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<issue_start>username_0: *NOTE: I had asked this question in [here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/48921/how-many-hours-a-day-on-mathematics-as-a-successful-student), in my edit, but since it is irrelevant to that question, I moved it here as it is a separate question...*
I chose to study bulky books instead of attending lectures or studying lecture notes, because I thought that studying every line of the books would enable me to have a rich access to the largest possible knowledge in my mind (not in the library) to have more creativity in time of doing research. By that, I mean I thought that the more techniques I would know, the more able I could be to test many 'keys' to open impenetrable problems. Unfortunately, due to never being in a university environment (as I am a high school student) I couldn't ask it whether I am wrong or not. I would truly appreciate it if someone would please guide me regarding that issue: Does more knowledge enhance chance of solving challenging problem in **mathematics**?
(Supposing that someone who has learned a lot of stuff [will not forget it](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/38518/what-is-the-best-way-to-retain-learned-materials?rq=1) with the passage of time)
**Added to express my question more clear** - My personal opinion is that the more problems (few from each of many different types not many from each of limited diversity) you solve the more expert you become in maths. This can include 'slow'-extension (i.e. not a breakthrough); e.g. after learning definitions and some theorems regarding different types of spaces in General Topology finding their relationships with each other as exercise. This approach can be (IMHO) helpful for many different situations from IMO participants to graduate research students. But, **Does it helpful or harmful for being sharp to do a breakthrough research in Mathematics (like works of Gödel or Perelman)?**<issue_comment>username_1: I think that, *under all other conditions being equal*, being exposed to larger knowledge base is (might be) beneficial for quality of research. The "other conditions being equal" condition (no pun intended) is important, as there might be other, more important in a particular context, factors that have greater positive effect on research quality and/or originality than just volume of knowledge.
Several such famous factors come to my mind. The first is the [Eureka effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eureka_effect). The second is the [deliberate practice](http://expertenough.com/1423/deliberate-practice) concept, which includes the famous 10000 hours heuristic, based on [research](http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf) by <NAME> and popularized by <NAME> in his book "Outliers". However, note that the role of deliberate practice in mastering a subject domain (to an expert level) recently has been actively challenged by research studies (i.e., see [this one](http://pss.sagepub.com/content/25/8/1608)). Finally, the third factor that I believe is important (and in many cases might be more important than other factors, including the volume of knowledge) is the ability to see and/or analyze a topic through different mental/conceptual "lenses" (for details and references, see Wikipedia articles on [perspectivism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspectivism) and [cognitive perspective](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perspective_%28cognitive%29)).
Therefore, considering the points above, I think that the answer to your question is **"Maybe"**.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Intuitively, of course the answer should be yes. Surprisingly, however, in reality the answer is sometimes *no*.
A common saying, which to the best of my knowledge has no known attribution, goes something along the lines of: "The fools didn't know it was impossible, so they did it!"
To achieve a significant original scientific contribution, you need to know enough to have a sound basis to build upon. You also need to avoid immersing yourself too deeply in conventional wisdom and groupthink, or else you are likely to have your originality bleed away from you.
Moreover, every hour spent reading the works of another is an hour *not* spent producing works of your own. But of course, you can waste a huge amount of time if you end up reinventing another's idea or miss an important clue in somebody else's work. So across a scientific life, you will end up wobbling back and forth on a balance between spending more time acquiring knowledge and spending more time generating it yourself. Early in your career, you will spend most of your time acquiring knowledge, because you need to get to a point where you can understand what is unknown well enough to begin grappling with it meaningfully. Later you may spend more time working on creating new knowledge, but must also keep up with your reading to keep from going stale.
Even in old and well established fields, however, it's surprisingly easy to get out to the edge of human knowledge and find yourself tangling with some of the interesting things we do not know. Like, [how do cats drink water?](http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2010/cat-lapping-1112) We only learned that a couple of years ago. Heck, we're still figuring out [how bicycles work](http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/2011/04/researchers-explain-why-bicycles-balance-themselves)!
If you don't have enough knowledge, you may not notice that there's a problem worth solving there, and you certainly won't have the tools to solve it. If you're too saturated in the knowledge of others, you might not notice the problem either, because you might end up accepting their explanations instead.
In sum: you must know your fundamentals, know your field, and know how to go looking for specific pieces of additional knowledge. But knowledge is not originality, and although knowledge often supports originality, it can also interfere with it.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: My own experience and observation of how some fellow students became very successful researchers suggests that doing what you describe is actually detrimental.
As someone else mentioned, every hour you spend studying these thick books is an hour away from research. But the actual effect is more insidious than that. In mathematics, there are two issues. One is that often to write a mathematically accurate text, you have to build up a lot of formalities, like definitions of how you use symbols, how you will handle edge cases, and proofs of little things that can actually obscure the main ideas. The whole point of attending a seminar or lecture is to see how an expert, possibly even the discoverer of the ideas in question, sees the subject. For research, sometimes this is all you need to know if it turns out you don't need to delve further into a topic, but even if you do delve deeper, knowing what are the main ideas is crucial and often not at all clear from a text, which is usually designed more to be an authoritative reference or complete in its exposition.
The other issue has to do with there being many ways to view one thing in mathematics. Experts build up very personal ways of viewing mathematics. I think this might be truer than in more experimental sciences. Even a well-studied area can be viewed in a way that's still correct but unusual enough to lead to new insights. A lot of famous mathematicians have arrived at new theories by just trying to understand old theories their own way, without being unduly influenced by the standard ways. I personally find it difficult to understand a proof that is coming from a different approach than what I'm comfortable with. To put it simply, sometimes your brain might be more hard-wired to understand something geometrically than algebraically or vice-versa. By learning to fill in the gaps in lectures your own way, you learn what works for you and you start to develop your own style of doing mathematics. If you're reading a very detailed or complete text, it can take you longer to understand simply because the author(s) might be more comfortable with using a particular tool than you are. One could argue that learning that tool is important, but I think there's something to be said for learning tools that come to you naturally. At the least, it's probably a more efficient approach.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: It is a delicate compromise really.
The benefits of having an encyclopedic knowledge of all areas of math are pretty clear. However, life is short, and you will be judged on the research you do from an early age.
Learning can be a form of procrastination. You also risk spreading yourself too thinly (learning the easy parts of many subjects but mastering none). Empirically, I observe that many mathematicians (ignoring Tao etc) are experts in a narrow field, and only have a superficial understanding of other areas.
With practice, it becomes easier to isolate the relevant parts of a proof, and extract the minimal technical information to apply it. You don't really need book "knowledge" of it.
It's also a matter of taste. I favour the "just enough education to perform" model. I am increasingly bored by learning, and prefer to work on new ideas all the time ("new" to me, anyway. I rely on chatting to people regularly as a screen against reproducing known results). I find it more efficient and fun to talk to people, than learning. Perhaps it comes down to your philosophy of life <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WrhzX3dRRiI> ;)
On the other hand, many ideas and techniques can be considered "core" mathematics. I think you basically *must* know these, if only so that you can talk to other mathematicians efficiently.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: What are the US equivalent ranks to the Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader (or Associate Prof), Professor ranks of the UK system?
Is it correct that in the US system they are Assistant Prof, Associate Prof, Full Prof and Chair/Endowed Prof, respectively?
I know that in the British system, there are further sub-levels in each of these ranks whereas in the US system there is no further gradation within each rank. So I am looking for only rough equivalence.
Edit: It would be great if a formal/informal reference which compares the two is also pointed out.<issue_comment>username_1: From the wiki pages <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_(United_States)> and <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_the_United_Kingdom>:
1. Entry level position
* UK: Lecturer
* USA: Assistant Professor
2. Mid-level
* UK: Senior Lecturer
* USA: Associate Professor
3. Upper-level
* UK: Reader
* USA: Professor
4. Highest level
* UK: Professor
* USA: Endowed Chair/Named Professor
Note 1. that in the USA, ranks #2 and higher are normally tenured. Tenure is handled different in the British system.
Note 2. The American rank of a named chair (aka named professorship, endowed chair) is distinct from the administrative head of a department, who is also often called the "Chair."
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Information in Wikipedia is not to be taken for granted. I woould rather suggest the following according to different categorisations in different countries
Lecturer is usually someone holding an MA (at least in most of the countries I know)
Senior Lecturer usually somewhere between MA and PhD
Assistant Professor definitely with PhD
Associate Professor with habilitation
Full Professor habilitation + many publications
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: Some new data: the University of Cambridge [recently decided](https://www.admin.cam.ac.uk/reporter/2020-21/weekly/6601/6601.pdf#page=31) to phase out the titles "lecturer", "senior lecturer", and "reader", adopting the following mapping of old titles to new titles:
* Lecturer (who is still on probation) -> Assistant Professor
* Lecturer (who has already passed probation) -> Associate Professor (Grade 9)
* Senior Lecturer -> Associate Professor (Grade 10)
* Reader -> Professor (Grade 11)
* Professor -> Professor
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: For those papers that have not been accepted, some people write "submitted to" in their CV and some others use "to appear in". I want to know the difference of "submitted to" and "to appear in". Thank you.<issue_comment>username_1: >
> For those papers that have not been accepted, some people write "submitted to" in their CV and some others use "to appear in".
>
>
>
Does anyone really use "to appear in" to refer to papers that have not been accepted yet? In my experience (mathematics in the U.S.), "to appear in" means "accepted, but not yet published", and it would be unethical to use it to describe papers that have not yet been accepted. It might occasionally happen, since not everyone acts ethically, but you wouldn't want to get caught doing that.
I can't rule out the possibility that other fields use these terms differently, but I'd strongly recommend sticking with "submitted to". It describes an objective fact, while "to appear in" is at best a prediction and could be viewed as an intentionally misleading statement.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: This is somewhat implicit in the other answer, but to spell it out: "Submitted" means that it has been submitted to the cited venue, but has not been reviewed and accepted yet. "To appear" or "in press" means that it has been accepted and is working its way through the rest of the publication process. If you know the exact edition of the journal or conference proceedings that it will be published in, "to appear" with a precise citation is probably more useful than "in press" since it points the reader to the exact place it will be findable and at what point in the future.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Two small additions to the other answers:
First, I have rarely seen "submitted to", but more often simply seen "submitted," with no journal or conference listed. The reason is simple: where you've submitted to makes no difference, since anybody can get any sort of trash rejected by a top journal. For a "to appear," however, the venue should always be included, since it means you've passed the standards of peer review for that publication.
Second, there is a third category that I have occasionally seen, "in revision." For areas that have a very slow review process, this can be useful for distinguishing that a publication has passed at least one round of peer review, even though it is not yet "to appear." It's still a pretty weak distinction from "submitted," however, so I wouldn't advise using it except for occasional edge cases with high-visibility journals.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: If one doesn't visit university/college and doesn't even take any courses in theoretical physics and learns PhD-level physics from other resources without stepping foot in college or university; Would it then become possible for him to do research?
Most people I've seen emphasize that "you need a real theoretical physicist as a teacher in order to become a theoretical physicist, and that will only happen if you go to college or university" but the Internet exists for a reason.
Most theoretical physicists that I have questioned about this, just have a feeling of *"I crossed the river, met a lot of people, cut many trees and spent a lot of time living in the woods coarsely to get a single apple. But he didn't do all of that and instead laid comfortably in a bed and received a single apple without doing anything."* In other words, it invokes jealousy or something similar.
In my opinion, learning what a doctoral candidate in theoretical physics knows isn't impossible but can be done with some patience and hard work, without going to college. ***But is it even possible to formulate a thesis or do research in the field and submit it to journals?***<issue_comment>username_1: It all depends on what you mean by "possible":
1. It's certainly possible in principle. Educating yourself to do high-quality theoretical physics research is within the range of human achievements, and if you manage to do this, then you will be able to publish your work in professional journals.
2. It's probably not possible in practice. Most people who would be capable of becoming good theoretical physicists would find it extremely difficult without teaching, mentoring, and guidance. Most people who think they have taught themselves to do high-quality research are completely wrong. Doing this successfully seems to require a rare combination of talent, motivation, and favorable circumstances. (For every Ramanujan, there are thousands of actual crackpots.)
3. Graduate school is not an obstacle to becoming a researcher, but rather a form of assistance. Even if you can teach yourself to do research on your own, it will be much harder to achieve your full potential without mentors as well as a larger community of peers.
I doubt the physicists you've spoken to are jealous, but rather skeptical of whether it's feasible. Even though it's theoretically possible, it's just not a reliable or promising plan.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Most people I've seen emphasize that "you need a real theoretical physicist as a teacher in order to become a theoretical physicist, and that will only happen if you go to college or university" but the Internet exists for a reason.
>
>
>
The people who told you this is are right. It is true that you can learn some theoretical physics by reading books or searching the internet. However, doing physics and reading physics are two very different processes. I won't go so far as to say that independent research without formal education is impossible, but one big reason why graduate school is a better alternative if you want to do science is the people you will meet in your program. By doing research with your peers and your advisor and attending journal clubs and lab meetings, for example, you learn how to think like a scientist and how quality science is done. Although the role of the human factor may seem unstructured and ambiguous, I think most people will agree that students become scientists by interacting and imitating the scientists around them, and this experience cannot be gained by simply browsing the internet.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: With a large amount of time and dilegence and patience, yes. A lot of colleges are moving towards opencourseware, some professors are doing their own youtube series and you can also look up what materials are assigned to the courses you would have had to had taken had you gone to college, acquire that same material (textbooks, etc) most if nothing else would be available at a colleges bookstore, most of which you can order online from, and simply read the material, watch the video series, challenge yourself etc.
In the long run, I used to argue that you didn't need college at all, in fact I've been an advocate for free/online courses long before video streaming was a thing. However, I would now say that although you could do it with out college you would be missing a huge advantage that colleges offer. With college that tell you what you need to know and consider the question, if you don't know then how do you know what you don't know and what you need to know? Sounds silly but its not. Colleges offer collaboration with peers which by itself is huge benefit.
Given the option, and given the options I would strongly recommend the college path.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I wonder whether there is any university that *requires* students to release their source code (or at least part of it) in order to obtain their PhD.<issue_comment>username_1: There's a much broader issue here having to do with copyright and patent rights on student thesis work. Laws vary from country to country. Within a single country, different universities may have different policies and even within a university a particular project might be funded by an external contract or grant that has further restrictions. Thus there's no completely general answer.
To the extent that students make use of university facilities and are paid by the university, and to the extent that the student's work is actually developed jointly by the student and the academic advisor, the university has some basis for claiming ownership of this "intellectual property."
Intellectual property is an all-encompassing term for patents, copyrights, and even trademarks, but the law governing each of these is very different, and using this term can easily lead to confusion. Administrators who use the term tend to be focused on giving the university as much control over intellectual property as possible and often use the phrase in ways that imply this control even when its not warranted. Thus it's a good idea to be more specific in talking about the different kinds of intellectual property.
Many universities have policies and explicit agreements about intellectual property that students are required to sign before they can begin work on research projects. Furthermore, if the student is funded by a research grant or contract they may have to agree to additional conditions. For grant funded research its not at all unusual for the grant to promise that all software developed will be open source, while for industry funded research it's not at all uncommon to have a requirement that copyright will be held by the funding organization (and the software will be kept proprietary.)
Some examples of policies on intellectual property that effect graduate students:
MIT: <http://web.mit.edu/policies/13/13.1.html>
University of Wisconsin-Madison: <https://research.wisc.edu/projectagreementsip/intellectualprop/>
It's also possible that the academic advisor will set requirements for publication of the software as a condition for agreeing to advise the student on a dissertation or thesis. For example, my practice is that at the start of an MS thesis or PhD Dissertation, I require the student to agree that software they develop in the project will be made available on an open source basis. If the student is unwilling to agree to this, then I may be unwilling to supervise the thesis. It's important that there be agreement on this before the project starts.
Even in the simplest case where the student's dissertation is simply a written document describing the research there can be intellectual property issues. Dissertations are traditionally "published" by the university in the sense that bound copies are placed in the library and made available to anyone who wants to borrow them. Many universities now publish dissertations electronically through their own repositories or through services like Proquest. In order to publish a dissertation in this way, the university has to require the student to give copyright permission (but not necessarily transfer the ownership of the copyright to the university.) The most common policy in this area is that the student owns the copyright to the dissertation but must license it to the university for publication and that this is a condition for receiving the degree.
To answer the OP's specific question, I'm not aware of any university that has a general policy that all software developed as part of a PhD dissertation or MS thesis must be "released" (as open source software) However, many universities have policies that say that the university owns the intellectual property and they could demand that the student give the software to the university and then release the software as open source software if they wanted to. This could also be required under the conditions of a research contract or grant, and it could simply be a requirement of the thesis advisor.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: *Note: My answer pertains to schools in the US.*
>
> Does any university require students to release their source code in order to graduate?
>
>
>
It depends on what you mean by "university." That is, I think there are fundamentally two different interpretations of your question. Since OP has not yet provided clarification, here goes ...
**Interpretation #1**
If what you want to know is:
>
> Are there *dissertation committees* which require students to release their source code in order to obtain approval of their dissertation?
>
>
>
The answer to this variant of the question is **yes,** this is fairly common in the engineering departments I am familiar with. Typically what is done if source code is required by the dissertation committee is that it is included in the dissertation appendix. Other alternatives include placing the source code online and citing it in the dissertation (e.g., placing the code on GitHub).
**Interpretation #2**
If, on the other hand, what you want to know is:
>
> Are there universities which adopt a *university-wide* requirement for students to release their source code in order to obtain approval of their dissertation?
>
>
>
The answer to this variant is (most likely) **no.**
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a bachelor student. I have been working with a PhD on an article. So the article was supposed to be co-authored; however, he was mainly going to edit my draft so it can be published. This is, the content of the article was actually my work, while the edition was going to be his part. I have e-mails with all the drafts I have sent to him until the final draft of the article. In these e-mails, one can see that he mainly suggested me to clarify some ideas or was trying to understand the ideas I was pointing out.
On the other hand, we have stopped working together. Thereby I sent him an e-mail, by recommendation of a professor, asking him if he had any inconvenience if I used my drafts for my bachelor thesis (in my country one first obtains the bachelor degree and then one must present the thesis). He answered that my drafts remain my work and that because of this I am free to use them.
The question which I would like to ask is if there would be any inconvenience if I wanted to publish this draft in a journal as long as it is actually my work. People have told me that as long as I have this e-mail where he is recognizing that my drafts remain my work, I would have no inconvenience, however, I wonder if this is enough for I did not ask him about using my drafts for publishing but just for my bachelor thesis.
I am wondering if he could accuse me of plagiarism if I would publish my work. I think that he could not do so because he has written to me that my drafts are my work and thereby I am free to use them. Besides this I have all the e-mails wherewith I could prove that the drafts are totally my production and that his contribution was mainly motivation and making me some suggestions or comments so that I can better clarify myself. Would that be enough in order I can publish my work without any fear of being accused of plagiarism?
Sending him an e-mail asking him directly is not really an option, for the relationship of work has gone deadly bad.<issue_comment>username_1: It is irrelevant whether you have any emails from anyone permitting you to use text. If you publish your bachelor's thesis and a journal article and there is text overlap between the two, someone may notice and may publish a review -- either in a journal or online -- noting that this can be construed to be plagiarism. One must strive for the utmost transparency in scientific writing. You could either publish the paper first, and then include it as part of the thesis, or you submit the thesis first and refer to it in the journal article. In that case you do not want there to be text identity. You are summarizing in your journal article.
Do make sure that you are not publishing with a predatory publisher that does not do rigorous peer review but only takes money for putting an article online.
The PhD you mentioned is not an author, and should not be listed as such, if they are only editing. You thank them in the acknowledgements, but only those who did the research and the writing should be listed as authors (see the Vancouver protocol).
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: Based on what you said I have the impression that you are the main contributor to this work and he only had some editorial comments. Therefore, you publishing this work, cannot be classified as plagiarism. (If you think his contribution was sufficient for him to expect you to give him some credit (e.g. second author) then you have to be careful because it may cause further complications between you and him. Besides, it is your responsibility to make sure he gets the credit he deserves)
Most of the times people won't actually act against each other in situations like this. I remember a few years ago, I was stuck in a situation where someone decided to publish a *team work* with his name as the first author, while it was clear to everybody that he was not the major contributor. My adviser sat me down and told me to let it go (and I accepted because he had good reasons). What I'm trying to say is that in cases like this your supervisor would usually mediate and smooths things out before it gets serious.
However, I think the chances of him even *trying* to accuse you of plagiarism are very slim. But even so, if you publish this work before him, he needs to have enough evidence that he had major contribution to the work. I assume that this is not the case and it is clear from the emails that were sent to you.
I suggest you to simply let your adviser know that you will try to publish this work and don't worry about the PhD student.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Your issue is rather one of authorship than of plagiarism and thus accusations of neglecting the PhD student in terms of authorship are what you should be worrying about.
First, you should ask yourself whether the PhD student’s contribution qualify him for authorship. For this, he would have to contributed intellectually to the science behind the paper – improving the explanations and writing does not count. Note that general ideas of what to research may be counted as this. For further information, I suggest that you browse [authorship](/questions/tagged/authorship "show questions tagged 'authorship'"). What you are describing sounds very much like the PhD should not be an author, though.
If you come to the conclusion that the PhD student should be an author, things become difficult, as most standards and journal policies require him to affirm the manuscript you will be going to submit, which may lead to all sorts of problems given your bad relationship.
If you come to the conclusion that the PhD should not be an author, you should only acknowledge him for “critical comments on previous versions of the manuscript” or something similar. You are doing nothing wrong in terms of laws, regulations or ethics when publishing the paper without him as an author¹. However, you taking some precautions to defend against possible accusations of stealing authorship may be a good idea:
* If the PhD student makes any claims of authorship, he has to back them up somehow. If those claims are wrong, he should only be able to do so by witness accounts of his alleged intellectual contributions. Probably the only plausible source of such accounts is your immediate research surrounding, i.e., supervisors, colleagues and similar. Thus you should ask yourself whether it is possible that they side with the PhD student on that matter.
* All your e-mail correspondence is certainly helpful as it should very well document that the PhD student was only involved in writing, e.g., if he asked questions on the actual content of your research.
---
¹ A problem may arise, if the PhD student actually wrote entire sentences. In this case, he could qualify for legal authorship in terms of copyright. However, my understanding of your question is that this is not the case. Even if it is, his contract or specifics of the relevant copyright laws may solve this issue.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I have my B.S in Marketing and for my degree I was required to take 2 science classes.
These 2 science classes were the only unrelated classes I had to take in my entire 4 years of Uni. While I excel in math I have always been completely awful at science.
I took both my science classes and got a C in both despite my normal A (96%+) average. These 2 classes hurt my record more than I would have liked and it's not because I didn't try. I put in 12 hours a week per science class, went to a study group, etc. I just never got the hang of it.
I've talked to a lot of other marketing B.S/B.A holders and they all had to take at least 1 science class unrelated to marketing and it was generally the lowest grade they got.
So, back to my question. Why require a class completely unrelated to the degree? There were at least 4-5 other business related classes that I would have loved to have taken and would have help me in my current career.<issue_comment>username_1: In the US, universities see their mission as being to educate students, not just provide technical job training (this is where universities differ from technical schools), so there are various "breadth" requirements established by higher-level units of the university (perhaps a particular college like "Liberal Arts and Sciences"). I assume your university doesn't have any such breadth requirements, and without more information on who exactly makes that requirement and what that requirement is, we would have a hard time diagnosing your specific issue. But generally, the issue is a result of the desire to graduate better-educated students.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: This is an American, and perhaps even really a Puritan New England, answer.
Traditionally, the role of a university education is to make a student suitable to be a leading citizen of their town (and church), able to make intelligent and informed contributions to debates on issues of common concern that should be taken care of by the government, and able to play a leading role on a jury trying to make a fair and proper decision in a trial. To be able to make such contributions, one needs to have a broad perspective on how to tell what is true from what is false across a wide range of disciplines, so that one can evaluate the judgements of supposed experts (and lawyers and politicians). Part of acquiring this perspective is gaining a foundational understanding of every subject, including science.
Even one's special area of study is meant to contribute to this. The major is not intended to help you learn skills for a job but rather to give you an understanding of what expertise means by requiring you to have the experience of acquiring in depth knowledge of some particular subject, with the particular subject being pretty much irrelevant.
Think of this study as a kind of tax on your education. For the privilege of being able to learn something that will be personally beneficial to you, you also have to learn something that will help you be of benefit to society as a whole.
(Personally, I don't think undergraduate degrees outside of the arts and sciences should be offered at all. After you have paid your tax by getting a proper bachelor's degree, you can, if you want, learn specific skills for a particular kind of job.)
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I was charged with possession of marijuana earlier this year. In my state, it's not a crime, just a violation with a fine. Technically, it's not even a conviction because there's a diversion program that results in the charge being dropped after a year. The problem is that it won't be dismissed and expunged until after I apply for graduate school. So right now the charge is listed as pending.
1. Do applications for a PhD in math ask about petty charges like this? I know some ask about felonies and convictions, but that doesn't apply here. I know if I were applying for law school or medical school, my situation would be very different.
2. How badly will this affect my application should this show up in a preliminary background check? Do math graduate programs even do background checks?<issue_comment>username_1: We don't ask about misdemeanors and generally there's no reason to volunteer such information.
Some faculty on admissions committees do *google* prospective candidates and if that is the case, you may want to engage in some SEO to make sure your positive attributes are at the top and your drunken and doped debauchery information and mugs shots are located further down in the rankings.
Furthermore, if you engaged in petty larceny or animal abuse, some people on the admissions committee might care just from a moral perspective, but many faculty have themselves had experiences where they "inhaled" (quoting <NAME>) so they are the least likely to throw stones in that regard.
Disclaimer: I'm in the humanistic social sciences
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Do applications for a PhD in math ask about petty charges like this? I know some ask about felonies and convictions, but that doesn't apply here. I know if I were applying for law school or medical school, my situation would be very different.
>
>
>
No. The part of the application that faculty look at has nothing remotely like this. If you apply to a public university there may be a portion of the application which is run through the university itself, so there is some chance that you might be asked about felonies. But as you say, you have not even been charged with a crime. You would have to be asked something extremely specific in order to have divulge this: e.g. "Do you have any pending fines for possession of drugs?" I've never heard of such a question asked in any context.
>
> How badly will this affect my application should this show up in a preliminary background check? Do math graduate programs even do background checks?
>
>
>
No, math (and other "arts and sciences") graduate programs do not do background checks, so far as I know [I was involved with graduate admissions at my program for several years]. Assuming that this information were disclosed to the faculty: well, everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but to me this sounds roughly comparable to a [moving violation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_violation) in terms of its legal and moral seriousness. In fact, some kinds of moving violations present a potential or actual danger to others; possessing marijuana really doesn't. I would put it squarely into the "Don't worry about it" category.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: While you needn't worry, you should reveal facts that you are *required* to reveal. Graduate school application forms are not easy to obtain (most institutions require online application via an application-handling company), but I could determine something about a few institutions.
If you were applying to the universities of Arkansas, South Carolina State, Hawaii, Alaska, or Tennessee State, there is no applicable question on their graduate application form. [Missouri State](https://www.missouristate.edu/assets/graduate/PaperGraduateApplication_REV112012.pdf) asks about charges pending, [Virginia Tech](http://graduateschool.vt.edu/forms/admissions/Application_US_and_Permanent_Resident.pdf) asks if you are "you currently on court-ordered supervised or unsupervised probation or under the terms of a finding under advisement". [North Georgia](http://ung.edu/graduate-studies/_uploads/files/Application-GradAdmission-Fillable.pdf) asks about criminal charges currently pending, and [Florida](http://www.admissions.ufl.edu/pdf/gradconduct.pdf) asks about being charged with a violation which if pending could result in probation, community service, a jail sentence, or revocation or suspension of driver's license (explicitly noting that if your record has been expunged, you do not have to answer 'yes'). [Indiana](http://graduate.indiana.edu/doc/admissions/gradapp.pdf) is very confusing: it asks "Have you been convicted of a felony or have you engaged in behavior that resulted in injury to person(s) or personal property", but this is immediately followed by their "Felony Statement" that "We require applicants who have been *charged with* or convicted of a *misdemeanor* or a felony, or who have engaged in behavior that resulted in mental or physical injury to person(s) or personal property, to disclose this information".
You should start from the premise that nobody actually cares if you get busted for pot, and if they ask any such questions, just say yes and explain (tell *only* if actually asked). Otherwise, you should discuss the legal arcana with your attorney, to see if you were charged with a felony (probably not), a misdemeanor (maybe not), or some other kind of violation / offense. I think in California, it is a "civil infraction" with no possible jail time. That might be a "violation" or a "charge", so talk to the attorney (or, simply say "yes"). It's vastly easier to just say "yes" and explain. The worst thing you could do is tell an untruth.
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/19
| 1,823
| 7,530
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm currently finishing a PhD in mathematics from a university in Europe ranked top 10 in the world. I've always been torn between philosophy and mathematics, and I'd like to give philosophy a chance (now that I have the "safety net" of a PhD in mathematics). Also, for personal reasons, I'd like to move to the US.
It turns out, at least according to the various admissions webpages, that doing a second undergraduate degree in the US is not as easy as I thought it'd be (even disregarding issues about funding, etc). Hence, my questions are:
>
> 1) Why are top US Philosophy departments (e.g. Harvard, UC Berkeley, ...) reticent to admit students already holding an undergrad degree in a different subject? In general, is the rule "no admission for students already holding a degree" as strict as it sounds, or can there be exceptions, depending on the context?
>
>
> 2) In said top US institutions, how common is "by-passing" the second undergrad degree and being admitted directly to a graduate program in philosophy?
>
>
><issue_comment>username_1: Maybe you do not know what an undergraduate degree at an American university means. You do not study, say, philosophy, you "major" in it. Depending on the university and your own choices, you may take anywhere between 1/3 and 2/3 of your courses in the area. You will also be taking basic courses on writing, social sciences, very broad courses in the sciences, and so forth, that to many well educated Europeans would feel like high school all over again. The idea of getting a **PhD** and then coming back for an undergraduate degree would be regarded as crazy by most American universities. I agree.
In general, yes, a PhD in subject X should get you out of having to do an undergraduate degree in Y and you should be thinking of enrolling directly in a PhD program in Y. But forgive me while I pick apart your question a bit.
>
> I've always been torn between philosophy and mathematics, and I'd like to give philosophy a chance (now that I have the "safety net" of a PhD in mathematics).
>
>
>
The idea that someone regards a PhD in mathematics as a safety net is very amusing (or bemusing?) to me. If you have always been torn between mathematics and philosophy and got a PhD in mathematics, surely you must have devoted some serious study to philosophy, right? If the answer is "no" then I don't really understand the situation. If the answer is "yes" then I hope you have been exploring the connections between mathematics and philosophy, which is something appropriate for someone considering doing multiple PhDs.
If you want to study an area of philosophy with connections to mathematics (most obviously, philosophy of mathematics, but there are many other areas of modern philosophy which draw upon mathematics), then having a PhD in mathematics at a "world top 10 university" should be a tremendous advantage. The level of mathematical expertise you bring will probably be superior to that of some of the faculty you would be working with. Thus at the very least you should be looking for some kind of specially worked out, accelerated graduate program. I would encourage you to also look for postdoctoral and other temporary faculty positions: these can be places to transition from one field to another.
The desire to start up an undergraduate program after having received a PhD at a top place is frankly a bit worrisome to me. You've probably spent your entire adult life as a student, roughly 10 years of it. You now want to turn around and spend another roughly more 10 years as a student? That's about a third of your adult life. Don't you have other things that you want to do?
**Added**: Although I do not think you should consider enrolling in an undergraduate *degree* program, if you really haven't taken any courses in philosophy at the undergrad level [by the way, in the US it would be really screwy for someone to have a lifelong interest in X and Y, do a PhD in X and never take an undergraduate course in Y; but maybe less so in Europe] then I think you should enroll in -- or audit, or whatever -- at least one or two as a non-degree student. You just need some amount of assurance that academic philosophy is anything like what you think it is.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The counter-question is, why do you want a second degree in philosophy?
Part of what a PhD teaches you is to teach yourself things. Many a PhD-holding scientist has branched into other related fields through self-study and connections/collaborations with other scholars, rather than doing a formal course of study. I know a neuroscientist who teaches in a biology department; I know several psychologists who have expanded into work in other disciplines, including applied statistics, political science, economics, business, and sociology. I've also come across the websites of philosophers who do research at the intersection of the physical sciences and philosophy, or at math and philosophy. Sometimes that expansion is formal - they take classes or earn a second degree (usually a master's) in the field, but usually it's more informal.
So I think first you need to figure out what you want to do with the philosophy degree. Is it just to satisfy your curiosity, or do you want to do significant research at the intersection of the fields? Both of those goals can probably be accomplished without getting a second bachelor's degree in philosophy. By your own admission you already have significant coursework in philosophy; you could continue to take classes as a non-degree student until you have the knowledge you need to do the research you want. You can start a research collaboration with philosophers interested in that intersection. I don't think philosophy does postdocs the same way that the sciences do, but you might find a humanistic postdoc that will take you on. An example are the Mellon postdoctoral fellowships that are at several universities; you'd have to make a really compelling case, though, because they are reserved for people with PhDs in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.
To more directly answer your original questions:
1) I doubt most people could answer that. The simplest reason is probably because they want to focus their resources on first-degree students. They may also reason that second-bachelor's students are less serious and invested (fair or not). There are also financial reasons; most schools and U.S. federal programs do not provide financial assistance for second-degree students. You'd probably have to ask the schools themselves for the exact answer. (It's not a departmental thing, either - the entirety of Harvard College doesn't admit second-degree students, not just philosophy). The rule is usually strict with no exceptions.
2) In very general, it's pretty common. To be more specific, though, you'd have to have an undergraduate preparation they deem sufficient to begin the graduate program. So if you didn't have an undergrad degree in philosophy but you'd taken 7 or 8 undergrad philosophy classes (and did well), and you also had a mathematics BA and indicated you wanted to study the intersection between mathematics and philosophy, an MA program in philosophy might admit you. However, very few PhD programs will take you, because most U.S. institutions have a policy whereby they don't admit people to do second PhDs. If you already have a PhD in any field, you typically can't do another one very easily.
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/19
| 558
| 2,051
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<issue_start>username_0: I have to dig through a large number of scientific papers (~26K), all with DOI links. I've built a small Python script for searching through the papers. Now I want to have more data about those papers. For example, where the authors are from (country or university) or, at least, retrieving the DOI link for the papers (not all of them have metadata).
One approach might be as follows:
```
(1) Get the DOI link (from a library, for example)
(2) Retrieve the information about the author(s).
```
Is there an API or a Python library that could help with that? I've looked at the Elsevier API, but it seems to be just for Elsevier papers. Web of Science isn't helpful, as they haven't much papers for my field (Information Systems).
Mendeley, Citavi or Zotero aren't really the options, as I want to do that somehow "automatically".<issue_comment>username_1: CrossRef [has an API](https://github.com/CrossRef/rest-api-doc/blob/master/rest_api.md), and this will resolve metadata for most papers. (Not all DOIs are registered through CrossRef, but it's going to cover most of the cases you want.)
However, it may not have all the detail you need - it won't always have author affiliation, for example.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I don't know that any scholarly citation database that covers all of science and provides an API that will give you author affiliations.
If you are working in biomedicine, though, you're in luck: PubMed has both an API with DOI search, and high-quality author affiliation data.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: DBLP might be another option for you. There's a python wrapper to get data from it:
<https://github.com/scholrly/dblp-python>
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: Here are some APIs you may want to consider. I found the pybliometrics one which uses Elsevier Scopus to be very useful.
<https://github.com/pybliometrics-dev/pybliometrics>
<https://github.com/ElsevierDev/elsapy>
<https://github.com/OrganicIrradiation/scholarly>
Upvotes: 0
|
2015/07/19
| 366
| 1,583
|
<issue_start>username_0: The chronic medical illness has affected my ability to take the most rigorous schedule and led me to withdraw from one class and also take a year break in my undergraduate education. I'm wondering how this will affect my grad school chances. I have excellent LOR and GRES, good GPA. Should the illness be discussed in SOP or elsewhere?<issue_comment>username_1: Do any of your letter writers know about your illness and can speak to your strength in spite of it? If your application on its face is strong (ignoring the withdrawn course and year gap), a mention of your illness and overcoming it in your personal statement (not your statement of purpose!) might be a good thing to do. I do not think they will look down upon you for this, quite the opposite. From what I have read, they cannot discriminate against you simply based upon your illness so that shouldn't be a problem (see ADA). If it's clear that you're dedicated, I think you'll be okay.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: If your letters are good, you have research experience (if that's common in your field), etc., I wouldn't disclose at this point. While they can't, and in most cases won't want to, discriminate against you, it creates an awkward situation precisely because they can't ask questions. At most, say you had to take a year off because of health issues. You can always disclose in the future if that becomes necessary.
I say this as someone with a highly visible disability who disclosed while corresponding with potential advisors but not in the application.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/20
| 729
| 3,082
|
<issue_start>username_0: In France the higher education is like this:
* 3 years of "Licence"
* 2 years of "Master"
* 3 years of "Doctorat"
But what about in the United States?
I heard that they have things called "undergraduate", "graduate" and "postgraduate". How many years do each of those take? And what are the equivalencies between these and the "Licence - Master - Doctorat"?
Note: If the answer to this question depends on the field of studies, then the field is physics.<issue_comment>username_1: Since France is a member of the Council of Europe and follows the Bologna Process, this question could be very well be applicable to many other European countries as well.
The bottom line is that undergraduate studies in the US are basically thought out as a four-year program, not three years. France -as most Bologna participant states- has chosen the three-year option for the first stage of university studies, in this case the License. This is a bit different from Spain and the UK, where there is perhaps more tradition of working respectively with Latin American and US universities. Recognition of Licence and undergraduate studies *in either direction* is not immediate in other cases.
However, there are perhaps larger possibilities for American universities to exercise their own judgement and flexibility as to recognizing foreign titles, than in some European countries. So, in some cases it may be possible for an American university to say: "OK, I recognize your French degree as 3 years studies, now you need to pass this, this and that courses to enroll in graduate studies."
There is a good article on the subject [here](http://www.petersons.com/graduate-schools/us-graduate-admission-bologna.aspx) , that basically states that American universities are aware of the problem and are increasingly open to finding solutions for European students.
I would go straight to the Admissions people at your university of choice, find out how they see your precise situation and what advice they can give you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I will mention that in France, upon completion of the first year of a Master degree program, you may get an "intermediate" degree (called the *Maîtrise*), which thus sanctions four years of higher education and is arguably the closest equivalent there is to an American-style four-year undergraduate degree. In fact there has been a recent nationwide agreement with Japan, under which Japan nationally recognises a French
*Maîtrise* as being equivalent to a Japanese four-year undergraduate degree, in particular for the purpose of enrolling in a Japanese Master program.
In the US there is no central authority about such matters so as Alan said it should be discussed with each prospective graduate school on a case-by-case basis. However, even if a school will not accept a *Licence*, they will almost certainly accept a *Maîtrise*. (And I would argue that even if they accept a *Licence*, it would be wise to get a *Maîtrise* anyway, since it gives you one extra year of preparation for free.)
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/20
| 1,686
| 7,292
|
<issue_start>username_0: Some weeks ago I went to a conference with some of the leading minds in my field of research. One of the speakers (professor A) mentioned a problem that bothered him and that was unsolved up to that point. After the talk (when most had already left the room to get coffee) professor B mentioned a possible algorithm to A to solve these kind of problems (myself and some others followed the discussion with interest).
Out of interest in the topic and motivated by the prospect of a novel algorithm, I spent some time working on this question myself - combined the suggestion of professor B with some of my own ideas and indeed found an algorithm that solves the problem. I can even proof convergence, error bounds, etc. The suggestion of professor B was enough for a working algorithm, but I think that convergence and correctness proofs are only possible with the addition of my ideas.
The question is how to proceed now. If I had thought of the initial idea myself it would be obvious that I should write it up and get it published. As it stands I obviously have to get in touch with professor B (and professor A?) though.
Is it too presumptuous to propose a collaborative paper to professor B? Should I also contact professor A? I can assume that he at least also worked on the same problem these past few weeks...
I could just mention them in the acknowledgment part of the paper - but that would still feel like I stole their idea.
I could just write them, what my ideas are on the topic - but I would feel more comfortable doing so if they already communicated a will to collaborate with me. As it stands they don't even know I worked on the issue...
On the other hand if I write something along the line of "I have found something. If you are willing to collaborate I will share it with you." it feels somewhat like extortion...
Is there some etiquette how to handle this situation or is it just "first come first serve", and I should see that I get the results published? (OK, the latter is definitely rude - but still...)<issue_comment>username_1: You should definitely get in touch with Prof B, but don't propose a collaboration immediately (that would indeed be a little bit presumptuous).
Thank him for his idea during the conference, and tell him some outline of your results (you may want to share the paper if you feel comfortable). And then end the email with something like "given that the origin of the idea was initially yours, I was wondering how you felt about a possible co-authorship? If you feel that this is not possible, would you mind if I put forward your name in the acknowledgments section?"
That way you leave the choice up to him, and he can have an easy way out if he doesn't feel like being a co-author for any reason.
(EDIT: Regarding Prof A, it might be good etiquette to get in touch with him to make sure he's not working on the same stuff, but I don't think it's strictly necessary)
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: So, this is definitely a sticky area and hard to advise seeing as I don't know the personality of either professor. However, the fact of the matter is that you did take the extra step to *formalize* and create a *working* solution. Seeing as we don't know the extent of Professor B's contribution, it is hard to tell how far the ethics of intellectual property will kick in.
That being said, technically, you could go right ahead with your paper as long as you are sure to give proper contribution during your motivation section i.e ("With the discussion and ideas of Dr. B, such and so became a tangible idea" or something).
**However**, I am going to assume that Professor B (And Prof. A) have a good reputation in the research community and have lots of papers/citations under their belts and it could be very helpful for you to send a friendly e-mail saying something along the lines of "I wanted to thank you again for conference presentation and wanted to follow up on the discussion afterwards. I have pursued the topics further and found XYZ solution and would like to know if you would like to collaborate with me on a paper." In doing so, you will most likely have a good name attached to your paper(and all the help that comes with it) and still maintain first name.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: If I read "If you are willing to collaborate I will share it with you." in an email from a PhD student I'd internally LOL and ignore that line! :)
Actually it sounds like you've done enough independent work for a paper already.
I think the main thing is to be **honest and open** with them.
An obvious question is do you *want* to publish alone? (There are a lot of benefits to having "<NAME>" as a co-author but in some cases they are exaggerated).
Presumably you would appreciate their views on it though, and certainly it seems best to give them a relaxed way of claiming co-authorship.
I suggest-
Write a quick rough draft, with credit to <NAME> for proposing the algorithm. ("We show [blah] for an algorithm proposed by <NAME>"). If you really made substantive changes to the algorithm, you could say "a variation of an algorithm proposed by Professor B".
In acknowledgements mention the the problem was posed by Professor A. Also acknowledge the conversation afterwards (and other participants, if there were).
Send the draft cc'd to both profs, (and also your PhD supervisor / someone trust worthy, if you don't trust profs A+B). Mention you were interested in the problem and listened to their discussions (even though you didn't actively participate, right?). You did some work, and showed [blah]. Mention that a rough draft is attached, and you'd appreciate any of their comments. Ask explicitly whether they feel sufficient credit is given to their ideas. Say very that you'd be happy to change the credits, or even write a joint paper.
If you *want* them to be a co-author, I think it's fine to say that!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: The other answers are excellent but I also want to draw attention to some points.
Although a lot of starting PhD students think that the more authors on a paper the less work people will think they did. I came to realize that this is not true, no one really cares how many authors are on the paper, the first author is usually perceived as the one who did the majority of the work and/or paper writing, the last one is usually the supervisor. That's about it..
That being said, there is no harm of having more authors, involving professor B and professor A is not just the right thing to do etiquette-wise (particularly professor B), but it will also have a positive impact on your publication.
1. As they are more experienced in that area, their contributions to the paper will probably make it more likely to be accepted at a decent conference.
2. The more authors from different institutions the more exposure the paper gets. The paper will appear in the publications list of all co-authors, giving it a higher chance to be cited and this will reflect positively on your academic profile.
So bottom line, I suggest you contact them (individually) and tell them that you worked on that solution, and ask them if they are interested in co-authoring a paper out of that work.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/20
| 484
| 2,043
|
<issue_start>username_0: I am currently doing research at a school that is not my home institution. When I create a poster board for this research, do I put logos of both the school where I am doing the research as well as my home institution? Or do I not mention my home institution at all?
If appropriate, where do I mention my home institution on this research poster?<issue_comment>username_1: I would put the logo of the funding agency (NSF, NASA, etc.) and the logo of the university where you are doing this research. If your home university isn't involved in any way, then you're probably fine excluding it.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Since you are doing research at that university and are funded by the other university, you should put both logos. Moreover, you should also put the logo of other funding agencies if some are involved in your project. You may also write an acknowledgedment such as "This projected was funded by NSF grant #12345" to indicate the specific grant that funded your project. Besides, if you have co-authors from other universities, you may also put the logo of their universities. Finally, you could also decide to not put any logo, and write the university affiliations and funding information as text, and it would also be fine
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: You have a couple options:
1.)It would be fine (and visually better) to have one logo. But which one? Well, it is appropriate to have the logo of the University/Institute that you are doing the research with. It is their faculty that you work with and contribute. You can then list your home university and other funding agencies in a "special thanks" section at the bottom of your poster.
2.)You don't want to even chance doing anything uncouth, so you can put all logos Oprah style. You get a logo! And you get a logo!
**Special Case: before leaving someone out be sure that there isnt anything in your contract or funding agreement that says "If I give you money, you will list my logo"**
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/20
| 861
| 3,833
|
<issue_start>username_0: I hold a 5 years "specialist degree" from a university in Belarus and I'm going to apply to a Ph. D. program in engineering in US. I have several problems regarding my reference letters.
The professor who was my Engineering Project adviser and who taught several important courses in my group for two years can give me strong a reference because my project was the best in the department. However:
* He doesn't know English.
* He is currently retired.
* Professors in Belarus seldom have personal e-mail addressed and neither does he.
* He doesn't have publications in English.
Any ideas how to solve these problems? Translate the reference, put it into an envelope and then ask the professor to sign envelope as required? Will the reference be even opened and taken into account?<issue_comment>username_1: If he writes the recommendation in his native language, the school can probably find someone to translate it. Not sure re the other issues.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: I agree with Keshlam, find someone at your university who can do the translation. That way you never have to touch the letter and the translation does not become an issue. As to your other problems, you will have to provide some way to contact the professor; by phone or by mail. But you will not be the first student applying with a reference from a retired professor. His publications should be easily verifiable using the Internet even if they are not in English so I wouldn't worry so much about that. Good luck!
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: First, contrary to the optimism of some of the other answers, you should *not* expect that the university you're applying-to will translate a letter sent to them. At my university in the U.S., the traditional requirement was that a "certified translation" be made-and-paid-for by the student.
At the same time, the tradition in applications in the U.S. for many years is that the student does *not* send the letters of recommendation (and/or translations) themself, but has either the faculty send them, or some secretarial staff. If you send paper mail and include such letters, they will most likely be considered "compromised" and invalid...
Your recommender's having an email account is not so important, as perhaps having internet access to upload an electronic file (scanned letter and translation and certification-of-translation, or PDF letter and others directly electronically), since the default process is more-and-more purely electronic.
Some application systems seem to default to sending an email to the recommenders, asking for an upload, and additionally asking for other information. I shudder to think how these systems could be made to cope with cases not fitting neatly into the designers' (often ill-informed) design choices.
(Indeed, the most recent "upgrade" to my university's over-arching software system makes certain things essentially impossible, ...)
The degree of complication will vary from university to university, and you'll need to be very pro-active to make sure that the certification of translation is adequate, and that paper-mail really arrives, if your recommender cannot manage to send email.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The University will most likely not do the translation. They don't have time and ressources to do that. What you should to is to make an official translation and ask the recommender to send the letter directly to the university. Generally, a student should not send the letter for the recommender but the recommender should send the letter. Otherwise, the letter could be assumed to be fake. So you should follows these two points: ask to make a certified translation of the letter and ask your recommender to send the recommendation letter directly to that university.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/20
| 830
| 3,624
|
<issue_start>username_0: For a paper we're writing, we need to use a small image of a popular, easily recognized piece of consumer electronics.
In previous drafts of the paper, a long time ago, someone made an image for the paper that ended up being the "headliner" image, i.e., the largest image that explains and outlines the subject of the whole paper. In it, because it was such an early draft and he was just trying to get the concept down, he clearly just googled the name of the piece of electronics and grabbed a random image he liked, cropped it, and put it in the larger image.
Now we're at the stage where we're actually going to submit the paper, but of course now part of our "headline" image is a random picture that we don't own, so I'm in a bit of an awkward position. Hopefully I can at least get the original composite image from the one who made our "headline" image (the image in the paper is flat so it can't just be "ungrouped" so I can remove/replace the offending part), but even then I don't know how to proceed.
So my question is, how can one use images in this way in a professional paper? Are you allowed to use anything on the internet as long as you credit it clearly? And if so, is there some way you're supposed to credit just a random URL?<issue_comment>username_1: This is a really good example of why it's important to be careful about copyright from the beginning: there's really no good way to ensure that you can actually secure permissions to use a random image. In terms of scientific *ethics*, you can credit the source, but that is completely unrelated to the fact that you may have no *legal* right to use the image.
As I see it, there are three good paths to proceed:
1. Track down the source of the original image (e.g., via reverse image search) and see if it happens to come from somewhere that you can acquire a copyright from.
2. Search for a similar image that is less restricted by copyright (Wikipedia is often a good source of such, due to their restrictions).
3. Make your own image. Since you're dealing with a popular piece of consumer electronics, you might even just lay hands on one and take a picture yourself, then enhance and crop as necessary with image editing tools (there's lots of good free tools out there).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Scientific publishing is just a specialized part of publishing. So all the rules on intangible assets apply just as much as in non-scientific editions.
Submitting a paper involves a scientific undertaking: you are making a representation that all scientific ideas contained in the paper are either yours, or have been duly referenced. But it also involves a legal representation, i.e. that you have the right to publish or to have published all content you present. This is why most journals make you subscribe a legal document in this sense.
The easiest solution, in my sense, is to make your own image. That way, there is no possible contest as to who owns the legal rights to the same. It may mean using a photo that is not quite as good from the point of view of clarity, or for scientific quality. But in the end of the day, what is most important is the innovative thinking contained in your paper, not just the support used to convey this thinking.
Do consider this hiccup as good training for that day, later on, when you will be involved in writing a publication in book form. On that day, you will be happy to have this experience to keep you aware of what can be used from a legal point of view, and what not. Asset management is, perhaps unfortunately, also a part of science.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/07/20
| 1,236
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<issue_start>username_0: I am on an integrated Masters in Physics course, otherwise knows as MPhys. This means that after my third year I will not be awarded with a BSc, but will graduate after 4 years with an MPhys. At my university (and I assume others as well), doing a 4th year after graduating with a BSc then gives you an MSc instead of an MPhys.
I am coming to wonder if there is any advantage to this. It complicates things massively if I want to change university to complete my Masters. Surely it would be advantageous to do a BSc, and then if you want to change university to complete an MSc there will be no complications.
There are only 2 possible advantages I can think of:
1. An MPhys is harder than a BSc+MSc and is therefore more highly regarded by employers and
2. There is no longer the need to apply for a 4th year at university.
The second is an obvious one, but is the first true? Are there any other advantages? I am thinking of transferring to the BSc in case I decide I want to go to a better university to complete my Masters.<issue_comment>username_1: An integrated masters such as an MPhys is an *enhanced undergraduate* degree where the final year will include level 7 courses and a substantial project. It will typically be accredited and meet the academic requirements for registration for chartered status (CPhys in this case).
An MSc is a *postgraduate* degree also with a substantial project and level 7 courses. It will often be more specialised in nature than an undergraduate degree and may or may not be accredited such that it will add the necessary academic requirements for chartered status if the student also has completed an accredited BSc.
In the UK there will typically be a difference in fees between the two cases and there is currently (although this may change or may even have changed already - you should check) a difference in funding available. Government backed student loans have only been available for undergraduate degrees.
For engineers in industry I do think that generally the integrated Masters is looked at more highly but of course it depends on the institution. If you goal is to get chartered status then I would advise the integrated Masters rather than a separate MSc provided you are staying in the UK. If you go abroad the separate postgraduate MSc is understood better and so probably easier to have accepted.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The main reason for doing a four year course is that (at least when I was a student) was that you would only get a government loan for your first degree. Therefore you did not have to worry about finding extra funding to do a masters. However, [apparently](http://www.findamasters.com/funding/guides/masters-funding-guide.aspx) from 2016-17 this will be changing so you can get a loan for a master's in a similar way to undergrad degrees. I don't no what effect this will have on the popularity of four year courses.
Another advantage, as you said is that you do not need to apply separately for an MSc course. In my opinion this is a minor issue and it should be noted that most places in my experience will make you move to the BSc course if you are not on target to do well (2:1) in the 4 year course by the end of the 2nd year.
I would say that your first point is not correct. If any thing the opposite is true and a separate BSc + MSc is viewed more highly. This is not an issue if you are looking to work in the UK but in the rest of Europe combined courses such as an MPhys are not well understood and may put you at a disadvantage.
However, other than that there are very few disadvantages to doing an integrated course. Most places run a parallel BSc course with the first two years having similar/identical content. If this is the case it should be easy to switch down to the BSc up till the end of your second year if you want to do a MSc elsewhere/not at all.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I took a similar course but in computer science. As far as I could tell, the course was not any more difficult, but the aside from the fees issue noted by other answerers, the advantage is that *you may graduate at the beginning of summer, rather than the end*. Typically, in an MSc, September until May or June is spent on taught coursework, and the summer is spent on a dissertation, leading to an autumn or winter graduation. In my integrated course, the dissertation was completed by May or June for a summer graduation, and to allow for this, the work was split over the two final years of the degree, and the number of credits of taught courses I was required to take in the final year was less than it would have been for the MSc. I don't know if this is the case for all integrated courses, but it was an advantage for me, as I got some time off between completing my masters and starting my PhD.
As you noted, you won't be able to change university for your masters. But many integrated courses allow you to transfer back to a BSc if you change your mind. You should obviously check how early you need to do this (ie, it might be that you need to decide before final year, not during).
Upvotes: 0
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2015/07/20
| 805
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<issue_start>username_0: I will enter the academic job market after having received poor teaching evaluations for my first and only independently taught class. Some of the criticisms were well founded, and I am trying my best to improve the class in the future. The teaching evaluations for the next (and hopefully improved) installment of the class will not be available in time to include them in my job applications.
While I am still inexperienced as a teacher, I don't think the evaluations are entirely fair. My predecessor agrees with me that the class is one of the most challenging classes to teach (it's a mandatory statistics class for terminal masters students without a mathematical background).
How should I deal with these teaching evaluations in my job application? Is there any way to provide context for the hiring committee?<issue_comment>username_1: Depending on where you apply, it may not be required to provide the teaching evaluations. For example, in the past, I have applied for a few jobs in Canada and other countries and it was not required. However, when I was invited for job interview, they asked me to give a 10 minutes course demonstration, so they could evaluate my teaching skills. I was required to do this for at least three different job interviews for professor positions. So I would say to provide the evaluations if they ask for them. Otherwise, you don't need to. If they ask for the evaluations, then you could always explain that it is a difficult course to teach. As a professor, I am aware that some courses are more difficult and I think that most professors should be aware of that and understand that.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Everyone has a tough time the first several years of teaching. It takes several years for people to find their feet. We can't all be <NAME> right out of grad school.
Still, a search committee might note your poor scores. You can compensate in several ways:
1. By remarking on this in your Statement of Teaching. I would try not to dismiss or shift blame, but tackle it head on. "In my first year of teaching, I received poor scores in Nuclear Physics 101. These mainly centered around X and Y. I have revised my syllabus to handle X and will dedicate more time to discussion around points Y. I have also changed how I handle Z, which should alleviate both problems, etc. etc. I have also decided to be less of a jerk."
2. By delivering a stellar guest lecture when you're brought on campus for your interviews.
Note that #1 and #2 both involve practices (statement of teaching; guest lecture in a class) that not all universities and colleges follow. Generally the ones that care about teaching require them and the ones that don't don't.
For example, I teach at an R1 where undergraduate teaching is ... deprecated. We mainly care about your research and that's what we evaluate our candidates on.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I would see if you can find someone willing to write you a positive teaching recommendation letter.
In mathematics, applicants are typically expected to provide one or more such letters. Sometimes these read "So-and-so had difficulties in his/her first year, but responded markedly well to feedback and constructive criticism. H/she is now teaching the course a second time and is doing an excellent job: [here the letter writer gives a lot of detail....]"
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/20
| 791
| 2,794
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<issue_start>username_0: I wonder if someone (or eventually some country, organisation, etc ...) already evaluated the costs of the system of grants.
* It costs at least the salary of the researcher who writes and gets the grant
* but also the salary of all the researchers who didn’t get it, and could have done something else than writing a proposal
* plus the costs in administration (e.g. the National Contact Point(s) in Europe at several places in each country)
* plus the cost of organising the referral (travels, meetings, ...)
* plus the cost of the grant itself, of course.
On the positive side, of course the entire society benefits from a completed grant.
So my questions are:
* Are there some studies about the economical efficiency of the grant system?
* What are their conclusions?
* How much does the granting costs?
* Are there other system evaluated?
Partially related questions :
* [How much time do researchers spend on writing grants?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/13354/7919)
* [How to quantify the loss in productivity due to time spent on writing proposals](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/27594/7919)
but this question is really about the economy of research and factual investigations about the system of grants, not about feeling from researchers.<issue_comment>username_1: I know of one such study: [Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant](http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989620802689821).
The authors examine the full costs of the process used by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and conclude that it would be more efficient to simply give a base amount to every researcher who meets the requirements to submit a proposal. The costs they consider include the time spent preparing and peer-reviewing grant proposals. In addition, the authors argue that the current system is ineffective, in that it rewards mediocrity and safe bets over curiosity and innovation.
The same journal later published a rebuttal ([The Real Cost of the NSERC Peer Review is Less than 5% of a Proposed Baseline Grant](http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989620903065475)) and a reply to the rebuttal ([Indeed: Cost of the NSERC Science Grant Peer Review System Exceeds the Cost of Giving Every Qualified Researcher a Baseline Grant](http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08989620903065590)).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: For a broad analysis of economic and social efficiency of science and science funding (including "soft money" such as grants), see the book *[How Economics Shapes Science](https://books.google.com/books?id=ToALIM28uScC&printsec=frontcover&dq=economics%20of%20science&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIrd-snafwxgIVWFyICh3mEgWD)*.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/21
| 414
| 1,870
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<issue_start>username_0: What is appropriate or reasonable number of keywords in a conference paper (in computer network/security topics)?<issue_comment>username_1: Honestly, I don't know if there is much reason other than history and tradition to continue to put keywords on conference papers. Most people will find your paper via search engines, rather than by searching for keywords in some specialized interface, and search engine technology is good enough these days that keywords are not usually particularly necessary for improving the chance of your paper being found.
The places where I know that keywords still actually matter, at least marginally, are:
* Putting in a keyword can be a good way to include a term that isn't otherwise explicitly stated in the paper (and thus might not show up on search engines).
* Some reviewing systems use an author's history of keywords to help figure out which papers they are likely to be a good reviewer for in the future.
So, given all of this, how many keywords should you choose? My own inclinations are as follows:
* When required to use the [ACM classification system](http://www.acm.org/about/class/2012): two, because it's a pain to look up something appropriate in their ontology, but I feel like I'm shirking too obviously if I try to get away with only one.
* When I get to pick my own keywords: 3-6, plucked from the air over the course of a few minutes by free association.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: From my experience in CS, I would put about four or five keywords. I would sort them from more specific to more general. But what you should actually do is to check other papers in the conference/journals where you will submit to know what other people have been doing in that specific community because it can vary depending on the community, the publisher, etc.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/21
| 494
| 2,124
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<issue_start>username_0: I have a manuscript that is placed under review for a month now and during this month I have discovered that there are a few things I want to change/add in the manuscript and I don't want to publish this manuscript in this particular journal anymore.
How can I ask for this manuscript back?
Should I just send an email to the editorial office and what do I say?
This is the first time I done such a thing.
Thanks,<issue_comment>username_1: Just contact the editor in charge of your submission. It may not be the main editor but an associate editor. Usually, when you login in the website for managing submissions, there is often a link to contact the editor. If not, you may also know who is the editor in charge of your submission by reading the e-mail that was sent to you as confirmation when you submitted the paper. Otherwise, you may look for an e-mail on the website to contact the editor. Those are general guidelines. It may vary depending on the journal. But don't worry. It is not a problem to remove a journal paper. This happen quite often.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If the manuscript was processed through some online system, then in fact "withdrawing the paper" should be an option available to you at any time. If you access the system, click on that, wait a suitable amount of time, the paper should indeed be withdrawn.
If you had direct correspondence with an editor, you should email the last editor you corresponded with and say "I would like to withdraw paper XXXX [giving enough information to clearly identify it] from journal YYYY [ditto]." You might want to give a brief explanation of the reasons for a withdrawal and/or discussion of your future plans with this paper, but that is probably mostly a face-saving device. In most cases, it should not be strictly necessary.
If you both dealt with an editor and dealt with an online system, then it would be safest to do both of the above.
By the way, this is not at all an unusual action to take. You are not going to get an argument or have to defend yourself. Just do it.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/21
| 1,636
| 5,938
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<issue_start>username_0: I have an old family friend in Japan (born and raised). We were recently talking about academics as he is in his 2nd year of Uni and I have 1 B.S and soon to have another with the goal of moving on to a Masters this fall.
While talking he asked if I "Work or study" as he knew I completed my first degree but was unaware I started my second. When I mentioned that I both go to Uni and work a corporate job in my industry he was, no joke, speechless.
He couldn't believe someone could both attend a Uni and work at the same time without failing classes. He told me that people only work part time jobs very sparingly during school semesters and then work more during the summer but can't even begin to believe working in a corporate job while still studying.
I don't know too many people that attend my Uni and don't either have 2 part-time jobs or a full time jobs (except for those with free rides or very generous parents).
Many people I know from other countries (I try to culture myself) ask me the same question "Do you work or study?" and they get very confused when I tell them "both" and explain my situation.
Is this only common in the US? I've talked to people from Singapore, Japan, Canada, Greece, and the UK and they all can't believe working and going to Uni at the same time.<issue_comment>username_1: Many colleges in Taiwan have evening divisions. They offer evening programs for the students who have full time jobs in the daytime.
For example, [College of Management of China University of Technology](http://www.cute.edu.tw/en/dep11.htm)
>
> has set up a daytime program in the four-year college division and an evening program in the extension division.
>
>
>
Usually their evening program will take 5 years for the students to get their bachelor degrees. This is because the evening division students really don't have much time to take classes in the evenings.
Working full time in the day and go to school in the evening is not uncommon in Taiwan. I personally have many friends who received their Bachelors degree from evening divisions of universities.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I am from Germany, and here you are not even allowed to have a fultime-job while being a student
The reasoning is that you cannot work fultime and study fultime, so are only allowed to work 20 hours/week on average (fultime being 40 hours).
If you want or need to work more, you have to either find illegal work (as the word says, illegal) or enroll as a part-time student (at least with respect to some social security issues and such, which is mandatory in Germany)(which has all kinds of unwanted consequences on the level of taxes, social fees and so on).
Probably even more extreme then in Japan :D
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: I am from Portugal and I'm finishing this year my Computer Engineering graduation. I've been working fulltime since I've started studing and here we have a thing called "student worker statute". This statute is very important on examination period were the employers must give two extrad days off per exam.
Here in Portugal there's a lot of people who works and study at the same time although it's more frequent they work in par-time.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: My country is NZ .When I was at Uni in the 1980s it was normal for students to work over the holidays .In fact well over 90% did so including me .Now days the situation has changed and there is a new normal .I work with lots of students which they now call interns.It is normal for Uni students to work part time during thier studies and work over the holidays .In the 1980s it was normal for a postgrad student to have a research position but I was very lucky as a repeat student which technically means undergrad to have a position .Nowdays most postgrad students do not get any research position .These days most students employment is mainly in the service industry and therefore has little vocational relevence to compensate the low wages.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: In Australia it certainly happens frequently. I know of a few people who have completed masters degrees while working full time in their fields. My former boss started and finished his MBA while running a department.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: In Germany, at least one survey reports that [47 percent of students work during the semester, and 63 percent work during the holidays between semester.](http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/201632/umfrage/umfrage-zum-parallelen-arbeiten-neben-dem-studium/)
Most of these students earn less [than 500 Euros a month](http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/190637/umfrage/monatlicher-netto-verdienst-von-studenten-in-deutschland/), but 6 percent earn more than 1000€ after taxes. Over [60 percent that have jobs have one to finance their studies/living expenses.](http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/190651/umfrage/gruende-fuer-die-arbeit-neben-dem-studium/) For [7 percent of students, their job is their only source of income](http://de.statista.com/statistik/daten/studie/37869/umfrage/finanzierungsart-vom-studium-im-jahr-2009/).
According to the [Sozialerhebung 2012](http://www.sozialerhebung.de/download/20/Soz20_11_Kap09.pdf) (a large survey by a federal agency) figure 9.10, 13 percent of students studying towards their first degree worked more than 20 hours a week on average in 2012. Whether that's "common" is a matter of interpretation.
The part on [financing](http://www.sozialerhebung.de/download/20/Soz20_08_Kap06.pdf) reports a median income of 300€ from working, with 63 percent of students doing some kind of work. Figure 6.5 shows that 2 percent of students only finance through studies through work, with an average income of 960 Euro, and 13 percent mainly finance their life through working, with an average income of 660 Euros.
(All sources in German)
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/21
| 1,432
| 5,929
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a grad student and I am reading a certain recent breakthrough paper. There is a part of the paper which is not making sense to me at all. So I wrote to one of the authors inquiring about it. But this person forwarded my email to *every* of the other authors! (and that includes some of the living legends in the fields!)
Why did this person do this?
Is this a scary situation to be in?<issue_comment>username_1: Why should this be scary? It was presumably forwarded because it was an interesting or amusing question. Hopefully the former.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I don't think you should worry about it.
1. I've not yet heard of a case in which someone forwarded a question because it was trivial and put the inquirer in CC.
2. In my opinion, the author acknowledged that your question was not totally uninteresting by forwarding it. Most high-level academics receive many of those emails and I reckon that most of them won't get forwarded at all.
3. Finally and most importantly: Asking questions is never stupid. It shows your interest and in the best case scenario, it also gives your counterpart some new thoughts and ideas.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: >
> Why did this person do this?
>
>
>
There is a long list of possible reasons:
* If something is unclear in the paper, it makes sense for the other coauthors to know in case somebody else asks the same question later.
* The author you emailed might not have worked on that part of the paper, and thus is not able to properly address your question.
* Or perhaps they *did* work on that part of the paper and simply have no idea how to answer you, and are hoping another author will be able to come up with a good response.
* Your question might inspire one of the other authors to come up with a followup idea.
* The other authors may want to know that somebody is reading their paper and is interested enough in it to want to ask a question.
* Perhaps the author you emailed doesn't feel qualified to speak on behalf of the group, or doesn't want to take the chance of misrepresenting the group's opinions.
* The other authors may have requested to be notified about any communication regarding the paper.
* As some other answers ([like username_1's](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49105/236)) mentioned, the author you wrote to may simply think it's an interesting question.
And so on...
>
> Is this a scary situation to be in?
>
>
>
No, why would it be scary? I suppose if you feel that way, who am I to tell you your feelings are wrong... but it's a very normal thing.
In fact, as a general rule, any time you email one author of a collaborative paper about that paper, you should *expect* that your message will be shared with the other authors.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: According to @MassimoOrtolano suggestion, I am adding my comment as an slightly expanded answer.
>
> Why did this person do this?
>
>
>
He did the right thing. An email about a paper (or an error in it) is something that all co-authors should know. If you were not sure about what you wrote in the email, you should not have sent it in the first place. Emails are permanent in the sense a) They cannot be undone, once sent b) They can be stored on someone's else PC or in his mail server for ever. In that spirit, before sending an email to someone unknown to you and inquiring about his paper or criticizing a portion of it, is something that should not be done lightly.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_5: I can definitely understand why this may seem scary, but honestly there are many non-scary reasons that this happened.
1. Its possible that the person you e-mailed wasn't as equipped to answer your question as another author might've been (perhaps it related more to his/her piece of the paper)
2. It was out of courtesy. Many times co-authors will share anything and everything related to the paper as a way to maintain equal footing and understanding of all things related to the subject. This can take away the sense that "you're working without me".
3. They in fact found your question to be very interesting or helpful to their research topic and wanted all the authors to read it. Perhaps, it was a question they hadn't ever thought about or addressed.
If they did by some very unlikely chance forward it so they could all laugh at you and make memes about the hilarious question... don't worry because they wont remember you, just the question.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_6: I have some questions about original question that might shape the answer, so I will provide a multi-branch answer:
Did the recipient CC the OP with the forward?
* if yes, then presumably the recipient wanted one of the other authors to respond directly to the OP
* if no, and the OP only found out they they had done so because one of the other authors replied directly, then perhaps there was a need for the authors to discuss among themselves before responding.
Did the recipient present any text in their forward, or simple just hit forward?
* I presume this one is a no, since if they had, that text would have come back to OP and self-explained the reasoning. They probably were just busy at the time and forwarded to the group so whoever could respond first would take the task of replying. Or perhaps that's just their usual way of dealing with questions about their shared work.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: To answer your question in a different sense, yes, this can definitely be scary! As a grad student I often got scared when talking to famous people, and I think that feeling scared is quite common and natural.
But, to repeat what everyone else said, this is at worst neutral and quite possibly very good for you. Good questions are worth a great deal in academia, and apparently your question was worth forwarding to "living legends". Congratulations!
Upvotes: 1
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2015/07/21
| 512
| 2,129
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<issue_start>username_0: So far as I heard, it is required to mention intended major in graduate school during GRE registration. I am curious to know, what would someone do if he wants to apply to different grad schools for different (but somehow related) programs? For instance, he wants to apply to the grad schools A, B, C, D for the grad programs P, Q, R, S respectively. My questions are:
1. When registering for GRE, which one would he select as his intended major at grad school? P, Q or, R?
2. Would selecting the program P as his intended major at grad school, lower his opportunity to get into programs Q or, R?
3. If he mentions "Other fields" as his intended major at grad school (that is, he mentions that his intended grad major is undecided) then would it lower his chance of getting into grad programs P, Q and, R?
4. If S is an interdisciplinary grad program and it is possible to apply to the program S with background in P, would mentioning P as his intended major at grad school lower his chance to get into the program S?<issue_comment>username_1: I wouldn't worry about it because that portion is used for statistical purposes like compiling average test scores by major, like in the example here: <http://www.ets.org/s...uide_table4.pdf>
The information that schools look at that regard majors are if you take a subject test, like in computer science or physics. And of course all of your undergrad data.
Additionally, marking undecided is possible if you really dont want to choose one.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: When I took the GRE (last year), I put down some flavor of inorganic chemistry, took the test, then turned around and applied to a whole bunch of computer science programs.
Personally, I think that a program that would disqualify you based off of the answer to a question like that (on a standardized test!) is a program I would have second thoughts about joining.
(However, I will say that I did better than I expected on the GRE, and the chemistry graduate school at Portland State has been hounding me ever since, so take that into account.)
Upvotes: 0
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2015/07/21
| 474
| 2,130
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<issue_start>username_0: I recently received a "revise and resubmit" decision for a submission to an Elsevier journal, and the deadline to resubmit is in about 5 weeks. Since I have to consult with my coauthors for my revision, and one of them is a professor who's not exactly fast in replying emails, I'm worried whether I'll be able to get a revision ready in time.
Is the resubmit deadline strict? Once the deadline passes and I don't make a resubmission, is the paper immediately rejected? Is it usually possible to ask for an extension?<issue_comment>username_1: *In my experience*, paper revision deadlines set out by journals are not strict. They are set out as a way to schedule and organize the journal operations. Perhaps deadlines for revisions are also to put a bit of pressure to authors to actually perform the changes in a reasonable time.
However, you are expected to meet them as a way to be respectful of all the people handling your manuscript, from the journal staff to reviewers and the editor(s).
As one comment stated, it is always a good practice to let the editor(s) and the handling staff know if you cannot meet a deadline, and to propose a new deadline that you would strive to meet.
Not meeting a deadline for a revision does not imply that your work does not meet scientific standards. Thus, rejections are not likely to happen. Still, not meeting a deadline and not offering explanations in advance would suggest that you are busy but rude.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The strictness of the deadline strongly depends on the journal and the context of publication. For most papers to most journals, there is potentially a great deal of flexibility (assuming that you ask early and are polite about it). The main exceptions that I have encountered are:
* High-impact journals sometimes expect you to drop everything else on their behalf, and thus may give both a short deadline and little flexibility.
* Articles submitted for a special issue sometimes need to hit particular dates in a production schedule, and thus may not have much flexibility to give.
Upvotes: 5
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2015/07/21
| 2,112
| 9,377
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<issue_start>username_0: I have been working on a topic(numerical analysis) for several years, and I discovered something new which can be verified by numerical experiments. But my supervisor doesn't allow me to publish it, though he does admit that my research is worth publishing.
So is it possible to publish my research without my supervisor? I have done the research all by myself, the idea, the numerical experiment is original and without any help from my supervisor, but I am still a student. Will the journal reject my paper just because I submit the paper while I am still a student and without any co-author?
As many people are wondering why my supervisor will not allow me to publish, I give my own explanation below:
1. He has a strong desire to control all the research in my lab, I am afraid he is the only person who is doing research in my lab, all the students who have published just wrote the articles, all the ideas are from my supervisor. All the ideas by the students usually will be abandoned.
2. I am an international student here, although I don't think that the relation with my supervisor is totally broken, I'm afraid he wants to postpone my graduation, so that he still have a PHD student in the next year. (Here is East-Asia, he can do like this without any opposition, it is not abnormal here as far as I know)
As someone suggested, my real problem may far beyond the simple question of the title. However, I do want to know if it is possible to publish a paper by a student solely. Of course any advice on whether I should or not publish my research is also appreciated.<issue_comment>username_1: Publishing paper does not necessarily need co-author and supervisor. However, it is strongly recommended. Having experienced co-author (not another unexperienced author) with couple of publications like your supervisor has several benefits, including:
1. Your co-author reads paper and puts effort to make it more professional and mature for publication. He/she checks to ensure there is no mistake in technicality, presentation, and English.
2. It gives more confidence to reviewers to ensure that what you did is scientifically correct and is also producible. Though rejection of papers with several experienced authors is also a very common issue.
In research, there are several small hints and tiny things to consider that can impact on the final results/outcomes of the research. If you submit without your supervisor/advisor's, particularly without his help and actual supervision, it is very likely to have those error.
In reality, research is very much complex, though it might look very simple. There are many many things to consider before undertaking research, reporting it, and even trying to submit it. Thus, your idea might not be yet ready for publication yet. Your supervisor may want to help you do not get a quick rejection that discourages you.
I don't think that exist any supervisor on the earth that avoid publishing paper unless there is either threat to its credit or the work is premature. Your supervisor may exaggerate on the quality of your work/paper though it is not yet mature enough to encourage you. So, if he *admit* that your paper is good, it is not 100% sure that your paper is ready to publish at the moment. Remember that your supervisor can see lots of other things that you cannot see in this stage.
So the bottom-line is that, try to further work on your idea and convince your supervisor that the paper is good and he -as a normal humankind- should be more than happy to co-author the paper with you since publication is one of the main KPIs for academicians across the globe.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Also depends on how powerful is your supervisor. In my field, editors would be wary that a PhD student does a paper without PI supervision, and would avoid accepting to save their backs. Also this way they can prevent their students sending papers to others and getting an independent publication. Since
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> research all by myself, the idea, the experiment is original and without any help from my supervisor
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1. Are you sure you were legally allowed to those experiments?
2. Your PI may claim later this experiment or organism (like bacterial sequence or gene) was not declared in the list of approved experiments.
3. Even the mere fact that he/she funded the resources and consumables for the experiment gives your PI right towards claiming authorship.
4. Since research faculties are filled with people with enough pride (and ego) your PI may also be very annoyed with her/his standing in your institution.
5. Finally, if you are looking for a postdoc/academic position later in your life - just do NOT do it. They will make it impossible.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: As long as the article is good, it can be accepted, no matter how many authors are on the paper or whether you are a grad student or not. However, if your advisor does not want you to publish the paper, there might be some reasons. First, perhaps that the advisor is funding your research and that this research direction is not his priority. He perhaps think that other problem should be investigated. If you are paid by your advisor, then the advisor may need to do research related to that funding source. Second, although the idea may seem good, the advisor may see some problems in your idea and may think that it is not the most promising idea and that you should spend your time on something else. Writting a journal paper can take quite a lot of time.
Finally, I would recommend to not publish a paper by yourself while you are working under a specific supervisor. Your supervisor may be very angry if you do that, especially if you do that during time where you are paid by his funding or using the resources of his lab. I know several professors who were very angry when their student decide to submit papers without letting them know. A student should always ask the permission of his supervisor to submit a paper.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: As stated before, **the problem is not the acceptance of a publication** (optimally double blind peer review, anyway).
It is a power play between the supervisor who needs the students work, and the student who needs the position (money / signature on dissertation).
It is sad, but the truth is that many supervisors are just like ticks exploiting the work of their students for their own benefit.
There are cases:
1. ... where the supervisor has many ideas (perhaps not the best) and uses the students solely for means of getting his ideas implemented
2. ... where the supervisor doesn't even have the ideas, just does some (possibly annyoing) editing in the end to justify his name on the publication
3. ... where the supervisor does not do anything and still puts his name on the publication
4. ... where the student is not particularly qualified and actually requires a strong guidance
5. ... where both the supervisor and the student are qualified and actually work together hand in hand
At first, I have had case (1), then quit. Then I could do my own research because there was no supervisor and had 2/2 publications at top tier conferences. Now I am back in an official PhD position and it comes to case (2). From what I see around me, I do not think I am very unlucky. It is sadly the norm.
From my experience, many/most supervisors cannot really teach the student anything new. They pass over some (arbitrary) literature to read and 'teach' the students how to succeed in a corrupt system. The students are younger and more focused, while the supervisor is trying to do ten things at the same time, is caught up in bureaucratics, etc. One can tell from the long list of their publications just how much actual contribution they could have had.
**Two points that bother me in the above comments:**
1. It is not necessarily true that the supervisor knows how to do things better. He does not own the truth. For example his editing might well make things worth.
2. The supervisor does not fund the research, usually the tax payer does, or perhaps the paying students of a private university (or wherever they get their money).
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: A journal worthy of being deemed scholarly should **consider an article on its merits**, be it from a postgraduate, a university academic already holding a PhD, or an independent scholar.
If you are concerned about an editor being dismissive because sole-authored articles by postgraduates were not the norm in your field, my recommendation is to **submit to a journal that employs double-blind peer-review** (i.e.: reviewers do not know identity of the author **and** the author does not know identity of reviewers). One reason for double-blind peer review is to ensure that the reviewers are evaluating the content and scholarly argument of the article, and not taking into account the reputation (or lack thereof) of its author.
In my field (which is in the arts & humanities), it is common for postgraduates to publish sole-authored journal articles or book chapters (I am a postgraduate who is currently working on a sole-authored book chapter for a collected volume; incidentally, my supervisor happens to be working on a separate sole-authored book chapter for the same volume but on a different topic).
Upvotes: 1
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2015/07/21
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<issue_start>username_0: It is inevitable that several parts of a PhD dissertation come from published papers. The publishers who claim copyright (or exclusive right to publish) of articles are aware of this, and they allow authors to include their papers in dissertations.
As an example, the following is an excerpt from a typical [Springer copyright transfer agreement](http://www.springer.com/?SGWID=4-102-45-69724-0):
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> Author retains the right to use his/her Contribution for his/her further scientific career by including the final published paper in his/her dissertation or doctoral thesis provided acknowledgment is given to the original source of publication.
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Furthermore, in the case of monographs the paper contents are often split up to become part of the new text. You do not even use the publisher's PDF, just your produced articles. You sort of include pre-and post-prints.
Now, provided that all the publishers' demands (e.g., acknowledging the source of publication) are met, can one put online a PhD dissertation, which contains both original text and text from copyrighted material, under a [Creative Commons](http://creativecommons.org) license? In particular, the [CC-BY](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) license.<issue_comment>username_1: With the standard disclaimer (I'm not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.): in order to put your dissertation under a CC license, you need to have the right to redistribute all material in the dissertation under that license. To that end, you might find it useful to classify each piece of your dissertation according to the following criteria:
1. You hold the copyright in the material. This applies to anything you've written yourself as long as the copyright has not been transferred to another party. **OK**.
2. You don't hold the copyright in the material...
1. ...but the copyright holder has licensed it to you for redistribution...
1. ...and the terms allow you to redistribute it under the CC license. **OK**. This is the case for any material from papers that are themselves distributed under the CC license you want to use. It *may* also be the case for papers that are not CC-licensed, depending on the terms of the copyright transfer agreement.
2. ...and the terms *don't* allow you to redistribute it under the CC license...
1. ...but your use of the material is defensible as fair use. **OK**. This is probably the case if you're quoting passages here and there. *Maybe* reusing a figure.
2. ...and your use of the material is not defensible as fair use. **STOP**. You cannot put your dissertation under the CC license.
2. ...and the copyright holder has *not* licensed it to you for redistribution...
1. ...but your use of the material is defensible as fair use. **OK**.
2. ...and your use of the material is not defensible as fair use. **STOP**. If anything in this category is in your dissertation, you can't distribute it at all (which makes it fairly useless as a dissertation).
The question in your case is whether the copyright transfer agreement gives you the right to redistribute under a CC license - in other words, does the material you take from your papers fall under 2.1.1 or 2.1.2? That you probably need to consult a lawyer for.
In the part of the agreement you quoted, it sure *seems* like the only condition they put on your reuse of the material is that you give credit, and if that's really the case, then it's okay (because you will give credit; that's just good academics and also part of the CC license itself). But the piece of the agreement you quoted doesn't actually say you're allowed to *redistribute* your distribution with the Springer-owned material in it, and even if you are, it doesn't say you're allowed to choose the license. This is the sort of thing a lawyer might pick on, and why I say you need to consult one of your own.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If the copyright in the material is held by someone else, you **cannot** license the entire work CC-BY. The Springer (etc) permission for a doctoral thesis is a specific exception and does not extend to allowing you to relicense the underlying work.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm submitting a paper to the journal Elsevier journal "Nonlinear Analysis: Theory, Methods & Applications" (<http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0362546X>).
They told me to use the elsearticle document to prepare my submission. The problem is the margins are huge and the line spacing is huge, so my document has doubled in size under this class. So I thought: ok, I need to cut down on my calculations etc. But then I looked at some published articles under that journal, and they do not resemble the elsearticle class at all! The margins are much smaller and the line spacing is much nicer, so much more text fits in.
What is the point of them telling us to use that awful style file? Why should I spend hours reducing my paper when it won't be published in that style and so the changes I make may be entirely unnecessary!<issue_comment>username_1: The elsevier LaTeX class file has a couple of options that influence the appearance of the paper.
If you see very large margins and double spacing, then you are using the class with a setting that is supposed to make reviewing the paper easier. It allows the reviewers to add notes to the paper "in situ", i.e., directly where they belong. This is especially helpful when correcting grammar and spelling.
The style of a LaTeX document can be changed by simply replacing a few words in the first few lines of the document's source code. For example, an option to the elsevier document class will remove the double-spacing. So it is not unreasonable by the journal to ask you to use that style, even if you think that it is ugly. When changing the look of the paper, it may be necessary in a few cases to add a few hyphenation patterns or break formulas a bit differently when changing the appearance, though.
Also note that the publisher has an own version of the class file that is not publicly available for final versions of the paper. If you use their provided style, then it will be easy for the publisher to switch your paper to this alternative style file, so that the final result looks just as the other papers in the journal.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> They told me to use the elsearticle document to prepare my submission.
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Who is "they"? If your paper has not been accepted yet, I recommend contacting someone on the editorial board (i.e. a scientist, not someone who works for Elsevier) and asking them if this is in fact required.
It might be that Elsevier merely "encourages" you to incorporate their style file so that their own employees don't have to do it themselves. In this case, you might remember that Elsevier makes over $1B of profit every year by selling scientists' own research back to them. My reaction would be that they can damn well afford to hire professional copy editors; others' reactions may vary.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: It is very rare (in mathematics) that a journal really makes using their style necessary for *submission*, even for the journal making that claim in their guide to authors. My advice is to **never adjust the style of a paper for submission**, and simply submit the version you originally produced.
The reason is that formatting for each submission turns out to be a waste of time, all the more so that journal styles are rarely that much more readable for the referee than any standard style. (Note that unless you really know about typesetting you should not depart from standard style too much, e.g. do not use the fullpage package. Large margins have a purpose.)
In fact, most of the time this is not even mandatory to use the journal's style after acceptance, because the journal will do the job of adapting the article to their class. I try to do it for reasonably cheap journals (e.g. MSP journals), but I never do that for Springer and Elsevier.
Also, unless strictly mandatory (e.g. page limit) you should never change the content of an article in function of the formatting style (of course you can resolve overfulls and other warnings): the content is driven by what you have to say, period.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: I've refereed papers for Elsevier journals, and the format of the paper that they provided to me was quite different from any published version. Not only did it have lots of white space (in the margins and between lines) but it also had line numbers in the margin. (The latter were useful, so that I could easily refer to specific lines in my report.) So you should not assume that any particular pre-publication format will resemble the final published version. And you should should certainly not base any revisions of the paper on its appearance in an early format.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/21
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<issue_start>username_0: I am about to submit a paper to a conference. I just found out that the conference falls in Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Since I am an observant Jew, I don't want to present on Saturday. What are my options?
1. I thought to submit the paper, and if it is accepted, explicitly ask the organizers to schedule me to another day. Is this possible/acceptable?
2. Another option is to submit the paper, and if it is accepted and scheduled on Saturday (and the organizers don't agree to change this), then withdraw the paper. This is of course less preferable as it, probably, creates bad reputation if I don't present an accepted paper (I am also not sure if it will be published: [Presented a paper in a conference, but my paper did not get published in proceeding](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/45638/presented-a-paper-in-a-conference-but-my-paper-did-not-get-published-in-proceed) )
3. The third option is not to submit at all, in order to prevent the option that I have to withdraw an accepted paper.<issue_comment>username_1: If your paper is accepted is it perfectly appropriate to ask them to observe your religious guidelines. A lot of people will give special date restrictions when presenting in a conference for lesser things like they need to fly home by a certain date, their funding doesn't cover hotels for the length of the conference, or they just don't have a desire to stay the whole time.
Good luck with presentations!
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I would say that this falls under the category of "reasonable requests for accommodation," and suggest pursuing option #1: first see if you're accepted, and then if you are, send a request to not be scheduled on Saturday. The conference schedule is almost certainly not yet determined (it will depend on the distribution of accepted papers), and the fraction of the schedule that is problematic for you is pretty small. Thus, if you are prompt in requesting accommodation after being notified of acceptance, there is a good chance that the organizers will be willing to make it happen. If they do not, however, you may need to ask a colleague to present or to withdraw.
Pragmatically, scheduling accommodations are more likely to happen in small conferences than in large conferences. If you're dealing with a single-track conference with a couple dozen talks, they will almost certainly be willing to flex the schedule for you. If you are dealing with a multi-track conference with hundreds of talks, however, it is possible that they simply will not bother because your talk means so little to them.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: It may or may not work.
I don't know how it is in other fields, but in most medium-to-large conferences I've presented in (geosciences), people don't only submit to the conference, but upon submission, select a particular session. Sessions are scheduled to occur on particular days. The session convener cannot schedule presentations outside her or his particular session. To reschedule, the conference organisation would have to reschedule the entire *session*, something they are unlikely to be willing to do.
But, I would go ahead and submit. If you do end up being scheduled on a Saturday, and it does end up such that it cannot be rescheduled, I would *ask a co-author to present on your behalf*. This is not an optimal situation, but it is a lot better than withdrawing completely.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/21
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<issue_start>username_0: I am finishing my PhD next month in *Philosophy*. I've been offered a Visiting Assistant Professorship (VAP) in *Mathematics* at a very good (nationally recognized) Small Liberal Arts College (SLAC).
I have alternative options, and I have a handle on the money situation.
I'm looking further down the road. Suppose I take the VAP. Suppose I'm applying next year for Tenure Track jobs in Philosophy.
The question: In your experience, what weight does a VAP from a different field carry when evaluating an application?<issue_comment>username_1: If your paper is accepted is it perfectly appropriate to ask them to observe your religious guidelines. A lot of people will give special date restrictions when presenting in a conference for lesser things like they need to fly home by a certain date, their funding doesn't cover hotels for the length of the conference, or they just don't have a desire to stay the whole time.
Good luck with presentations!
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I would say that this falls under the category of "reasonable requests for accommodation," and suggest pursuing option #1: first see if you're accepted, and then if you are, send a request to not be scheduled on Saturday. The conference schedule is almost certainly not yet determined (it will depend on the distribution of accepted papers), and the fraction of the schedule that is problematic for you is pretty small. Thus, if you are prompt in requesting accommodation after being notified of acceptance, there is a good chance that the organizers will be willing to make it happen. If they do not, however, you may need to ask a colleague to present or to withdraw.
Pragmatically, scheduling accommodations are more likely to happen in small conferences than in large conferences. If you're dealing with a single-track conference with a couple dozen talks, they will almost certainly be willing to flex the schedule for you. If you are dealing with a multi-track conference with hundreds of talks, however, it is possible that they simply will not bother because your talk means so little to them.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: It may or may not work.
I don't know how it is in other fields, but in most medium-to-large conferences I've presented in (geosciences), people don't only submit to the conference, but upon submission, select a particular session. Sessions are scheduled to occur on particular days. The session convener cannot schedule presentations outside her or his particular session. To reschedule, the conference organisation would have to reschedule the entire *session*, something they are unlikely to be willing to do.
But, I would go ahead and submit. If you do end up being scheduled on a Saturday, and it does end up such that it cannot be rescheduled, I would *ask a co-author to present on your behalf*. This is not an optimal situation, but it is a lot better than withdrawing completely.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/21
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<issue_start>username_0: I am about to enter a PhD program, and I am very interested in learning about opportunities that allow me to go abroad after I finish. During my undergraduate career, I studied in China for a year, and I really enjoyed the environment of learning new languages and living in a different culture.
Specifically, I want to know about some of the challenges that one might have in looking for university or research positions in non-Western countries, and subsequently, how one might transition back to the United States after having spent a considerable amount of time abroad (5+ years). I have felt that math is a universal topic, and many universities abroad (especially in Asian and central Asian countries) would have faculty positions for English speaking PhDs to move there. However, I don't have any information to justify these beliefs.
I'm not as concerned about salary or ending up at a prestigious research university. I really enjoy teaching and working with students, and I enjoy math enough that any position that would allow me to continue working in mathematics and with students would be acceptable. Am I entirely off base in hoping to find positions abroad? What are some challenges that I might not have considered?
EDIT: I should have clarified. I am an American student beginning a program in the United States. In that context, then, what are things that an American PhD should be aware of when looking for opportunities in non-Western countries, such as those in Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, etc.?<issue_comment>username_1: This answer is mostly for Asia.
Yes, there are programs in at least Japan and Korea (that I am aware of) for American Ph.D to find a job, including professorship.
I think the largest difference/challenge you will face is that many times, being a student and working in Asian countries such as China, Japan, Korea, is very different. In general, the faculty, students, local businesses, etc. are happy to accommodate students spending some time in their region, learning their language, and living. Systems are in place for this and the universities most often actively encourage it.
**Meetings**
As a professor it can be (but not always) different. Unless you learn the language fluently before you go, think about your new colleagues and how they will feel, being required to speak to you in a language other than their own. Not necessarily about the weather, but more importantly (what I noticed) is in faculty meetings, budget decisions, etc. In this case, you can easily be the only person not able to understand, which leaves two options: you are left out of the meetings or everyone else is forced to speak your language (if they can).
You mention not caring about prestige, but I would caution you that many 'bad' universities have a lower chance of faculty being comfortable in English.
**Administration**
Beyond faculty, which may or may not speak English, you still will have administration to deal with. Do you assume your contract will be in English? While some online university systems are in English, I have seen many parts that are not, such as the email system in English, but the login systems or vacation registration is not.
**Culture**
Of course, you need to think about culture. The idea of Asian culture may allure you, but remember it is not always what it seems (just as people going to America find out). In at least Japan and Korea, Impact Factor is the largest measure of performance, and you must follow it. Be ready to change your work style if it does not fit into the way you are evaluated.
**Resources**
You can check <https://www.higheredjobs.com/international/> for international job postings.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: A supplement to @user1938107's excellent answer about Asia. There are some future career issues you need to think about before you come to Asia to work.
The first one is tenure. Many Asian countries offer only visiting professorships to western scholars. Those visiting professors do get higher salary than local people. But, most of them are not permanent positions. In other words, you'll need to look for another job somewhere else after a few years when the contract expires.
Another issue is sabbatical leave. Because you are a visiting professor, you don't get sabbatical leave. You are free to go anywhere in the world, but there is no guarantee that you'll get the same position when you come back.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm supervising an undergraduate research assistant this summer, who I hired for a full time position. There are several other full time research assistants in the lab, who work about 35-45 hours a week (specific hours of their choice).
This one student works about 25. He isn't unusually productive, either, and doesn't seem to be learning as much as the students who are actually working approximately full time. He isn't terribly behind, but I am sure he would make more progress on his project and have a better chance of finishing it by the end of the summer if he actually worked full time. (I designed the project so that it could reasonably be expected to be completed over the course of the summer by an undergrad working about 35-40 hours a week.)
Should I have a conversation with him about his working hours? If so, how to do it without sounding like a jerk?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> Should I have a conversation with him about his working hours?
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**Yes!** He gets paid to do a job. He doesn't do the job. You *need* to talk to him, even though it's an uncomfortable situation. Also, you say in a comment:
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> Because the general culture in academia tends to be more like, "Work as many or as few hours as you want as long as you get your work done."
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This is true, but you say that he *does not* get his job done. Frankly, if he only works like 25 hours, even if he would be supremely productive I would *still* talk to him about his work ethics if he puts in so much less hours than his peers... and if he is not it's all the more reason to make sure that he at least tries as hard as the others.
If you don't, the problem is going to be that sooner rather than later many of the 45-hours students are going to wonder why the heck *they* are actually not enjoying the summer. I have seen in my current group that various bad habits have a tendency to spread like wildfire if the students have the impression that not doing your job isn't in any way frowned upon anyway.
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> If so, how to do it without sounding like a jerk?
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In private, without getting emotional or accusatory. Tell him that you have the impression that he works considerably below the amount that was agreed upon, and that you have to ask him to change this. Tell him that you have the impression that his project is not progressing fast enough, and what will happen if he can't get it done in time (you *have* some course of action in this case, right?). Be prepared that he may counter with some sort of attack against you. For instance, this is a classic in such situations: *"Well, since you never have time for me, I don't know what to do half of the time anyway - so rather than just sit around I leave"*. Make sure that you have a good answer in this case.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: From the perspective of an undergrad student, I think you should address this issue. He might be unaware of the problem you are having with him since as you said, he is not behind in his work but you feel he could be more productive. He might even appreciate you telling him this if framed correctly, allowing him to pinpoint where he can improve and knowing that his advisor not only notices his performance but believes he can do better.
Mention that it is a paid full-time position and because of that there are expectations, despite the culture you mentioned in one of your comments. He might be able to get work done in the amount of hours a week he works, but increasing his hours not only ensures his work is done, it also shows his dedication. Also mention that the project is *designed* for someone to work 35 to 40 hours a week. He is not especially productive during his 25 hours a week, so it's not like he can get away with doing less than expected.
Sounding like a jerk would only be a problem, I think, if you don't explain your reasoning for talking to him about this. It might be best to address this in an informal setting outside of the lab, but that is more about where you personally think the conversation would be least confrontational. The way you approached the wording of the question definitely made you sound well intentioned and not jerk-ish in the slightest, so you shouldn't worry too much about your tone.
I would suggest asking him if he is only working 25 or so hours a week because he has other things going on in his personal life. It's a good place to start the conversation as it is coming from a place of concern and allows for you to get to your main problems with him as well. I'm assuming that the schedule is somewhat flexible, and if that is true, remind him of that and that you're willing to work with his schedule to some extent.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I am an undergraduate (in electrical engineering) doing undergraduate research, so I'll answer based on my own situation and what I would want if I were in the same situation.
It's possible, if he isn't putting in his full effort, that he isn't very interested in the research project (maybe he had misconceptions as to what research was like in general, or found out that he isn't as interested in the field as he thought he was). I'm not sure if there's a lot you could do there. Perhaps he's lost sight of how his particular project fits into the big picture. I had that problem before, and feeling like I was an insignificant cog in the research machine certainly didn't help my performance (I found it helpful to discuss the research with my professor to revitalize my interest in the project and to get a better understanding of how my work fit in and was useful to the team).
On the other hand, it's possible that he is having some difficulties that are holding him back with his work that are discouraging him. Is it possible that there would be unforeseen issues with his project that would make it take more time than you thought? (Admittedly this is more unlikely--I and many of my coworkers would be inclined to work more hours at this point, but it can be disheartening I suppose).
If you want to avoid directly telling him to work more hours, consider increasing the frequency at which the students report their progress to you if necessary. Perhaps have them do a mini presentation every week on what they've accomplished. Some people find it difficult to keep slacking off if they feel like their slacking is making them look like they don't have much to show.
If you do choose to speak to him directly about his work hours, just be honest--he's being paid for full time work, so he needs to work full time. That's really not something a student who wants to learn would be offended by (perhaps he'd take a hit on his pride, but that's hardly your fault).
If you want to be less "in your face", perhaps you could get this point across by emphasizing that the summer is almost over, and so he should be giving it his all in the last few weeks. This should be especially easy if you plan on having one-on-one time with the students to discuss their progress. It could be something as simple as
"Hi there [student]. Based on your current progress with your project, I would strongly encourage you to spend more time working in the coming weeks to ensure that you're able to finish."
Emphasize that he's working on the project to grow as a researcher as well as help out, so he may need encouragement to put in more effort than he deems appropriate.
Finally, there could be nothing you can do at all. Perhaps he has things going on in his personal life that distract him from work. Perhaps he's just not interested in the research and only wants to do the bare minimum, and is only interested in working as many hours as he needs to do his work. If there is a way to fix that, it seems a direct, frank talk would be the only way to do so.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/07/21
| 397
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<issue_start>username_0: I am wanting to know how necessary it is to work in industry after undergrad and before applying to a PhD. On one hand, I have a lot of industry/ research experience and have a good deal of specialized knowledge in the area of computer science that I want to research. On the other hand, most people I work with worked in industry before getting their PhD. What's the general consensus?<issue_comment>username_1: From my experience in CS in Canada, most student do not have industry experience before doing their Ph.D. And I have not seen this as a requirement for entering the Ph.D either. The reason is that a Ph.D. is not an industrial project although it could be related to the industry in some cases. But it does not need to. During a Ph.D. the goal is not to commercialize a project. But it is to advance knowledge in a given field. Some people do a Ph.D. project in collaboration with a company. But from my experience, most people don't. So to answer your question: it is not important to have industry experience. But it can help. Perhaps that you will know how to better manage your time, etc. and this may be help in carrying your Ph.D project.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In addition to username_1's answer, and depends on your workplace policy, you have a chance to earn your PHD through practical-research at work. For example: If your company is developing a new algorithm for VR-game helmet combining the player's neurotransmitter-signals, you can propose a research in that field, while working and developing this algorithm.
As for the original poster, you said that you have a lot of industry-experience, so maybe you should check out this option too.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/07/21
| 833
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<issue_start>username_0: Should a separate section list all retracted articles?
Should just a note (---retracted) suffice?
Is a short explanation expected (retracted for fabrication, plagiarism)?
Should one give a longer explanation (retracted due to Joe's work, my supervisor, who is a fraud. He is the rat, not me.).
Or should the retracted article be treated simply as a denied article, and not be listed at all?<issue_comment>username_1: In a [poll on Retraction Watch](http://retractionwatch.com/2011/01/26/how-should-authors-mark-retracted-papers-on-their-cvs-compare-a-chronic-lyme-doctor-with-one-from-the-mayo/) asking "Should retracted papers show up on a CV?," the majority of respondents said "They should be listed as retracted":
However, there is a significant minority support for the option of not listing them at all. [DrugMonkey](https://drugmonkey.wordpress.com/2009/09/01/should-retractions-be-listed-on-the-academic-cv/) offers the following rationale for this position:
>
> In a very large number of situations in which an academic CV is used, there is no *obligation* for it to constitute an exhaustive list of everything the scientist has ever done that might be considered pertinent to various sections.
>
>
>
If you choose to include it, a simple note that the paper is retracted, and possibly the list of authors signing on to the retraction, is probably the classiest way to do it. The retraction notice should give the rest of the details, should anyone wish to follow up. See for example [Donald Green's CV (online)](https://sites.google.com/site/donaldpgreen/cv-07-2011). Assigning blame for the problem in a CV seems wildly inappropriate to me.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I do not think that a retracted article can be treated the same way as a never-published article and simply not listed, because the article still appears in the literature ([and may even attract citations](http://retractionwatch.com/2015/02/18/evidence-scientists-continue-cite-retracted-papers/)), just with a "retracted" mark on it. As such, anybody who looks you up may come across it and wonder whether you are attempting to conceal the retraction.
I thus think that it would be better to include the article in the CV, and think it would be best to include a short note (no more than one line) stating the general circumstances of the retraction as neutrally as possible. As for which section, I can see arguments in either of two directions:
* Including it with the rest of the articles of the same type is reasonable because it's also an article, but problematic because it may look like it is trying to hide amongst them.
* Placing it in a separate section is reasonable because it makes the distinction clear, but is problematic because it highlights the retraction.
As such, if I were dealing with this myself, I think that I would choose to place it in its own section, but put that section as late as possible, where the reader has been exposed to lots of good things before they come to the bad.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/22
| 1,521
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<issue_start>username_0: I have created several figures that are a part of presentation slides. As usual for presentation slides, those were not published in any official proceedings (just the underlying paper, that didn't contain the same figures, was), and no copyright for the presentation slides or any parts thereof was transferred to any other party.
I have made the presentation slides available on my website and I would like to keep it that way. *More generally spoken, I would like to continue being able to provide these slides whereever I wish, including allowing other people to redistribute them on their websites.*
Now, I would like to re-use some of the figures from the slides in an upcoming paper, which will be published by Springer. Consequently, I will have to transfer copyright for the paper to Springer.
**How do I safely re-use my graphics?**
* As suggested by [DCTLib's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49183/14017), publisher may wish that I cite the paper in all works that share a graphic with the paper. However, this does not seem feasible in cases where the final form of the presentation slides was created and distributed before the paper was even planned.
* Do I have to transfer copyright of these graphics, as they form a part of my paper, which means I am forced to remove the presentation slides, which would - after the transfer - constitute a possible copyright infringement?
* Do I have to somehow explicitly mark the respective graphics (in the paper and/or elsewhere - is there another place where I need to indicate that toward Springer?) as *cited with permission* (albeit I granted that permission myself) rather than *original works first published in the paper*?
+ **Bonus sub-question:** In this latter case, it seems that regularly publishing all created graphics on my website and then marking all graphics that I use in papers as cited from that website would save me and others *lots* of possible trouble when it comes to the future re-use of graphics that were already shown in papers whose copyright has been transferred to a publisher. It just cannot be so easy, as otherwise, everyone would be doing it, so there must be some catch in this plan (?)
Maybe more generally, the question could be put as: **How can I re-use a graphic in a publication, if I have to transfer the copyright for the publication to a publisher, without changing the previously valid copyright/licensing status of the graphic?**
I feel this must be related to the case when I want to use images that are already subject to a different license, e.g. a CC-SA license, and thus I cannot grant any publisher the exclusive right to publish these images, as that would conflict with the way the images are already in use and circulating.
**Related Work**
I have found various related questions, but they either deal with [special permissions for re-use in theses](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/4787/is-it-necessary-to-obtain-permissions-for-copying-figures-from-published-article), or with re-using images [already published](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/36769/can-i-reuse-my-published-images) [in copyright-transferred papers](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/45074/reuse-published-images). Moreover, copyright laws in my country do not have a concept of *fair use*, so [questions related to fair use are not applicable to the described scenario](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/40173/academic-fair-use-and-using-publication-images-in-your-thesis), either.
**Background**
I am asking this question in response to an urgent university-wide e-mail sent by university administration that asked us to take great care when it comes to copyright issues with respect to what we publish on university websites, or in the name of the university. Apparently, there has been a recent copyright-based legal issue for the university based on what some employees put on their websites, which did not end well for the university. While I do not know any specifics other than that the university had to deal with the receipt of one or more [Abmahnungen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abmahnung), the tone of the e-mail made it clear that "acting in a way that will *probably* not create any problems" is not good enough.
EDIT: To be clear, I am *not* asking how to re-use a graphic that has already been published by one of the usual publishers and that is thus subject to the copyright restrictions of that publisher. I am asking about the opposite direction; how to have one of the usual publishers re-use a graphic I have already distributed before under less restrictive terms than what the publisher would allow, without the publisher assuming copyright ownership of the graphic.<issue_comment>username_1: Did you have a look at the Springer copyright agreement?
For example, the one for the "Lecture Notes in Computer Science" series by Springer says:
>
> Author also retains the right to use, without having to pay a fee and without having to inform, the publisher, parts of the Contribution (eg. illustrations) for including in future work, and to [....], provided that the original Springer Contribution is properly cited.
>
>
>
So updating your old slide set to include a citation should do the trick. It may be debatable whether this makes the slide set "future work", although it does change when addition the quotation.
However, I think that you overthink the issue. Springer journals allow to publish extended versions of already published papers, even if the previous version was not published by Springer. If no usage of previously published material *at all* would be allowed due the to copyright transfer that you mention, there couldn't be any extended versions unless all figures are drawn from scratch.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Perhaps re-drawing the figures, slightly modifying the style and the form, can help avoiding these copyright issues ? That's what we do, in my field and country (geography/maps, France).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Publish the figures first under a Creative Commons license on Figshare or a similar site. Licensing them in advance preempts the publisher agreement. If you license them CC, you won't be required to reference.
I know at least one person who does this regularly; she discusses it on slide 4 of [this presentation](https://www.bitss.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/reproducibility_pi_manifesto1.pdf).
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/22
| 2,690
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<issue_start>username_0: *As this has happened to me several times for different papers now, I am not describing a specific case here, but the abstract aspects that were common to all situations.*
Occasionally, in the "Tasks" or "Materials" section of the "Evaluation" or "User Study" chapter, papers of mine contain statements such as:
* "Figure ... shows one of the tasks from the user study. The correct answer was ... ."
* "For the user study, we had prepared eight tasks. They were given in the form of natural-language questions. Users were supposed to use our novel concept to input the appropriate parameters as described by the questions. Questions ranged from simple (such as '...?', see Figure ... for the solution) to complex (such as '...?', cf. solution in Figure ...)."
In these cases, the figure captions once again mention the figures depict questions and/or solutions from the user study.
Occasionally, these are met with reviewer comments such as:
* "The paper does not provide any example of the tasks presented during the user study. It would greatly improve the quality of the paper if the authors could at least provide one such example. Without this, I find it very hard to get a clear idea of how the study was conducted, and thereby, I also cannot tell how reliable the results presented in Section ... are."
*I base my reasoning on the idea that this reviewer comment is, plain and simple, incorrect, as I did provide concrete examples of tasks. If I am somehow mistaken about this, please do let me know.*
While such statements were certainly not the only reason for voting to reject, some of the reviewers who wrote something along these lines made it rather clear that they saw the alleged lack of any task examples as one of the most critical issues with the submission.
My question focuses on the situation that such a paper is getting revised - either, because it was accepted after all, and I am preparing a camera-ready version, or because it was rejected, and I am trying to improve it before submitting it elsewhere: **What is the appropriate reaction with respect to such comments?**
* **Ignore the statements and do not change anything about the respective examples in my paper.** This might be a viable way to go, but it leaves a bad taste to completely ignore some reviewer statements, even though they are clearly comprehensible and *should* be straightforward to implement.
* **Re-word the sentences mentioning the examples.** I might do that, but I am wary of making things worse, as I already consider the respective statements in my paper quite unambiguous as they are.
* **Add more examples, and possibly at different locations.** This could make it harder to miss the examples, but in CS conference papers, space is an extremely scarce resource.
* **Ask the editor.** Especially in cases where the paper was eventually still accepted, this seems quite extreme to me. I feel contacting the editor should be reserved to truly exceptional and severe issues, not "every-day worries" of all authors who are preparing their CR-versions.
Note that I am not asking [how to deal with the review decision](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23836/paper-rejection-based-on-unfair-review). Even though it is slightly annoying if a rejection is indeed based on incorrect reviewer statements, I am ok with resubmitting a revised version elsewhere. I am specifically asking *how* to revise the particular parts that were incorrectly criticized.
Some peculiarities of my field to note that might not be obvious:
* Only some conferences have a rebuttal phase. If they do, it is not guaranteed (or even reasonably likely) that especially reviewers who criticized a paper a lot will actually read the rebuttal and possibly even amend their review. Also, these rebuttals are usually limited in length (e.g. to 500 words), so you can usually mention only a selection of all issues raised by reviewers.
* CR-versions are rarely accompanied with explanatory letters to the editors (or, more precisely, the program committee) in my experience.
+ Submission usually happens by means of web-based submission systems which allow the upload of exactly one PDF file, which is sometimes automatically checked on formal factors, such as number of pages (so even tacking an extra page with explanatory notes in front of the paper will not work).
+ If an opportunity is provided to upload some additional files, this is usually meant for uploading sources and supplementary material such as videos that will be put on the proceedings CD. It is not clear whether the material will be sifted thoroughly enough so letters to the editors will be found in time and treated appropriately.
* My field is related to HCI.
+ Therefore, contributions are sometimes graphical in nature. Consequently, figures sometimes do not just provide information *about* the contribution (statistical graphs, exemplary architectures), figures are often a crucial part for *showing* the contribution. In other words, sometimes, the depiction *is* the contribution, or it shows how the novel concept presented in the paper does something.
+ User studies are used to test how well human users can get along with the novel concept. Therefore, tasks are often written as questions. Study participants then have to find the correct answers to these questions by using the novel concept being tested. This usually means that they have to interact/make inputs with/in the implemented prototype that shows the novel concept. This is meant to mimick how the concept would be used in real life, where users would use the respective novel HCI technique for retrieving information, as well.<issue_comment>username_1: The following is predicated on the assumption that the reviewer comments indeed concern mostly editorial matters which can be resolved through modest amounts of text editing (your examples look like that), and do not raise any substantial issues (an example of which would be where reviewers ask you to carry out additional experiments which would take a serious amount of time). In the latter case i would suggest to get in touch with the editor to discuss whether or not the additional work can reasonably be expected to be done within the time frame given for revision (if any).
I think that two things happened: the reviewers were either sloppy or they did not have the time to read the paper un-interrupted and forgot some parts of it, and secondly: you apparently made it easy enough for them to forget parts that are relevant.
Not knowing your papers, i can only give general suggestions to avoid the second issue or reduce its impact. The first is to have a proper structure in your paper: have separate (sub-)sections clarifying different aspects of your technical approach. In my sub-field of CS it is for example very common to have a (sub-)section describing the system model, which can have further sub-structure describing the fault model, load models etc -- even when I as a reviewer forgot some detail about certain assumptions or details of the experimental setup, i know where to look when such a section is there and stands out. And secondly, you can sprinkle cross-references to the relevant sections in various places ("The user did well in task X (see Section x.y for the task description) because ..") instead of repeating the task descriptions.
Fixing / re-organizing your paper along these lines should definitely be part of your reaction, don't just ignore such comments. I would recommend against bugging the editor about editorial issues -- the onus is on you to make things clear and to keep reviewers happy.
To summarise, I think your overall approach should be based on the assumption that all is your fault and not the reviewers. I am not saying it is, but i think the outcome overall is better if you treat it like that.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: To be honest, I don't think a comments like
>
> the paper does not provide any example of the tasks presented during
> the user study. It would greatly improve the quality of the paper if
> the authors could at least provide one such example
>
>
>
are incorrect. Although you described your surveys briefly, the reviewer may still want to actually have a look at them. If I were you, I would publish the surveys on the internet, and include a link to them in the paper. This way, anybody could easily see what your "eight tasks" are, and convince themselves that you did a great job :)
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_3: A simple rule of thumb can help to handle reviewer comments:
"The reviewers are always right, even when they are wrong."
This means that when reviewers make wrong assumptions or draw wrong conclusions, apparently the article is not clear enough and allowed them to do so.
Mostly, in my experience, the solution that works best, is to restructure the article to prevent readers from drawing wrong conclusions. Make the text clearer, improve the structure, avoid being overly verbose.
The reviewers will appreciate such an approach more than you trying to point out in the reply-to-the-reviewers why they are wrong, or just ignoring their comments.
When your article was rejected immediately, then use this approach to improve the paper for a new submission, and prevent running into the same issues.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_4: If the article is accepted and there is no rebuttal phase or step and you really had a section that called out the tasks, ignore that part of the review. If there's an opportunity to rebut, or this is a journal where the editor needs a response, then write back to the editor that you have already provided example tasks, cite the page number and section, and quote the text. There's really nothing more you need to do or should do.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: I almost *never* ignore a reviewer comment. Even if the reviewer is simply wrong, the way in which they are wrong usually points out a way that some significant subpopulation of readers is likely to misread the paper.
Given this, when a reviewer seems to have simply overlooked a chunk of the paper, I will generally fiddle with the wording, the structure or the introductory material in order to make it pop out more clearly.
For example, with your "eight tasks" example, I might do any or all of the following to make the presence and visibility of the material more blatant:
* Make sure that the introduction has a "the structure of this paper" subsection that includes the word "example" in it.
* Do the same for the section including the tasks with a "structure of this section" paragraph at its beginning.
* Add a subsection header for "Examples of Tasks"
* Put the question examples into a bullet list, rather than prose
Remember, the reviewer may be incompetent and sloppy, but *many of your readers will be also*. You want to get your point across to as many of them as possible, regardless.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_6: Being a researcher myself and having seen how the review process is done, I know that there are reviewers that give the review task to their students and these students who are not experts evaluate papers written by other serious researchers. Of course, later on the original reviewer also does a check on the reviews written by the students, but I think this is a huge blow to the quality of publication.
Of course, I cannot tell how much common is this practice. May be very little. And since you complained that you frequently get those negative reviews, I believe you are not a victim of these non-qualified reviewers.
On the other side, as another answer mentions - a reviewer is always right.
So, from your description, what I would suggest is, try to create clear description of your examples. For example, write subheadings, "Example 1", "Example 2" and this way, there is no chance even a half careful reviewer will miss it.
Remember, these days most of the reviewers are overburdened with other work, and if your paper is not very clearly readable, chances are you will get negative remarks, even when you think you don't deserve it.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/22
| 806
| 3,298
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<issue_start>username_0: You often hear that almost all UK universities are public. [Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_university#United_Kingdom), for example, says "There are four fully-fledged private universities in the United Kingdom, the University of Buckingham, BPP University, Regent's University London and the University of Law."
However my understanding is that funding for UK universities comes almost entirely from tuition fees and grant income.
What is the legal/technical/practical difference between a public and private university in the UK?<issue_comment>username_1: >
> However my understanding is that funding for UK universities comes almost entirely from tuition fees and grant income.
>
>
>
This is incorrect. Tuition of UK students is subsidised (to varying amounts in the constituent countries of the UK). In the most extreme case, Scottish students pay no tuition at universities in Scotland. If you compare 'home' fees with international fees at any public university, you will see that UK and EU students pay substantially less than international students (although it is not the case that the UK government tops up the UK tuition fees to the amount paid by an international student).
Sheffield University has [some informative pages](http://www.sheffield.ac.uk/finance/staff-information/howfinanceworks/higher_education) on how exactly this funding works. In particular, student tuition [is subsidised via HEFCE grants](https://www.shef.ac.uk/finance/staff-information/howfinanceworks/higher_education/calculate_grants), which vary depending on the course. This page appears to date from before the new variable fee regime in England, so the numbers and formulae may be out of date. But the funding mechanism subsidises the clinical years of medical, dental and veterinary students the most, then lab based courses and the non-clinical years of the medical courses, then courses with some lab or fieldwork, and then everything else.
Private universities do not receive this funding.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In England the government provides ~£4 billion to fund universities via [HEFE](http://www.hefce.ac.uk/funding/annallocns/1516/). About 1/3 of this is for teaching, 1/3 for research and a bit less for captial spending and other costs. There are different bodies for Scotland and Wales but I suspect they work similarly.
There is lots of info on the HEFE website about how the funding is allocated etc. I haven't looked too deeply, but the teaching funding is split almost evenly between supporting high cost subjects (e.g. physics/engineering) and supporting low access groups.
This funding is a small but significant % of university funding ~15% according to [wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_university#United_Kingdom).
In return the universities have to follow various regulations. The most significant of which is the tuition fee cap (~£9,000 currently) and do various things encourage encourage disadvantage groups to go to university.
Theoretically any university could refuse this funding and become private. However, I will speculate that the increase in tuition fees required to cover the loss would make them unattractive to students compared to public universities.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/22
| 2,500
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<issue_start>username_0: I am asking this for a friend who hopes to enter grad school for a PhD next year in science. This person has a cell phone but almost always turns it off and has no voice mail (meaning there is no way to leave a phone message). I think not answering phone calls or being available by phone would make it difficult for my friend to be successful as a grad student, esp. as a RA or TA.
My friend has a variety of reasons for not wanting to have phone on or voice mail set up that I will not specify here.
So I am looking for thoughts from grad students or professors.<issue_comment>username_1: Anybody who wants to participate in scientific life, even as a grad student, needs to have some way that they can be reliably reached in a timely fashion. They also need to provide that information to those who need to reach them (e.g., their professor, students if they are a TA).
Whether their recommended best means is by cell phone, by email, or by instant message, however, matters much less. In fact, [the current generation appears to be moving away from voice calls](http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/07/AR2010080702848.html), so cell phone availability is less likely to matter in any case.
Thus, as long as it's easy for people who need to reach your friend to do so, the particular choice of not having a cell phone on should not be a problem.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: Being a TA or RA is not being a receptionist, secretary, or personal assistant. It's also not taking pizza delivery orders. Answering phone calls is not part of the job requirements in the vast majority of cases.
Now, that being said, it's possible that if the desk where your friend sits and the office where their supervisor works are physically separated by some distance, the supervisor may try to call before they come looking for your friend or to ask your friend to come to their office. My supervisor's office was 4 floors up and then he moved across the street and 6 floors up---he called before coming over to the lab to chat.
So, if your friend has a phobia or other problem related to telephones, it's possible they may have to work out an arrangement with their supervisor so that they can be contacted via SMS, instant message, or email quickly when their advisor (or anyone else, really) is looking for them, but otherwise, it will be fine.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: I, as a grad student, have never in my life used my phone for work/research/teaching purposes.
In my field (Maths) and country (UK) handing out phone numbers to students or advisors is completely unheard of. In fact, if you do so then people will think you are weird!!
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: No, using the phone is not a requirement to be a successful grad student. It may depends where you work, on your advisor, on your field, etc. But personnally, during my studies in Canada, I have mostly communicated by e-mail with my supervisors and other colleagues. In terms of phone, I have answered the phone at the lab a few times, but it was not a requirement. And I did not have a cell phone either.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: Is your friend me? :)
Having been a graduate student for years, I've never had anyone call me for professional reasons (except perhaps to ask for directions when meeting up at a conference or social event), and I've never seen this happen to any grad student I know.
The closest thing that I can think of is stories I've heard of naive TAs giving out their cell number to students, who then incessantly call at inopportune times (such as 1 am in the night before an exam). Avoiding this "responsibility" cannot possibly impair a graduate student's success, since TA orientation workshops tend to recommend it.
Academics almost exclusively communicate with email. When face-to-face communication is necessary, it usually happens through a pre-arranged Skype session. I think due to the nature of most office arrangements in Academia, the disruption and break in concentration caused by phones is unwelcome. Often there are conferences, classes or meetings where phones are muted. On top of this, if the person in question does much lab work, they may often be physically unable to answer the phone.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_6: I have supervised several graduate students. I don't recall a single phone conversation with any of them. I don't think I ever had any of my student's phone numbers.
When I need to contact one of my students I send them an email; if the matter is pressing, I might walk to their office.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: An aspect hardly mentioned in other comments and answers is the syndrome of interrupting face-to-face interactions to answer the phone, or at least see who's calling, etc., ... thus giving the phone-call higher priority (at least for a moment) than the people right in front of you, and at the very least *interrupting* the face-to-face. I ceertainly don't like that when other people do it to *me*. So I tell people that I will very possibly *not* pay attention to a phone call in my campus office, because I'm there to talk to people face-to-face, or teach a class, or a seminar. Phone calls don't fit in to that. The subordinate point here is that (e.g.) email or text messages allow asynchronous communication, while phone calls insist on at-that-moment response, etc. I tell people to send me email anytime, and that I'll almost always respond within a few hours at most, but I have never given out my cell phone number (nor home phone). Most phone calls to my office phone are wrong numbers, besides, so caller ID doesn't tell me who it is, etc.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_8: One issue that has not been mentioned is administrative matters.
Usually when you start as a grad student, your department asks you to fill out a form with contact information, typically including a phone number. (You may have a similar form for higher echelons of the university.) If you put a phone number on that form, the department's administrative staff is going to expect that calling that number will reach you. The vast majority of administrative matters are handled by email, but occasionally there can arise something urgent where someone needs to speak with you right away. ("We need this form signed today or your stipend will not be paid." "Another TA is sick, can you take over her class in 15 minutes?" "Your office is being flooded with sewage.") In those cases, they may very well try to phone you - and it's not so good if this results in them leaving a message you will never hear.
And if you *don't* put a phone number, it's likely that you will have to explain why you don't want to be called, and hope that your department's staff are understanding and willing to be flexible. Note that administrative staff members tend to conduct much more of their daily business by telephone than academic personnel, and may find it much less convenient to try to reach you by text message, instant message, etc - so keep in mind that your preference is having an impact on other people.
If your friend's reasons for avoiding phone contact are reasonably compelling (hearing impairment, stalkers, etc) then I would expect that accommodations can be made. But if they are frivolous or appear to be personal eccentricity, this may lead to friction with the administrative staff. (And that's not good, they have a lot more power than you may realize.)
I would actually expect this type of contact to be a bigger issue than with your advisor (who is probably fine with contacting you via other means) or your students (who should not get your personal phone number anyway).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_9: I could very well be your friend. The only reason I got a mobile phone in the first place was because I was coorganising a show with experiments with about twenty contributors and an audience of over 500. As you might have guessed, this was an entirely voluntary thing.
Since then, I activated my mobile only twice for university-related reasons other than pure convenience, once to tell a professor that I may be late for proctoring an exam due to a puncture and once in case a professor might not make it in time to an exam. Both cases were obviously exceptional and even if I had no mobile phone, it would not have been a big deal.
The point I want to illustrate here and that has been missed by the other answers so far is this: If your friend’s attitude to mobile phones is a problem at all, it’s even less so, as he has one and is only reluctant to use them. In those rare cases where there is actually a call for it, he might agree to use them (if I understand you correctly).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_10: Several points I believe other (fine) answers have not addressed:
1. **Quid-pro-quo for getting an office:** If my department gives me an office (which I actually use), and it has a phone, it's reasonable to expect I be somewhat available on that phone. (Not on my cell phone though, that's personal).
2. **Teaching duties:** If you're a TA or otherwise teaching, and you have reception hours, it may (or may not) be reasonable to expect you hold them in a place with a phone, since in some situations students can't always be expected to physically visit that space, and might want to talk to you rather than converse in writing. It's possible that no-one will formally require this of you but I think you are obligated that way. Regardless of whether voice calls are more or less popular, a not-insignificant fraction of your students may prefer/need to make them and you should be obliging that in my opinion.
3. **TA-in-charge:** If you're the TA-in-charge for a larger course, then you *definitely* need to be available on your cell phone, and the lecturers and TAs need to have the number. I wouldn't say you need to be available 24/7, but be highly available when it matters (e.g. days before an exam).
4. **Lab work:** Some lab work (especially in the life sciences) is very time-critical. This situation is somewhat similar to being a TA-in-charge, since researchers and technicians might need to coordinate what-to-do-when or who-replaces-whom in watching the Petri dishes. Phone numbers are often shared in this situation.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: The institute where I'm doing my PhD has a formal policy not to hire local PhD graduates as postdocs. Is this normal?
I live in Europe.<issue_comment>username_1: As far as I know, there are no official rules prohibiting institutes, universities or even labs to hire former PhD students as post-doc. Sometimes, a supervisor might hire you for a short period of time as Research Associate to wrap up papers and finish work at the lab, but this typically does not exceed 6 months to a year and should be considered to be part of the PhD work.
That said, although there are always exceptions, in general it is a pretty **bad idea** to do a post-doc at the same lab or department as your PhD. Some people even consider it to show a lack of ambition, competence and motivation; and I've been told it is frowned upon by hiring committees.
Successfully completing a PhD is the endpoint of an apprenticeship relation with the PI and lab. A post-doc is an opportunity to break that relation and take the experience and knowledge from your PhD to perform more independent research, build a new network, diverge into other topics, and experience a different lab culture.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: It depends very much on the field and on the circumstances. A student in an experimental field who has done enough work to finish a thesis might well be invited to stay on for a year or two to do more work on the same broad experiment. A student who has finished a thesis late in the job-hunting season might be offered a one-year position as a post-doc or an instructor to enhance her CV before moving on to a longer term position. There simply are no general rules.
Upvotes: 2
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| 465
| 2,044
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<issue_start>username_0: The university where I'm doing my PhD is asking me to register a co-supervisor.
However, I don't really know the role of co-supervisor. What exactly is it for? Does it mean that for every publications we do, we should also add him in the authorship?!<issue_comment>username_1: There are several reasons that the university wants you to do this.
The most serious is as a safeguard against possible problems that might arise if your relationship with your (actual) advisor deteriorates. For example, if your advisor asks you to do something that you think is unethical, or is making what you think are unreasonable demands on you, the idea is that you should be able to go to this second advisor to talk about these things. Whether or not this is actually realistic is another question.
This has nothing to do with authorship of publications, unless the second advisor is actually an author.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: There are a few possible reasons.
* One of the most important aspects of your graduate education will be how to successfully collaborate with others. By requiring you to work with someone other your boss, they hope to have you learn more about working on a research *team*.
* It's almost always a good idea to have many eyes on research before it goes out, to make sure that it's inspected from a number of viewpoints. Requiring a larger committee enforces that idea.
* Having someone else as a "dotted line boss" provides you with someone else who is officially responsible in some way for you. This can be a good way to generate discussion and get feedback on your ideas from someone other than your advisor. The most useful discussion I had in the entirety of my graduate career happened with one of my committee members, not my advisor.
* Some programs require you to have a co-chair not in your program. In that instance, your graduate program would like to make sure you leave the program with exposure to disciplines other than your own, and this policy enforces that.
Upvotes: 2
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| 1,583
| 6,793
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<issue_start>username_0: Before I start my PhD I worked in a group that researched on the application of a particular area to a particular domain. No other research group published work in this area+domain. So I can safely say that my previous group is among the first if not the first to research in the application of that particular research area on that particular domain.
Now I find a paper published at an IEEE conference where a major part of its contribution is introducing a system that does something I did in a previously published paper, and it does it in the exact same way and even gives it the same name!
I know that some conferences could accept non-novel contributions. Also the paper talks about other aspects so I find it perfectly fine that this paper has been accepted and published. But what I find annoying is that they do not cite my relevant work which was published a year earlier and fairly visible online; A simple (unpersonalized) search on Google would show up at least three links to my work.
This is the second time I face this problem, but the first time this happened it was actually by the same group I worked with before; they published a related paper without citing the paper I co-authored with them.
I try to give the maximum possible exposure to my work by making it publicly available on my personal website, ResearchGate, making sure it appears on Google Scholar, etc..
I find it worrying that my work misses citations, I am keen on improving my h-index and citations count. So my questions are:
1. Is there anything I can do regarding that already-published paper?
2. Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening in the future?<issue_comment>username_1: That happens. Maybe they didn't do a thorough literature study before they published, or they did but before your work was available. This is more frequent than we would like to think. Note that it's generally expected from authors to have done a reasonable effort in searching for previous work, but it's not unethical *per se* not to reference every previous publication that could be relevant (it's also practically very hard).
>
> Is there anything I can do regarding that already-published paper?
>
>
>
No, missing a previous related work is not a valid motivation to complain to the authors or editors. Just forget about it and move on.
>
> Is there anything I can do to prevent this from happening in the future?
>
>
>
Yes, become so influential in your field that reviewers will know your work enough to spot when someone else submit a related work without citing yours.
Side note:
>
> I am keen on improving my h-index and citations count.
>
>
>
Without going into how this might not be what you should focus on (while very good researchers tend to have a high citation count, the inverse relation is not always true), the best way to do that is to produce **high-quality research**, preferably on a hot research topic.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: The only thing that you can really do is become well known so that you or your students / postdocs are constantly sent these papers to review. Then you can be the one adding "hey you didn't cite me" to your review.
If you think it's so severe that they are plagiarizing your work then you should write the editor, but good luck with that.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: Adding to the perfectly fine answers that already have been given:
The authors of the respective paper could honestly not be aware of your previous work. You could send them an email saying something like "I really appreciated your article about this and that. I myself have published in the same area, see attached paper".
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_4: It happens all the time that some papers do not cite all the relevant work. And there is nothing to do about that" But if you really think that they have plagiarized your work, you could contact the editor about plagiarism. But if it is just for a missing citation, the editor will not do anything about it. How to get cited in the future? As said previously, you can work on some hot topics and make yourself more visible by becoming more influential in your field, so people will be more aware of your work. It is also good to put you papers online. But it does not guarantee that other researchers will actually read them.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: I don't want to be the debbie downer here, but it might be that your work is not that relevant or high-quality at all.
I suppose you publish in English, even if being German, since this is the most common case in your field. So, there is a high probability that the author came across your work during a keyword research of the literature.
Maybe they read it, but thought it was misleading, or even flawed, and not worth citing. If things don't work as you expect, then it's time to let someone review your work carefully.
And, as others pointed out, you can not do anything about what others cite in their papers.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: It may not entirely apply to OP's question, but the study [Dion et al.: "Gendered Citation Patterns across Political Science and Social Science Methodology Fields"](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/political-analysis/article/gendered-citation-patterns-across-political-science-and-social-science-methodology-fields/5E8E92DB7454BCAE41A912F9E792CBA7) reveals that there may, indeed, be subtle biases in *which* papers get considered foundational or central, and therefore garner more citations.
As the other answers noted, self-promoting, getting involved in the review process, better networking, and emailing your work to authors when you see a relevant preprint on Arxiv, all might help. In the case of inequality, one could speculate that some authors engage in these activities more than others, or that innate biases mean that other people's prejudices affect the effectiveness of said activities.
I read a piece recently (can't seem to find it on Google now) that called for removing citation limits and encouraging more comprehensive referencing, to better acknowledge the contributions of young and minority investigators. The implication was that: when the number of references is limited, authors favor works by established (often white-male) colleagues, which might be considered more "canonical", simply due to network effects.
We might be able to improve this as peer-reviewers: whenever we get a manuscript to review, we should always perform a comprehensive literature search to ensure that the authors are not unintentionally ignoring some papers—especially works by young or minority researchers, which may be high quality but neglected due to bias and network effects.
Upvotes: 2
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| 1,174
| 5,142
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<issue_start>username_0: I am a PhD student in mathematics. I was always brilliant in my studies. Now, I have a problem consisting in doing wrong things without paying attention.
For example, I was asked to do some computations, and I did and checked but after sending an e-mail to my supervisor, I discovered that it missed other details.
Also, I submitted a paper to two journals and it was rejected, but one of them I selected without asking my supervisor and after hearing this he was so angry. I know, he is right but I tried to be responsible for my work and
each time I tried to work better and give a good result.
I commit many errors in small details and that is why I lost confidence in myself. My supervisor is always blaming me, but he doesn't know that I did all my best. I don't know how to solve this problem and to make me confident in myself? Maybe my problem is essentially the way that I should learn to complete my thesis successfully.<issue_comment>username_1: Look at the kinds of problems you're having, figure out what general category each belongs to, alter your procedures to prevent that kind of error happening again. Repeat as necessary until you have reliable results. Publish. (And consider including a "lessons learned" section so others can benefit from your failures as well as your successes.)
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: I see three different issues in what you have described:
1. You make some mistakes in computations. That happens to all of us, but whether you should be concerned about it depends on what type of mistakes you are making. You need to look at what mistakes you are making and how, and see whether they are "sloppy" mistakes (in which case you can develop a checklist for yourself to avoid making them) or whether they are just coming form the fact that research is hard.
2. You submitted to a paper without consulting with your advisor (and maybe dual-submitted as well). This is a serious problem, especially if you did a simultaneous submission to two journals, which is almost always forbidden and unethical. If your advisor is a co-author, then you are definitely in the wrong to submit without approval: you are not taking responsibility for yourself, you are *denying responsibility to your co-author.* Even if you did not commit either ethical sin, most advisors want to help advise their students, and submitting without consulting is a good way to make mistakes that will reflect badly on both yourself and your advisor.
3. Your advisor has been angry at you, and you are losing self-confidence. Maybe you *need* to lose some of the undergraduate-style self-confidence, and to develop a more mature self-confidence. What you describe as "being responsible" and "working your hardest" does not actually sound like responsibility to me: it sounds like you are not yet reflecting on how to manage your own behavior and its impact on others.
For all of this, I think self-reflection and learning from your mistakes is the solution. If you can understand *how* you have been making mistakes, then you can act to make them less likely in the future, and all three of these issues are likely to improve.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Making errors is an unavoidable part of the process, as any researcher will tell you. But it's important to have good quality control over your own work.
We can roughly divide errors into two categories: errors that result from a lack of attention, and errors that result from a lack of understanding. For the first kind, it's simply a matter of taking more care. If you think a document is airtight, wait an hour (or more if it's a long document), come back with fresh eyes, and proofread it again before sending. If you continue to find errors in your work after it's too late, continue adding iterations.
The second kind--which I suspect you're also making, because your paper wouldn't have been rejected twice if its only problem were nitty-gritty mistakes--is harder to deal with. It's fine to not understand things. If we understood everything already, it wouldn't be called research. But it's very important to **know what you understand and what you don't understand**. If you're not sure a step in your proof is justified, don't take it. (On the other hand, thinking ahead and asking what you can do with the step if it IS justified, is fine and sometimes necessary. But you do eventually have to come back and justify the step.) And it's fine to ask for help when you don't understand something. It's important to be able to ask your advisor stupid questions--that's what he's there for. And your advisor should read any paper you're submitting before you submit it, or at the very least, you should give him a detailed report on it. He's right to be frustrated that you went behind his back.
Finally, even if you do everything "right", mistakes will still happen. After <NAME>' earth-shattering proof of Fermat's Last Theorem, a mistake was found, and it took Wiles over a year to fix it. There's no shame in making mistakes, as long as they're not too frequent or too obvious.
Upvotes: 2
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| 455
| 1,756
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<issue_start>username_0: I want to submit an article to a journal which uses the system of double peer review, the information that I found was the following:
>
> Confirm that you have prepared: (a) a complete manuscript text minus
> the title page, acknowledgements, and any running headers of author
> names so as to permit anonymous review; (b) a separate title page with
> author information.
>
>
>
so lets suppose that my article has the following structure:
```
Page 1: Title of the article, author, affiliation
Page 2: Abstract
Page 3: Title of the article, Introduction
...
```
so for part (a) what should I include? should I do something like this:
```
Page 2: Abstract
Page 3: Title of the article, Introduction
```
and for part (b) should I submit only:
```
Page 1: Title of the article, author, affiliation
```
is it like that? I have already take care that any reference about me or the place in which I made the research is anonymized. Any help?<issue_comment>username_1: The basic answer here is to ask an editor since it's your first submission, but I would think that this sounds good. There's a lot more to preparation for double-blind review than taking your names off the front. You've got to do a good job making your self-citations look like references to other people. I.e., instead of saying "in [5] we showed" you say "in [5] Layal, et al. showed", etc, etc.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Yes, the manuscript (A) should contain the abstract, title and introduction but not the author names and affiliations and should not contain any acknowledgement.
Then, in a separate file (B), you would provide title, author names, affiliations, abstract, introduction and acknowledgements if it applies.
Upvotes: 1
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| 674
| 2,921
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<issue_start>username_0: When the review process is double-blind, I guess (although I have not read this anywhere) that acknowledgements should not be written in the submitted paper, as this might break anonimity. They should only be inserted into the camera-ready version, after the paper is accepted.
What is the custom when the review process is not double-blind? Should I write the acknowledgements in the submitted version, or wait to the camera-ready version?<issue_comment>username_1: For a review process that is not double-blind, it can be ok to not put the acknowledgement in the submitted version. As long as it is in the published version, it will be fine. I have done that many times.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: If it's not double-blind, then it generally doesn't matter whether the acknowledgements are in the initial version or not: the reviewers will simply ignore them.
When there are page limits involved, however, I like to put the acknowledgements in as early as possible. That way, their size is built in from the beginning and we don't have to figure out how to fit the extra space during the revision.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I agree with the other answers here. In particular, I follow the advice of @username_2 where he suggests to put the acknowledgments in earlier on so you can account for the space it takes up.
I would like to raise an additional consideration for putting acknowledgments in earlier on: *when your funding agency requires you to do so.*
For example, in the US, certain Department of Defense (DoD) components (such as DARPA) require the authors of any publications (or manuscripts to be submitted for publication) stemming from funded research work to include an appropriate "distribution statement" at some location in the paper. In my subfield, authors typically put this statement in the acknowledgment section.
You might ask:
>
> Why not just add the distribution statement in *after* the paper is accepted for publication?
>
>
>
Well, manuscripts to be submitted for publication must first be "released" for publication by the DoD, and if the distribution statement is not listed in the paper, then your paper is not approved for "public release." (You can get into trouble with the DoD if you try to submit your paper *prior* to obtaining public release approval).
**Bottom line:**
Check with your funding agency to see if they have any constraints on the acknowledgment section (or first-page footnote, etc.) of your paper, and at what stage of the publication process it is required.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: In mathematics, reviewing isn't double-blind, and I always put acknowledgements in from the start. Partially this is because papers circulate as preprints, but also, if the referee is someone you should have acknowledged, then it will put them in a better mood if you do so.
Upvotes: 2
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| 2,319
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<issue_start>username_0: I've asked some professors this questions and none of them have seemed to been able to give an answer that didn't lead to both them and me having more questions.
To put into context:
I have my B.S in Marketing and have been working in the marketing industry for just under 4 years. Of all the jobs I have had and been interviewed for having a strong knowledge of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) was required to even be considered. In order to market using anything digitally based you need to understand SEO and in some cases ASO.
Never in any of my textbooks was SEO talked about even though it's not a new topic and my textbooks were 2011-2013 publications. SEO was mentioned but never talked in a sense of someone would know what it is and how to use it.
For a concept so important in the marketing industry today why don't textbooks talk about it? I've looked through half a dozen of my marketing books and I've even asked to look through the new 2015 editions my professors were given.
Are their limitations to what goes into a textbook? This sounds silly even to me but anyone who works in marketing knows how important SEO is and when a textbook is written by people who have worked in the marketing field it only makes sense that they would want to include to most important industry topics to-date so that a new 2015 textbook doesn't seem outdated.<issue_comment>username_1: An important distinction that needs to be considered, in the design of any course, is the timescale over which the knowledge is expected to be applied.
* At one end of the spectrum are courses where the knowledge is expected to become obsolete only on a time scale of centuries, such as calculus or Newtonian physics (yes, they change: try reading a calculus text from 100 years ago and the notation is likely to be somewhat confusing), but are generally about fundamental knowledge and core principles and thus often rather removed from immediate applicability.
* At the other end of the spectrum are courses where the knowledge is immediately applicable, but where it may become obsolete quite quickly, such as training in particular software systems or laboratory equipment.
Institutions then tend to organize themselves along this spectrum according to their goals:
* Strong universities tend to focus much more on the long-term end of the spectrum, because they are trying to give their students skills to last a life-time, and indeed to help those students become the ones who create new systems and applications that render the shorter-term knowledge obsolete.
* Vocational schools tend to have a mix that aims to give the students both immediately applicable skills but also enough foundations that they won't need major significant retraining for a number of years.
* Professional development and other "on the job" training tends to be much shorter and focuses on the short-term skills that are needed now and where it's OK if you need to train again on the new system in six months.
Now, let's consider your example of search engine optimization: this is a *rapidly* moving target, since it's based on adapting to the current methods that the current search providers happen to be providing how the internet happens to be organized right now. Cutting edge SEO techniques are being invented and destroyed constantly. Pretty much any SEO technique from five years ago is totally useless today, and SEO didn't really even exist as a field ten years ago.
As such, you should expect a marketing textbook or course at a good university to pay little attention to SEO, but instead to focus on more foundational principles. On the other hand, if you search for SEO textbooks and courses online, you'll find a lot of more vocational or corporate resources available.
In short: educational resources adapt to the timespan over which they are intended to apply. The longer a timespan an education is intended to cover, the less it will focus on "hot topics," and a good undergraduate degree is intended to last your whole life.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: To put it simply, I think what you're facing is the difference between the purpose of courses that contribute to a university degree, the practical needs of companies that hire, and the desire of search engine companies to erect barriers to engineered SEO.
To restructure what you're asking, companies want SEO experts to help raise their online profiles (relative to the online profiles of similar competitors). Google, Bing, Baidu, etc. want to rank sites based on quality of content and ease of parsing pages rather than give into these SEO machinations.
It's hard to see how a university course could really help here. It could begin with a cursory and theoretical account of what SEO is and what it seeks to accomplish, but this would tell you little more than you can learn from a day of sleuthing about on the Internet.
After that, the problem is that Google, etc. won't tell you specifically what you need to do to accomplish SEO. Thus, there's a bit of a dark art of guessing and figuring out how to manipulate pages to raise the profile of a site. How does one construct a university course around industry secrets relative to companies that don't want people to know the exact means of optimizing?
It would seem you would need someone in the industry rather than a CS or marketing professor to teach it. But anyone who can do it well enough is gainfully employed and employed specifically to use that skill for their employer. The precise methods are changing so fast that the techniques I used in 2011 were outdated (meaning no longer provided an advantage) the last time I looked at in 2013.
To give an analogy, it's roughly like offering a course in contemporary street art where contemporary means -- drawn during the semester the course is taught. Sure, we can talk about in the classroom, but the experts are mostly criminals so how we do get access to fresh work and understand it?
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: I was teaching last year at a university and was really disappointed to see that the techniques they were teaching (in statistics) were very different from what I had been using in real-world problems. I have spent a lot of time pondering the reasons for this:
* There seems to be a lot of inertia in academia, perhaps because once people have written the lecture notes for a class, they don't want to change it, even if they wrote the notes fifty years ago. My current boss, for example, told me the story of a professor who was still, at the turn of the century, inverting matrices by hand.
* Academic classes have to prepare people for many different career paths at the same time. The things that need to be taught for people who are going to publish academic papers are going to be very different to the things that people need to know in the real world. In my case, there was a lot of teaching of t-tests, anova etc. but not much programming or messy data sets. In your case, people who are going to be marketing professors probably don't need to know about SEO, because it won't help them to get their papers published. And then of course they end up thinking it isn't important, and the problem percolates to the next generation of academia.
* In some subjects (perhaps marketing is an example, I don't know) the people who know the most about it aren't working in academia. For example, the best footballers don't teach classes in sport science; they are too busy playing football.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_4: I am going to offer a bit of a diverging view here. In his [answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49246/10094), Jake offers the explanation that SEO is just too much of a "moving target" to be of value as a university course. I strongly disagree. Just because a topic isn't "static" does not mean that you can't have good, university-level courses on it. A prime example of this is security, specifically malware detection: the entire field is basically an ongoing race between people finding ways to detect malware, and others finding ways to prevent detection. The state-of-the-art tools change literally every month. By the time you even *know* about a given concrete threat, it's probably already not the most dangerous thing out there anymore. However, clearly there is method to the madness - there are principles and techniques that can be taught, which remain useful for a long time even if the concrete tools change. In the case of malware detection, this would be knowing about honey pots and sandboxing (to find and analyze real malware), malware signatures (both exact and fuzzy), heuristic methods, behavior-based methods, and so on.
For SEO, the same thing holds true. In a nutshell, SEO is a race between search engine makers wanting to show the best content to its users, and "optimizers" trying to figure out ways to trick the search engine into thinking that their mediocre stuff *is* the most relevant content to a given search query. How you do this concretely changes all the time, but the fundamentals have, to the best of my knowledge, remained relatively stable.
So, why *is* SEO then not routinely taught in marketing?
Likely, because for understanding how SEO actually works "under the hood" you should have:
* Reasonably advanced knowledge about mathematical graphs and algorithms on graphs
* Knowledge about the theory of recommender systems
* At least basic knowledge about computational linguistics
* And of course you should know how crawling and indexing actually works on Web-scale
All of these are not topics typically taught to marketing students. That is, in order to properly teach SEO (basically a computer science topic, after all) you would need to go onto a pretty significant tangent. If you don't, you will end up teaching a course that boils down to "you have to use these kinds of words using these frequency in these tags" without giving students a chance to understand *why*, and then you are back to Jake's answer.
*(but yes, many computer science degrees, especially those with a focus on information retrieval, actually do teach SEO or a variant of it)*
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/22
| 996
| 3,677
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an Indian citizen and I'm planning to go for my bachelors to Germany. Since schooling in Germany is 13 years in length, I'll study 1 year in India before going there. I wanted to ask that after completing my Bachelor's in Germany, will I be eligible to apply for Masters in USA straightaway right after my BS (I plan to pursue a BS in Computer Science). I had this doubt in my mind as BS in Germany would be 3 years compared to that in USA which is 4 years.<issue_comment>username_1: Many universities in the US will not admit foreign students as graduate students after a 3 year bachelor's degree. Students in this situation typically complete a master's degree, some kind of post graduate certificate or an "honors degree" in the English system.
You're right to be concerned about this, but there aren't any easy solutions.
Some examples (from a quick google search): [San Jose State University](http://www.sjsu.edu/gape/faq/), [UNCC](http://graduateschool.uncc.edu/future-students/admissions/international-applicants/three-year-degrees), and [University of Idaho](http://www.uidaho.edu/graduateadmissions/requirements/internationaladmissionsrequirements/academics).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The answer to your question is yes, no, and maybe. It all depends on where in the US you want to go.
As Brian indicated in his answer, these are some universities that don't accept a three-year bachelor:
* [San Jose State University](http://www.sjsu.edu/gape/faq/)
* [University of Idaho](http://www.uidaho.edu/graduateadmissions/requirements/internationaladmissionsrequirements/academics)
However, there are certainly universities that do accept a three-year bachelor:
* [Stanford University](https://studentaffairs.stanford.edu/gradadmissions/applying/international)
* [University of Minnesota](http://www.grad.umn.edu/admissions/applicationinstructions)
* [Columbia University](http://gsas.columbia.edu/faq)
* New York University ([Wagner](http://wagner.nyu.edu/admissions/applying/international))
* Almost all business schools accept a 3-year degree (including Harvard, MIT), [source](http://www.gmating.com/topics/mba/3-yrs-accept-us-b-schools/)
And then there are who evaluate the three-year bachelor on a case-by-case basis:
* University of Michigan ([Rackham Graduate School](http://www.rackham.umich.edu/prospective-students/admissions/faq/frequently-asked-questions-while-applying))
* [UNC Charlotte](https://gradadmissions.uncc.edu/admissions-info/international-applicants/additional-application-requirements-for-international-applicants/)
Certainly, this list is incomplete. So, do your own search if you like to apply in the US, and if a university does not state anything about the three-year bachelor, ask their Graduate Admissions office.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: There are some schools that try to make up for their lack of goodness by making it harder for prospective students to get in.
But the best schools only care about enrolling people who will succeed.
A friend of mine is a case in point: she got into a prestigious MBA program even though she'd never attended university at all, never mind having a degree. She'd gone into the world of work straight out of secondary school, married, had 2 kids, and only thought about going back to school when her kids were teenagers, she was divorced, and she wanted to go into management rather than remain a Principal Software Engineer at a major company in the computer industry.
The school took one look at her record of accomplishment, brushed aside her lack of tertiary education, and 2 years later awarded her an MBA with honors.
Upvotes: 0
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2015/07/22
| 1,136
| 4,798
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<issue_start>username_0: About a month ago I applied for a PhD position in Germany under a research training group funded by the German Research Council. There are 12 open positions for this program. Before I applied I was told that promising candidates will be contacted in July. Then I heard that the department received nearly 200 applications for 12 open positions. I was a little disheartened but I thought I would wait July out before giving up hope.
But then I found out today that the department reposted the job ad to advertise the same position, with a new deadline! I haven't heard back from them about my application, so I don't even know if I'm allowed to reapply, or if I have been effectively rejected and probably should move on.
I guess my question is: is it usual not to find any suitable candidates from such a large pool, or is the admissions panel just being too picky?
**EDIT 1 (23/7)**: The program is interdisciplinary, they're looking for a wide range of backgrounds within two main disciplines (one of them I have 3 degrees in and the other I have explicitly expressed my keen interest). Because of that the program will also have a series of lectures and seminars to introduce students from one discipline to the theories and methods of the other. They're even allowing them to join master level courses! So it doesn't seem like they're looking for the perfect fit necessarily.
**EDIT 2 (23/7)**: They did have a terrible application portal when I first applied. So maybe the first round of applications was so disorganized they want everyone to apply again. But I didn't get an email encouraging me to reapply
**UPDATE (23/7):** I was told that my application is still under review, and I don't need to reapply. Yay!
**UPDATE (17/11):** Just wanted to edit this post to say that I did end up getting that PhD. Thank you everyone for keeping my anxiety at bay!<issue_comment>username_1: >
> I guess my question is: is it usual not to find any suitable candidates from such a large pool, or is the admissions panel just being too picky?
>
>
>
As somebody who recently did not hire a single candidate from a pool of about 100 applicants, I can say that it is indeed possible that they just did not find enough good people.
We were looking for a PhD student in computer science, with a focus on software and cloud engineering. We put out announcements to a few of the widely-distributed mailing lists in the field. Here's roughly what happened:
* A few candidates had completely inappropriate backgrounds. E.g., one applicant had a master in biology.
* About 30% to 40% of the applicants were computer scientists, but with a completely different specialisation in their undergrad and master. For instance, many students applied who used to work on theory, AI or Machine Learning. We are not interested in such backgrounds.
* Easily more than 50% of the applicants, based on their application material, did not have a sufficient command of the English language.
* More than half of the applicants came from Asian universities where we did not know the university nor the professors writing the letters. All of them had reasonable grades and positive but very generic letters. Most had done internships at companies we have never heard of. As we had no way to distinguish the good from the bad students with those (to us) seemingly identical application materials, we deemed the risk too high.
* About 25% of the applicants had, or pretended to have, multiple papers in predatory open access journals. The few times I actually looked up these papers, I was either unable to find them, or they were obviously of very low quality.
* The vast majority of applications were supremely generic, and obviously sent in identical form to any PhD student posting in a Western university.
At the end of the day, we found 3 or 4 candidates that we were genuinely interested in, and after Skype interviews etc. it just did not work out with any of them.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This answer may or may not apply to German universities and this funding source. In the USA, sometimes a firm or university will "hit the reset" button on a personnel search or other solicitation, purely for internal reasons. Maybe someone higher up on the organization objected to their process or criteria and they had to restart the process. Maybe there were internal organization changes about who is or is not involved in the interview/decision process. Maybe the final decision-maker(s) changed. Maybe it has to do with some quirk or change in accounting (e.g. which budget year applies). And so on...
If I were you, I would resubmit your application unless you have been explicitly rejected. The only downside is that they could say "no" (again).
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/22
| 1,030
| 4,362
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<issue_start>username_0: I cannot attend any western university right now. I can relocate in future.
But I already have article which will soon go into publishing process. So affiliation could be useful right now.
I do not like idea of publishing without affiliation or with affiliation to institution which do not work within my field (molecular dynamics).
I don't like idea of putting affiliation with institution which does not pay for my job.
Where and how I can get affiliation for myself? Should I ask for affiliation directly? What if I can possibly work for that institution in future?
PS.
I attended to many universities. Article I have was made while I attended to small one building institution (csu.ru). Institution did not pay for article nor I have any grants. Only payment I received was for teaching junior classes 2 years ago.
PS2.
Ethically I should put ALL contribution to my work.
But I didn't use laboratories, nor computer power, nor payment for last 6 months. The main expenses were computing equipment for about $2000 which I bought with money from my teaching. I was enlisted for some grants, but I already did my "payment" for this with other article, so everybody is with good relations to me.
PS3.
My previous affiliated institution is not involved for 6 months already, during this time I did my work. No, I don't intend to slap my previous institution, but I am looking for new one.
Should I just email people from other institutions with collaboration proposals and publish under their institution?<issue_comment>username_1: Affiliation isn't a commodity to buy and sell. It is simply a statement that at the time of researching and writing this article, you were affiliated (as a student, employee, or similar) with a particular organization.
From your question, it sounds like at the time of researching and writing the article, you were a student or employee of Chelyabinsk State University, so standard practice would simply be to list your affiliation as "Chelyabinsk State University". If you are not enrolled or employed there any more, then list a "current address" stating how to contact you.
Ethically, if you feel that CSU contributed nothing to the work, and you did it on your "own time", then you could omit it; in which case, you would list no affiliation at all. But this would likely be perceived as a petty insult to CSU, to the extent that anyone noticed it at all.
Affiliation should be determined only on the basis of what you were doing while you prepared the article. Anything that happened after the fact is irrelevant. You can't "get" a different affiliation for a paper you have already written.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Nate answered the issue about your previous affiliation.
>
> Where and how I can get affiliation for myself? Should I ask for affiliation directly? What if I can possibly work for that institution in future?
>
>
>
About obtaining affiliations. Many universities have a category of "visiting researcher" for scholars who are neither employees or students but would still like to use the university resources such as the library or collaborate within a lab for a short while. The VR status may allow for a research visa depending on the institution.
These are usually term limited and the university may have a registration/administrative fee. You'd normally apply by finding a PI within a department that would be your university sponsor for the VR status. "Sponsor" does not imply any financial obligation to you, many VRs have to pay their own way.
There may be either an explicit or implicit expectation that you will be in residence for at least part of the term of VR. There is, however, no expectation that you will teach, mentor, or do any administrative duties. At some universities, VRs are not given any office space and it is up to their sponsor to find work space if needed out of their own allocation.
VRs can lead to being hired but this would not be the norm or the expectation. You are just "visiting" after all.
That being said, it sounds like you would not accept this status as you said, "I don't like idea of putting affiliation with institution which does not pay for my job."
If you won't accept unrenumerated affiliation, the only option left for you is to get a paying job at said institutions.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2015/07/22
| 1,232
| 5,218
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<issue_start>username_0: I said to my supervisor that I would like to finish my PhD very quickly. He said that formally I can submit my thesis 2 years after starting my degree at earliest, but that I am doing very well and it should be possible.
I verified the institutional requirements and indeed I cannot submit my PhD thesis in less than 2 years. However, I would like to submit the thesis in 1 year and 3 months. But I would like to ask you if this could somehow be possible and if yes, then how and what I should do.
I could talk to my supervisor in person about this, but the problem is that he would find it hard to believe me that much and thus he would be reluctant to help me or what is even worse, I may hurt the relationship with my supervisor. I have been doing my doctoral degree for 9 months in mathematics and some big parts are coming together, yet still there is a lot of work.
I believe that I could finish it in 6 months, but my supervisor would believe me only if he saw everything completed. The problem is that by then it would be too late for me.
Edit: I study in the UK. If I can finish my PhD thesis earlier, and then move to a preferred place for a postdoc, I do not see a reason to delay. I need to know now if I can finish early, so that I could apply for the scholarships supporting my postdoctoral visit. The scholarships I am going to apply require that I start within certain dates and can be applied for only at specific times during the year twice or once a year.
I have fulfilled all the credit requirements already and meet my supervisor every week while formally it is required only once a month.
The specific rule is:
```
In some cases the graduate board may allow you to submit your thesis early, before the end of your standard period of study. A Postgraduate Research Tutor can only recommend this if:
(a) the thesis is complete and ready for submission and
(b) has been read by your supervisor in its entirety. Your supervisor must confirm in writing that they have read your thesis and that their view is that it is ready to be examined.
The earliest date you can submit your PhD thesis is at the end of 2 calendar years of full-time study.
```<issue_comment>username_1: You haven't explained why you need to finish your PhD so quickly- is there some particular reason that you can't complete the PhD program in the normal time frame?
You haven't mentioned what country you're in. The answer to your question could vary a lot by country.
You also haven't detailed the specific rule that says that two years are required. In the US system it would be common to have a minimum number of credit hours for the dissertation (e.g. 36 credit hours) and a maximum number of credit hours per semester that you could register for (e.g. 12) that would effectively create such a rule.
When an institution has a requirement like this it is typically not within the authority of the advisor or the dissertation committee to waive the requirement. Rather, any waiver of the requirement would typically require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Studies or some similar official. You can certainly ask, and especially if your advisor strongly supported your request, it's possible that a waiver would be granted. However, and assuming that you're in the US, it isn't at all likely that a requirement like this would be waived.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I don't understand what you want; do you want us to contact your supervisor for you? We can't find some magic exception in the rules for you. Either you need to suck it up and accept this won't happen, or you need talk to your supervisor and convince them that this is a good idea.
Let me just add that this sounds like a **terrible** idea to me. UK Ph.D.'s are way too short anyways; rushing through one will just throw you out into the cold hard reality of the job market totally underprepared. You don't seem to have thought about the "If" in "If I can finish my PhD thesis earlier, and then move to a preferred place for a postdoc, I do not see a reason to delay." or thought about what happens at the end of your postdoc. If you are really finished with your thesis at the end of 15 months, then it's not as though you'll twiddle your thumbs for the next several months; you'll have an incredibly valuable chance to start some other projects, and get a bit of a head start before heading into your postdoc. That's time you'll never get back, and which you want to strain your relationship with your advisor in your rush to throw away.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: It's time to read the fine print. At my university, a student can finish under two years if the Dean of Research approves and an independent assessor agrees that the thesis meets the required standard. This is pretty rare. The work must be ground breaking.
In any case, research is about time and having only spent <2 years is actually a negative. Spending more time means you get to hone your skills, accumulate more papers, and build up a better CV. This means you'll be extra competitive against other post-doc applicants; some of which by the way may have already completed multiple post-docs.
Upvotes: 4
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2015/07/23
| 793
| 3,163
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<issue_start>username_0: If I simply want to gain expertise in a very specialised area of scientific research that is in its infancy, and not necessarily go on to do further research, is a PhD the way to go?
Is a PhD solely a door to a career of research?
There is currently little known about the phenomenon I'm interested in and even less research, so there is no explicit education in the area.<issue_comment>username_1: Whether a Ph.D. is good or bad for your career depends on a lot of things, like your country, your subject area, and your non-academical abilities and interests. In science and engineering a Ph.D. can open up the path to research and development, and any Ph.D. can be helpful to instill trust in clients, e.g. as a lawyer or broker. On the other hand doing a Ph.D. can be seen as procrastinating, i.e. people believe that you rather stay in academia then get a "real job". This is probably a problem in parts of humanities, or if your previous education or your Ph.D. took significantly more time then necessary. On the other other hand this won"t be a problem if your future employee is related to your studies, e.g. when working for a publishing company.
The fact that you are not sure whether you want to stay in academia is not important, since doing a Ph.D. serves to find out whether you actually like research or not. So succesfully doing a Ph.D. and then leaving, even if a Postdoc position is on offer is quite common and nothing to be frowned upon.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Why do you want to gain expertise in the topic? If it is due to sheer curiosity, then probably it is called "research" after all :-)
Whether you will still be curios and interested after a few years down the line, and whether you will want (or be able) to make a living out of it are different issues altogether.
Another issue is about the PhD admissions --- in my field, most professors I know are happy to admit you if you possess great curiosity, and excellent command for the subject even if you are uncertain what you plan to do in the future. However, I heard a minority to express the attitude that students who do not go into academia is a waste of their time.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: I found this on another thread and thought it may be helpful to anyone experiencing a similar question about a PhD. It helped me a lot. ---
"The main point of a PhD is to learn how to be a scientist. Involved in this is to focus on the work that needs to be done but also to pick up the necessary skill to solve the problem."
"During my own PhD, I spent a fair amount learning tools that were only of marginal use in my own work. I am now very happy I did because as now a long-time faculty member, I have come to realize that the time I had as a PhD student to immerse in topics, is hard if not impossible to recreate after the PhD. I therefore advise PhD students to use their time wisely since the tools they learn during their PhD make up the core of their future toolbox. Contacts with other researchers and research directions is a similar issue in my mind."
**answered Dec 21 '14 at 21:59
<NAME>**
Upvotes: 1
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2015/07/23
| 1,020
| 4,291
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<issue_start>username_0: I was asked by Program Committee members to be a sub-reviewer for some papers related to my research. The PC members are big shots and I really want to impress them.
It is easy to write a review if I can discover weaknesses in the paper. However, if the paper is strong or I am unable to find any weaknesses, I feel my review is useless.
Unlike the flaws, the authors tend to repeat and highlight their contributions. So my review is just rephrasing the contributions and how I am impressed by them.
If I'm unable to give any suggestions to improve the approach or the narrative of the paper, what should I do to write a good review? How to show the PC members that I didn't just skim through the contributions, and agreed with the authors (strong papers are often written by well-known researchers)?<issue_comment>username_1: Just write a thoughtful review on why you think the paper is strong. If the paper is well written, then say how it is well organized, and why the idea is clear; again, justify, justify! You may include its significance and how it will contribute to the discipline as a whole. ...
You will give a good impression if you show that you have been diligent and reflective in your write-up.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: The key principle is this: just as with a negative review, you need to demonstrate that you have read the paper thoroughly and are making your judgement for sound scientific reasons.
If you like a paper, you should be able to say *why* you like it. Beyond the paraphrased summary of goals and contributions (which should begin any review), you can spend a sentence or two saying what aspects of the work or its presentation you found particularly compelling or particularly elegant, and why.
It's also a rare paper that doesn't have *any* minor errors or needs for improvement, and you can also point out those, prefaced with something like, "The only things I see needing improvement are a few minor points of copyediting and clarification."
In the end, your review might be quite short, and that's fine.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: >
> It is easy to write a review if I can discover weaknesses in the paper.
>
>
>
That is because you comment on the weaknesses. You do this to show to someone who is convinced of the paper why you think the paper is weak.
For a strong paper, you would do the opposite: You highlight the strong points, in order to show to someone who is convinced that the paper is poor that it is not.
If it helps you, you can create a checklist for yourself, listing aspects that you expect to find in the paper. For instance:
* Is the contribution clear?
* Do I understand all parts of the novel idea?
* Are there any examples of how to use the novel concept?
Often, some of these questions are already provided in the invitation for the review. In any case, you can highlight the answers to these questions in your review, and thereby corroborate your suggestion to accept the paper.
>
> In all the cases, I'm unable to give any suggestions to improve the approach or the narrative of the paper.
>
>
>
You do not need to do this. If you really think the paper is great, and if that impression is supported by the aforementioned checklist, there is no point in suggesting changes for the sake of providing some suggestions.
>
> How to show the PC members that I didn't just skim through the contributions, and agreed with the authors
>
>
>
That is exactly one of the reasons why you should explicitly highlight which parts of the paper you liked. One way to show that you actually understood the content of the paper is by [writing a short summary of the paper in your own words at the beginning of the review](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/43164/why-do-reviews-of-articles-often-start-with-a-summary-of-the-article). Later on, when you highlight positive aspects of the paper during the further text of your review, you can refer to the various parts of the paper content that you already mentioned during your short summary. This should be sufficient to show to both the authors and the PC members that you based your positive evaluation on actual comprehension and thought, rather than a cursory impression.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/23
| 744
| 3,032
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<issue_start>username_0: I prepared a short tutorial in [IPython Notebook](http://ipython.org/notebook.html) and want to release it on an open license. However, as it is something between code and slides, I do not know if Creative Commons licenses are suitable (they [are not meant to be used for code](https://wiki.creativecommons.org/wiki/Frequently_Asked_Questions#Can_I_apply_a_Creative_Commons_license_to_software.3F)) or should I rather something specific for code (say, MIT or BSD)?
If you are not familiar with IPython Notebook, it looks like that (not mine):
* [Introduction to Linear Regression](http://nbviewer.ipython.org/github/justmarkham/DAT4/blob/master/notebooks/08_linear_regression.ipynb) (from [this course](https://github.com/justmarkham/DAT4))
* [Deep Dreams (with Caffe) - Google](https://github.com/google/deepdream/blob/master/dream.ipynb)<issue_comment>username_1: While CC licenses aren't really appropriate for code, and code licenses aren't really appropriate for text, there's no real downside to assigning *both* kinds to the same material. This is "dual-licensing" ([reasonably common for software](http://oss-watch.ac.uk/resources/duallicence2)), and it allows the reuser to choose whether they wish to use and redistribute your material under license A or license B.
They can then pick the particular license which is most appropriate for their purposes without having to (eg) try and work out how to apply the BSD license to a graph.
For example, you could use a license statement that says something like:
>
> This material is copyright <NAME> and made available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (link). Code is also made available under the MIT License (link).
>
>
>
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: One option would be to use the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication CC0, which is appropriate for text, images, and code. The Free Software Foundation has even recommended that if you want to release code into Public Domain, you should use CC0.
CC0 does not require attribution, but I find that most of the code snippets in IPython/Jupyter notebooks are sufficiently short that I would want others to be able to use them without requiring attribution. The code in the Linear Regression notebook you posted is a great example; it primarily consists of short examples of how to use the Statsmodels, Pandas, and Matplotlib APIs.
<https://creativecommons.org/about/cc0/>
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: The notebooks are more code (to be modified, adapted, and run) than some more or less static, unchangeable, work of art. Go for a license for code.
If you want to share widely, no strings attached, you should use MIT or BSD licenses. This means somebody could take the notebook and build say a proprietary presentation out of it. That sounds a bit ridiculous, so not much of a risk of that happening.
If you want to ensure the notebooks and any modifications are always shared for anybody to modify at will, use one of the GPLs.
Upvotes: 0
|
2015/07/23
| 580
| 2,358
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<issue_start>username_0: Two years ago I finished my thesis, at the time I wasn't interested in writing papers but I have since changed my mind.
The thesis has been made available online by the department. It has been cited by someone else since that time.
I would like to take a chapter of my thesis and publish it as a journal paper. And based on this question here, it seems that could work:
[Can I publish parts of the Ph.D thesis as a paper in a journal?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/2937/can-i-publish-parts-of-the-ph-d-thesis-as-a-paper-in-a-journal)
However, I have a follow-on question. Should I be citing my own thesis if I write a paper from one of the chapters?
Notes:
* I would not be adding any extra analysis
* I will be using the same figures
Extra for experts: Should I be paraphrasing all or most of the text? At the moment I have paraphrased most but perhaps one or two sentences remain unchanged because I considered them to be in the most clear and succinct form I could manage for an explanation.<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, you can publish a chapter of your thesis as a journal paper. The two-year time lag is slightly unusual, but it's not a show-stopper. However, since the thesis has been cited already, it is possible that someone else may publish a work that extends the results of the chapter you intend to publish, which might lead to rejection. You should be prepared for that.
I would also cite the thesis, in the introduction or perhaps in an acknowledgment section (depending on the intended journal; have a look through the archives to see common practices). "Some/The majority/Most of the materials contained in this paper were previously published (in modified form) in my thesis ...".
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I strongly encourage you to write the papers. In my experience, this will give your work much more credibility.
I also would not worry about rejection.
If the thesis is original (your own writing) I think no reviewer would be disturbed by you using your own work in a paper- the language and the actual text. However- in my field, journal papers aremuch more concise and require much less background discussion than a Thesis- so the text for the journal would probably need to be made much more concise than it would be in the thesis.
Go for it!! Good luck!
Upvotes: 1
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2015/07/23
| 801
| 3,380
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<issue_start>username_0: I am currently finishing my PhD thesis (in Mathematics) and trying to find a post doc position.
My PhD supervisor is a very nice person and is, of course, one of my referees.
However, most places need 2-3, so I am not sure who else to ask.
I have a secondary supervisor but we only talked once really during a formal thing. So asking a referee who does not know much about the work or the personality is a bit... weird...
I had a decent relationship with my Master's supervisor, but unfortunately we have not corresponded once in the 3+ years after my masters, so me writing "hey, do you remember me from waaaay back then, would you please write a reference for me" seems a bit ... strange .. too.
I have published several papers already but I don't have any co-authors whom I could ask.
I have given one talk outside my university but I am not sure who to ask there. I don't actually know these people, my supervisor referred me to them and they were OK so I gave the talk.
Any ideas?<issue_comment>username_1: If those are your only options, ask them anyway. When professors take on students as interns or PhD advisees writing a letter of recommendation for them is generally understood as part of their duty, so they will probably accept.
However, depending on how much they know about your work they may not be able to write a very persuasive letter. In the future, try to cultivate a network of relations that extends beyond your current supervisor (this holds in all walks of life, not only in academia!). Best of luck!
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This answer applies most directly to my field of mathematics, but it probably applies to similar fields as well.
Most genuine postdoc positions are extremely competitive. You need to apply well in advance (typically, in December for a position starting the next August). Postdocs will be difficult to obtain if your thesis work is substantially unfinished a year before you apply. I am not counting temporary teaching positions for new PhDs, which are a different kind of job entirely.
*For competitive postdocs, you want to have very strong letters, both from your advisor and from senior researchers at other institutions.* The way to obtain such letters is to build connections throughout your graduate program, particularly in the later half. Ideally, you should plan to give one or two seminar talks at other institutions while in graduate school. In addition to disseminating your research, these talks help to get your name out as someone up and coming. Your advisor can also have a role, behind the scenes, in getting invitations.
Competitive postdocs are given to people who seem to be up-and-coming in the field. There are usually only a handful of postdocs each year, worldwide, in each particular research specialty, so the committees have a collection of strong candidates to choose between, all of whom have the minimal credential of a PhD. So, if you want to pursue the postdoc track, your goal in graduate school is to develop a vita and letters that are competitive in that environment.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: I know it doesn't apply to you yet, but I used my PhD external examiner as a referee on my first postdoc application. Having read through my entire thesis he was in a very good position to talk about the quality of my work.
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/23
| 1,387
| 5,962
|
<issue_start>username_0: I just finished a bachelor’s degree in applied maths. The thesis was designed to be a fairly formulaic implementation affair of an (obscure) NP-problem, but I happened to develop a novel heuristic algorithm for it, which had some very interesting properties, both theoretical and computational.
The problem is not a canonical NP-problem, but a rather obscure one. It could be that no one would care at all, but
* it does seem to outperform all previously published heuristics;
* it is based on a novel way of utilizing the problem structure that conceivably could be applied to other NP-problems.
“Talk to your supervisor” is good advice, but he didn’t show **any** interest in the project throughout the semester (despite it being his area of research) and he hasn’t even commented on the report, despite being asked repeatedly. At this point, I am close to certain he will be of no aid if I would want to pursue this further.
I asked the head professor at the department as well – he said he’d read it but hasn’t. I reminded him about it but that looks like a dead end as well.
So what are my options? It’s far from publishable in its current state and I obviously can’t pursue it further on my own.<issue_comment>username_1: The first question you should address is whether your result is worth being published. In your case this translates into "Is your heuristics new, because you had a good idea, or because the problem is so obscure?". Just saying that your algorithm outperforms published ones is not sufficient, even if they are published by well known scientists. Sometimes good Homer sleeps, and pointing out the failings of (future) colleagues is too petty to be proud of. Also "novel way" can mean anything from a great idea to a minor modification of a well known method. Answering these questions is part of the job of your advisor, if he doesn't fulfill his duty and there is no other expert in your department you have to contact some outside person. You could try to present your work at a conference, which might be difficult because at your stage of career funding for conferences is often hard to get. Or you could contact someone working on this problem.
If your paper is worth being published note that a good paper on an obscure question, which is not very short, is hard to publish in a paper journal. An electronic journal does not care about the number pages your article has, or the number of articles it publishes, so obscurity is a minor issue here. A good electronic journal has the same reputation and dissemination as a paper journal.
What you definitely should avoid is looking for a journal which is bad enough to publish your research. While having one peer-reviewed publication is uncommon for a fresh bachelor and can improve your early career, publishing in bad journals leaves a stain which you have to live with forever.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_2: The foremost thing you need is a mentor familiar with the subject to guide you through the process of paper writing and in particular provide feedback to you. Unless you are very good at it, writing a mathematical paper without any feedback is a bad idea, as it’s very difficult to estimate yourself whether your writing is understandable to others. Also, scientific writing is an art of its own that you probably have not mastered yet.
As you already guessed, the canonical choice for such a mentor is your supervisor, but as he is not an option, I would consider the following (in roughly this order):
* other members (PhD students, postdocs, etc.) of your supervisor’s group who have experience in paper writing;
* visiting scientists or collaborators of your supervisor;
* other scientists from your department, with whom you are on friendly terms;
* scientists from other universities doing related work;
* look for a mentor on your department’s bulletin board or similar.
To avoid quarrels with potential mentors and because it’s ethical, you should clarify the following:
* You are not good at estimating the publishability of your work. It may very well be that it turns out to be unpublishable.
* The essentials of the situation between you and your supervisor.
* How you will handle authorship: Just mentoring your paper writing does not qualify for authorship by common authorship standards, but it’s not unlikely that your mentor will, e.g., find some extension or improvement of your work that is worthy of authorship. Authorship may be a relevant incentive for mentors. For more information, see [authorship](/questions/tagged/authorship "show questions tagged 'authorship'").
Together with a mentor it should be much easier to decide on the publishability of your work and what journal is suitable for it.
Finally, some further caveats:
* Depending on how much your supervisor laid the intellectual foundations for your reasearch, e.g., by giving you detailed ideas on what you should research and how to do it, he may have reasonable authorship claims. Unless he verifiably abandons these claims, this would lead to all sorts of trouble.
* If you are worried about your work being stolen, you can publish the current state as a preprint, e.g., on the ArXiv. Be aware that there are journals that do not allow for such prior publication, but as far as I know, this is not a problem in mathematics.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Here some questions and statements that might help in your decision:
* You must know previous publications on the subject. Where have these been published? There must be some interest in it for some people at least.
* Since there are people who care about the subject, what can that result contribute to them?
* Write an abstract. Then write an introduction.
* "it does seem to outperform all previously published heuristics", but in terms of what? Do you have a rigorous complexity estimate? Do you have an experiment on your laptop?
I hope this is helpful.
Upvotes: 1
|
2015/07/23
| 627
| 2,569
|
<issue_start>username_0: I was recently contacted by a friend to give an academic reference, as we were both students at the same university.
The problem is that, he only completed the first 2 years of his degree and then stopped attending. I think he received a job offer and decided to take that instead.
Me and my fellow classmates finished our 4 year degrees and got jobs in our field.
So, is it reasonable for him to ask me for such a recommendation?<issue_comment>username_1: Why would it not be reasonable?
It should be clear from his CV that he didn't complete his degree, but you surely could say relevant positive things about his character and skills.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Just make sure your friend knows what an honest academic reference from you will look like, and that it will serve their purposes.
I had an experience like this once, with an old friend who was going back to school after many years in the workforce. My reference couldn't speak much to academics, but it could be a good reference regarding personal character and determination, and in that case and for that particular program, that was sufficient for my friend's needs.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: There's an ambiguity when you say "academic reference". I can think of three meanings:
1. Letter to help him get into graduate school or an academic position.
2. Letter to help him get into undergraduate
3. Letter to an employee about his academic competency.
I don't see any problem with writing him a letter for #2 based on your knowledge of him. For #1 and #3, it doesn't seem like you've been in the sort of relationship where you could write one.
---
Regardless of type, there's a second issue of whether you can write him a *helpful* letter. I've had several students ask me in the past (particularly for their entrance into medical school), and several of them were outstanding students. For the less than outstanding, what I do is, point out the sort of letter they would get from me and say I'm fine with sending that, e.g.,
>
> You earned a C in my class which is not exceptionally good. If I wrote a letter, I would mention the degree to which I felt you performed in my class. It might not be the best letter you could get. IF you're still interested, I can send one for you.
>
>
>
(It should not be hard to adapt that to your purposes).
Presumably if he's asking you for a letter to get into undergraduate, part of the point could be to explain that he's a good student but had to quit for work, etc.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/23
| 812
| 3,222
|
<issue_start>username_0: There are [several](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/23421/which-problems-would-a-blind-person-have-when-applying-for-a-professorship) [posted](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/889594/who-are-some-blind-or-otherwise-disabled-mathematicians-who-have-made-important) [questions](https://matheducators.stackexchange.com/questions/2623/how-do-blind-people-learn-mathematics) regarding people who have had struggles, but ultimately were able to succeed, in academia while being blind.
My question is regarding being mute (by choice or otherwise): what are the difficulties in being successful? Are there notable examples of such people? I'm not mute myself, but I thought it was an interesting question for the following reasons.
I would think working in academia means coming up with new and interesting ideas through research, while also conveying these ideas and results in an effective manner to an audience, both through papers and giving talks. So success should be possible in some aspects of academia (such as papers), but not in others (such as giving talks).<issue_comment>username_1: Why would it not be reasonable?
It should be clear from his CV that he didn't complete his degree, but you surely could say relevant positive things about his character and skills.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Just make sure your friend knows what an honest academic reference from you will look like, and that it will serve their purposes.
I had an experience like this once, with an old friend who was going back to school after many years in the workforce. My reference couldn't speak much to academics, but it could be a good reference regarding personal character and determination, and in that case and for that particular program, that was sufficient for my friend's needs.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: There's an ambiguity when you say "academic reference". I can think of three meanings:
1. Letter to help him get into graduate school or an academic position.
2. Letter to help him get into undergraduate
3. Letter to an employee about his academic competency.
I don't see any problem with writing him a letter for #2 based on your knowledge of him. For #1 and #3, it doesn't seem like you've been in the sort of relationship where you could write one.
---
Regardless of type, there's a second issue of whether you can write him a *helpful* letter. I've had several students ask me in the past (particularly for their entrance into medical school), and several of them were outstanding students. For the less than outstanding, what I do is, point out the sort of letter they would get from me and say I'm fine with sending that, e.g.,
>
> You earned a C in my class which is not exceptionally good. If I wrote a letter, I would mention the degree to which I felt you performed in my class. It might not be the best letter you could get. IF you're still interested, I can send one for you.
>
>
>
(It should not be hard to adapt that to your purposes).
Presumably if he's asking you for a letter to get into undergraduate, part of the point could be to explain that he's a good student but had to quit for work, etc.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/24
| 1,532
| 6,304
|
<issue_start>username_0: I am looking to decrease the time I waste looking for a book in the library. I generally know exactly what book I want, but not where in the library it is located.
(Finding out what book you want, is a matter for a whole range of other questions.)
My university has 4 libraries across its campus.
One for Art/Humanities/Business, one for Education, one for Science/Engineering and one for Law. All are multistory buildings.
Normally I will just use the library for my area, (that I am familiar with) but occasionally I will have to visit another for something cross-disciplinary.
The libraries separately shelf, books, periodicals, quartros and a few other types of publication.
Shelves are **not** always laid out in a linear order -- for space constraints and historical reasons, no doubt.
**How can I optimally find the resource I am looking for?**
My current method is:
1. Look up the book online. This will tell me the Library, the Floor, the media type (Book or Periodical etc), and its spine information: Dewey Decimal, year, author name and title.
2. Go to that floor. Walk past **each and every** shelf until I find the one that lines up with the Media type and Dewey Decimal range.
3. Entry that row and move, checking the Decimals every meter or so, on one shelf.
4. When I get to roughly the right area, check all spine codes til I find the book.
My latest failure at this, was in step 2, Finding the shelf. I was looking for a periodical with code 401.9.
I found the area with most periodicals on the floor, shelves we sequentially ordered from 200-399, then form 700 onwards. Skipping the 400s section I was looking for. After quiet a while of looking, eventually found the 400s section. It turned out that because there were so few 400s in this particular library/floor it was combined with the Quartros, and was in shelf sequentially after the 400 series books.
**I figure there has got to be a better way.**
I realized after, when I placed the journal in the re-shelving area, that while the re-shelving area had a section for 300 series Books, 300 series quartos and 300 series periodicals. It only has a section for 400 series anything. Thus if I had have looked in the re-shelving section at the start, I would have realized something was up with the 400 series, and known to be on the lookout for them to be all together.
Thus I figure there are other productivity tricks to get the layout of a library quickly.<issue_comment>username_1: Ask a librarian. They usually know the place well, and are often quite happy to help.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I don't know what university you attend, so I don't know their library services. But my advise would be: learn how to use their online tools (the library catalogs in primis) because they are usually much more sophisticated than you think. In modern catalogs, you can have a personal area where you can store your search queries and your search results, so that you can build up lists of materials online *before* actually going to the physical place. You can narrow down your search results by date, subject, author, and you can get very rich and accurate lists of readings without actually checking the books.
Also check references from the books you read and bibliographies: they provide a list of relevant materials, so you know what to look for in the first place. Wandering through the stacks is great for serendipity, because you can find similar or relevant books just by browsing, but it takes time (exciting experience, though) and it's good for casual discovery rather than for finding the right materials.
Since you mention that you look in 400 section I take that you study language. That is a discipline where books are still very relevant, but don't forget to check the vast online journals about the subject, which contain up-todate research about your topics.
Finally, ask the librarian is the best solution: they know their collection better than you could ever do, and they know how to make the best out of the online search better than you'll ever do. If it looks like they are lazy, or they are not good enough, simply insist and demand more: they have to be up to the task.
DISCLAIMER: I'm an academic librarian.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Outside the box answer: See if you can avoid stepping into the library at all!
There may be a way to get the book you want without leaving your office. It's worth while to spend some time investigating all the services your library provides. Sometimes they are buried in obscure corners of the library website, or have unintuitive acronyms, so that you might not have discovered them before. A friendly chat with your subject librarian can be valuable here.
Some things I have taken advantage of in the past:
* E-book databases. Some publishers offer electronic versions of their books under an institutional subscription agreement. For example, Springer has [Springer Link](http://link.springer.com). This may even be integrated with your library's online catalog, so that when you look up your book in the catalog, you also get a link to the electronic version.
* Electronic document delivery. You send your library a request for what you want, and they send someone into the stacks to fetch it, scan it, and email you a PDF. They usually won't do full books (for labor and copyright reasons) but they can often do an individual article or chapter. They can often also get books/articles that the library doesn't own, either by first getting the item via inter-library loan, or (more often these days) asking some institution that does have it to do the scanning. Libraries I've used can usually handle these requests within a day or two, so if you don't need the item right this minute, you can save yourself a trip to the stacks.
* Physical document delivery. You send in a request for what you want, they send someone into the stacks to fetch it, charge it out to your account, and deliver it to your office (via campus mail or their own couriers). Note that even if such a service exists, it may or may not be available to all library users (for example, it may be offered to faculty but not graduate students).
* Google Books, if you only need to read a couple of pages.
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/24
| 1,284
| 5,513
|
<issue_start>username_0: Modern academic publishing is based to a large extent on the use of the Internet, and many of us consult articles or even books mostly in PDF format rather than hard copy. URL links to both reference material, and data sets or complementary material the author makes available to the reader are becoming commonplace, and are easily accessed from within a document that is consulted in electronic form.
However, in some cases the document can only be accessed in paper, which makes following a URL awkward. Examples of this could be some editions of books available only in paper form, or CVs (as discussed in this question on SE: [Is it advisable to have many hyperlinks in an academic CV?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/21436/is-it-advisable-to-have-many-clickable-hyperlinks-in-an-academic-cv)).
In similar circumstances, both the manufacturing industries and the marketing sector tend to use QR codes that are easily scannable from a mobile device, such as this one containing the URL of Academia on SE:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Ymos4.png)
To date, I have personally never seen the use of QR codes in academia.
My question is therefore: what major factors make the use of this technology less likely to become commonplace in academic publishing - or more likely, as the case may be?
**Edit:** thanks to a comment below, my attention has been brought to some scientific books by Elsevier and O'Reilly that do contain QR-codes to enrich content with online material. In both cases, the field were Computer Science and Technology in Medicine.<issue_comment>username_1: Ask a librarian. They usually know the place well, and are often quite happy to help.
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: I don't know what university you attend, so I don't know their library services. But my advise would be: learn how to use their online tools (the library catalogs in primis) because they are usually much more sophisticated than you think. In modern catalogs, you can have a personal area where you can store your search queries and your search results, so that you can build up lists of materials online *before* actually going to the physical place. You can narrow down your search results by date, subject, author, and you can get very rich and accurate lists of readings without actually checking the books.
Also check references from the books you read and bibliographies: they provide a list of relevant materials, so you know what to look for in the first place. Wandering through the stacks is great for serendipity, because you can find similar or relevant books just by browsing, but it takes time (exciting experience, though) and it's good for casual discovery rather than for finding the right materials.
Since you mention that you look in 400 section I take that you study language. That is a discipline where books are still very relevant, but don't forget to check the vast online journals about the subject, which contain up-todate research about your topics.
Finally, ask the librarian is the best solution: they know their collection better than you could ever do, and they know how to make the best out of the online search better than you'll ever do. If it looks like they are lazy, or they are not good enough, simply insist and demand more: they have to be up to the task.
DISCLAIMER: I'm an academic librarian.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: Outside the box answer: See if you can avoid stepping into the library at all!
There may be a way to get the book you want without leaving your office. It's worth while to spend some time investigating all the services your library provides. Sometimes they are buried in obscure corners of the library website, or have unintuitive acronyms, so that you might not have discovered them before. A friendly chat with your subject librarian can be valuable here.
Some things I have taken advantage of in the past:
* E-book databases. Some publishers offer electronic versions of their books under an institutional subscription agreement. For example, Springer has [Springer Link](http://link.springer.com). This may even be integrated with your library's online catalog, so that when you look up your book in the catalog, you also get a link to the electronic version.
* Electronic document delivery. You send your library a request for what you want, and they send someone into the stacks to fetch it, scan it, and email you a PDF. They usually won't do full books (for labor and copyright reasons) but they can often do an individual article or chapter. They can often also get books/articles that the library doesn't own, either by first getting the item via inter-library loan, or (more often these days) asking some institution that does have it to do the scanning. Libraries I've used can usually handle these requests within a day or two, so if you don't need the item right this minute, you can save yourself a trip to the stacks.
* Physical document delivery. You send in a request for what you want, they send someone into the stacks to fetch it, charge it out to your account, and deliver it to your office (via campus mail or their own couriers). Note that even if such a service exists, it may or may not be available to all library users (for example, it may be offered to faculty but not graduate students).
* Google Books, if you only need to read a couple of pages.
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/24
| 587
| 2,314
|
<issue_start>username_0: In research proposals, why do investigators, who usually are permanent faculty members, need to claim a certain fraction of their full-time salaries, from the proposed budget? Are they not paid in full by the university?<issue_comment>username_1: There are several reasons in the US. Most faculty are paid for 9 months of the year not 12. They may choose to spread out their pay into 12 payments a year, but their base salary is for 9 months. Grant funding is one way to supplement their pay up to a full 12 months. Unfortunately, the National Science Foundation, which funds a lot of academic research in the US, only allows a maximum of 2 months to come from NSF, so professors must diversify somehow as well.
Additionally, some faculty may choose to buy out some of their required teaching. Many departments will allow you to teach less if you can bring in even more of your salary. Sometimes this is done with grant funding, but I think more often it is done using endowed chairs.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: This varies by the industry, as well. Many NIH funded researchers in the biological and health sciences are effectively full time researchers, and their salaries are not funded by their institutions directly (rather, are often 'paid' in laboratory space). NIH grants pay their full salary (up to the NIH Salary Cap, linked to [here](http://grants.nih.gov/grants/guide/notice-files/NOT-OD-15-049.html) for 2015).
Institutions might give these professors a constant salary from the institution, with the expectation that most/all of that salary is reimbursed through grant work. (Ignoring tenure, for the moment; of course a tenured professor may receive a salary even if they are unable to find sufficient grant work for an extended period of time.)
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: In the UK at least, it is because the funder is contracting with the university for their employee's time. This [PowerPoint](http://www.bbk.ac.uk/rgco/otherservices/Mgmt%2022%20Feb%2011.ppt "powerpoint") from Birkbeck, for instance goes into costs etc, plus the requirement for institutional sign-offs. The investigator will continue to be paid by their university as before (normally) but the University will be compensated for the relevant time.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/24
| 739
| 3,165
|
<issue_start>username_0: I'm preparing my grad school applications (CV, letter of intent, etc) and in these I need to include my GPA. My school uses the 4.3 scale and I feel as though not including this information is misleading since my GPA will look better when compared to someone who is actually marked out of a 4.0.
But I have not seen this in any online example nor have I seen it in any of the outlines that schools give for their expected applications.
Should I include the GPA scale and if so how do I do this? Would 3.9 / 4.3 be reasonable?
**Update / Solution**
By the general look of the comments it is best to avoid ambiguity by stating the scale up front. So, I think the general consensus is GPA/grades should be reported along side their scales.<issue_comment>username_1: I had the experience of sitting on a graduate admissions committee during my years in graduate school. (This was at a "top-10" school in my field, though not a "top-5".) In my experience, the raw GPA number was mainly used to make a "first cut" to weed out the fraction of applications that were almost certainly sub-par. (Things like super-low GRE scores were also used at this stage as well.) Once the applications got beyond this initial screening, committee members would read carefully through them; and at this point, the raw GPA was put aside in favor of the more detailed grade information on the transcript. Almost every transcript, especially those from US colleges or universities, had an explanation on the back about the system used to assign grades and calculate the GPA. There's enough variety in the systems used by different institutions (even within the US—foreign institutions had even more variety) that I always had to read through this information to contextualize what I saw on the transcript.
Which is to say: it's probably best to be honest about your GPA in the CV. But if you don't mention it specifically, the committee members will almost certainly still be able to figure out that your school had a 4.3 scale; and they almost certainly won't hold it against you for not mentioning it once they've figured it out.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: If your transcript doesn't include an explanation of the grading system (usually on the back?), then why not include a copy of the page in the bulletin or other official document that explains it?
I have to agree with the previous poster, having been a student rep on the admissions committee of my Ph.D. program (top-5 school), that 99% of those applying will have excellent GPAs and GRE scores. The faculty told the student reps to look for people whose statements suggested they would be a good fit for our program (i.e., knew what the program was about and spoke to that in their statement, rather than submitting a cookie-cutter statement that would serve for all ten of the programs they applied to). Indeed, that made the good candidates stand out and was the best indicator of who was ultimately admitted. The more you appeal to even an individual faculty member who thinks it would be interesting to work with you, the better your chances of admission.
Upvotes: 0
|
2015/07/24
| 1,057
| 4,047
|
<issue_start>username_0: I have completed some work that I believe could well be worth a Ph.D. I have been working completely in private, with no affiliation with any academic institution.
I would like to use this work to start a career in academia. What should I do with it next? (In case it's relevant in any way, I am a mature professional in business and IT and 53 years old).
In particular I'm wondering about the following options:
1. Attempt to publish it as a paper (a fairly long one, around 50 pages).
2. Use it as my thesis for acquiring a doctorate degree.
My questions are:
* Can I do both? If not why not?
* If not, which of the two is preferable and what are the pros and cons?
* Are there alternatives from the above two that I could pursue to achieve my goal?<issue_comment>username_1: A thesis is only one part of a doctoral program. Generally, there are also classes, qualifying examinations (to make sure you have sufficient breadth and depth), and general apprenticeship as a researcher. The goal of all of this is to prepare you for a scientific career (whether in traditional academia or elsewhere), which requires more than just the ability to produce a single project once. In my experience and observation, life as a practicing researcher typically involves producing another Ph.D. worth of work every year or two---a Ph.D. thesis is just the capstone demonstration that you have been educated enough to be capable of doing it at least once.
As such, I think that it is unlikely that any good institution will allow you to skip straight ahead to using a completed project as a thesis, no matter how good the material. If you want to use the work as an entry-point into academia, I would instead recommend publishing it as a paper paper and simultaneously using the work as a springboard for admission into a good Ph.D. program. If your field supports use of preprint archives, this is a good way to put your paper formally out there even while it is going through peer review.
If this is truly the direction you want to go, don't worry about rushing to the end-point. As other questions on this site indicate, [age need not be a bar to an academic career](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/24577/22733). Instead, I would recommend that you take the time of graduate school as an opportunity---if your independent experiences give you a head start, so much the better for being able to do *even more awesome work during graduate school*, and also better positioning yourself for what comes after.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Partly as a comment/correction to [username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49344/11053), this largely depends in what country you're considering getting a doctoral degree. In some countries, like the US, the thesis is normally just one part of the requirements for the doctoral degree. This is why the first page of the submitted thesis typically contains a phrase along these lines (taken from my Ph.D. thesis):
>
> A dissertation presented by [Name] to The Department of [X] in partial
> fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
> in the subject of [X].
>
>
>
But in other countries and/or at other institutions, you *can* indeed get a doctoral degree by just showing up with a thesis ready in hand. In Norway this type of doctoral degree is called "dr.philos. (doctor philosophiae)". There are only three requirements for this degree:
1. A dissertation.
2. Two trial lectures.
3. A public defense.
I won't go into more detail about this, since you're unlikely to be in Norway (more detail can be found in the University of Oslo's [overview article](https://www.uio.no/forskning/phd/drphilos/) and [regulations](https://www.uio.no/om/regelverk/forskning/forskerutdanning/drphilos.html)) for this type of degree.
In short, you need to check if such degrees exist in your country and/or at your preferred institutions. Otherwise see [username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49344/11053).
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/24
| 1,105
| 4,347
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<issue_start>username_0: Here is the situation: I am looking for a PhD in a field somewhat different from the field of my previous studies. I have several research groups in this area in mind and they have a very large number of researchers each.
Being kind of an "outsider" to the field, I don't really have a basis to know which ones of the Professors in the groups are going to be better advisors for me, since reading the publications of each professor (among more than 100 of them) would take me an immense amount of time.
I had previously read (I think it was some answer in this forum, but I couldn't find it again) that in those situations a good approach would be to send an email to the director of the group, state your main interests and see if he can point you to maybe one or two professors who might be willing to advise you. The problem with this approach is that these research groups are huge and really important, so I'm anticipating that the director of the group isn't even going to read my email!
What would be the best approach here?
Thank you in advance.<issue_comment>username_1: A thesis is only one part of a doctoral program. Generally, there are also classes, qualifying examinations (to make sure you have sufficient breadth and depth), and general apprenticeship as a researcher. The goal of all of this is to prepare you for a scientific career (whether in traditional academia or elsewhere), which requires more than just the ability to produce a single project once. In my experience and observation, life as a practicing researcher typically involves producing another Ph.D. worth of work every year or two---a Ph.D. thesis is just the capstone demonstration that you have been educated enough to be capable of doing it at least once.
As such, I think that it is unlikely that any good institution will allow you to skip straight ahead to using a completed project as a thesis, no matter how good the material. If you want to use the work as an entry-point into academia, I would instead recommend publishing it as a paper paper and simultaneously using the work as a springboard for admission into a good Ph.D. program. If your field supports use of preprint archives, this is a good way to put your paper formally out there even while it is going through peer review.
If this is truly the direction you want to go, don't worry about rushing to the end-point. As other questions on this site indicate, [age need not be a bar to an academic career](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/24577/22733). Instead, I would recommend that you take the time of graduate school as an opportunity---if your independent experiences give you a head start, so much the better for being able to do *even more awesome work during graduate school*, and also better positioning yourself for what comes after.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Partly as a comment/correction to [username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49344/11053), this largely depends in what country you're considering getting a doctoral degree. In some countries, like the US, the thesis is normally just one part of the requirements for the doctoral degree. This is why the first page of the submitted thesis typically contains a phrase along these lines (taken from my Ph.D. thesis):
>
> A dissertation presented by [Name] to The Department of [X] in partial
> fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
> in the subject of [X].
>
>
>
But in other countries and/or at other institutions, you *can* indeed get a doctoral degree by just showing up with a thesis ready in hand. In Norway this type of doctoral degree is called "dr.philos. (doctor philosophiae)". There are only three requirements for this degree:
1. A dissertation.
2. Two trial lectures.
3. A public defense.
I won't go into more detail about this, since you're unlikely to be in Norway (more detail can be found in the University of Oslo's [overview article](https://www.uio.no/forskning/phd/drphilos/) and [regulations](https://www.uio.no/om/regelverk/forskning/forskerutdanning/drphilos.html)) for this type of degree.
In short, you need to check if such degrees exist in your country and/or at your preferred institutions. Otherwise see [username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49344/11053).
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/24
| 933
| 3,608
|
<issue_start>username_0: Descriptions of graduate (and advanced undergrad) courses sometimes indicate that the lectures are going to be conducted in a "workshop style". I am unsure what a "workshop style" lecture entails and how it is usually conducted over a two hour span?
How does a *workshop-style* lecture differ from *formal lectures*?<issue_comment>username_1: A thesis is only one part of a doctoral program. Generally, there are also classes, qualifying examinations (to make sure you have sufficient breadth and depth), and general apprenticeship as a researcher. The goal of all of this is to prepare you for a scientific career (whether in traditional academia or elsewhere), which requires more than just the ability to produce a single project once. In my experience and observation, life as a practicing researcher typically involves producing another Ph.D. worth of work every year or two---a Ph.D. thesis is just the capstone demonstration that you have been educated enough to be capable of doing it at least once.
As such, I think that it is unlikely that any good institution will allow you to skip straight ahead to using a completed project as a thesis, no matter how good the material. If you want to use the work as an entry-point into academia, I would instead recommend publishing it as a paper paper and simultaneously using the work as a springboard for admission into a good Ph.D. program. If your field supports use of preprint archives, this is a good way to put your paper formally out there even while it is going through peer review.
If this is truly the direction you want to go, don't worry about rushing to the end-point. As other questions on this site indicate, [age need not be a bar to an academic career](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/24577/22733). Instead, I would recommend that you take the time of graduate school as an opportunity---if your independent experiences give you a head start, so much the better for being able to do *even more awesome work during graduate school*, and also better positioning yourself for what comes after.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Partly as a comment/correction to [username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49344/11053), this largely depends in what country you're considering getting a doctoral degree. In some countries, like the US, the thesis is normally just one part of the requirements for the doctoral degree. This is why the first page of the submitted thesis typically contains a phrase along these lines (taken from my Ph.D. thesis):
>
> A dissertation presented by [Name] to The Department of [X] in partial
> fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
> in the subject of [X].
>
>
>
But in other countries and/or at other institutions, you *can* indeed get a doctoral degree by just showing up with a thesis ready in hand. In Norway this type of doctoral degree is called "dr.philos. (doctor philosophiae)". There are only three requirements for this degree:
1. A dissertation.
2. Two trial lectures.
3. A public defense.
I won't go into more detail about this, since you're unlikely to be in Norway (more detail can be found in the University of Oslo's [overview article](https://www.uio.no/forskning/phd/drphilos/) and [regulations](https://www.uio.no/om/regelverk/forskning/forskerutdanning/drphilos.html)) for this type of degree.
In short, you need to check if such degrees exist in your country and/or at your preferred institutions. Otherwise see [username_1's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49344/11053).
Upvotes: 3
|
2015/07/25
| 411
| 1,753
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<issue_start>username_0: In the spring, I briefly helped with a decently sized project. Shortly after it wrapped, I was asked if I wanted to be co-author on the paper being written on the project. I agreed, and subsequently haven't heard anything back. It's a database project so there will be a long list of co-authors, and I don't want to be a bother, but I also don't want to be left off.
Is five months a reasonable time to wait before asking after status?<issue_comment>username_1: Publications plans can end up going into limbo for a long time. In my experience, this can be especially true for publications with lots of authors, because you can easily end up in a situation where nobody's really stepping forward to get it written, or where everybody thinks somebody else is the one dealing with the current road-block. One paper that I am an author on spent *three years* in un-submitted limbo for such reasons.
As such, checking in every few months is totally reasonable, as you may in fact provide the stimulus to keep it moving forward. Be warned, however, that if it's ended up in limbo and if you actually care about the paper, that you may well find yourself one of the ones getting handed tasks for actually writing it.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I agree with <NAME> that too much nagging might result in you doing all the work. So I would suggest asking a rather innocent question related to the paper, e.g. about the content of a section you had little to do with, some formulation questions, or whether you can give a small talk about your work somewhere (e.g. the local seminar, not a conference). Chances are pretty high that you will get the information you want without taking over too much obligation.
Upvotes: 0
|
2015/07/25
| 693
| 3,006
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<issue_start>username_0: I am doing PhD in an Australian university. My thesis was approved by my supervisor, however, one of two examiners suggested revision and re-submission (with harsh criticism and no solid recommendation), and eventually failed it. The committee asked for another examiner and failed it. I would like to know if we can appeal in this situation:
* My supervisor has approved the thesis,
* I never had any problem in annual review, and
* I have made revisions in accordance with the comments received from the examiner.<issue_comment>username_1: I don't see how you can successful appeal the failure based on your supervisor's approval. The only recourse is to change supervisor, complain that your supervisor is incompetent, and get the university to waive any penalties to do with late submission. The supervisor's job is to make sure your thesis is up to the international standard. He/she is not responsible for passing you. In your case, as three external examiners have said no, then there is no way to pass without first doing more work, and then submitting a revised thesis; perhaps sending it to new examiners. Also, I would definitely get an experienced supervisor or co-supervisor to guide you.
The other side of the coin is that it is possible that the fault is entirely yours. I know of students who went ahead with the submission despite having a poor thesis, and the supervisor reluctantly approved the thesis to prove to the student that the thesis is not up to standard.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: As a number of respondents have said, it really depends on your university's policies on supervision, vivas and appeals, but it is likely that there are three issues here.
1. The question of adequate supervision. Were you supervised properly in essence? Was your supervisor reasonable in approving your submission or did they guide you correctly in your choice of topic etc? Very often that will come down to the documentary trail on meetings, discussions on the parts that led to the fail etc.
2. The conduct of the viva. Was it procedurally correct? It is highly unlikely that you can appeal on the grounds of the examiners' academic judgement.
3. Which leads to the quality of your work. Is it of sufficient quality for you to be awarded with a doctorate?
It might be that you could establish a procedural irregularity in the exam or that you were subject to inadequate supervision but that still leaves open the question of the quality of your completed work. In other words, it might be that you deserve some kind of remedy, but that remedy might not entail you being awarded with a PhD.
Your first step is likely to engage with the relevant officers in your students' union, if they exist, and also to have a conversation with your Head of School about possible next steps. That second conversation might be best managed towards discovering what your department's attitude is, not for you to rehearse your own feelings on the matter.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/25
| 487
| 2,267
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<issue_start>username_0: In my country, if a PhD thesis is written in national language, the candidate must also submit an extended summary of the thesis in English, which will be deposited in a national repository and will be uploaded to the appropriate section of the university's website. This English-language document is approximately between eight and ten thousand words long, its structure is pretty similar to that of a scholarly article and can be downloaded by third parties without cost or restrictions.
I have the following two questions:
* Can a candidate submit an English-language manuscript based on the extended summary to an international scholarly journal? Should the extended summary fall in a different category with regard to prior publication than theses "published" in ProQuest ?
* A few journals publish extended abstracts and extended summaries of PhD theses as they are - these items are not peer-reviewed and the published version is essentially the same as the item submitted by the PhD candidate to the Doctoral School. This is only for increasing visibility of the original thesis and serves purely research dissemination purposes. If the candidate's extended summary is published in a journal, would it be considered a prior publication?<issue_comment>username_1: To your first query, the candidate can submit the extended summary of his thesis to a scholarly journal. And more likely of it is not to be rejected, basis the fact that it is a summary of thesis, leaving other selection criteria aside. I belong to a finance background and got the extended summary of my PhD Thesis, post submission of my thesis in an [international journal of finance](http://www.elkjournals.com/EAPJFRM.asp). Secondly, it will, in my opinion, fall in the different category with regards to the published thesis.
For your second query, I am quite unsure of whether it will be considered a prior publication. I will check with my supervisor and will get back to you with his suggestion.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: If you submit the summary (or a substantially similar paper), you should ask the relevant people at the journal beforehand. We can't give an authoritative answer for any particular journal, let alone all of them.
Upvotes: 1
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2015/07/25
| 2,812
| 11,176
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<issue_start>username_0: I am from computer science and we typically submit to conferences and less often to journals. Publishing pre-prints to arXiv becomes more and more popular in my field. From the discussion here on AS I get the impression that arXiv is more than just putting something on a personal website.
For example from [What to do when you spot a paper on arXiv with the same essential material as yours?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/27271/what-to-do-when-you-spot-a-paper-on-arxiv-with-the-same-essential-material-as-yo?rq=1) I get that I should discuss arXiv papers if they are related to your work.
Now, a paper for a CS conference contains often about 75% theory + 25% experimental section. The experimental section takes a lot of time - so I wonder (and fear) if there is a trend to upload just the bare minimum to arXiv in order to get credit for the idea.
Is this a problem? Maybe similar to patent-trolls, just uploading vague ideas in the hope to get citations?
**Edit**: For clarification: I am working in the field of data-mining, where it is common to have experiments to show that your idea does not only work in theory. This question/concern came up as we discussed the pro and cons of uploading our work to arXiv, since we have never done this before, but it seems to become more common in our field.
**Edit 2**: It seems that more people are concerned with this problem, especially in machine learning:
[<NAME>:](https://medium.com/@yoav.goldberg/an-adversarial-review-of-adversarial-generation-of-natural-language-409ac3378bd7)
>
> This post is also an ideological action w.r.t arxiv publishing: while
> I agree that short publication cycles on arxiv can be better than the
> lengthy peer-review process we now have, there is also a rising trend
> of people using arxiv for flag-planting, and to circumvent the
> peer-review process. This is especially true for work coming from
> “strong” groups. Currently, there is practically no downside of
> posting your (often very preliminary, often incomplete) work to arxiv,
> only potential benefits.
>
>
>
[<NAME>:](https://medium.com/@yoav.goldberg/a-response-to-yann-lecuns-response-245125295c02)
>
> I do not mind posting papers quickly on arxiv. I recognize the obvious
> benefits of arxiv publishing and fast turnarounds. But one should also
> acknowledge its shortcomings. In particular, I am concerned about the
> conflation of science and PR that arxiv facilitates; the
> rich-get-richer effects and abuse of power; and some of the current
> arxiv publishing dynamics in the DL community. It is OK to post early
> on arxiv.
>
>
> **It is NOT OK to misrepresent and over-claim what you did.
> Sloppy papers with broad titles such as “Adversarial Generation of
> Natural Language” are harmful. It is exactly the difference between
> the patent system (which is overall a reasonable idea) and patent
> trolling (which is a harmful abuse).**
>
>
>
[...]
>
> Most people don’t read the papers in depth but only the title and
> sometimes the abstract and sometimes the intro. And when the papers
> come from established groups, people tend to trust the claims without
> verification. “Serious researchers” might not fall for this, but the
> general population sure does get mislead. And by the general
> population I mean people who are not actively working in this exact
> sub-field. This includes practitioners in industry, colleagues,
> prospective students, prospective reviewers of papers and grants. In
> the short time since this paper came out, I already heard, on several
> occasions, “*oh, you are interested in generation? have you tried using
> GANs? I saw this recent paper in which they get cool results with
> adversarial learning for NLG*”. This will be extremely harmful and
> annoying for NLG researchers who apply for grants in the coming year
> (remember, many grants are reviewed by a panel of capable but
> non-specialized experts), as they will have to either waste precious
> space and effort in dealing with this paper and with Hu et al and
> explaining why they are irrelevant, or be dismissed as working on this
> “already solved problem”, despite the fact that neither the paper in
> question nor Hu et al actually did very much, and despite the fact
> that both papers have terrible evaluations.
>
>
>
And the follow-up discussion on [reddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/MachineLearning/comments/6ge4oj/d_lecuns_reply_to_goldbergs_and_largely_nlp/)<issue_comment>username_1: >
> If there is a trend to upload just the bare minimum to arXiv in order
> to get credit for the idea.
>
>
>
No, there is not. No reputable author is stupid to publicly upload junk (on arxiv or anywhere else) and put his name on it. Perhaps, there are some people that do what you are suggesting (I cannot confirm though) but these mediocre-to-bad publications are nothing you should worry about.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It seems to me that this question is less about the arxiv *per se* and more about how to navigate doing research in a very fast moving academic field.
>
> I get the impression that arXiv is more than just putting something on a personal website.
>
>
>
It's certainly *different*. The main differences are:
(i) Many more people will see your paper.
(ii) Your paper will indeed be archived, essentially permanently. (Withdrawing a paper from the arxiv has the effect of uploading a new, empty version. Older versions are still there!) On your own website, you can take things down at least as quickly and easily as you can put them up.
(iii) Some (very obnoxious) journals may regard posting on the arxiv as "prior publication". (This is strictly unheard of in my field, mathematics. My guess is that CS is close enough to math so that it is at least very rare in yours.)
(iv) Minimum standards of completeness and professionalism are enforced on the arxiv. These are enumerated on the site itself, but the gist of it is that they are looking for manuscripts at the last step before conference/journal submission or later. They are not looking for early drafts.
Of these points, probably the last is most relevant to you. If it is standard in your subfield to include 25% experimental data [you say that is standard in "CS", but that is certainly not true across the entire field], then a paper uploaded to the arxiv without that would probably look to many in your field to be incomplete, which is against the spirit and perhaps the rules of the arxiv. So I wouldn't recommend it.
But the situation doesn't fundamentally change for papers that you or others post on your own website. The phrasing in your question suggests that you feel that you might not have to "be responsive" in the academic sense to papers that you find on people's webpages (only). That's not true. As an academic you have to be responsive to others' work *wherever you find it*.
In terms of the prospect of people uploading "the bare minimum to arXiv in order to get credit for the idea": is this an *actual* problem for you or just something you are wondering *might* be a problem? I have never encountered this problem in my work. That you are wondering whether it *might* be a problem makes me think you may be a quite new researcher and haven't fully grasped the way the academic community works. (Which is fine, and you have only to look forward to understanding it better. But you should talk to others, including advisors and mentors, to try to get a better idea.) Academia places a great privilege on **completed work** for exactly this reason. If you put out a manuscript which, say, modifies an algorithm and hints that it could be faster in some situations, the most likely reaction you'll get is "Go on..."
This question may finally have made me understand what people on this site are on about when they say things like "An idea is worthless". An idea is certainly not worthless, but a vague and unimplemented idea is of highly uncertain value, to the point where rushing to publish "only the vague idea" would be a very poor, um, idea.
By the way, you don't have to immediately drop something because someone else had "the same idea" and put out a paper before you. Much -- perhaps most -- important academic work overlaps with other work and even more of it refines and extends the ideas of others. How to respond to seeing "your idea" in another paper is a topic for a different answer.
Finally, let me say: if what you've done, are doing or want to do has real value, then it is unlikely to be received with thunderous applause this week and totally ignored next week. If you're living in fear that someone else will say what you want to say, maybe slow down and find more to say.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: >
> I wonder (and fear) if there is a trend to upload just the bare minimum to arXiv in order to get credit for the idea.
>
>
>
You are letting the nasty worldly details of the race for academic credit, prestige, funds and jobs clound your judgement of academic actions.
If someone has a good idea, that has been developed enough to constitute 75% of a paper, but has not had the time or the resources to test it empirically - it is better **for science** that this person post some kind of note / mini-article / blog post about the idea for others to read.
Then, other interested people could collaborate with this individual who has perhaps resolved a problem they were tackled with, and now do not have to resolve themselves. Or even just undertake the experimental work themselves. This is also certain, by and large, to lead to some changes in details or perspective about the purely-theoretical part - as well as to ideas for future research.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Unfortunately, scientific communication is indeed in a state of treating it like IP for quite a while, otherwise known as "publish or perish". This has a few corollaries, most notable of which is that it all largely behaves like patents indeed.
However, if 5 people publish roughly the same idea, it is not a given the first of them would get all the credit and reference count that comes with it. If it goes really, really big - and few things do - yes, they would likely have their names up there somewhere. But for more mundane things like metrics the better connected and more visible ones win. That makes mature research still valuable and all that happens, really, is that people try to get more visibility for their ideas with publishing often and publishing lots. And arguably, that is a good thing.
Personally, I was against publishing immature work for many many years until coming across Richard Hamming's "You and Your Research". One of the takeaways was that the articles one writes are not monuments to their work - they might turn out to be so, and one may choose to present a body of work in its entirety, and there are still significant advantages to that... But ultimately, they are mainly communication. And that tends to speed up. For casting the greatest bit of the work in stone (or, in this case, paper) books exist.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/25
| 1,411
| 6,001
|
<issue_start>username_0: ### Motivation
I'm soon going to start a Post-Doc in the Netherlands. The labor laws are different from where I did my Ph.D. work; the academic culture is somewhat different; the unionization situation is different; etc.
So, I've gotten the informal offer over email, and I'm now expecting the formal contract offer. I already have a copy of the [collective employment agreement](http://www.wvoi.nl/default.asp?CID=92) which covers post-doctoral researchers where I'll be working.
When I did my PhD, like I said, the situation was quite different - plus, I didn't actually get to sign any contract and no bargaining was involved. But now there might be some bargaining (although I'm not sure to what extent as employment conditions are mostly standardized).
### The actual question
My question is: What are, in your experience or opinion are points that are possible/useful to bargain about in the individualized contract? If you can, please give an example of better vs worse options for the same point. Long lists with less details are also quite ok by me :-)
### Examples
(some more academia-specific and some more generic)
* The extent to which the academic institute controls copyrights to your discoveries: Partial copyright in your works / Institute controls everything / Automatic publication under free license.
* The extent to which you can be required to perform duties other than your chosen specific personal research: Not at all / At their discretion / Upto x% of the work week
* Funding for attending conferences abroad
### Notes
* Somewhat-related question: [What questions should I ask when I visit labs for potential post-doc employment?](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/41546/7319)
* Please answer even if your experience does not regard the Netherlands. I'm particularly interested in inter-national differences, because the prevalence of alternatives elsewhere is a point I can use in bargaining.<issue_comment>username_1: Looking at the collective employment agreement briefly, I'd say that pretty much everything is prescribed, and that only the things in Appendix 3 are negotiable. That is to say, you can negotiate about some things in the amount of gross salary and the amount of vacation. These are options for, it appears, trading salary/vacation for help with commuting costs, costs of school, union dues, additional retirement savings, and the purchase of a reasonable bicycle (it is the Netherlands after all!). This is referred to in Section 1.8 of the General Provisions.
Section 1.9 of the General Provisions covers Intellectual Property. I don't see anything that makes these provisions negotiable, and the employer appears to own everything. 1.9.2 covers Copyright and 1.9.2.1 covers requests for the transfer of copyright to the employee. If you are concerned about who owns your scientific articles or software products, I would ask how frequently these transfers are approved.
I haven't looked through all the chapters for provisions specific to researchers and postdocs, so if you are concerned that you might be assigned duties outside of your own, self-directed research, I would carefully ask your interviewer/potential supervisor about that. Post-doctoral positions are usually about extended training in the US, and so they tend to be a blend of producing works that came out of the dissertation (or extending it) and producing new works that are a collaboration between the postdoc and the advisor. I.e., postdocs are expected to continue working on their old ideas but also work on new ideas that come from the collaboration of the postdoc and the advisor.
That's the theory at least. They are often expected to do the former and also lead ongoing lab efforts at the advisor's sole direction. If you are concerned about this, ask. Just be careful that you don't turn your potential employer off to hiring you due to an apparent unwillingness to be a team-player.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: Legally, as far as I understand, it is not possible to negotiate new terms that contradict the terms of the applicable collective labour agreements in the Netherlands. Many labour agreements however leave some room for negotiation, see e.g. Appendix 3 in the file you linked. In practice however there I would not expect there to be much room.
As for your example questions:
* As username_1 pointed out, Section 1.9 arranges IP ownership, and indeed the employer owns everything. See also point 4 of Article 1.9.3. I don't see much room here for negotiation.
* This is not part of the collective agreement. Your contract may have certain provisions, for example the amount of teaching (if applicable). You should discuss this with your supervisor/boss on what is expected and how much freedom you will have. Here there may be some room for negotiation.
* Again, this is something the supervisor can answer. It depends on how much budget the group has available, or if your work is part of a grant funded project, how much there is available there.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: In hindsight, I can say the following:
The research institute did not take kindly to attempts at negotiation, and would basically not negotiate on nearly anything. (That is, it's not that it stuck to its position - there was no negotiations dialog).
Exceptions or near-exceptions to this rule were (or could have been):
* Mode of calculation of your effective experience (e.g. how does industry experience count)
* Guarantees regarding funding for experimental equipment
* Opportunities for "access" to potential grad students
* Some kind of help with temporary accommodation while you search for a place to live in Amsterdam, which is an incredibly long and arduous process.
* (Informal?) agreement re how FOSS code you write is to be licensed upon release
Perhaps there are a few other negotiable points, but the negative attitude to negotiations makes it difficult to cover that many.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
|
2015/07/25
| 477
| 1,770
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<issue_start>username_0: I've noticed that some publication venues add the degree type links to the author name, like MS, PhD, MBA or MD. What's the point? ([example](http://www.people.vcu.edu/~btmcinnes/publications/btmcinnes-amia2007.pdf))<issue_comment>username_1: I cannot generalize, based on your single-document example. There might be various reasons, such as publication outlet's *requirements* or authors' *professional ego* (see [egocentrism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egocentrism) and/or [egotism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egotism)). However, in that particular case, it can be argued that the degree attribution has been done to clarify that some of the authors are not Ph.D. holders. Not that it matters much (or should matter much or at all, that is), but, perhaps, the authors wanted to be *more precise* in attribution in order to prevent confusion due to implied assumption that all authors are doctoral degree holders.
Upvotes: -1 <issue_comment>username_2: It depends completely on the journal's editorial criteria. Some journals will expect that the degrees are included (see [JAMA](http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=2319707)) and some will not (see [Research in the Teaching of English](http://www.ncte.org/library/NCTEFiles/Resources/Journals/RTE/0492-nov2014/RTE0492Annotated.pdf)). Professional ego will not come into it -- the journal will want to maintain uniformity from article to article.
Academic cultures differ as to whether degrees are typically appended to names. In the academic culture in which I spent 30 years of my professional life, use of the "Ph.D." was seen as unnecessary -- if one identified oneself as "Associate Professor of English" or "Professor of English," the Ph.D. was assumed.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/25
| 363
| 1,554
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<issue_start>username_0: I just tried submitting my first paper to arXiv. To be honest, this hasn't been an unqualifiedly fun experience.
One reason for rejection was that my paper contained line numbers. I am a bit confused as to why arXiv would reject papers for containing line numbers. One reason for me to submit to the arXiv was to potentially get comments on the paper - and it's a lot easier to comment on a paper that has line numbers. It's easier to discuss "lines 95-105" than "the third paragraph on page 5, not counting the table and its caption". I *really* like line numberings in papers I'm supposed to review.
*Can anyone tell me why arXiv does not allow numbered lines in submissions?*
(A quick internet search didn't turn up anything useful. )<issue_comment>username_1: In my experience, it is much more useful to give some context (a few words, name of the theorem, ...) to any editorial suggestions than line numbers. My documents exist as LaTeX source, so line numbers in some printed version don't correlate at all with line numbers in the text I currently work on. A few words of context are easy to search for in a text editor, line numbers would require referring to the printout to find same first. Besides, text changes (paragraphs get rewritten, shuffled around, new chapters are added, a new example appears, ...).
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: It may be a way of discouraging authors from submitting galley proofs, which are typeset in the final format of the journal but generally have line numbers.
Upvotes: 2
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2015/07/25
| 2,199
| 9,549
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<issue_start>username_0: I am nearing the end of teaching a course for first year students with a fellow student.
We assigned a paper and 2 students have submitted almost identical papers. The policy is that if a student is caught they get a 0 and possible legal action on a case-by-case basis governed by department heads.
I know that one of these students is a 4.0 students and it seems odd that she would either share or copy her paper from another student. I'll refer to her as student A. Student B's paper is about a 90% copy and normally cases where this happened it's evident that the students are friends and socialize during classes. I have never seen Student A and B talk to one another and I find it hard to believe student A would plagiarize off of another student.
I do not want to have to fail both students if only 1 copied off the other without the other's knowledge. How can I appropriately handle the situation without seeming like there is a favoritism towards student A? Student B has been on the lower end of the class grade wise but is still a passing student.<issue_comment>username_1: So you're a student and not faculty? That can be tough to deal with because you lack authority, both in the faculty's and the students' eyes. I'd advise you to get advice from some faculty member in the department. It'll help to involve them early if it ends up going to some sort of hearing.
One tactic in this situation is to send an email out to the class advising them that you caught people cheating off each other on this assignment. If they turn themselves into you you'll go easy on them. Sometimes it works and you'll have an easier time of it with this route.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Without talking to both students, you can't be sure of anything. The first step in a plagiarism case is to talk with the student. How would Student B have obtained Student A's paper before the paper was due, without her cooperation? I think the best strategy is to talk with both students, get whatever information you can, give the department chair your best estimate of the situation and let him or her handle it.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_3: Usually, the way to handle this is to ask both students to come in at the same time. And then in separate rooms, ask them to articulate one of the key points of the essay. It's usually simple to determine who wrote the paper and understood the ideas and who merely copied the text.
However, the key issue doesn't seem to be just whether B copied from A, but whether:
1. A allowed B to copy the material willingly (perhaps for remuneration)
2. A allowed it to be copied by B accidentally or through neglect (e.g., A left a draft on a public computer); or,
3. B copied it by malicious action (B hacked into A's computer).
(There is a fourth possibility: that both B and A used source C and both are plagiarists.)
It would be unfair to punish just B and let A go without proving A's innocence or culpability.
**That all being said**, untangling this is non-trivial and at this point, I'd declare it above my pay grade and **send it up the chain of command to the university committee responsible for student ethics and misconduct** (via the instructor on record if you're a teaching assistant).
Upvotes: 7 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_4: You seem to *believe* that A is innocent and you seem afraid that the university rules will punish her anyway.
Do you have faith in the fairness of university rules and their fair application? If so, talk to your professor. If not, ask yourself if you're at the right university ...
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_5: You go to whoever in your department is responsible for this kind of thing, explain the situation to them and do as they advise. This is a serious matter and you need to be acting in accordance with your department and university's policies, not on the well-meant advice of strangers on the internet.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: Some universities have codes of conduct to prevent fishing of students who are suspected of cheating. Talk to the Head of Department or a senior professor. Do not do anything else.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_7: Speaking as a student lab instructor who recently handled a similar situation, this is the general decision-making process I go through, with concrete examples from the incident with which I was involved.
1. Determine if any school policy constrains your actions. For example, in my case it is required that even *suspected* cases be turned over to the academic misconduct people. This centralised mechanism allows the school to accurately track students who offend in multiple courses, and it offers additional disciplinary options that aren't available to the instructor (e.g. the incident may be noted on all transcripts the student requests).
2. If the above step doesn't prevent you from doing so, document the facts of the offence. This may require you to do additional research (e.g. checking the assignment against an online plagiarism detection service), depending on the particulars of the assignment. In my case, the papers were submitted electronically, and I was able to prove that Student A had turned his in barely prior to the posted deadline, but Student B had turned his in several hours late.
3. Should the evidence be insufficient to determine who has what level of culpability, it may be necessary to interview the students. This is tricky, because an instructor doesn't have the same powers as the police. For example, depending on jurisdiction, you likely cannot force them to show you their inboxes, or restrict them from communicating with one another before you interview them. I strongly recommend taking steps to protect yourself against the possibility that the student will accuse you of extortion (i.e. they claim you said "I won't report this if you give me money/favours/etc."). You *may* be allowed, depending on privacy laws, to inform an authority in your department, or to record the conversation. In my case, I informed the professor who taught the associated lectures, and he conducted the interview via email, so neither of us was never alone with the student and there was a written record of the discussion.
4. Use your findings to determine what likely happened. Do your best, just like you would when marking the assignment normally, to keep the students' identities at arm's length. That is, don't presume that since Student B is a poorer student, Student A did the work and he copied it. In my case, I concluded that there was no evidence of collaboration before the deadline, and that Student A was likely under the impression that he was free to discuss it with Student B (discussion after an assignment being commonplace and tolerated here, even to the point of emailing work to another student), but Student B misrepresented the work as his own. Student B did not contest this in his email response.
5. If there is an office to handle these things at your school, present them with your evidence and, if appropriate, a recommendation. If not, determine what consequences to impose. In borderline cases, it may be appropriate to issue a warning; in clear-cut cases, it can vary quite a bit depending on both the severity of the offence and the local academic culture, from taking a zero on the assignment to failing the course to expulsion. In my case, the assignment was heavily weighted and a zero on it caused Student B to fail the course.
In general, the first priority is to play by the rules of your school and the laws of your jurisdiction.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_8: An advice I have to is check if Student A uploaded her document to a shared resource of some sort. For example, if the university has a shared network drive for students, it's entirely possible student B accessed this somehow. Just ask how she stored the document and take steps in that direction.
While a undergrad at college I noticed lecturers and students alike tend to not protect their digital usage. I known a teacher who uploaded all the homework solution to a website and simply unlinked them. Basically you had to change the url from homework\_solution\_1.html to homework\_solution\_2.html and you'd see the solution well in advance.
Also at my previous job, I noticed this co-worker seemed to have similar and/or exact code as someone else well in advanced. I finally figured out that this co-worker would wait until someone uploaded their code for the day then start picking it out. This co-worker was grossly incompetent otherwise and even after bringing it up to the management they kept this person on.
So digital protection is a must anywhere.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_9: You should talk with the people responsible for the plagiarism policy at your university and ask how to handle the case instead of asking for advice on the internet. It is very important to follow the rules. For example, at some university where I previously was, there was a rule that a professor should meet with each student A and B separately. If this rule was not followed, then the case of plagiarism may be dropped.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_10: First you need to identify if the work is acceptable, such as is it referenced correctly.
Second, see if you can show signs of collusion or plagiarism based on the universities definition.
Third you can ask the student to defend the work by agreeing to an oral exam, there is a technical term for this but I can't remember.
Upvotes: 0
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2015/07/25
| 215
| 944
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<issue_start>username_0: Do I reply to travel grant chair for notifying me approval of my travel grant award application for a conference? (Thanking him/her.. etc)
What is my appropriate action? Or is it not really expected and I should just follow instructions of submitting listed receipts to the specified person in email?<issue_comment>username_1: I don't think it's necessary, but my inclination is to just write a one or two sentence response, just saying "Thanks for the wonderful news. I'm looking forward to the conference." This way they know you got the email and are still planning on attending.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Best option is to respond very briefly. This is **basic courtesy, to let them know you received the notification and will accept the travel grant**. Of course, it is also wise to remember to submit the receipts as requested! The first is courtesy, the second business.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]
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2015/07/25
| 194
| 791
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<issue_start>username_0: This researcher says something along the lines of "I welcome all contact regarding this book".<issue_comment>username_1: Unless this is someone you know already, I'd say that you probably shouldn't ask. He's not offering unsolicited advice to all comers. You can either give him your feedback on his book or not, but I wouldn't tie the two things together.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Oh no. The operative phrase is "regarding this book." You should ask for help with your statement from 1) your academic advisor, 2) a teacher you feel comfortable with, 3) a colleague who's gone through the process, 4) a friend who's an excellent writer, and so on.
Hitting this researcher up for advice is taking advantage of the situation.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/26
| 3,436
| 14,324
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<issue_start>username_0: My job search (for tenure-track Assistant professor in Computer Science) last year failed miserably. I submitted applications to about 10 US schools (top 30 -- top-100 quality). In the end, I got only 1 on-campus interview, which I think I did well, but no job offer.
Here is a quick summary of my qualifications:
* ABD from a highly reputable university outside US (equivalent to, e.g., Toronto, EPFL)
* 10 papers, all in top conferences (5 first-authors)
* 4 recommendation letters (one from my advisor, 3 from other reputable researchers)
* extensive internships in industry research labs
* extensive TA experience
* has experience in grant-writing (assisting my advisor)
I am really confident in my research accomplishments and research abilities. I also communicate reasonably well and speak/write English fluently. Since I didn't get a whole lot useful feedback, **what do you think are major holes in my profile**? I did some reflections and had the following in mind:
* No Post-doc experience (is it really necessary in CS now?)
* Never taught a course as an instructor (but I don't see many candidates have this in their resumes)
* Degrees not from US
* 10 papers in top venues are still not enough
* Research/Teaching Statement could be written better (perhaps, but I think mine read OK)
Thanks in advance for your suggestions.<issue_comment>username_1: Some things committees are looking for which you did not list:
* Did you win awards? (not directly under your control)
* Were your publications important? Were they cited? (You cannot control citations, but you can say why your work will be cited.)
* Can your proposed work attract external funding?
* Were your applications carefully tailored to each institution? e.g. is your research and teaching proposal relevant to the institution's mission?
* Experience teaching independently. Designing new classes is even better.
Successful applicants in my field (not CS) have completed at least one postdoc and applied to more than thirty schools.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I wouldn't worry about paper count, especially if you have ten papers in top conferences. Do make sure you are realistic about what is truly considered the top conference of your area, of course. But I had only 3 papers in my area's top conference (one first author) when I got a faculty position, and I've placed a student at a top 10 school with less than that. My department gets nearly 1,000 faculty applicants every year. Nobody will have time to read ten of your papers. Much more important is that you have just *one* thing that you are actually somewhat known for. Then when you apply people will say, "Oh, s/he's the person who did X, I liked that work." Particularly at the junior level, one publication with 200 citations is worth a lot more than 10 papers with 20 citations each. Depending on your area, software artifacts can also be quite helpful if you've gotten others to use them. The number one criterion people are looking for is **impact**.
Second, don't underestimate the value of the research statement, which in your case you imply was only middling. Somehow people seem to think the statement is not very important. Obviously a truly renowned candidate is going to be interviewed anyway. However, I've served on search committees and seen the statement affect things both ways--strong candidates not get interviewed because of bad statements, and dark horse candidates get invited because of fantastic statements. More than that, writing the research statement is an important turning point in your graduate career. Yes, you've done 10 cool things and gotten 10 top papers out of it... but can you string a sizable fraction of those results into a coherent narrative that shows you have vision? The second most important hiring criterion is **potential**. You need to convince these schools not just that you've done something cool, but that your accomplishments to date form part of promising research agenda that will continue at their school. I don't think it's possible to put together a good interview talk if you can't first construct a good research statement. On top of that, it makes life much easier for your letter writers if you provide them a copy of a brilliant statement, so indirectly you are probably improving your letters with a good statement.
Third, in many regions of the world, it is customary to write recommendation letters that are less warm than U.S. letters. E.g., I sometimes see letters from Europe that are very dry, like, "The candidate solved X problem. Here are the candidate's strengths. Here are the candidate's weaknesses." Whereas in the US the same person might get a letter saying, "Let me tell you just how important problem X was... And not only did the candidate totally nail the problem, s/he continued to surprise me with a series of follow-on results that seemed intractable just a few years earlier. On top of that, the candidate has been the go-to person for Y and Z in my department, which explains how s/he managed to contribute to fully 10 publications, only half of which I even coauthored. This candidate is as good as Person A (now at U.S. School S), and in several ways stronger than Person B [whom you already interviewed last year]. Our school never interviews its own fresh Ph.D.s, but it sure was tempting in this case--we'll miss the person next year." So when you select a post-doc, make sure to do it either in the U.S., or in a place where people have enough U.S. experience to write the kind of gushing letters we've come to expect here. The people to whom your letter writers compare you must also be meaningful in the U.S. I think most Canadian schools (including Toronto) are similar to the U.S. EPFL (which you mentioned) also has a critical mass of people who understand this, as does MPI. So that might or might not be a problem depending on where you are and who is writing your letters.
Finally, I hate to say it, but there's just a lot of randomness in hiring at the Junior level. There's only one valid way to evaluate faculty candidates, and that is to read their publications (or at least to read the one best publication by each candidate). That takes a lot of time, unfortunately, and typically only happens for a fraction of applicants. Once someone has read and thought about your best paper, your case starts to stand on the merits. Once you actually interview, the randomness goes way down. But what convinces someone to read your paper in the first place? Well, maybe s/he saw a talk you gave at a conference or talked with you there and thought you seemed smart. Maybe something in your research statement or one of the letters caught his/her eye. Maybe you're lucky enough to have worked with someone who has placed students at comparable schools, and so that person can make a convincing case you are worth investigating.
What actionable advice can I give you to derandomize the process? Try to interact with people at schools where you'd want to work and get "on their radar." Serving on program committees or organizing committees might be one way to do this. Talking to people about your or their research at conferences might be one way to do this. But also make sure you aren't annoying. Explaining your latest research result at 400 words per minute to somebody who is tired at the end of a long program committee meeting is not going to win you any points. On the other hand, even if you didn't talk about research, someone could pick up your application and think, "That candidate was really helpful in organizing the poster session, I wonder if his/her research is any good," in which case you are more likely to get your paper read. If you have a friendly relationship with someone at a school where you didn't get an offer, you may also be able to get feedback this way. (Ideally your advisor could work some connections for feedback, but it sounds like that hasn't happened.)
I love my job as a faculty member. On the other hand, I see plenty of people moving from faculty positions at good schools to industry, where they seem just as happy. We are are lucky to be in a field where the most desirable jobs for Ph.D.s consist of far more than just professorships. So I wish you well in your next faculty search, but also take heart in the fact that, whatever happens, you have bright career prospects with a computer science Ph.D.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: Getting interviewed by 10% of the places that you applied to sounds like a success, not a failure. You may just need to apply to more places or you'll need to try a few cycles. If you got an interview than your application was competitive.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Let me add two points to username_2's excellent answer.
Landing a tenure-track faculty position in computer science, even during this current phase of rampant uncontrolled growth, is still very very hard. As username_2 put it: There's just a lot of randomness in the hiring process. In this respect, hiring junior faculty is no different from every inherently subjective selection process: undergraduate admission, graduate admission, paper acceptance, senior hiring, even tenure.
There is **nothing** you can do to absolutely guarantee that the dice fall in your favor, but you can change the distribution. As one of my interviewers once said to me when I was looking for faculty positions, the *variance* is a function of the committee, but the *expectation* is a function of the applicant.
Apply widely
------------
>
> I submitted applications to about 10 US schools
>
>
>
There's your biggest problem. Only the *very* strongest PhD students have any chance of landing a tenure-track job with only 10 applications. Each position receives dozens to hundreds of applicants; simple statistics imply that you should aim for a wider range of targets. I'd suggest 40-50 as a more reasonable target.
Hiring protocols vary significantly between American universities. Some departments practice targeted hiring, where every interview candidate must match a specific research area approved in advance by the dean. Other departments practice broad-spectrum hiring; these departments can interview anyone they find sufficiently interesting, regardless of area. Most departments lie somewhere in between these two extremes. Restrictions can change *during* the hiring season. Moreover, the position advertisement does *not* reveal the department's hiring constraints, or even necessarily preferences. Some departments publish general ads ("all areas of computer science") even when their searches are targeted; others publish targeted ads even when their searches are broad.
In short, you **cannot** tell whether your application is in scope for a particular department from the advertisement. **For this reason, you should apply to *every* department that you *might* be interested in joining, no matter what their ad says.** The worst they can do is say no.
Quality > Quantity
------------------
My second point is one about perception and language: Your entire application package (including the identities of your references and their contents of their letters) should emphasize quality rather than quantity, impact rather than effort, excellence rather than busy-ness. Even your own internal mental gauges should be calibrated to the strength and potential of your research, not the length of your CV.
At least one of the metrics we use to choose interview candidates is the question "Is this person likely to get tenure?" The more you present yourself as someone who is *already* ready for tenure, the more your achievements shine on the metrics faculty use to judge *each other*, the better your chances will be.
>
> ABD from a highly reputable university outside US (equivalent to, e.g., Toronto, EPFL)
>
>
>
The number of non-American CS departments that your prospective American colleagues would rank in the same equivalence class as Toronto and EPFL is *very* small. Are you sure? Are you sure because Americans have told you so, or only because that's what everyone at your home institution says?
In any case, the reputation of your home institution is not as important as your personal reputation as a researcher. (These are [strongly correlated](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/154/65), but they are not the same.)
>
> 10 papers, all in top conferences (5 first-authors)
>
>
>
That's certainly above-average *productivity*, but productivity is not the same as impact. Did your papers win awards? Did they create any buzz? Have they been cited? Did they inspire follow-up work? **In short, were your papers actually *good*?** [Sturgeon's Law](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sturgeon%27s_law) applies even at the best conferences. Do your external letters (see below) describe the novelty, quality, and impact of your work in specific and credible detail? Are you, personally, known for this work, as opposed to your advisor?
>
> 4 recommendation letters (one from my advisor, 3 from other reputable researchers)
>
>
>
"Reputable researchers" is too low a bar. You need letters from recognized intellectual leaders in your field, including a significant fraction from outside your home institution. As username_2 points out, you especially need letters from people who are calibrated to the social norms (as some put it, "gushing") of American academic recommendation letters.
It's also important to have American references so that they can give you direct and brutally honest feedback about your application package *from the point of view of your target audience.*
>
> extensive internships in industry research labs
>
>
>
Were your internships successful? Did they lead to publishable or patentable results? Did they have significant impact within the company? Did your internship sponsors write you strong recommendation letters?
>
> extensive TA experience
>
>
>
Unless you are aiming for undergraduate-only institutions or a teaching-only position, this is at most of secondary importance. Your research matters first.
>
> experience in grant-writing (assisting my advisor)
>
>
>
Was the grant-writing experience successful? Did you and your advisor actually get the grant(s)?
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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2015/07/26
| 461
| 2,001
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<issue_start>username_0: I applied for PhD programs starting from the fall of 2015 at several universities and I was waiting very eager to hear from them, because I just finished my MS last spring semester and don't want to waste time.
However, in the mid of this month, I received email from one school telling me that the admissions committee has decided to move my application for review to the 2016 - Spring semester. In the letter, it didn't mention any acceptance/rejection. They moved my application for the next review which doesn't mean I have been accepted.
I'm really wondering why and how did they decided to delay my application. Moreover, **What would you advise in this situation? Can I ask them the chances of acceptance or the reason for the delay? Or should I just wait?**<issue_comment>username_1: I think given the amount that I know from your post, I don't think we can give you more advice than to ask for clarification. This isn't a standard procedure that I know of, though I could imagine various reasons this could happen. Since I'm just imagining (and I'm sure you are too), just write a polite email to the director of the graduate program, or whichever faculty member seems to be the correct contact, and ask them precisely what this means for you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: When I applied to start my MS, I failed to get my application in before the fall deadline.
So I went to the University I wished to attend and took the graduate level classes I needed as a *non-degree* student.
Half-way through the term, the University accepted me as a student for graduate studies starting the next term. They also accepted all of my non-degree credits towards my degree program. The fact that I was performing very well in the graduate level courses may have been a factor in them accepting me.
This worked very well for me but I recommend speaking to a counselor at the University that you wish to attend prior to attempting this course of action.
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/26
| 2,792
| 12,046
|
<issue_start>username_0: **Short form:** How should one lead a collaborative "book study group" amongst one's peers, particularly when the leader does not have deep prior knowledge of the book?
**Long form:** I'm an undergraduate CS student† (rising junior). In the remaining time before I graduate, I thought it would be a fun idea to read a volume of Knuth's *Art of Computer Programming* each semester and work some of the problems. Since I know others in the department might be interested in studying this work, I decided I would organize a "book club" where we read ~40-50 pages a week and then meet up to discuss what we read and/or solutions to exercises that we have solved.
So, my biggest question is: Besides solutions to exercises in the book or clarifications on what we read, what else should or could be discussed during our weekly meetings?
There are plenty of resources online about "how to lead a book club," but they all primarily focus on literature/story analysis, etc., not something suited for scientific writing. Many book clubs will have a time where they read a chapter aloud, which also is not applicable to Knuth's work. I feel as though I'm searching for the wrong term when I use the phrase "book club." Is there a standard term for this form of study group that I could use in searches?
Furthermore, I have not read *AoCP* before. Thus, I don't have a strong basis of knowledge upon which I could draw to guide discussion. Obviously, a great solution would be to get a professor or grad student who has read *AoCP* to act as a mentor for the group; however, I do not know if any have done so--assume for sake of this question that such a mentor is not available.
---
†I know that issues facing undergraduates are generally off-topic here. However, I believe this situation could also be faced by a grad student or a postdoc--the primary difference would be the difficulty of the source material they are studying. I simply mention my background so readers may understand where I'm coming from.<issue_comment>username_1: I ran one of these a few years back. Here's what we did:
* Start by publicizing the idea with your friends/colleagues and setting up an initial meeting. You'll get a sense prior to the meeting whether there's interest. The more advertising you do here the higher chance you'll actually have a showing at the first meet.
* At the first meet, re-state the purpose—group of people working through the ideas in the book—and decide the meeting cadence (weekly, biweekly, monthly). This is important; reading through books like this take time, and for the group to work it's critical that people actually read the content and come prepared to discuss questions. You need to give enough time to let them read, and not so much that they'll forget what they read.
On this note, we also split the book up by chapter (we were reading [Elements of Statistical Learning]([http://statweb.stanford.edu/~tibs/ElemStatLearn/](http://statweb.stanford.edu/%7Etibs/ElemStatLearn/), chapter splits made sense there). You may decide to split by topic or whatever else. The main idea is to ensure that everyone's on the same page, and comes to the next meet prepared to discuss the same content.
* During the break, read up on content. As the group leader/organizer you may want to take notes on what you read to prompt discussion (itemize points covered, questions you thought of, points for discussion). Send out one or two emails reminding them about it.
* At the first meet, come with discussion points and be prepared to lead a discussion, as it's likely no one else will take the lead. You don't have to be an expert, you just have to lead the conversation and bring up talking points. If you're not comfortable in this role, find someone who is and make sure they come to the meeting.
I recommend you keep the meeting at 60 minutes or less. If the first one is a success the rest then just wash, rinse, repeat.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: While I did not *lead* a book club, I was *second in-command* in two and I, currently, lead a study group as an undergraduate. Here's what I learned in both experiences.
**On Recruiting**
You should always keep in mind how many members you want. Maintaining a book club with 4 to 7 members is easy because you can get to know each member individually, and you can keep tabs on who's coming to the meetings and who isn't. Larger groups take more work, and inevitably attendance will drop because each member will be contributing less and less as the group grows, so they don't really get attached to the group.
Some people have great intuition, some don't. Follow yours if it has yielded good results before. If it hasn't, find someone on whose intuition you can trust.
Example: In one of the book clubs I assisted, the leader was easily influenced by flattering. I met one of the possible recruits and I was immediately struck by how *unsettling* he was. He did not seem trustworthy at all. Later I discovered he had many rape accusations on him, among other illegal activities. He took over the discussion and derailed the entire group, and after I left all the female members left because of how unsafe they felt around him.
Quality is harder to achieve than quantity. Once you have achieved a number of members slightly higher than the ideal, cease recruitment and focus on improving quality of the research/debate.
Some people will drop out and that's OK. It's inevitable.
**On the Group's Structure**
Ideally, you should at least have a second in-command. Someone who can share some your responsibilities, who understands the group's missions and objectives, who can recruit and evaluate members, who can take decisions in your absence.
Each member will eventually show his or hers personal skills and tendencies, and you'll have to watch out for that. You might have a member particularly prone to joking and changing the subject, and that can be good if he or she raises morale when everyone is tired of debating. You might have someone who likes cooking for the group, which brings many benefits. Someone might have a great place where you can bring everyone to discuss the book. And, of course, everyone has negative points and you have to deal with that as well. And so on.
Example: I recruited a young man to my research team. I already knew him for some time, and knew that he struggled with a deep depression, that he had a terrible family environment and that, while hard working, he struggled with his grades.
At first, he lagged behind and was a constant drain on my time and resources, which made me reconsider my decision of accepting him on the group. As of now, though, he is our most dedicated researcher and one of the few people I always seek when in doubt about how to manage the group. He is, now, my assistant and most loyal researcher.
You don't need to know everything about the subject, but it's unforgivable if you come across as knowing more than you really do. Set your boundaries, clarify how inexperienced you are. You are an undergraduate and no one should forget that.
Still, you absolutely *need to know* how to lead a discussion so that people expose their thoughts and experiences. You'll need some charisma for that, and it often helps if you know each member individually, even if superficially.
Example: I am an undergraduate and I lead a research team. One of our members, hierarchically inferior to me, is someone with years of experience in the area. She alone has more publications than everyone else in the group together.
Still, she has *never* questioned my authority. Because I lead the group well enough, because we work great together, and, mostly, because I know when to shut up. She knows more than I do, so I let her talk without interruptions.
Get to know you book club members. Some will be shier, some more vocal, and that has nothing to do with the quality of their contributions. Learn how to make the shy genius speak, and control the vocal minority who often derails the discussion. Control the debate so that *everyone* contributes, otherwise you'll be bleeding members after some sessions.
Eventually, every group develops a *culture*. Respect and cherish it.
Example: On my research team we often organize lectures. Our marketing is often humorous, it's our opportunity to joke about our research. Most of our attendants comment that our relaxed approach to the subject matter was a deciding factor in attending our events.
**On the Meeting**
Prepare a list of subjects to be discussed and send it to the members some days before the meeting. After the meeting, send a summary of what was discussed and decided.
If the meeting is going for too long, make a short break to drink water, eat something and use the facilities.
Try to make the meeting someplace where you won't be interrupted or bothered. Be there some time before the expected time so you can make sure everything is there (number of chairs and tables, for instance.)
If someone is not taking part in the debate, ask for their opinion on the subject. Try to make everyone participate.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: An alternative format to a book club that is well-suited for what you want to accomplish is that of a reading seminar/reading course. You may even be able to arrange to get credit for it, depending on your department/university.
The organizer of the seminar distributes the content you want to cover to the participants. Each participant is responsible for learning his or her content deeply enough to teach that material to everyone else at the assigned meetings. However, ALL participants are responsible for reading ALL of the material prior to every lecture to gain at least passing familiarity, and their role when not lecturing is to ask questions to the lecturer about anything they don't understand. Solutions to the associated exercises could be discussed immediately after the lecture, or at the beginning of the next meeting, as you prefer. My personal recommendation is to meet multiple times a week, since it's too easy to neglect readings if you only meet once a week or less.
Keep in mind:
1. The benefit of the lecture is primarily to THE LECTURER. Teaching material to others forces you to internalize it more deeply than simply discussing exercises would. To that end, the lecturer should take the opportunity to learn how to develop simple examples to illustrate and clarify concepts and definitions.
2. The point of asking questions, beyond learning the material, is to promote discussion, foster a collaborative environment, and, well, to learn how to ask questions. Treat this as a mandatory exercise.
I'm not a CS person, so forgive me if I'm wrong, but a quick look at the table of contents leads me to believe that the content is relatively basic and fundamental. I would expect probably any of your professors to be proficient enough at the material to mentor such a reading course, even if they haven't read this specific book. If a mentor really truly is not a possibility, you may consider having pairs or small teams of participants give each lecture, so no one gets stuck during preparation without having anyone else to talk to about their problems.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: One of the topics not covered by other answers is the importance of food and departmental support. Fortunately they can be one and the same.
I would ask your department chair or director of undergraduate studies if you can have funds to help support your group.
For example, in my department we want undergrads to take these kinds of initiatives and provide a small amount of money to make sure that you guys are well fueled with pizza and soda during these sessions.
US$50/session would not be a terrible burden for most department budget lines but would likely help increase your sense of camaraderie (and perhaps productivity). Happy undergraduate majors attract other students to the major and it's a win:win for everyone.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: My paper was accepted in peer reviewed journal last week and is about to be publishing. Last night I thought the solution makes better sense if I change the definition of one of the variables. This is a minimal change which doesn't change any of the other equations or any of the conclusions or results.
Is this possible and how can I ask If I could change this variable?
Also, if they accept does that mean that the paper has to to be reviewed again?<issue_comment>username_1: My advice is to contact the editor of the journal and ask about your desired change. The editor may send it to one of the reviewers, or may accept the change without further review. But communication with the editor is what you need.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: I will disagree with username_1's answer.
In most cases, if the change truly is "minimal," (less than one line of text to change), then it can be "corrected" at the proof stage without further intervention. However, if there is a cascade of changes, then this may possibly involve editor intervention.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: It is normal to correct things that are essentially typographical errors at the last minute (page proofs), with the usual caveats about not making typographically-big changes (ones that could change pagination). Changing the definition of a variable sounds more like a change of substance (even if it only involves changing a few words), meaning that there could be consequences for your change (it could render your paper logically inconsistent -- or not, the point is, somebody who knows the area should judge what the effect is). So I have to disagree with username_2's disagreement: the editor should be involved, to determine whether the intellectual content has been changed.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am taking a graduate-level summer course and have observed several problems. I would like outside opinion on whether these observations are valid grounds for an official complaint, or whether I am the one being unreasonable.
First, the professor canceled one lecture entirely and cut short another 8 lectures. (There are 18 scheduled lectures of 1 hour, 50 minutes.) In most cases, the early endings were by more than 50%. All told, there were supposed to be 33 hours of lecture, but we received only 24 hours. This is an approximate 27% shortage. All of the lectures are recorded as part of my university's distance education program so there is a trail of indisputable video evidence here.
The professor is also the director of an academic program at the university. His most frequent reason given for the class times being cut short was that his other duties as director created schedule conflicts. Little if any advance notice was given about the canceled or reduced lectures.
In every class I had ever taken, from elementary school through graduate school, if the teacher/professor/lecturer could not attend for any reason, some alternate arrangement like the following was done:
* Substitute lecturer
* Recovering the lost time through alternatively scheduled class meeting. This "make up" session was recorded and made online to the entire class, so students having conflicts could still watch it.
* With student approval, extending the duration of the remaining lectures
However, in these cases, the professor did not do any of those.
I might be willing to understand a 5-10% reduction in received lecture time as part of random noise or "stuff happens", but 27% seems ridiculous to me.
My university's faculty handbook states:
>
> For brief absences, faculty members shall make appropriate
> arrangements subject to the review of the chair or dean as requested
> and according to University and school policies, so that absences
> interfere only minimally with their normal teaching and other
> responsibilities.
>
>
>
No arrangements were made in these cases, and 27% seems to me far beyond a "minimal" interference.
I consider this first issue to be the most egregious. It seems like a flagrant dereliction of the professor's job duties. This course for several thousand dollars in tuition. Is it fair to say I have not gotten my money's worth? Would a university ever issue a partial refund in such a case?
Second, the homework assignments were not graded according to the written instructions. For each of the assignment for the course, the professor posted an "instructions" document that said what we were supposed to do.
The first assignment's instructions had language along the lines of "You must implement these visual features...". The second through fourth assignment documents had no language whatsoever about look or feel. The fourth assignment grade is still pending. But I was penalized on the second and third assignments for look/beauty/aesthetic reasons.
Only after I questioned the TAs did they give me a grading rubric that showed how exactly we were to be graded. In most cases, there was a correspondence between the instruction documents and the rubric documents. However, the rubrics had additional criteria relating to aesthetics and beauty that are indisputably absent from the instruction documents. This "beauty" aspect varied between 10-12.5% of the grade. These are the exact words in the grading guidelines: "Grader subjective score of look and feel." Again, this was not documented up front. Only after my assignments were graded did the TAs send this document, and only because I specifically asked for it.
I emailed the professor about this, and his response was: "I thought I made it clear on the first day of class that you were to [make visually pleasing products]". However, assignments 2-4, in direct contrast with the first assignment, had no documented requirement for this. It seems completely nonsensical for an instruction document to be only "partially" complete. We ought to be graded by only what the documentation says, and exactly what it says. Or am I being overly "grubby" by insisting that we only be graded by exactly what the instructions said to do?
Should documentation not trump everything? Is this a valid grounds for making an official dispute/appeal of the grade to the department chair?<issue_comment>username_1: I am only going to focus on the lecture issue. There is no question that missing over a quarter of the scheduled lecture time is inappropriate.
The effectiveness of complaining depends on who is doing the teaching. A complaint like this could get cause an adjunct to not be hired again. For tenure track and tenured faculty, the depaetment head MIGHT say something in passing. For a department head, nothing is likely to happen. Complaints like this are not worth a Dean's time.
As for a refund, it is more likely the university will alow you to sit in for free the next time the course is taught.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I think we can all agree that missing more than 25% of the lectures is unacceptable (and the excuse that the instructor has other academic commitments is unconvincing to say the least: if I cancelled class every time I had other looming academic commitments, I would be cancelling class a lot more than 27% of the time). This is one of the more serious complaints I can think of bringing against an instructor: literally, you did not get what you paid for and what the university is committed to provide.
Some tips:
1) Your second complaint is so much less serious than your first that I suggest that you totally swallow it for the time being and *possibly* take it up later if it is still relevant after you are finished pursuing your first complaint. With respect to the second assignment the instructor can say "I mentioned the aesthetics early on in class and I even put it explicitly on the first problem set. If at that point a student doesn't understand that aesthetic considerations are important in web programming then giving them a lower grade on assignments is the best way to drive the point home." And I think that the instructor may have a point there...but anyway, this is all quite debatable compared to the missed classes, which is really not.
2) Your first complaint ought to be taken seriously by everyone who hears it. I think it is overwhelmingly likely that you will hear "We'll look into the matter and ensure that it does not happen in the future." But would such a response be satisfactory to you? I think it probably shouldn't be. So you should think of specific, reasonable suggestions for what can be done. Could you ask for a partial refund? Yes, it is reasonable to ask. It would also be reasonable to ask to be withdrawn from the course (without any penalty or stigma) and get *all your money back*. I would also consider asking to be withdrawn without penalty from the current course and given free enrollment in the next semester (or during the following summer). Which of these two to ask for depends on your own schedule, your level of interest and commitment in the material, and also whether the same person will be teaching the course the next time around. Note also that these resolutions render moot the grading issue in your homework.
I'm sorry that this happened to you. Good luck.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I started my PhD not long ago, and I have heard some of my colleagues something to the effect of since they did not get their submission to some conference accepted, they will not be going to that conference.
This made me wonder whether it is normal for academics to go to conferences or workshops even if they didn't get anything accepted by that conference or workshop. Obviously, the organisers and committee members could still have a reason to go, but what about other people? As a PhD student, I would think that it's a good idea to go to conferences that are relevant to your area of research, whether or not you actually have anything accepted by that conference, just to make connections and hear about the latest research.
So long question short: As a new PhD student, should I go to relevant conferences and workshops even though I have no publications accepted at that conference or workshop, or would this be seen as a waste of time and weird?<issue_comment>username_1: Yes. There are many reasons to go not merely to present your work. Learning more about the field and more broadly is the principle reason but you should not overlook the importance of networking at this stage in your career.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This answer is written with a background of a subfield of applied CS, where conferences are a primary venue of publications.
**tl;dr: Yes, it is normal. *At the same time,* it is unusual (though not "seen as weird") for someone to actually attend all conferences related to their field.**
Indeed, it can be a good idea to attend a conference simply out of interest for the topic. Both learning about new research and especially making connections with other researchers are worthwhile goals.
However, there are a number of reasons why it might not be realistically feasible:
* Some employers would not want to regularly cover travel expenses to conferences unless the attendee is presenting something ("has to go") there, especially if they take place far away. To clarify, presenting something on the conference counts as a compelling reason that requires attendance (even if it means the person gets to attend 5 or more conferences in a single year), while simply attending out of mere interest does not.
+ As suggested by [JiK](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13404/jik), there are also arrangements where the total number of conferences that will be funded within a given timespan is restricted by an upper limit. In such cases, "saving" conference trips for the instances where you actually can present something may be the way to go.
* Even if the conference takes place very closely, registration fees are sometimes considerable (600€ or more).
* The time required to travel or at least to attend the conference is missing elsewhere. It is "just" a few days, but it is a few days ever so often that the conference attendee will not be available for progressing with their research and fulfilling their possible other duties (e.g. giving or supporting classes, supervising students, performing non-research tasks required by their funding source and/or department, etc.). This is especially difficult with regular (e.g. teaching-related) duties, as they cannot just be postponed; someone has to fill in for the traveling researcher.
Moreover, the value of visiting these conferences (especially compared to other strategies for using your time that restrict conference visits to when you also present something yourself) should not be overestimated:
* While a conference can usually be picked for being "on-topic" for your research, most conference scopes are often still wide enough so the vast majority of works presented there are at best "nice to see, though essentially unrelated" to your work (especially in early stages of your PhD, where you are probably somewhat focused on rather narrow topics, as opposed to more senior researchers, who are more likely to be interested in a whole bunch of topics covered by their own group).
+ This is less of a concern for workshops, which are usually more focused on a specific topic or set of questions. On the other hand, workshops (at least [as I know them from some CS-subdisciplines](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/44309/14017)) often have lesser requirements to the completeness of contributions, and also sometimes later deadlines than the main conference. As such, it can be easier to still produce something to present on a workshop as a "justification" to attend the workshop (and also the conference it is embedded in).
* While some talks are certainly interesting to watch, not all of them are. A bit of personal preference towards receiving information in talks vs. in writing certainly plays into this. Still, I think it can generally be said that attending a conference is not an overly efficient means to quickly get updated on a wide spectrum of new ideas, given that every single such idea occupies a timeslot of some 20 to 25 minutes.
* Finding new contacts tends to be a bit of a "gamble" that is, among other factors, influenced by the nature of the conference. Especially smaller conferences can easily have something like a "core community" that considers the conference their "annual meeting of old friends", where it is very difficult to get into. Again, this depends a lot on your personality, of course; different people are very differently skilled at getting in touch with strangers.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I used to go to conferences that interested me even when I was not an academic. At one talk I even got offered a job by the speaker because he thought my questions were so perceptive! (I didn't accept because I had other things going on)
The key is to be interested in the ideas of the others and, if possible be familiar with their work. Then, whether you ask questions formally or informally they are more likely take you seriously.
Ask a question at the end of a presentation that interests you. Gauge how much this sparks the interest of the speaker. If they seem impressed then it's a good cue to have a chat with them afterwards, especially when they aren't busy.
When you finally do present a paper, they will remember your face and, with luck, be favourably inclined towards you and your ideas.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Some or all of this may be specific to my own field, which is theoretical computer science.
It's not unusual to go to conferences and not present anything. Going to conferences lets you meet other researchers in your field and learn about what other people are doing. However, most PhD students have very limited funding to go to conferences: in the departments I've worked in, it's typically been of the order of one conference per year. Also, most conferences require that at least one author of the paper attend to present it, as a condition of acceptance. As such, most students will save their funding for conferences where they're going to present something. Sometimes, funding is only available if the student is presenting. Of course, if the conference is nearby (so travel costs are lower) and short (keeping registration and accommodation costs down), it may be possible to attend more than one, or to find money from an alternative source.
Research staff and academics tend not to be quite so constrained in their funding but still mostly try to get the best value for money by mostly going to conferences they'll be presenting at.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: From my math experience, it is perfectly normal to attend conferences without presenting anything, especially for young researchers.
Phd students and postdocs benefit more in some sense from conferences by networking and get a feel for the field, while some (one, actually) more established professors I have spoken with, thinks conferences takes time from research, and mostly attend only when presenting something.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: The following question is triggered by reading [this recent question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/49420/12391) as well as by a recent case of an organizing committee member approaching me with invitation to present at a well-known (at least, within my discipline of information systems and a larger management sciences field) *conference*.
Unfortunately, I had to politely **decline** his kind invitation and an *exciting opportunity* for academic research career building and networking, especially considering that I am a beginning researcher. The reason for why I had to decline that promising invitation is twofold:
1) at this time, I'm a non-affiliated (independent) researcher with no *financial* support for research activities, including attending conferences - needless to say that I simply cannot afford to attend them on my own (but, even, if I would be, say, a postdoctoral researcher with some research budget, as far as I know, funds for attending conferences or similar events are quite limited);
2) my current life circumstances are not too favorable in terms of *traveling* (though, it is possible); moreover, I tend to agree with the *"time lost"* point, mentioned in [this nice answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49422/12391) (though, I realize that it is a matter of *assessing* and *balancing* between time and effort spent on preparation for presenting at a conference and a potential academic and career value of a prospective event).
Considering all the above-mentioned points and circumstances, my questions are as follows:
**Is it possible to build a good research academic career, avoiding publishing for (and, thus, presenting at) conferences and, instead, focusing at disseminating research artifacts via journal publications (in addition to working papers, industry articles, workshops, etc.)?**
**To what extent, if any, it would be damaging to a researcher, especially in early career, to use the strategy above and what are some potential mitigation strategic and tactical measures other than attending (and presenting at) conferences?**
**Note:** My questions above imply conferences only, as workshops or similar smaller events seem to be more affordable and, sometimes, even, free to attend and/or to present at.<issue_comment>username_1: Yes. There are many reasons to go not merely to present your work. Learning more about the field and more broadly is the principle reason but you should not overlook the importance of networking at this stage in your career.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: This answer is written with a background of a subfield of applied CS, where conferences are a primary venue of publications.
**tl;dr: Yes, it is normal. *At the same time,* it is unusual (though not "seen as weird") for someone to actually attend all conferences related to their field.**
Indeed, it can be a good idea to attend a conference simply out of interest for the topic. Both learning about new research and especially making connections with other researchers are worthwhile goals.
However, there are a number of reasons why it might not be realistically feasible:
* Some employers would not want to regularly cover travel expenses to conferences unless the attendee is presenting something ("has to go") there, especially if they take place far away. To clarify, presenting something on the conference counts as a compelling reason that requires attendance (even if it means the person gets to attend 5 or more conferences in a single year), while simply attending out of mere interest does not.
+ As suggested by [JiK](https://academia.stackexchange.com/users/13404/jik), there are also arrangements where the total number of conferences that will be funded within a given timespan is restricted by an upper limit. In such cases, "saving" conference trips for the instances where you actually can present something may be the way to go.
* Even if the conference takes place very closely, registration fees are sometimes considerable (600€ or more).
* The time required to travel or at least to attend the conference is missing elsewhere. It is "just" a few days, but it is a few days ever so often that the conference attendee will not be available for progressing with their research and fulfilling their possible other duties (e.g. giving or supporting classes, supervising students, performing non-research tasks required by their funding source and/or department, etc.). This is especially difficult with regular (e.g. teaching-related) duties, as they cannot just be postponed; someone has to fill in for the traveling researcher.
Moreover, the value of visiting these conferences (especially compared to other strategies for using your time that restrict conference visits to when you also present something yourself) should not be overestimated:
* While a conference can usually be picked for being "on-topic" for your research, most conference scopes are often still wide enough so the vast majority of works presented there are at best "nice to see, though essentially unrelated" to your work (especially in early stages of your PhD, where you are probably somewhat focused on rather narrow topics, as opposed to more senior researchers, who are more likely to be interested in a whole bunch of topics covered by their own group).
+ This is less of a concern for workshops, which are usually more focused on a specific topic or set of questions. On the other hand, workshops (at least [as I know them from some CS-subdisciplines](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/44309/14017)) often have lesser requirements to the completeness of contributions, and also sometimes later deadlines than the main conference. As such, it can be easier to still produce something to present on a workshop as a "justification" to attend the workshop (and also the conference it is embedded in).
* While some talks are certainly interesting to watch, not all of them are. A bit of personal preference towards receiving information in talks vs. in writing certainly plays into this. Still, I think it can generally be said that attending a conference is not an overly efficient means to quickly get updated on a wide spectrum of new ideas, given that every single such idea occupies a timeslot of some 20 to 25 minutes.
* Finding new contacts tends to be a bit of a "gamble" that is, among other factors, influenced by the nature of the conference. Especially smaller conferences can easily have something like a "core community" that considers the conference their "annual meeting of old friends", where it is very difficult to get into. Again, this depends a lot on your personality, of course; different people are very differently skilled at getting in touch with strangers.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I used to go to conferences that interested me even when I was not an academic. At one talk I even got offered a job by the speaker because he thought my questions were so perceptive! (I didn't accept because I had other things going on)
The key is to be interested in the ideas of the others and, if possible be familiar with their work. Then, whether you ask questions formally or informally they are more likely take you seriously.
Ask a question at the end of a presentation that interests you. Gauge how much this sparks the interest of the speaker. If they seem impressed then it's a good cue to have a chat with them afterwards, especially when they aren't busy.
When you finally do present a paper, they will remember your face and, with luck, be favourably inclined towards you and your ideas.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: Some or all of this may be specific to my own field, which is theoretical computer science.
It's not unusual to go to conferences and not present anything. Going to conferences lets you meet other researchers in your field and learn about what other people are doing. However, most PhD students have very limited funding to go to conferences: in the departments I've worked in, it's typically been of the order of one conference per year. Also, most conferences require that at least one author of the paper attend to present it, as a condition of acceptance. As such, most students will save their funding for conferences where they're going to present something. Sometimes, funding is only available if the student is presenting. Of course, if the conference is nearby (so travel costs are lower) and short (keeping registration and accommodation costs down), it may be possible to attend more than one, or to find money from an alternative source.
Research staff and academics tend not to be quite so constrained in their funding but still mostly try to get the best value for money by mostly going to conferences they'll be presenting at.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: From my math experience, it is perfectly normal to attend conferences without presenting anything, especially for young researchers.
Phd students and postdocs benefit more in some sense from conferences by networking and get a feel for the field, while some (one, actually) more established professors I have spoken with, thinks conferences takes time from research, and mostly attend only when presenting something.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I am an undergraduate student (final year, Computer Science). I am interested in research. I have worked and progressed (I believe) on a specific problem, namely graph isomorphism. Instructors in my department are not interested in that topic. I have contacted them a couple of times, and they did not reject my work nor confirm it. How can I proceed now, i.e., how can I get reviewed to confirm or verify my work?
Edit 1: The answer below by pjs36 seems to be"personal" (pointing my poor writing skill), but the answer should be general. I may have this problem, others might not have. So, what one can do to get reviewed by others?<issue_comment>username_1: The title suggests you want *new* individuals to review your work, while the last sentence seems now like you need advice reviewing your *own* work. I'll focus primarily on the title question.
I think you should ask *why is nobody commenting on my work?*, rather than *who can I get to comment on my work?* and I'll share my thoughts on that question.
I don't know how you're presenting your work, but if it's anything like this question, that might play a significant role.
What I mean to say is this. You did not explain your situation very well. Sure, I got the idea, but this is a relatively mundane situation, "Nobody will pay attention to me." It's just not *communicated clearly* (or professionally, do you really need to abbreviate *department*?), as I've pointed out that it's not even clear what question you're asking.
But when it comes to actual scientific research, we leave the world of the mundane. You are potentially discovering something nobody has seen before, or at least working on very technical material. Anyone reading your work or listening to you cannot simply fill in the gaps or correct any imprecision. If they could, it is overwhelmingly likely *not* 'research' in the academic sense of discovering or clarifying things that are new to the world, not just you.
My point is supported by your posts on MSE about Brocard's Conjecture (see, for example, [here](https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/1231576/an-argument-for-brocards-problem-has-finite-solution)). You used very unusual notation, lots of handwaving, and were generally unable to explain yourself sufficiently, by mathematical standards, in the body of the post or in the comments.
If you are asking faculty members to comment on work that's presented similarly, dismissal seems like a likely outcome. The flaws above are so serious that I can only assume (in that example) you hadn't made any real progress on Brocard's Conjecture, and thus it wasn't really worth my time to continue attempting to make sense of what you had presented.
You need to sit down and ask yourself some serious questions about what you have produced and how it's presented. Questions like "Is this true? How can I tell? Is my argument correct beyond a shadow of a doubt, and has it been tested on several examples? Have I made any conclusions that simply don't follow, or used leaps of logical faith to justify anything? Have I explained things so that, with minimal effort, this can be read and understood by a professional?"
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: If you want to get people to review your work, why not just submit it for peer review? Write it up for an appropriate journal, submit, and see what happens. There is no *requirement* to have a professor involved, it's just often helpful.
Probably, your paper will get rapidly rejected. That's OK. What's important is to *learn from the reasons that are stated for your rejection.* I think that you want to have people either say your work is correct (in which case they will publish it) or to point out a mathematical flaw. You might, however, get rejected for another reason, such as not making sense to the reviewers or being seen as not significant in some way.
**If this happens, do not write off the reviewers as being "biased" or "lacking in vision" or whatever.** Go down that path, and you are likely to become a [crank](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html). Instead, if that happens, *listen to what they say and figure out how to present your work to address those objections.* In fact, that might be a good place to go for help from a professor again, not asking them to evaluate your mathematics, but to help with the presentation of mathematics.
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I have written a paper for an IEEE Transactions journal. But now I have several improvements to the original paper. Can I publish the paper again with a slightly different approach? The introduction, etc., would be almost the same and hence I may retain and refer to the already published paper. But the implementation is different. How shall I proceed?<issue_comment>username_1: If the improvements are sufficient to constitute a new paper, then write that paper, referencing the already published paper (but not repeating it) and explaining the improvements. If the improvements are not enough for a new paper, then I'd suggest preparing a new version of the published paper, incorporating the improvements, and posting it on the arxiv (or in some other highly visible place on the web).
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: I would recommend putting the new material in a tech report, and publishing it alongside your original paper on your website. This establishes prior art and makes the improvements available to other researchers, while also avoiding two ethically dubious alternatives: trying to publish the revision as a new paper, despite it being incremental over your original version; and substantially updating a peer-reviewed paper without the reviewers evaluating the changes.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: Both the ACM and IEEE have their name attached to a host of conferences and journals. Some are known to be better than others, but I feel generally that any conference or journal with the ACM or IEEE brands attached are considered decent quality. (Questions like [this](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/26337/8469) indicate I'm not the only one to think so.)
**Question**: Are publications in IEEE and ACM journals and conference proceedings automatically considered decent quality by prospective employers in academia? (When applying for postdocs, assistant professor positions, and so on.) Or is it more nuanced than that?
Essentially, I'm asking what weight do these brands have.
The ARC ERA2010 rank these journals and conferences from A\* (the best possible ranking) to C (the lowest possible ranking). But it's possible that these rankings are not an accurate gauge of the community's attitude towards a particular journal or conference.<issue_comment>username_1: Within many sub-disciplines of Computer Science, conference proceedings, rather than journals, are the main publishing venues for new research. In contrast to journals, which have an impact factor, there is no unified metric to quantify the quality of a conference proceeding. Although there are indeed a number of categorizations, I haven't seen them actively being used to decide which venue to submit to. I found that within these sub-disciplines of Computer Science, academics are very aware of which conferences and journals are competitive and what the impact is of publishing a paper there. These are indeed mostly ACM/IEEE, thus, giving them a certain status by name. Nevertheless, just because the conference is supported by ACM or IEEE, does not imply that it is a high quality conference.
However, when you apply for post-doc or faculty position, there might be people on the hiring committee that are not fully aware of this. To mitigate this issue and emphasize this difference to other fields, I have seen several resumes that explicitly explain how the publishing model in their respective subfield differs from the "classic" journal based system. You can achieve this with a simple note in your resume before listing your publications. An example:
>
> **Note**: Within the field of (subdiscipline of computer science), selective peer-reviewed conference proceedings are the main
> dissemination of novel research contributions. Conferences such as
> (conf x) and (conf y) are highly competitive publication venues with 2
> review rounds that include reviews from 3 external reviewers as well
> as at least 2 associate chairs. These conferences have an acceptance rate between 10 and 15 % and papers that are accepted and published are refereed as full length papers.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Ok a couple of things for me;
Firstly just because it's published doesn't mean it holds academic calibre. To quote an old lecturer of mine - "Some of the most popular papers are popular because they're wrong".
If anything its a point of conversation if in your CV you've declared your papers and also offers them a location to go and find, read then evaluate your work. I think that's a big thing too, you're dealing with seasoned 'paper-readers' they most certainly won't think - "Hey this guys published, they must be awesome". They'll want to read your papers and develop their own opinion.
I'd say it depends partially on the type of personality of your employer (if going for non academic roles). My current employer likes that I went to a good university and often tells some of our clients. So I assume if I had published papers he would also love to tell people that. To my last employer I could easily see that as a nice bonus (during the interview) but nothing more passed that, he preferred to know that I've had real world experience but after the interview we never discussed it again.
In terms of the 'brands' of ACM and IEEE they were always the locations I was sent to for getting research papers from both my undergrad and postgrad university so if there had been 'better' brands - we would have been directed there
I hope this offers a bit of help for you
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: This is a question about academic ranks or positions. **I am interested in knowing the best equivalence for the Spanish *'Profesor Contratado Doctor'* in English language (UK, US, etc.).**
Description of 'Profesor Contratado Doctor':
* tenured (i.e. permanent) position,
* not a civil servant,
* not an entry-level position to the tenured track,
* is the previous position to *'Profesor Titular de Universidad'* (which is sort of equivalent to the *Associate Professor* position).
So **it is something between *Assistant Professor* (or *Lecturer*) and *Associate Professor***. Is it a sort of *'Non-civil-servant Associate Professor'*, *'Senior Assistant Professor'*, *'Assistant Professor with PhD'*...?
According to Wikipedia (<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_Spain>), *'Profesor Contratado Doctor'* can be expressed as *Associate Professor* (but not a civil servant yet). I am writing the current question becauase I want to be sure about whether *Associate Professor* would be the best way to *translate* this Spanish position or not. **I would like not to mislead anyone when I say I am an Associate Professor (meaning *'Profesor Contratado Doctor'*).** At least, I would like to mislead as little as possible.
---
EDIT:
I've seen in Wikipedia and also in [this other thread here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/19709/translating-british-faculty-titles-into-american-equivalents) that mapping academic titles or positions from one country to another is really very difficult and there are too many particular cases.
So, maybe the point is finding a *neutral*, generic classification, something that can be understood for everyone. Therefore, assuming that we have the following kind of *generic* tenured positions (sorted in *ascending* order):
1. Assistant professor (entry)
2. Associate professor
3. Full professor (top)
what would be a name for something between 1 and 2?
---
EDIT:
More facts:
* In [this WordReference thread](http://forum.wordreference.com/threads/profesor-contratado-doctor.1465978/) they conclude that *Associate Professor* is the most appropriate translation.
* This sort of [official PowerPoint presentation](https://web.archive.org/web/20120512122800/http://www.uned.es/iued/subsitio/html/convocatorias/Seminarios%20acreditacion/JLCastillo-ANECA-Evaluacion%20de%20Profesorado-UNED-Enero2012.pdf) states that *'Profesor Contratado Doctor'* is equivalent to *'Assistant Professor (tenure track)'*.
* This [report](http://www.eui.eu/ProgrammesAndFellowships/AcademicCareersObservatory/AcademicCareersbyCountry/Spain.aspx) says that a *'Profesor Contratado Doctor'* is a *Lecturer*.<issue_comment>username_1: In the British system, *Senior Lecturer* would be the most likely equivalent. [The teaching career ranking](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Academic_ranks_in_the_United_Kingdom#Overview) in the British system is Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader, Professor.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It is often difficult to map (academic) ranks between countries and languages. There might be subtle (and sometimes not so subtle) differences, that make a perfect mapping impossible.
I would write something like: "Associate Professor (Profesor Contratado Doctor)". In that way you provide your official title (no confusion), and a title the reader can relate to (clarity).
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I occupy one of these positions, so I can explain it.
In the Spanish system there is no concept of *tenure* as such. There are two kinds of permanent profesorial positions, *catedratico* and *profesor titular*. Employment as either means that one is employed as a *funcionario de carrera*, which means a civil servant with all the accompanying civil service protections. In practice this is quite similar to tenure, but the manner of obtaining such a position is different, and as I remarked there is no accompanying notion of *tenure*. The relevant civil servant status is essentially the same as that of a postal worker.
A *profesor contratado doctor* is also a permanent position, and also a *funcionario* in the sense of being a public employee (but not a *funcionario de carrera*), but is technically different in that it is a *laboral* position, which in practice means that such a position is in principle susceptible to forming part of a layoff package (although I believe this has never been done with respect to these positions) and that the employment conditions are subject to collective bargaining as they would be for truck drivers.
Spanish administrative law treats the two kinds of position rather differently, and while in practice a *profesor contratado doctor* earns only slightly less than a *profesor titular* and has generally essentially similar working conditions, also in practice there is a hierarchical relationship and *profesor titular* is treated as above *profesor contratado doctor*.
None of these positions is susceptible to promotion in the usual sense. Obtaining any one of these positions requires competition against all qualified applicants.
In practice Spanish universities have used *profesor contratado doctor* positions more in recent years than in the past because austerity measures made offering civil servant positions more difficult and the laboral positions were easier to offer. The typical occupant of such a position has had several postdoctoral positions and is considerably more active in research than profesores titulares of the previous generation.
Such a position has no real comparable in the US system, but simply *Professor* probably comes closest in practice. *Associate Professor* has connotations that are simply not pertinent. In the UK system, something in the range *Lecturer* to *Reader* is similar, but again there is no direct equivalent.
In my opinion the best practice is to avoid translating the names of job titles. People who don't know what they mean shouldn't be judging curriculums anyway.
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I am one year away from finishing a PhD in neuroscience and looking at PostDoc/future career options. Though I love neuroscience, I don't enjoy working in the field very much and I have had a life-long (though non-academic) passion for ecology/conservation biology. I have a very broad background in biology (zoology, plant physiology, marine biology, development..) and have done several ecology-related courses in my undergrad.
My questions goes mainly to ecologists out there, is it possible to learn the techniques needed for ecological surveys/conservation biology work (thinking mostly marine, climate change focused) "on the job"? I believe I have gained a lot of transferable skills during my PhD and I learn techniques quickly. However the fields are very different. I wish I could be more precise but right now I am just looking at a general idea based on the premise that during a PhD, one learns skills beyond one's subject and thus should be able to change, even though it's not easy.
Would it be necessary to maybe do a master's program to bridge the fields? My undergrad would allow me to do a master's in ecology, I already checked that. But at this point of my career I think it's more valuable to learn on the job than to go back to a taught course (also I'm quite old, >25).
I'm thankful for any input!<issue_comment>username_1: While I am not an ecologist, I have seen a lot of people make transfers between semi-related fields in the biosciences, and am basing my answer on my observations there.
What often happens is that people will use a postdoc to shift between fields, especially when there is a clear relationship between the fields. In your case, for example, the two fields are actually pretty close on the larger scheme of things, and so there are likely to be a lot of things that you did in neuroscience that will still be relevant for ecological studies. For example, some projects in both disciplines make a lot of use of microscopy and DNA sequence analysis; others in both fields make heavy use of stochastic temporal modeling.
The specifics of the possible overlap will depend on what you have actually done previously, but there is a good chance that you can find postdoc opportunities that will make use of your prior training in a new context, and PIs who will be happy to have you. From there, you can submerge yourself in the new field, acquiring new skills and network connections, and after a few years of postdoc (maybe more than one postdoc) be ready to apply for long-term positions in your chosen field.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_2: I am not an ecologist, but I work with several, and if you squint and don't look very hard I might pass as one.
It will very much depend on the type of ecology you're interested in doing, and what kind of skills you have now. "Ecology" is a very wide open field, which can involve anything from fairly advanced mathematics to lots of field work, and everything in between. It's certainly *possible* (a lab I know has taken several postdocs from fields further afield than your own), but it would help if you could find a way to either apply your current skill set to an ecological problem.
Failing that, while it's likely *still* possible, it may take more time and be something of a rougher path.
Short version: "It depends."
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a PhD student. A paper for a conference got rejected. I haven't met my professor yet to discuss about it. But is it bad for my PhD performance? I mean, probably the professor will not trust my manuscripts anymore.<issue_comment>username_1: **In short, no.** In long, this is a normal stage of going through a PhD: nobody gets all of their work published all of the time.
The best case scenario is that the reviewers have given you some useful feedback to work with, in which case now you're in a better position than you were before. Worst case, you got a flat reject with no helpful feedback (which happens sometimes: I've seen reviews that say *"Insert review here"*), but at least you'll still have something to talk over with your professor. In the latter case, try and work out why your paper was rejected: was the idea not considered novel enough? Was the explanation not clear enough? Or does this particular piece of work need some more data, more evaluation or more analysis before its publication worthy?
In either case, once you've talked this over with your professor, you should now have some idea of what direction you can focus your efforts on. This will help you get your paper ready for submission to a new venue.
EDIT: You mention in your comments that the reviewers said there was nothing theoretically new with your approach. This gives you a few options (which you should talk about with your professor). Firstly, if you disagree, then you need to make your case for this stronger (by citing similar papers in the field and showing how your approach differs). This is often easier than you might think; there are enough niches in research that you can often find a way to show that your work can be applied to specific cases in a new way, or in such a way as to tackle new problems. Secondly, reframe the work: the approach itself may not be novel, but you can frame it in a new way by, for example, comparing it to other approaches or by using it to form a position paper on a certain issue. Thirdly, if you've been scooped, or you feel this ground has already been trodden, then talk to your supervisor about exploring other approaches in this area.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: What field are you in? In mine (theoretical computer science), conference papers get rejected all the time: the better conferences tend to have acceptance rates of around 25-35%, and [acceptance or rejection is a lot more random than you probably think](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/33031/10685) (thanks to ff524 for the link). It's easy to judge what the best papers are, and accept those; it's easy to judge what the worst papers are, and reject those. For everything in the middle, it very much comes down to how enthusiastic the referees were and whether or not at least one member of the programme committee was willing to stand up and argue for your paper being accepted.
Assuming your paper wasn't one of the obvious-rejects, there's a decent chance that, if you resubmitted it unaltered to a different conference of about the same standard, it would get accepted. Hopefully, the referee reports made some constructive comments so you can improve the paper before resubmitting it, and have an even better chance. (Note that I wouldn't recommend resubmitting unaltered, unless you got no useful advice at all from the referees. As <NAME> points out in the comments, it's not unusual for at least one of the same referees to see the paper next time it's submitted and it's rather irksome to see one's advice ignored.)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: As I am looking for a PhD scholarship in Germany, I've come across an internet site which contains a database of scholarships. One of the questions asked there is whether I am pursuing "interne Promotion" or "externe Promotion".
According to my colleague, the internal doctoral studies might mean that I am fully occupied at the university, whereas the external studies would occur if I were employed in industry and had to visit the university occasionally for getting feedback from my professor.
Is the explanation of my colleague correct? Are there any further nuances?
Also, why would it be asked for a scholarship?<issue_comment>username_1: **In short, no.** In long, this is a normal stage of going through a PhD: nobody gets all of their work published all of the time.
The best case scenario is that the reviewers have given you some useful feedback to work with, in which case now you're in a better position than you were before. Worst case, you got a flat reject with no helpful feedback (which happens sometimes: I've seen reviews that say *"Insert review here"*), but at least you'll still have something to talk over with your professor. In the latter case, try and work out why your paper was rejected: was the idea not considered novel enough? Was the explanation not clear enough? Or does this particular piece of work need some more data, more evaluation or more analysis before its publication worthy?
In either case, once you've talked this over with your professor, you should now have some idea of what direction you can focus your efforts on. This will help you get your paper ready for submission to a new venue.
EDIT: You mention in your comments that the reviewers said there was nothing theoretically new with your approach. This gives you a few options (which you should talk about with your professor). Firstly, if you disagree, then you need to make your case for this stronger (by citing similar papers in the field and showing how your approach differs). This is often easier than you might think; there are enough niches in research that you can often find a way to show that your work can be applied to specific cases in a new way, or in such a way as to tackle new problems. Secondly, reframe the work: the approach itself may not be novel, but you can frame it in a new way by, for example, comparing it to other approaches or by using it to form a position paper on a certain issue. Thirdly, if you've been scooped, or you feel this ground has already been trodden, then talk to your supervisor about exploring other approaches in this area.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: What field are you in? In mine (theoretical computer science), conference papers get rejected all the time: the better conferences tend to have acceptance rates of around 25-35%, and [acceptance or rejection is a lot more random than you probably think](https://academia.stackexchange.com/q/33031/10685) (thanks to ff524 for the link). It's easy to judge what the best papers are, and accept those; it's easy to judge what the worst papers are, and reject those. For everything in the middle, it very much comes down to how enthusiastic the referees were and whether or not at least one member of the programme committee was willing to stand up and argue for your paper being accepted.
Assuming your paper wasn't one of the obvious-rejects, there's a decent chance that, if you resubmitted it unaltered to a different conference of about the same standard, it would get accepted. Hopefully, the referee reports made some constructive comments so you can improve the paper before resubmitting it, and have an even better chance. (Note that I wouldn't recommend resubmitting unaltered, unless you got no useful advice at all from the referees. As <NAME> points out in the comments, it's not unusual for at least one of the same referees to see the paper next time it's submitted and it's rather irksome to see one's advice ignored.)
Upvotes: 5 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm new to academic writing. I submitted a paper which I co-authored with my supervisor to an upcoming conference. I wasn't too confident that the paper would be up to scratch because I'd never submitted one before, so I was pleasantly surprised to find out that the paper was accepted. Of the two peer reviews, one was a "weak accept" while the other was a "weak reject".
I couldn't really find anything by Googling. What exactly do "weak accept" and "weak reject" mean, and what are the other levels of acceptance? Where do weak accept and reject fall in the scale?
**Edit:** The conference did state that at least three reviewers would be selected. I have only received feedback from 2 at the moment.<issue_comment>username_1: In my discipline (CS) in conferences you can find several levels of reviewer recommendations that are different depending on the venue's regulations. You may have:
* Strong Accept (+3)
* Accept (+2)
* Weak Accept (+1)
* Borderline (0)
* Weak Reject (-1)
* Reject (-2)
* Strong Reject (-3)
Not all conference have the same levels. E.g., The Borderline level is not very common (I have only met it in one conference) and Strong Reject or Strong Accept might not be there as well.
Usually, for your paper to be accepted in good conferences, when we are talking about 3 reviewers, you usually need at least 2 weak accepts and 1 accept or something similar. Getting accepted with a weak reject is not very likely, unless the other two reviewers gave an Accept or better, but I do not think this is very common.
Upvotes: 6 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: Many conferences use a reviewing system that ranks papers as "Accept", "Weak Accept". "Borderline", "Weak Reject", and "Reject". They may even add a level with "strong" qualifiers on both sides. Each reviewer gives their written opinion, maybe some numerical scores, and this ranking. When the Program Committee meets they can look at the reviewers' opinions and rankings and try to decide which papers they want in and which ones they want out.
Since there are no absolute standards for what should be presented at a conference, the "weak" qualifier gives each reviewer the opportunity to hedge their ranking a little. If there are lots of papers, then having 5 levels of ranking may help distinguish between papers that 3 or even 2 levels of ranking would not.
Now, it's a little surprising that your paper only got 2 reviews. That might mean that the conference is small or, as the comment suggests, that the conference is of lower quality. Without absolute standards though, it's hard to gauge whether there's any meaning to a weak accept and a weak reject leading to an acceptance or not.
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_3: In CS science conferences, there are often the following levels : strong accept (3), accept (2), weak accept (1), borderline (0), weak reject (-1), reject (-2) and strong reject (-3). But this can vary from one conference to another
Besides, a reviewer may often be able to indicats its confidence level on a scale for example of 1 to 5. This is used as a kind of weight. For example, a reviewer may choose "accept" but with a confidence of 3 which means that he is not so confident because he may not be an expert in that field. Or he may choose confidence of 5 if he is an expert in that field and then its recommendation will have more weight.
Overall, it depends on the conference. Besides, after all papers have been reviewed, the organizers of the conference will choose the top ranked paper as being accepted. Sometimes a paper could be accepted with "weak accept" or "borderline" or even with a "weak reject". It always depends on overall how many papers are submitted and their relative evaluation.
Upvotes: 3
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<issue_start>username_0: My question was originally designed to be very related to [this one](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/42546/can-a-professor-influence-the-graduate-admissions-committee-if-he-or-she-is-inte).
However, I have continued to write it because it has a second part.
I am currently sending email to PIs in order to know if they have any position available for doing research in their lab (life sciences). My list includes some elite universities but it has a wide range (top 100 universities according to shangai rank). A problem I have is that I'm interested mostly on PIs and not so much on university X or Y (every university of the list would represent a major step forward on my career). I haven't had any repply so far but I'm still optimistic.
Reading some lab's webpages I've found messages like these on contact pages.
>
> If you are not graduate student (...), the most direct way would be to
> apply to (INSERT PHD PROGRAM HERE).
>
>
>
Which is very related to
>
> Please be aware that individual researchers have not influence on
> admissions comittee (...)
>
>
>
But also this,
>
> Please contact me if you would like to discuss our graduate program or
> the research in my lab.
>
>
>
I know that mostly in Europe the logic for Msc or equivalent that rules is
```
mail to PI-> get accepted by him/her -> apply to university with very high chance
```
The thing that I like about that is that it doesn't matter that a particular university has only one place that you might be interested in. However, it may be useless to apply to a university where you have only one "awesome lab" meeting your interest and more wise to apply to a university where you have (say) 3 "OK labs". Although maybe "you having thumbs up from a PI" might change the strategy, several answers point out the variability on admission comittees and the fact that your applying to the university first (you have a strong coursework component during the first 2 years) definitely make the advisor's word less important.
**So the question is: If PIs are less involved, wouldn't be a better strategy to apply to the university where there are more labs without contact or does the "european" logic still hold in the US?**<issue_comment>username_1: My acceptance to my PhD program was a bit outside this model since I had already done some undergraduate research with my advisor, nevertheless, I think I can fill in a few gaps.
No matter what you do, you will have to apply to a PhD program not a PI directly. For me, at my university, that meant using the university-wide online admissions process but targeting a particular college (the College of Engineering) and major (Aerospace Engineering). There was one process with customizations for each college and department since each had different requirements and requested materials. You generally can't avoid this process. Since these applications are tailored to the college and department, the admissions committees are at the departmental level. You don't necessarily apply directly to a department, but you materials will be routed there. Some universities may use separate processes for each department, but I haven't experienced that. Nevertheless, the decision will most probably be made at the department level.
Now, in parallel with your application, if you can establish a PI that you want to work with and who wants to work with you, you should do that. You may be accepted by the university before or after you are able to establish a relationship with a PI. That's OK. I suspect, though I don't have any direct evidence since I have not sat on any admissions committees, that if you do have a PI that wants to work with you before your application is considered, then they can weigh in on your behalf when the admissions committee meets. Having someone to stand up and say "I have funding and will support this student" goes a long way towards admissions for borderline candidates. For top candidates, it probably doesn't affect the admissions chances much, but it does help the department know in advance that finding them a supervisor will be easy. For borderline candidates, it can make all the difference.
I know (second hand) of at least one candidate that was admitted on their second or third try only after they came and worked for a research institute on our campus and established a relationship with a PI. They were both able to find a backer in the committee meeting and spend some time writing a few papers to improve their CV. This latter model is unusual, but they were determined to get a PhD from our school.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: username_1's comment ("You don't need a yes in advance") is the main thing you should be focusing on. Prepare as strong an application as you can. Choose 3 - 5 universities that have programs and professors that make you drool when you imagine yourself studying there. Please note, the emails you have been sending are not a good way to approach this.
The standard strategy is to have one dream school, one "safety" school that you could get into even if you forgot to send an essay, and one that you are pretty sure you'd be happy with, and you think you have pretty good chances of getting into.
However, if you can afford a couple more applications, you could pick two more, but I personally think five is plenty.
Make sure all three (or five) appeal to you, in terms of location, climate, program of study.
One more note: if you do want to send one or two inquiries by email, they should be specific questions or feedback about a particular journal publication or research program, addressed to a researcher whose work you have looked into closely and you are truly excited about.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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<issue_start>username_0: I have written a paper (about 14 pages long) and submitted it to a journal. The editors suggested I cut it down to a 5-page paper and resubmit. I can do that, but will end up leaving a lot of material on the cutting room floor. That material isn't strong enough to command a published article of its own, but I don't want it to be lost forever. I am considering a couple of options:
1. Upload the original 14 page version of the paper to arXiv.
2. Try to piece together the scraps that were removed from the longer piece to make a ~9 page paper and upload that to arXiv.
Which of these seems like a more sensible / standard practice?
A secondary question is whether I should do this *before* I submit the 5-page version of the paper (and then include in that shorter version a reference to the arXiv version), or whether it would make more sense to wait until there is a decision on the 5-page version.<issue_comment>username_1: Arxiv or not, adding the material to the online supplement if possible is a good idea.
If you want the 14 page paper to be available as written, post it to the arXiv. When the short version is published, make clear that it's a longer version of the published paper.
If you want the arXiv post to act as an honest pre-print, then there's no point in waiting. However, if you only want canonized work to be publicly available indefinitely, I'd wait until after you've at least written and submitted the 5 pager. You might find that the 14 pager wasn't necessary when you're done.
I've never seen anyone mention an arXiv version in a published paper. I don't think a sensible reviewer or editor would have a problem with it, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone raised objections. Something about trying to extend the peer review approval to the unreviewed material or some such. If the paper with the same title is available on the arXiv, a lot of readers will find it anyway.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It's not extremely common, but you can find significantly extended versions of published papers out there on arXiv, authors' websites, and the like. And at least in my filed of research it doesn't seem like that big of a problem to post an extended version after publication if there is a merit and clear reason to do so instead of cramming everything in one place or writing a weak paper out of what is left out.
For example, [this paper on arXiv](http://arxiv.org/abs/quant-ph/0304161v3) is an extended version of a [paper published in the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory](http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/TIT.2004.834737) and explicitly states when it was first submitted to the journal, when a revised version was submitted, and when the extended version was uploaded to arXiv (which was after submitting the revised version to the journal but before it got accepted for publication). There is a [slightly updated version](http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/mackay/abstracts/qecc.html) of the extended one on the personal webpage of one of the authors as well.
In any case, I think it's generally a good idea to respect the editor's opinion unless you have a strong reason not to follow their suggestion. But you may also want to ask the editor if the journal has online-only storage for supplementary materials to officially attach what they asked you to cut out and/or if the journal is ok with uploading the originally submitted, longer version to arXiv. If arXiv is common in your field, I highly doubt they say no to posting the longer manuscript online; if it's not allowed to post a preprint you submit to a journal, how on earth can we use arXiv as a preprint server anyway? What would they do if you had already posted the longer manuscript on arXiv before submission to the journal, for example?
My feeling is that as long as you don't abuse the system, it's ok to post an extended, fuller version online (with a clear note that it is an extended version of a shorter paper). So, for example, if the editor is not happy about a lengthy, marginal part which you think is helpful and of interest to some but perhaps not all readers, I don't see any reason not to upload your original manuscript to arXiv. You should check the journal's policy and the norm in your field first, though.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: I recommend the first option: piecing together scraps sounds like a fair amount of work to get something that will probably be less useful to the reader than what you currently have. If you are in a field in which arxiv publication is at all common, the practice of posting an extended version on the arxiv should be received non-negatively by everyone. (And really, unless the journal is so obnoxious so as to object categorically to arxiv publication -- in which case I hope you at least consider not doing business with them -- what could be their complaint? You brought the material to them first, and they told you to take it out.)
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/27
| 3,811
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<issue_start>username_0: Though I read this style quite often, I was recently told unambiguously by a reviewer that I was NOT supposed to use citations "as if they are objects in a sentence." The following sentence is an example of what the reviewer considered unacceptable:
>
> We analyzed the data using the Wilmerding method, guided by [12].
>
>
>
The references section might include the following:
>
> [12] <NAME>., <NAME>., & <NAME>. 2011. *Techniques and
> Procedures for Applying the Wilmerding Method.* Prince Publications,
> Inc, New York, NY.
>
>
>
The Wilmerding method1 is not a step-by-step algorithm that can be precisely followed as if by a machine, and thus [12] does not provide a step-by-step algorithmic description but rather guidance for using the method. [12] is a relatively slim but authoritative textbook about how to use the Wilmerding method.
Within this question, for the purpose of discussion, I have intentionally put [12] in grammatical positions where it's an important element of the sentence and the sentence would make less sense without the reference. Sometimes that seems to be the most efficient way to communicate the intended message. **Is using a reference as a grammatical sentence element like this OK? Why might this not be considered acceptable? Should I be rewording those sentences? Is it enough of a violation to be worth passing the note on to authors of papers I review?**
I considered posting this on [EL&U](http://english.stackexchange.com) but it seems more specific to academia than general English usage, and the comment came from a content reviewer rather than a copy editor. [This question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/36624/is-it-acceptable-to-include-author-names-as-a-substantive-part-of-a-sentence-as) is related but it seems to be more about when to put authors names' in vs. outside of the parentheses in an APA-like style.
The numbered citation style (as opposed to following APA, for example) is required by the venue.
1: Fictionalized for the purpose of this discussion<issue_comment>username_1: Conceivably the reviewer objected to the non-mention of peoples' names, thinking that should write "guided by <NAME> [12]" or "guided by [Doe12]" or "... by [Doe2011]"... Something in that direction would be my preference, also, since numbers in a bibliography are completely artifactual, not really adding any information. Names are far more informative.
But, still, it's possible that the objection was completely stylistic, so ... "it's just a rule"... which means rational discussion of it is presumably out-of-bounds. Such things seem silly to me, but I am acquainted with people for whom such rules are the only defense against Darkness and Chaos, etc.
I'd not comment on such things in any review/referee-report *I* wrote, but I can imagine some might. The operational point probably is that if the referee chose to mention it at all, it means they *do* have that particular fetish, so just comply if you want approval. But don't "pass it on", if you were to ask my opinion... :)
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> Can cited works hold grammatical positions in sentences?
>
>
>
I recall a couple of discussions on this also here on Academia.SE (at least in comments). For many people, the answer to this question is a sound *no*. However, if you read a number of articles across different fields, you will find that for many other people the answer is, actually, *yes*. Unfortunately, as far as I know, style guides do not seem to address this specific issue.
Actually, I'm on the *yes* side for the following reason: different kind of brackets identify different kind of elements: parentheses identify equations, and brackets identify citations. Therefore, the symbol [XX] should be really interpreted, and read, as "reference no. XX", a noun group which can hold a grammatical position. Similarly, the symbol (XX) should be really interpreted, and read, as "equation no. XX".
That said, if the journal style guide requires the authors to write "Eq. (XX)" or "Ref. [XX]" (or similar constructions), then I'd avoid using a citation as a noun. For instance, in this case, I'd reword your example sentence as
>
> We analyzed the data using the Wilmerding method, according to the implementation described in Ref. [12]
>
>
>
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_3: *This answer refers exclusively to "atomic" citation references based on numbers or abbreviations, such as [42], [ABC+95], or (M09). My opinion described here does not expand to citation reference styles that do not require a fixed form, but instead integrate naturally into a sentence, such as "<NAME> had discovered in 2336 ...", thereby indicating the key information of author names and year necessary to find the appropriate item in the bibliography.*
*As a further restriction of my claims with respect to [Massimo's answer](https://academia.stackexchange.com/a/49493/14017), I would like to point out that my subfield rarely uses numbered equations. If we do, they are explicitly referred to, like other inserted pieces of information, by writing "From Equation 15, we can conclude ...", rather than using the mere equation number like "From (15), we can conclude ...". This may well influence my opinion.*
As a bit of a counterbalance to the existing answers, I am going to state my opinion that **using a citation reference like a word is extremely bad style**.
I would not point it out in a review, as it is too minor, but I definitely rewrite such sentences in papers that I participate in when one of the other authors uses that style, and I ask them to write *complete* sentences instead.
One issue I see with considering citation references such as [42] as words is that papers that do so apparently never do so consistently. More concretely, a sentence like
>
> We analyzed the data using the Wilmerding method, guided by [12].
>
>
>
is often followed by a sentence such as
>
> As numerous problems have been pointed out related to the basic Wilmerding method [13 - 15], we have used the Thunderbolt Approximation.
>
>
>
So, [12] is a word; it should be read as "Reference 12"? Fine, but then [13 - 15] must be read as "References 13 to 15". Evidently,
>
> As numerous problems have been pointed out related to the basic Wilmerding method References 13 to 15, we have used the Thunderbolt Approximation.
>
>
>
is not a sentence.
Conversely, if citation references are considered as words, each additional reference makes the sentence more convoluted, as additional sentence parts have to be added. In particular, the action of inserting a single reference to provide some evidence for a given statement becomes one of actually changing the respective text. This is simply not necessary if citation references are seen as meta-information super-imposed on the text, without any influence on sentence structure, that can be skipped while following the flow of the text, unless the reader specifically looks for references.
In general, I consider in-text citation references as an artifact from the days when scientific publications were still text printed on paper. We have various of these artifacts, such as papers being nailed down layout-wise on a fixed-size paper format like PDF, with what seems like physical page numbers and fixed-format section numbers, rather than per-document page numbers1 and a semantically nested structure of sections and subsections (that just imposes order and hierarchy, but not superficial things like numbering style). In my opinion, citation references are exactly this - an artifact that, sooner or later, will disappear and be replaced with meta-information embedded in the document, used by viewers to provide on-demand source information (e.g. upon mouse-hovering over the passage of text based on the cited work, which otherwise just contains a subtle visual cue indicating that there is something more embedded there), similar to context-aware editing helper popups found in some code/text editors:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/rm7oZ.png)
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/BiiHV.png)
In my opinion, citation references are like these context-aware popups. They are displayed near the text they refer to, but they do not belong to the text flow (and wouldn't be read out when reading the text of the actual document).
One additional possible issue when treating citation references like words is the fact that citation references in some styles just do not look sufficiently like words to be treated as such. One such style is used in [another question](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/43396/style-of-inline-citations-numeric), and the examples in the question illustrate themselves that citation references in superscript do not look nice as words:
>
> However, in⁴ only a small uncertainty has been introduced ...
>
>
>
This is partly coming back to my aforementioned statements - ideally, the *appearance* of citation references should not be nailed down by the document, and consequently, citation references should be inserted in a way that will essentially work no matter how citation references end up being styled in the final document.
1 Things are beginning to change, as evidenced by [a question here](https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/48533/how-to-cite-a-conference-paper-with-no-pagination/48539), and also some publishers that give their papers page numbers of the style `:`.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_4: It depends on the stylistic standards of your field. In linguistics, it is standard to use references as nouns, e.g. "X shows that" or "as demonstrated in X", where X refers to some publication. Generally our citations are of the form "Dewey (2011)", "<NAME> (2005)", but a few journals (all Elsevier, I think) use and require the nameless number system.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_5: The short answer (IME, and it is a matter of opinion, including the editors') is no. But you can make it into a grammatical entity with a word or 2.
I'm most used to numerical (especially superscripted) styles¹. I might want to *follow the method set out in **reference 1***, for example, rather than *follow the usual method¹*. Here's another example of how I used this approach in my thesis:
[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/fFkxq.png)
Otherwise the combination of my reference style and the footnote (tablenote) symbols would have led to table notes like ⁿ ¹²³, or confusion with powers (it's normally easy to avoid putting a reference next to a number, not in tables). I see no reson why this wouldn't adapt to the style in the question: I might want to *follow the method set out in **reference 2***, for example, rather than *follow the usual method [2]*.
¹A Author, "Notes on referencing"
2 B Buthor, "Citations that interrupt reading"
Textual referencing styles are more varied. *Jones (2012) developed a method* is fine if that's the style you use, as you're discussing Jones and their work. The rammed-together AuthorYear styles for example are harder. I've seen things like [Jones2012] in line. That, treated as a noun, could only refer to a paper, not (logically) an author. So you could *follow the method set out in [Jones2012]* (though I don't like the brackets in this case). Alternatively, *Jones and Smith, in [Jones2012], derived the function from first principles*. Some of the other text citation styles may take more work than this.
Upvotes: 1 <issue_comment>username_6: I think the issue is plainly linguistic, on the basis that a sentence should be complete without the elements being in brackets.
From that perspective, you cannot use [1](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/parentheses-and-brackets) or (Doe et al., 2017) as a subject or object, cause if you remove either of them from your sentence, the sentence will make no sense.
In most cases I came across this type of sentence, it was formulated as
>
> According to Doe et al. [[1](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/parentheses-and-brackets)],
>
>
>
or
>
> According to Doe et al. (2017),
>
>
>
and I think this is the proper way to have this information.
Copying from [Oxford Dictionaries website](https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/punctuation/parentheses-and-brackets),
>
> Round brackets (also called parentheses, especially in American
> English) are mainly used to separate off information that isn’t
> essential to the meaning of the rest of the sentence. If you removed
> the bracketed material the sentence would still make perfectly good
> sense.
>
>
>
and
>
> Square brackets (also called brackets, especially in American English)
> are mainly used to enclose words added by someone other than the
> original writer or speaker, typically in order to clarify the
> situation:
>
>
> He [the police officer] can’t prove they did it.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_7: **Yes, in at least some venues.**
Including a citation in a grammatical position is explicitly given as an example for [what you are supposed to do for *CHI 2018*](https://web.archive.org/save/https://chi2018.acm.org/chi-anonymized-policy/):
>
> Avoid “As described in our previous work [10], … ” and use instead “As described by [10], …”
>
>
>
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_8: As was mentioned in a comment, the [IEEE Editorial Style Manual (p. 5)](https://www.ieee.org/content/dam/ieee-org/ieee/web/org/conferences/style_references_manual.pdf) says
>
> Grammatically, they may be treated as if they were footnote numbers, e.g.,
>
>
>
> >
> > as shown by Brown [4], [5]; as mentioned earlier [2], [4]–[7], [9]; Smith [4] and Brown and Jones [5]; Wood et al. [7]
> >
> >
> >
>
>
> or as nouns:
>
>
>
> >
> > as demonstrated in [3]; according to [4] and [6]–[9].
> >
> >
> >
>
>
>
Upvotes: 4
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2015/07/27
| 894
| 3,748
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm a PhD student in computer science. In my university, the PhD process is divided in the following steps:
1. Qualification exam
2. Research proposal exam: presentation of chosen topics and methodology and plan (near 1-1.5 year after PhD program begining)
3. Thesis proposal exam: presentation of done and remaining work (near 1-1.5 year after research proposal)
4. Thesis defence
I'm at the end of my PhD and basically at the end of the dissertation writing. I still have to write the last chapter about the validation results.
I still haven't done the *«Thesis proposal exam»* and will take it in mid august; then I expect to submit the dissertation draft at the end of august, for a defence expected in late september or in october.
I'm embarrassed, as I basically almost ended the dissertation, by the fact that the «Thesis proposal exam» presentation and the *«Thesis defence»* presentation will foregone be the same content. It look like the first one will be a sort of rehearsal of the second one.
How can I proceed to present a meaningful *«Thesis proposal exam»* and still having something new to say during my defence presentation?
Thanks.<issue_comment>username_1: As MadJack says in the comments, this is really something that you and your advisor need to sort out with the department. Part of an advisor's responsibility to their students is to make sure that they don't end up in easily avoidable bureaucratic screw-ups like this. So yes, you've failed, but your advisor has failed as well.
First thing to do, then, is to sit down with your advisor and figure out how serious a problem this is. If it's something like JeffE suggests, and due to recent regulation changes, or if it's a requirement that is more pro-forma than serious, then there are likely good ways to deal with it. For example, you might end up following the letter of the law and in fact having the proposal exam be essentially a dress rehearsal for the defense (and that might be considered to be OK). Or the proposal exam might end up finding some problems that really do need to be addressed before you defend, and you will be grateful---you might be delayed, though, and that might or might not be a problem (you don't say where you are: in the US, delay is generally not a problem if your advisor can fund you; in some other countries it can be a major issue).
If the department is not flexible, however, and wants to make an issue of your failure to comply with the letter of the law, then the resolution will be very particular to the department, and that is something that you and your advisor will need to navigate together.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: >
> How can I proceed to present a meaningful «Thesis proposal exam» and still having something new to say during my defence presentation?
>
>
>
I understood your concern to be not so much with whether you will get in trouble for condensing the timeline, but more about how to make the two presentations different enough to keep your audience interested.
How about this: your first presentation is a re-creation of what it would have been a year or two ago -- give them all the background for the work you did. You can leave them with a cliff hanger -- which will be resolved a few weeks later in your second presentation.
Upvotes: 0 <issue_comment>username_3: If this is just "bureaucracy", maybe you can even roll them into the same presentation. Or present your work as (pro forma) "research proposal", fix whatever details require adjustment and do the final presentation. Unless the audience is exactly the same, they'll probably won't mind. But be prepared for much more in-depth questions the second time around if there is overlap...
Upvotes: 2
|
2015/07/28
| 229
| 934
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<issue_start>username_0: If i am the first coauthor of the paper, is it possible to change the order of names on the paper in my resume and show my name on the first place?<issue_comment>username_1: Since you write that you are co-first author, I assume you are from a discipline where authorship order matters (e.g. life sciences), and then the answer is **NO**. In fact, this may be seen as purposeful misleading.
The authorship order is essentially part of the paper and how it is indexed.
And if authorship order in your field does not matter, why would you want to do this?
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_2: Do not change the order as it appears on the publication. If you are officially a co-first author, by some declaration in the paper or elsewhere, such as an \* with the comment that 'these authors contributed equally, you can do the same on your Resume by having a \* claiming you are a co-first author.
Upvotes: 3
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2015/07/28
| 5,382
| 21,066
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<issue_start>username_0: I suspect anybody who's a professor knows this story: you meet someone new in a social setting and it comes up that you're a professor. The inevitable next question is, "oh, what do you teach?"
It's a perfectly reasonable question, and one simple answer is: *well, tell them what you teach!* But the question also implicitly suggests that professors do nothing but teach, and to answer it directly feels like you're only reinforcing that perception. It also does nothing to steer the conversation toward your other passions, like doing research and writing grants.
**Q:** *How do you answer this question without being rude, while still painting a more representative picture of what a professor actually does?*<issue_comment>username_1: You say, "I'm a professor of Computer Science," or "I'm an Economics professor," or "I'm an English Professor," and see where the conversation goes.
I understand that you desire to clue the person in to the fact that you do many things other than teach, but in a social setting, it's inappropriate.
Over cocktails, you won't be able to change the perception of your conversational partner without seeming pretentious or boorish or boring. Just let it go and ask the person in return, "What do you do?"
Of course, you can say, "I teach Economics, with a focus on X, Y, and Z," (your research interests) and see if that arouses their interest and leads to a more in-depth conversation. If not, wander over to the bar and refill your glass.
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_2: I usually get assigned to teach \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_ (e.g. introductory biology classes), but actually, most of my work at the university involves research in the area of \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_.
Upvotes: 9 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_3: Well, yes, most professions have somewhat "fixed" definitions and it's a difficult task to give yourself a label and subsequently try to change the definition of that label in people's minds.
Far better to start out with a label that more closely approximates what you truly identify with.
If you prefer to be known as a person who does research, tell them you're a researcher. If you prefer to be known as a teacher, tell them you're a professor.
In any case, it's better to give as many details about what you actually do before you drop the one-word profession label, as that gives you a chance to actually explain what you do before they develop any misconceptions you would have to erase.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_4: The person asking this kind of questions does not really want to understand your research or your career. He might just want to say something or let you say something. No matter whether or not he knows your research, teaching is a good topic related to professors.
so in my opinion, if you are willing to say something to him, it's OK.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_5: Small talk is exactly that, **small** talk
It is very unlikely that the other person is inquiring for you to lecture them on all of the aspects of your job.
The other person is making a sincere attempt to connect with you and doing anything at all outside what is expected will make you seem defensive and produces a bad vibe for the rest of the night.
Even if they are courteous enough to listen to everything which you do, it puts a lot of pressure on them to try and remember it for the next encounter with you. Guess what, they will probably not remember and avoid talking to you due to fears of you finding out that they remember about 10% of what you said.
My one suggestion is to keep it completely friendly and be very positive and passionate about how you craft your tone.
---
Other person:
>
> Oh, you're a professor? What do you teach?
>
>
>
You:
>
> This semester I have [chosen] or [been assigned to] teach about X, Y, and Z. You are a contractor I understand, is that commercial or residential?
>
>
>
---
It is supposed to be a back and forth interaction. If they do not continue to ask more questions then they simply have no current need for further information.
Now consider this:
You meet this person at another social event in the future and it can go something like this:
---
Other person:
>
> Hi <NAME>! I am so glad I ran into you. I was wondering if you could help me out? My child will be attending your university next year and we are wondering if you have any information about grants in X, Y, and Z?
>
>
>
You:
>
> Well you are in luck! I most certainly know about grants in X, Y, and Z, I write them.
>
>
>
Other person:
>
> No kidding! I am sure glad I asked, how long have you been writing them for?
>
>
>
You (now you can relish in your other aspects):
>
> I've been writing them for....
>
>
>
---
My apologies if this answer is terse but I have been struggling with the exact same issue in my profession of web development. I've learned that it is **not** about me and I cannot force someone to learn about me. During small talk people DO NOT CARE about the details. Small talk is an opening into extended discussion for the future.
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_6: Why don't you just tell them what field you teach in? Most people know that professors also do research, but that is not what they are asking. Especially if they don't know much about the field, telling them about what you research is getting too much into detail unless they specifically ask about it.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_7: If the setting is purely social and not professional, people want to socialize and be entertained. So, you go, "Yup, I teach a couple of software engineering courses, but do you wanna know the best part of being a professor?"
There you go. You can now reverse the public perception of all you do is teach (which seems to be your primary issue in your original post), and at the same time you can talk about what you really do, all the while being polite, fun and social, generally being someone people want to talk to over a glass of wine.
What do you think?
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_8: Focus on their intention, not on their words
============================================
When thinking about social skills, the original question:
>
> oh you are a professor, what do you teach?
>
>
>
Should typically not be interpreted literally. If this is asked shortly after meeting someone and telling them that you are a professor, it can be interpreted like so:
>
> Oh you are a professor, that sounds interesting. Is there something nice that I would enjoy to hear and you would enjoy to tell regarding this? To start with something like what you teach?
>
>
>
To prevent confusion you would of course want to tell them what you teach (either by mentioning the name, or with a nice one-line description), but the goal is not to answer their question accurately. The goal is to have a nice conversation!
So my advice:
1. For good form, respond by mentioning your field/what you teach in one line
2. Follow up directly by telling something nice (Nice for the both of you!) about it. If the person is showing real interest you can do this a bit more elaborately but normally I would start very short with max 3 lines.
Example
-------
A format could be:
>
> I'm active in {Field name or quick description} and am mostly busy with {brief description of what you actually like, and is interesting to hear}
>
>
>
Note that I don't say 'but' as it somewhat implies that they asked the wrong question.
An example of this format in practice:
>
> I teach computer science and currently I'm doing research on using sensors to detect immediately when senior citizens fall and can't get up.
>
>
>
Final advice: always find a way to make it relatable. In most cases this means you can focus on how the knowledge is (potentially going to be) applied, but sometimes this is a bit hard. In that case just say something fun about it.
A nice example that I heard once:
>
> I am a math professor in the field of topology, I focus on what happens when you don't care about the difference between a dougnut and a coffee cup.
>
>
>
Upvotes: 6 <issue_comment>username_9: If you don't want to be seen as a professor don't say you are a professor, say you are a researcher. The term has come to mean "any instructor, especially in a specialized field" so use a term that is more accurate to what you do.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_10: I would answer the question honestly and say that I teach X and also do research. In my opinion, a lot of people don't know exactly what the job of a professor is, so don't take it personal if they assume that you are only teaching. As a Computer Science professor, when I talk to some people that are not from university, it may happen that some people think that I'm teaching how to repair a computer or have some other misconceptions. In my opinion, you shoud just don't take it personal and explain what you are doing. I would try to explain using simple words and if the person ask more questions than I would go in more details. If not, then I will not talk about details and perhaps talk about another topic.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_11: When I saw this post two days ago, it puzzled me that everyone seemed to agree that they are asked this question routinely. Because I can't recall a single time I've been asked anything like this.
But now I understand why. It's because when someone asks me what I do, I never answer "I'm a professor". I answer "I'm a linguist". I never thought about it, but I would simply think the person asking me is more interested in knowing what I'm working on rather than knowing the name of my position.
To use an example from outside of academia, if you're a chimney sweep here in Norway, the official name of your position is actually "worker" (SKO 6014), but I have a hard time imagining that chimney sweeps go around telling people they are "workers".
So if the follow-up question people have to you telling them you're a professor bothers you, then I suggest you stop telling them the name of your position, and that you instead tell them what you are (mathematician, biologist, computer scientist, etc.).
Upvotes: 5 <issue_comment>username_12: Professor means teacher.
------------------------
In most countries, someone who doesn't teach can't be called "professor". Teaching is essential part of being a professor. This position is defined by teaching. Their assumption that professor teaches is correct.
You assume they're misguided, that they think professors do nothing but teaching. I can't help but assume you are misguided and think of "professor" as simply the highest rank, some kind of "general". There are plenty of people who want privileges of professorship but without the hassle of dealing with students. I think it's clear beyond any doubt that people who don't want to teach and who don't recognize the importance of teaching should never become professors in the first place.
Perhaps I've read you wrong. Maybe you're an educator so dedicated you can't help but educate them about what "professor" really means (in your book). If that's true, then you should try to leave work at workplace. Nobody wants to be proven wrong. Social meetings are for acquiring connections, not for acquiring knowledge. You should consider that nobody really wants this knowledge, nobody enjoys being proven wrong and your efforts are in vain: they're rather forget about "that rude nerd" as soon as they leave.
You also overvalue small talk. People are merely trying to find a common topic in conversation. Everybody has school experience to talk about. You can of course talk about your research - but conversation is by definition two-way. How many laymen could hold up a conversation on the topic you'd like to talk about? Remember that you too can't talk about details of their specialty. When chatting with strangers, we only skim our jobs to give an impression they can understand, not necessarily an impression that's true to the bone.
If you don't want to chat about teaching, don't introduce yourself as a teacher. Introduce yourself in a way that will steer the conversation towards your favorite part of your job.
Finally, if you don't want to consider any of what I wrote here, you can always answer:
*I teach X. Dealing with students is fun/pain in the ass but the real highlight/headache is...*
Upvotes: 4 <issue_comment>username_13: There was one encounter recently where I was asked a question and gave the usual socially appropriate concise answer, until, after being pressed, I gave the "Here's what's really going on." The other person (I had not understood this) was a specialist enough to want the "Here's what's really going on" answer. But I was right to give the brief, simplified "general public" answer until I was prompted otherwise
**"Just give me the time, don't build me a \_\_\_\_ing watch!"**
That's a label and a reaction you don't want.
"So, what do you teach?" is a standard, socially appropriate question. Respond with a standard, socially appropriate answer (i.e. "Chemistry. What's your line of work?"). Be ready to needlessly have people be alienated if you take this as justification to invade and straighten out their ideas of what a professor is.
(I remember one math Ph.D. student saying, "How I envy people in particle physics! They can explain to other people what they do for work.")
If you're a mathematician, you might be interested in <NAME>'s [The Magic of Mathematics: Discovering the Spell of Mathematics](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0933174993); I read an earlier title of his and found it, bar none, the most effective explanation of what exactly mathematicians do for readers who may or may not have scientific background. However, I would discourage you from adding a heavy reading assignment to help other people understand what life is like as a mathematician. *Polite social conversation needs no footnotes, nor is adding footnotes an improvement.*
Just give the polite answer and recognize that deepening the conversation is usually not helpful, for your reputation or for your listener's experience in meeting you.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_13: **Develop a *theory of alien minds* and use it.**
In [*Profoundly Gifted Magazine* Interviews <NAME> Murry of *A Wind in the Door*](https://CJSHayward.com/charles-wallace), there is a discussion of "theory of other minds" as relevant both to giftedness and the autism spectrum (I'm not trying to diagnose anyone here as on the spectrum or not on the spectrum; the principle is generic):
>
> <NAME>: If I may shanghai an opportunity to follow the words, "If there is an elephant in the room, introduce him..."?
>
>
> Profoundly Gifted: Yes?
>
>
> <NAME>: Asperger's Syndrome.
>
>
> Profoundly Gifted: It's kind of like profound giftedness, no?
>
>
> <NAME>: Let me quietly count to ten... Ok...
>
>
> I read *<NAME>'s Third Culture Kids: The Experience of Growing Up Among Worlds*, and I said, "That's me!" Then I read <NAME>'s *Driven to Distraction* and it made sense. Then I read, on a medical practitioner's advice, *<NAME>'s The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome*, and my response was some more polite form of "**Dude... pass me a toke of whatever it is that you're smoking!**"
>
>
> ...
>
>
> Furthermore, and here I am less concerned with the relationship between profound giftedness and Asperger's than improperly read research, there is a consistent finding that IQ-normal, autism-normal children do markedly better at what are unfortunately lumped together as "**theory of other minds**."
>
>
> A much better interpretation of Attwood's data might come from splitting the **theory of other minds** into a separate **theory of like minds**, and also a **theory of alien minds**. A **theory of like minds** works with one's homeys or peeps; hence someone IQ-normal and autism-normal surrounded by IQ-normal and autism-normal classmates will coast on a **theory of like mind**s. But, except in how it may be refined by practice, a **theory of like minds** that comes virtually free to everyone isn't in particular reserved to a majority of people (not) affected by XYZ condition. With some true exceptions like Tay-Sachs, everybody gets along with their peeps. Gifted and profoundly gifted click with their fellows; Asperger's people click with their fellows; To pick a few many demographics, various geek subcultures, codependents, addicts, and various strains of queer should click just as well. Everybody gets a **theory of like minds** virtually free; the breadth of usefulness depends on how rarely or commonly one encounters like minds, and this heavily loads the dice for Attwood's approach.
>
>
> The comparison Attwood makes in interaction with autism-normal people loads the dice in a way that is totally unfair. The comparison is autism-normals' **theory of like minds** to Asperger's **theory of alien minds**; he never, ever tests autism-normals on their ability to relate to alien minds, nor does he ever test Asperger's patients on their ability to relate to like minds. And while being unsure about how far this applies to IQ-normal Asperger's patients, Asperger's patients often make herculean and lifelong efforts to develop "**theory of alien minds**" aptitude, and the result is not just that they connect, perhaps clumsily, with people of the same age and socioeconomic status; they make very close connections across age, race, and gender, and for that matter animals who may start off by being afraid of them. The **theory of alien minds** is finely honed, even if it is not a valid substitute for a **theory of like minds**, and once it is honed, this **theory of alien minds** reaches much, much further than autism-normals resting on a **theory of like minds**.
>
>
>
([Read full "interview."](https://CJSHayward.com/charles-wallace))
**Develop a theory of alien minds, and use it in relating to people who ask what subject you teach.**
For that matter, there are degrees of occasions for **theory of alien minds** among mathematicians. Mathematicians of one specialty cannot, as a rule, really hold a professional conversation with mathematicians of another specialty (the discipline has reached enough of a labyrinthine specialization that it's a rare beast of a mathematician who can understand 13 out of 50 papers presented at a math conference). Different adaptations are appropriate for math grad and undergrad students, interlocutors from mathematical sciences, disciplines that are not really mathematical but use statistics, humanities that do not have a pretension of being just-as-much-scientists-as-people-in-the-so-called-"hard-sciences"-like-physics [(more)](https://CJSHayward.com/religion-science), educated nonscholars, adults, children. All these audiences are best reached with some form of context-sensitive bridge-building, together with a realization that you may not rightly be able to convey all you would wish (this is NOT a predicament that only applies to scholars!).
In a word, **work on your theory of alien minds, and use it**.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_13: At the risk of provoking ire by posting a third significantly different answer to this question, even more irritatingly with a question:
You obviously want to be genuinely understood. ([So do I](https://CJSHayward.com/author/)). So, I imagine, does everyone else who has weighed in on this thread, and probably everyone who has asked, "What do you teach?"
**What can you do to understand others and give them what you want from them?**
A number of professions, and a lot of people, are not well understood to the outside world. If I may draw on [a bestseller that doesn't have or deserve respect in the academy](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0060589469), a car mechanic is probably very misunderstood. People think that a mechanic is someone who loosens bolts, moves assemblies aside, and replaces parts like fan belts. But from the inside, that's maybe 10% of what a car mechanic's job description. The lion's share of a mechanic's job description is to pin down, sometimes on faint, ambiguous, or confusing evidence, what is the root cause of a mechanical problem. It's the same thing as computer programmers developing, except that the mechanic is debugging a metallic mechanical system instead of code in a computer. The unappreciated car mechanic is one part automotive robot (that partially disassembles and reassembles cars) and nine parts sleuth (that uses clues to pin down the root cause of unwanted behavior--or lack of behavior).
**If you don't like people not understanding some things that are very basic to you, what can you do to give others the understanding you seek but do not receive?**
(P.S. If you'd like a bookworm's place to start, you might try [Please Understand Me!](http://rads.stackoverflow.com/amzn/click/0960695400))
Upvotes: 2
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<issue_start>username_0: I'm going to send manuscript for publication in IEEE Transactions. Some parts of this manuscript were published earlier in little-known journals (in Russian). But in general manuscript is significantly different from previous papers. Should I upload previous papers as a ‘Previous Published Version(s)’, and upload summary of differences?
**UPD:**
I found the following in ScholarOne Manuscripts (IEEE Transactions manuscript submission site): "Has any portion of your paper been published elsewhere? If yes, please include your original paper and a brief summary of your changes. New material must be added before submitting the manuscript to this journal.". So, I should upload previous published versions?<issue_comment>username_1: While I'm not too familiar with the IEEE publication process, in particular, the common sense tells me the following. Since your manuscript in its present form is **"significantly different"** from the previous versions, it very well makes sense to simply submit the current version as an *original publication*. However, it would be nice (and right - in order to prevent self-plagiarism accusations) to mention somewhere in the paper (preferably, in the introduction section) that the present paper is *based on previous work* by such authors, which has been published in such journals / outlets.
The "previous published version(s)" option that you have mentioned seems to be directed toward more closely related versions of the same paper, which seems to be not the case in your situation.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It's always best to err on the side of openness, particularly when dealing with a venue that is particularly friendly to expanded publication like IEEE. Even when the new version is very different, if parts were previously published, I upload and explicitly mention those parts.
When most of a publication is new (as it sounds like is the case for you), then all it means is that it will be really simple for the editors and reviewers to determine that you are in conformance with their extended publication policy. If, however, you do *not* declare the prior publication and a reviewer notices, then it is likely to at least cause a significant delay in reviewing while they sort things out (if not larger problems).
Having the previous publication in another language complicates things a little bit, but does not fundamentally alter the situation. Translating the paper might be a bit much for appropriate level of effort, but you might at least make the life of the editors and reviewers simpler by annotating the previous and current documents to show which passages have been translated for the current work. That way, they can easily see that the magnitude is much smaller than the current paper, simplifying their evaluation.
In short: there's generally no downside for declaring prior work, and plenty of possible downsides for not declaring, so it's almost always better to declare.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: It is always a good idea to declare and provide access to similar or overlapping content, even if the current work is significantly different from the previously published ones. That way, it is clear that your intent is right and you do not wish to deceive or pass off parts of a previously published work as an original study. I'm not sure if translation or annotation would be feasible in terms of time and effort, but you should at least cite the previous publication if you have used any content from it in your current work.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I was recently appointed to a new post (at a much better university) and my affiliation will change in a couple of months. I have to attend a conference next week and present work carried out with my current affiliation.
I would like somehow to let the audience know what my next position will be, and the project I will be working on, as it is very relevant in the community.
My questions are:
1. Is this common, or should I just stick to the research findings?
2. If it is indeed common, how to let the audience know? I was thinking about including a slide in the end of my presentation, about my upcoming post and project. But then, is there a chance that my new employer would have a problem with that? Should I let them know? Or maybe just forget the whole thing and just present my current work?
I am asking because the presentation will be permanently online, so I would like to make the most out of it.<issue_comment>username_1: While I'm not too familiar with the IEEE publication process, in particular, the common sense tells me the following. Since your manuscript in its present form is **"significantly different"** from the previous versions, it very well makes sense to simply submit the current version as an *original publication*. However, it would be nice (and right - in order to prevent self-plagiarism accusations) to mention somewhere in the paper (preferably, in the introduction section) that the present paper is *based on previous work* by such authors, which has been published in such journals / outlets.
The "previous published version(s)" option that you have mentioned seems to be directed toward more closely related versions of the same paper, which seems to be not the case in your situation.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: It's always best to err on the side of openness, particularly when dealing with a venue that is particularly friendly to expanded publication like IEEE. Even when the new version is very different, if parts were previously published, I upload and explicitly mention those parts.
When most of a publication is new (as it sounds like is the case for you), then all it means is that it will be really simple for the editors and reviewers to determine that you are in conformance with their extended publication policy. If, however, you do *not* declare the prior publication and a reviewer notices, then it is likely to at least cause a significant delay in reviewing while they sort things out (if not larger problems).
Having the previous publication in another language complicates things a little bit, but does not fundamentally alter the situation. Translating the paper might be a bit much for appropriate level of effort, but you might at least make the life of the editors and reviewers simpler by annotating the previous and current documents to show which passages have been translated for the current work. That way, they can easily see that the magnitude is much smaller than the current paper, simplifying their evaluation.
In short: there's generally no downside for declaring prior work, and plenty of possible downsides for not declaring, so it's almost always better to declare.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_3: It is always a good idea to declare and provide access to similar or overlapping content, even if the current work is significantly different from the previously published ones. That way, it is clear that your intent is right and you do not wish to deceive or pass off parts of a previously published work as an original study. I'm not sure if translation or annotation would be feasible in terms of time and effort, but you should at least cite the previous publication if you have used any content from it in your current work.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: I just received the answer for my first submitted paper. It was rejected but they annexed the answer of just one referee. Is it normal to reject a paper based on the review of a single referee? Can I use this as an argument to ask for reconsideration? Of course this would not be my single argument, since I found issues with the review itself as well. (It questioned the validaty of my methodology even though I cited a review just about the methodology used.)<issue_comment>username_1: It is normal. Often there is one referee who writes an extensive review, whose judgment weight heaviest with the editor. If there are 4 reviews, 3 are in the "publish" half of the spectrum but are brief (not adequately justifying the recommendation), and there is 1 "reject" review which extensively argues against publication, an editor will either have to apply his/her own knowledge of the field and decide which argument carries the day, or will need to request an additional review. Good editors do not just count up the plus and minus values, they have to evaluate the evidence in the reviews.
If you make the case for reconsideration, I think it should focus on the question of whether positive evidence in the reviews has been undervalued. There's not much you can do if the negative reviewer is (unbeknownst to you) The Leading Authority.
Upvotes: 4 [selected_answer]<issue_comment>username_2: In my experience, it is typical for papers to receive either zero reviews (editorial rejection) or multiple reviews (usually 3-4, but occasionally 2 or 5). Having just a single review (accept or reject) is very unusual. One possible explanation is that the editor formatted their editorial rejection as a review; another possible explanation is that you were dealing with a publication venue with a rather slipshod process.
You can email and ask for clarification. It is not, however, likely that you can get the decision changed in any way: if the editor found your paper problematic enough that they willing to reject with a single review, they are unlikely to change their mind on for purposes of "due process." Improve the paper, find a better venue, and move on.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It happens -- at least it's happened to me -- and although I don't know about the etiquette of asking for reconsideration, if you believe the bad review is based on an incorrect reading of the manuscript, then I think it's warranted.
The time this happened to me, I had two very good reviews on a paper and one really bad review. The two good reviews were short because they liked everything in the paper and had nothing else to say. The one bad review was bad because the reviewer was biased against my premise and did not examine the evidence I presented. I contacted the editor and pointed these things out and eventually the paper got published. So, there's not much to lose by touching base with the editor unless in your situation doing so would be a serious faux pas.
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_4: It is not so common but it still happens quite often that a paper is rejected by only one referee, especially for smaller conferences. Usually a paper is assigned to a few reviewers. But some reviewers may be busy and may not send their review on time. In that case, the decision may be taken without all reviews.
And generally, it will not work if you ask for reconsideration unless there would be some major error or some very serious reason to do so. Besides, according to my experience, it happens quite often that some reviewers don't understand something in a paper. But most of the time, it is the fault of the author because something in the paper is not clear enough. So if the reviewer did not understand, it may just be an indication that you need to rewrite the paper to make it more clear so that the reviewers will not think about something else. Don't forget that reviewers are not always expert on your topic.
Upvotes: 0
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<issue_start>username_0: I often hear it said that all jobs have to be advertised externally before anyone can be appointed to an academic post in a UK university. However, this rule about having to advertise externally is certainly not true in general in industry where the only obligation one might have to avoid discrimination claims is to advertise the job internally.
Is there a special obligation on a UK university through some public sector regulations, maybe, to advertise all jobs externally? I'm asking about UK universities in particular.<issue_comment>username_1: Yes, in my state (Texas), there's a [law](http://www.statutes.legis.state.tx.us/Docs/GV/htm/GV.656.htm) that all government vacancies in positions (including jobs at state-run, public universities) must be posted publicly for at least 10 business days unless the position is to be filled by an internal candidate. It is often [flouted openly](http://www.ktxs.com/news/texas-ag-fills-several-top-jobs-without-public-postings/33996554).
Upvotes: 2 <issue_comment>username_2: I think you are misunderstanding how academic job searches work in the UK. All jobs, and I believe this is not specific to universities, must be advertised internally first to individuals in the "redundancy pool". If, and only if, there is no one in the redundancy pool that can meet the minimum requirements with 6 months of training can the job be advertised externally. The redundency pool is available to people, I think, from 3 months before their contract ends until 3 months afterwards.
Current employees not in the redundancy pool, can get prompted within the same job family without having to advertise the job at all. At my university there is no system for moves, lateral or upwards, across job families. That said, if you really want someone, you can regrade and reclassify them.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_3: It depends on the country, state or the university. Some university have their own policy. Some country or state may also have some rules about whether a university should advertise jobs externally. If you are not sure, you may contact someone from a given university to know how it works there.
Upvotes: 1
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<issue_start>username_0: After my paper was accepted, I was sent page proofs with few corrections to some words and some references. Is it possible to add something to this page proofs. I want to change wording of a line that they didn’t mention so it makes better sense is that possible?<issue_comment>username_1: In my experience, this is usually fine, as long as your changes are fairly minor and localized.
Upvotes: 3 <issue_comment>username_2: Basically it should be fine.
In my own experience large publishers (Springer, BMC etc) have outsourced the proofing process or at least a separate division does it. After Editor has viewed your paper along with possible revisions made proposed by the reviewers, the paper is usually moved to the people doing the proofing. Theoretically, you could make any corrections possible, since the writers have no expertise in the subject. At least this is my experience. They just do the job according the journals policy and instructions. As so, I strongly believe you can make corrections outside the proposed ones. In some journal journals they also inquire for "any other corrections". Of course if you make revisions which have any influence on the scientific matter there might be issues after publication.
Upvotes: 3 [selected_answer]
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