evaluating it internally). You can cite the research you did for "important enough topic" above to answer the latter question. You might also be asked for sample chapters. Your university press might be the best place to start, since they are the ones most likely to be willing to take a financial risk by publishing your book.
If the publisher agrees to your proposal, then they'll handle everything else, from drafting a contract to performing typesetting, etc.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: Many dissertations, at least in the United States, are sent to [ProQuest](https://about.proquest.com/en/dissertations/student-authors/), often a requirement of the institution. You can also submit your thesis, even if your institution does not require submission.
ProQuest archives dissertations, makes them searchable, and sells printed copies, microfilm versions, and online PDFs. They also sell subscriptions to many libraries. A [royalty is paid](https://about.proquest.com/en/dissertations/proquest-dissertations-frequently-asked-questions/proquest-dissertations-authors-frequently-asked-questions/#royalties) when copies are sold, or somebody accesses your dissertation via a subscription.
Their searchable database is useful for accessibility, particularly if your institution does not have some sort of online repository. If you are interested in getting paid however, I have never heard of anybody receiving any money from them because the minimal audience and readership in most theses.
(In fact, when I submitted mine, they hooked me on fancy bound printed versions of my thesis, so I spent more buying copies for myself and my parents then I ever will get in royalties.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_8: tl;dr: You must not restrict access to your thesis.
---------------------------------------------------
Public access to research findings is important for the scientific community and for society as a whole. Government-enforced restrictions on copying published works originate in repressive and censorial measures by the British monarchy (read about the [Statute of Queen Anne](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Anne)) - and we should not condone them. It is immoral to prevent people from being able to copy your thesis; and - it is detrimental even to your personal interest, of it being widely read, having greater influence, and inspiring others in their research and applied work.
Projects like [SciHub](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sci-Hub) (wikipedia.org) and [Library Genesis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis) (wikipedia.org) exist for the sole purpose of circumventing such nefarious attempts to limit access to publications only to those who pay. If you publish behind a paywall, your thesis will likely end up in one of these archives. Why not publish it freely to begin with, so that search engines and personal websites can more easily link to it?
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_9: Fields differ in what they consider to be the primary "unit" of scholarly output. In computer science conference presentations (e.g., at NeurIPS or a SIG Conference) are highly regarded; biomedicine places much more weight on journal articles instead. A few fields, especially in the humanities, expect academics to write books.
In these fields, it's not uncommon for a dissertation to form the backbone of a person's first book. However, it generally isn't published as-is: one writes a book proposal for potential publishers and revises/expands the text. It is a *lot* of work and the goal is generally (academic) career advancement rather than the commercial success of the book itself.
Unfortunately, I don't think mechanical engineering is a very book-driven field, but your advisor or thesis committee could probably tell you more. If you're interested in the process, this book is often recommended: <https://www.worldcat.org/title/from-dissertation-to-book/oclc/56329536>
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I need to emphasize on the positive aspect of the fact that someone has already worked on the topic I am including in a paper. So, I want to have a connecting sentence such as "Fortunately, the topic has already been explored...", however I know that words such as "fortunately" are not perceived well in academic writing. Any other suggestions for words or phrases that keep the positivity without sounding unprofessional?<issue_comment>username_1: “Happily” is one that I use (but I also don’t really see an issue with “fortunately”).
On the topic of whether these terms are appropriate for academic writing: If you take the point of view that papers are communicating "facts", then avoiding terms that impart subjective judgement can be a reasonable view to take.
Papers are not always just listings of facts, however: the papers I find most useful are about the relationship and interplay between ideas and bodies of thought. In this case, "fortunately" (or "happily" in its "by happenstance" meaning) both convey the idea that there is no default expectation that someone not working on the writer's specific problem would have considered the subtopic at hand, but that it turns out people working on another topic do care about it and have explored its nuances.
By highlighting the idea that "this next step should be hard, but is unexpectedly easy", words like "fortunately" provide context and can help the author shape the reader's understanding of the concepts and how they fit together.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't think your supervisor's feedback was to indicate the specific word "fortunately" is a problem but rather that you *should not express "positive aspect of the situation"* or other emotional or value judgments. If the sentiment is fine to express, then "fortunately" is a perfectly reasonable word to use.
If you want a synonym, you can use a [thesaurus](https://www.thesaurus.com/browse/fortunately), but I don't think that will actually be a solution here that will appease your supervisor and there is no magic list of professional and not-professional words that mean the same thing.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I don't think you need anything there. The same just without "fortunately" explains perfectly well that you don't have to do this as others have done it before. I don't buy that "I need to emphasize that it is very fortunate...".
While I wouldn't say that "fortunately" is unprofessional or really problematic (and I wouldn't complain about it too loudly), I don't like it, because I as a reader of a scientific text am interested in the facts and not in whether XXX makes you happy or not. Using it means that you bother me with something that I (in this kind of text) don't want to be bothered with.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: *I think this is an excellent example where it is short-sighted to condemn a word in general, and instead one has to think about why the word is problematic and whether that actually applies in the given context.*
I think your supervisor’s concern stems from the fact that it is good practice to take a neutral stance on scientific results to avoid exhibiting a bias or inducing it. For example, I would indeed consider it unprofessional to write:
>
> Fortunately, the solution of this equation is 42.
>
>
>
**However,** this is not what you are doing. Your *fortunately* is about scientific progress, not about the outcome of your study. If you so wish, science is inherently biased towards this anyway. If it is about the circumstances that allow you to further human knowledge¹, I see no issue with using *fortunately,* e.g., when writing something like:
>
> Fortunately, we already know the solution to this equation since it has already been intensively studied on account of its relevance to the field of underwater basket weaving.
>
>
>
Mind that you still need to judge whether this word really improves your communication. It may still be that your specific *fortunately* is superfluous, since the fortunate nature of what you are describing is apparent and it is not needed for the text flow either.
Finally, since you were asking for alternatives:
If somebody considers expressing your opinion on how research fits together problematic, a synonym won’t solve this.
---
¹ There are some rather obvious limitations to this, e.g., you wouldn’t want to find it fortunate that we know something on account of blatantly unethical experiments conducted in a darker age.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_5: I don't think it is the word, but just how the word is used. As in "Luckily, the opposing player missed the goal" which literally says the opposing play is lucky when the intent is that the person speaking is lucky. You need to say who is fortunate, or thankful, or whatever.
Using informal grammar makes your work much harder to read by those for whom English is not a primary language.
Of course, your advisor might have meant something else.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_6: The simple alternative is not to add any personal judgement:
>
> "The topic has already been explored..."
>
>
>
Adding "Fortunately" is just a filler: Either it is already clear why you find this fortunate, in which case the statement is not needed, or it is not clear, in which case just stating so does not help. Referring to another work already has a positive connotation by default, as otherwise you would be expected to discuss any conflicts or contradictions to your own work.
If there is a *specific* reason why you think the existing work is positive (or negative!) for your own, then prefer to name that reason:
>
> "We do not provide a thorough proof in this paper since the topic has already been explored..."
>
>
>
>
> "The topic is of general importance for our domain, as has already been explored..."
>
>
>
This expresses the positive aspect in a factual way and helps the reader gauge how the referenced work ties into your own.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_7: There's nothing wrong with "fortunately", as most people here are saying, but if you want to impress with your word power, just drop in the near-synonym "fortuitously". Nobody uses that one in everyday conversation, so it *must* be highly academic.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: The question: is it appropriate or helpful to bring up life-impacting personal problems with your academic advisor?
I know that details are typically required here, but for obvious reasons I'm being concise. Assume anything negative is being extremely understated.
My fiance left me, but before they did they made sure to do everything possible to make it as painful as it could be. All-in-all it was quite sudden, dramatic, and has affected the quality of my work. For the last two weeks, I have done the bare minimum to keep up the appearance of work (attended some presentations, made a couple slides, and whatnot).
My advisor is genuinely a nice person and has gone out of their way to help students before with health and housing problems, but I'm not sure this is the kind of problem that should be brought up in an academic environment. However, the impact on my ability to do research is great and I've even considered leaving the university.<issue_comment>username_1: That depends on your general relationship with them. My relationship with mine was rather formal, so it probably wouldn't have been a good idea. We weren't "friendly". There were other members of the faculty that I interacted with, however, that I'd have been comfortable sharing personal details with.
So, if your relationship is strictly professional rather than personal, perhaps not. But if you, say, lunch together or baby-sit their kids (my experience) then I don't see any issues.
However, if this is affecting you so much that you are considering leaving, then you need two kinds of advice. One is from a personal counsellor who can perhaps help you over the issue. But it might also be necessary to talk to the advisor about the possibility of leaving and the reasons for this will probably come up naturally in any conversation. They are not likely, however, to have the skill to give you the first sort of advice, but might be able to provide you some space and time to sort it out. Good luck.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I'm very sorry about your experience.
I think that this is helpful for the advisor to know, and I for sure don't think it's inappropriate to tell them, so I'm generally positive, although I also think it depends on the personality of your advisor and your exact work relationship whether it's a good idea. There are some people I wouldn't tell something like this, but these are rather exceptions than the rule, and I think that an advisor should generally be open for such information.
Note however that such things are only acceptable as excuses to a limited amount. Everybody should understand that your work can be affected by such things, however it is ultimately your responsibility to pick yourself up from this and to hopefully return to full work energy as soon as you can. It is one thing to inform your advisor and maybe have a chat with them about it; it is quite another thing to not do many things that you are meant to do and to try to get away with it based on this reason. Obviously I have no indication that you intend to do this, and in fact such things may harm your work energy a lot, so there may be some understanding indeed. Still, the probability that the advisor will react positively is much higher if you tell them this as information (and let it open to them to what extent this means they will accept a temporary lack of commitment to work) rather than as excuse in advance.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I do think it's okay to bring it up with your advisor particularly if you trust them and if you are bringing it up to see if your advisor can help you with finding resources to help you during this tough time.
I used to be an advisor and students would share what was going on with them and if they needed resources. Know that if you share something that is out of your academic advisor's area of expertise they may refer you to a different resource on campus. If a student disclosed something to me that was more appropriate for someone in Student Health Services to discuss that I'd let the student know that. I'd often help them with setting up an appointment or even walking them over during walk-in hours if the student wasn't familiar with where the center was located or wanted someone they trusted to walk over to a new office with them.
Depending on your degree/program and where you are at in the semester your academic advisor might be able to help you in terms of extensions, if the drop deadline hasn't passed and you need to lighten your load this term, or see if it's possible to switch to pass/fail vs a letter grade for a course. These are all things I've helped students with when I was in academia. Good luck to you.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: There was a funny article about how much detail to provide in an excuse, including a two dimensional scale of excuses from "I don't feel well" to "it's coming out both ends".
That was for physical illness but in this case it's the same idea. Your choices aren't just tell your advisor every gory detail or say nothing. There is a lot of middle ground there: in this case you can tell your advisor that you're going through an emotionally rough time because a long-term relationship has ended and that you realize it is impacting your work but it is very recent and you are processing it as best you can. And depending on how they react to that you can include more detail or not.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_5: I think the previous answers have covered the *Should I tell my advisor...* portion of your question. I want to address the *...considered leaving the university* bit.
When we're wounded in one part of our life, it is normal to withdraw from everything, so wanting to leave the university is a completely natural response. However, this is not the time to make such a big decision.
You have just experienced a loss that was beyond your control. Staying at/leaving the university is *your* choice, and it is a decision you should make *after* you've recovered from this trauma.
Give yourself some time; the right answers will come if you just stay still.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: If there are specific protocols in your College's constitution, please follow them.
Failing that, doesn't this seem to be something you should first tell your doctor, or other counsellor?
If you get a medical certificate yes, take that to your Advisor.
If not, why bother your advisor with a purely personal problem?
Upvotes: -1
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<issue_start>username_0: I keep reading that we should absolutely avoid personal pronouns in papers, however, a lot of the academic papers I have read on google scholar use "our work", "our approach", "we define", etc. So, what are the rules on personal pronouns?<issue_comment>username_1: It is possible to overdo the "we" usage and result in an arrogant tone. It is possible to refuse to use "we" and result in stilted writing.
My advice, and it is just opinion, I guess, is that you should write clearly to be understood. You can use "we" if you like, or not. You can use passive voice, or not. But if you value some rule over clarity, you are probably doing it wrong.
Einstein: "It is said that E=mc^2."
There are also different sorts of papers. In pure math papers and other highly technical work the phrasing is more likely to be on the "thing itself", so the authors/creators are more in the background. Not a lot of "we" usage, generally. An introduction might include "In section 3, we show...", but not a lot more than that.
In much of the writing I do, however, more in the human aspects of software creation, I tend to use we, even when writing as a sole author. But the overall tone of that writing is to "invite" the reader to become part of the process of discovery. So, the "we" means "you and I", not "me". But clarity must still rule.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: The main advice here is to read the "guidelines for authors" of the journals you submit to. There are no general rules, but many journals have their own rules.
I think the general idea here is that scientific results and facts should be impersonal, i.e., they should hold regardless of the author, and they should be presented so that this is expressed.
Personally however I think that this can be misleading, and that authors should rather be encouraged to present personal choices honestly as personal choices, which would require personal pronouns. Same for interpretations, and also there can be space for personal opinions in papers, for example regarding what is worthwhile for future research, or what of a battery of outcomes is most important, or what practical consequences this should have. Of course arguments should be given, but I think taking explicit responsibility by writing "I" or "we" would be a good thing. But it may be against journal guidelines.
By the way, in places I find single authors using "we" to avoid writing "I". My interpretation of this is that it implicitly suggests that the reader and everyone else should agree with what the author writes, and I don't like it. The author should take responsibility, and the reader themselves should decide whether they agree. (Of course I'm not claiming that authors who use this style consciously intend to convey this "implicit message"; I'm aware many just do it because somebody told them they should avoid "I", or they see many others doing it.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I would argue that in some fields, religiously avoiding pronouns in writing is bad writing at best and misleading at worst. Sure, there is a notion that the results should be generalizable and objective, but if it is not a purely theoretical field where anyone could check the proofs if they so wish, the authors also assume both the credit and the responsibility for experimental results. For *in natura* experiments in particular, details about their conditions are indispensable. One might opt for presenting the results as "X was observed", but avoiding the notion that these results were obtained at a specific place and time could not - and should not - be done. If this impartiality is being removed anyway, why bend over backwards to change everything to passive voice just to avoid these pesky pronouns in writing?
Referencing your own earlier results is a more complex topic. If "our methodology" is plastered all over the text, it raises questions: are authors even knowledgeable about their peers' research and are they faithfully representing the most up-to-date knowledge in the field? On the other hand, references to prior research may be very natural, especially in Materials and Methods: again, mentioning the authors for every other research item listed but your own is very odd.
And finally, there are cases - niche in some fields, ubiquitous in other - where the authors are the only one working on a narrow topic or with specific equipment. Huge collaborations such as those working at LHC would, naturally, lean towards passive voice in writing, small ones would use more pronouns, but this is a stylistic choice more or less mirroring informal speech patterns. "We saw" is a natural way to describe the experiment when it had 4 people working in the lab but a bit weird one when it had hundreds of people involved.
Upvotes: 0
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